On the Soul's Terms

Venus is the sphere in which we ponder Love, Beauty, Harmony, Pleasure, Value (and our Values) and Worth (and that niggling question, 'Am I Worthy?).

In our chart she represents how you attract others, express affection, handle finances and appreciate the finer things in life. 

In the current sky, Venus in Scorpio is retrograde and about to disappear from the evening sky. She's on her way to meet the Sun at 0° Scorpio before returning to her home in Libra and rising again as the morning star. 

This episode is a companion to that journey; a deep dive into her realm.

Sappho, her most cherished devotee, will start us off on the right foot. Then we follow her mythic threads with the help of Aphrodite and Eros from their most primordial essence through to how they are imagined in the harsh HD lights of the modern day. 

Part Two of the Podcast follows the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite in its entirety. Aphrodite, disguised as a maiden, approaches the unsuspecting Trojan, Anchises. The poem is a rare glimpse of Aphrodite's world from the inside. Including her powerful effect on all creatures in existence to bring them the gifts of love along with its accompanying strife. 

The episode cover art is Venus de Milo – the Louvre

REFERENCES

Sappho — Fragments
Especially Fragment 5.
The Poems of Sappho — Wikisource

Hesiod — Theogony
For the primordial Eros and the genealogy of Aphrodite.
Hesiod, Theogony — Perseus Digital Library

Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Hymn 5)
The central mythological source for the second half of this episode.
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite — Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies

Homer — Iliad, Book 5
For Aphrodite's wounding and her relationship with Aeneas.
Homer, Iliad — Perseus Digital Library

Virgil — Aeneid, Book 1
For Aeneas, Venus, and the aftermath of Troy.
Virgil, Aeneid — Perseus Digital Library

Empedocles — Love and Strife
For the conception of Love as a fundamental cosmic force.
Empedocles — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

David Abram — The Spell of the Sensuous
For the discussion of sensual perception and our embodied relationship with the world.
David Abram — The Spell of the Sensuous

Chris and Melanie talk Venus & Inanna
On Spotify

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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Venus in the sky is currently at her highest glory (elongation (distance from the sun)). That's the moment that, like Inanna, she hears the call from the Great Above to the Great Below and decides to descend. She moves through the seven gates, each gate demanding that she remove one of her signals of power in the upper realms. 

Melanie Reinhart joins me to talk about her own observations of this myth. It has particularly come alive for her since she started tracking the resonance of her inner world with the movements of Venus through its five-pointed star pattern since 1983.

We discuss Melanie's connection to folklorist, Diane Wolkstein. Diane was a storyteller who held court in Central Park, NY, in an official capacity as resident storyteller for many years. Following her curiosity about ancient tales, Diane tracked down Samuel Noah Kramer, a leading Sumerologist in his field whose job it was to translate cuneiform texts. 

Together they wrote the book Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth (see link below). Kramer translated Cuneiform into English, Wolkstein translated English into Story. From their tireless and persistent work togehter the ancient myth made its way into the modern world. 

It's more than just a story of descent. It's a story of ecstacy, longing, commitment, obligation, love, loss, rage and redemption... amongst other things. 

In this Special Edition episode, aligned with the Times, Melanie shares with us a generous offering of her life experience, client observations and participation in the coming to life of this epic tale into the modern era. 

Timeless wisdom for a world in thirst of soul. 

Podcast Image: Ancient Akkadian cylinder seal depicting the goddess Inanna resting her foot on the back of a lion while Ninshubur stands in front of her paying obeisance, c. 2350–2150 BCE

Resources

• Sylvia Brinton Perera — Descent to the Goddess (1981)
• Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer — Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth (1983)
• Diane Wolkstein — The First Love Stories: From Isis and Osiris to Tristan and Iseult
• Samuel Noah Kramer — Sumerologist / translations of the Inanna cuneiform texts 
• Ariel Guttman — Venus Star Point / Venus cycle 
• Dane Rudhyar — birth as the moment of separation / cutting of the cord 
• Alice Bailey — Venus as esoteric ruler of Gemini 
• Irving Finkel — British Museum / Sumerian material and the Queen's Lyre 
• Rumi — poem concerning love and removing the obstacles to love 
• Adonis / Aphrodite — later mythic development of the dying-and-returning lover and lamentation tradition 
• Rogerian therapy / Carl Rogers — mirroring/reflective listening, in relation to the Kurgarra 
• Queen's Lyre of Ur — Sumerian lyre, British Museum / Baghdad Museum restoration story

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system, closest to the sun, taking a magical 88 days for a year. It travels fast but spins slowly – a day being 1.5 times as long as a year – with a quirky, egg-shaped orbit.

Small with a big character. That kind of sums up mythical Hermes (Mercury) who, on the first day of his life, invents music, fire and ritual, steals Apollo's cattle and snuggles back into his blanket like nothing happened. 

To get in touch with this endlessly paradoxical being we begin with his Orphic Hymn: an invocation of the god. Only, of course, there isn't one hymn but two. Already he has found a way to 'twin' himself. The first hymn gives us a sense of his role as messenger – his 'day job' – the second as psychopomp: guide of souls who assists us through the many deaths of our lives. 

That's the thing about Hermes/Mercury. We meet him at the threshold. Even astrologically he is the third in a set of three. He revises where we've been and sets us up for where we're going next. 

Of course, being an episode about words themselves, there had to be some poetry involved. Dylan Thomas takes us in with On the Words in Poetry – essentially a love song dedicated to the magic of words themselves. And then, to close us out, a poem called, if this isn't too on the nose, Magic Words. 

References

• Homeric Hymn to Hermes — Theoi Classical Texts Library 
• Orphic Hymns — Apostolos N. Athanassakis & Benjamin M. Wolkow, The Orphic Hymns — Johns Hopkins University Press
• The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart — Robert Bly, James Hillman & Michael Meade — Open Library
• Dylan Thomas — “On the Words in Poetry” — from The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart
• “Magic Words” — from The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart
• Tim Minchin — “Prejudice” — YouTube
• Tim Minchin — “If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out” — Tim Minchin
• Sigmund Freud / “Freudian slip” — APA Dictionary of Psychology 
• Arnold Mindell — “Discovering the World in the Individual: The World Channel in Psychotherapy” — Process Work 
• Hermes — Theoi Greek Mythology — Hermes 
• Hermes, the herma, fire, lyre and psychopomp — Theoi: Hermes

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Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
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Today I’m joined by mentor, guide and friend of the podcast, Brian Clark. 

It’s time to enter the world of Hermes, guide of souls, the one we meet on the road who can lead us away from home and lead us back when the time is right. 

We begin our discussion by talking about mythological Hermes, tracing his origins back to Mycenaean culture where he was known as the ‘herma’ – a pile of rocks that we still have in our language today as the ‘milestone’. 

Brian and I discuss moments in our lives, of which there are far more than we could possibly mention, of when we had a plan and Hermes had an alternative. Once off the track of what we thought might happen we are in the hands of Hermes or Mercury and on the pathless path where the mystery, unmistakably, is unfolding at our feet. 

From here we go into the more technical realm of Mercury the planet. The numbers that are associated with his relationship to the sun, including Pi – that endless rambling number that seems random but follows an invisible order. And we suggest some ways to work with Mercury and its cycles in order to follow its intrinsic patterns, tend to the mind and thread together ideas so that they might become fruitful projects over time. 

I decided to leave the conversation unedited. The moments of wrestling with an idea, or getting things wrong, or taking the apparently wrong path, seem an important part of the contemplation of Hermes Mercurius. Without that tension, that wrestling match, that confusion, those strange crossroads, we’re unlikely to receive that little bag of gold that Hermes holds in his hand, the one that isn’t holding the Caduceus. 

Resources Mentioned

Books & Texts

• Lewis Hyde — Trickster Makes This World
• Homer — The Iliad
• Homer — The Odyssey
• Homeric Hymn to Hermes

Authors & Thinkers

• David Abram
• Dane Rudhyar

Mythological References

• Hermes / Mercury
• Perseus and Medusa
• Kairos
• Prometheus and Epimetheus
• Metis
• Mnemosyne
• Snow White / Sleeping Beauty

Astrology & Astronomy

• Mercury's Promethean and Epimethean phases
• Mercury's retrograde cycles
• Mercury's inferior and superior conjunctions
• Mercury's greatest elongation
• The ~116-day Mercury cycle
• The relationship between Mercury's cycles, 22/7, and π

Astrosynthesis

• Brian Clark & Glennys Lawton — Astrosynthesis

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Spyros Siamos is an energy healer, esoteric author, and former mathematics teacher based in Messinia, Greece. He lives on a coastal olive grove situated near an ancient Temple of Apollo, where he conducts one-on-one healing sessions and hosts sound therapy, meditation, and spiritual workshops.

A father of two and author of three books on esotericism, Spyros has explored various healing modalities and trained in Peruvian Shamanism for over ten years. He recently established Esothen Messinia—a dedicated space created to host accessible, low-budget creative and spiritual holidays, as well as affordable retreats in Greece.

English is not Spyros' first language. Many of the concepts we touch on in this episode are ones that he wishes he could wax poetic on in his mother tongue. Never the less, this apparent limitation gives us, the listener, the opportunity to, like Apollo, allow ourselves to be engaged in the struggle of birthing the light.

We begin with Spyros' childhood. His father taught primary and encouraged his interest in the ancient myths of his culture that were taught in early education. Spyros experienced myth as a way of tapping into the threads of history. 

Once in high school, myth was no longer taught. He replaced mythology with philosophy as that's what was considered to be the sensible thing to learn. To put away childish things. 

Then, through his exploration of the interior landscapes with a Peruvian Shaman, in the depth of his own consciousness, the mythic figures he'd learned about in early education returned as guides. First Athena, Aphrodite, Dionysus and others. And after a few years, Apollo. 

It was this first hand experience with the gods that I wanted to connect to On the Soul's Terms. Apollo (or the astrological Sun) not just as a concept that we can form opinions on and argue on the costs and benefits of such a god, but as an emergent, embodied, felt sense experience that is personified in Ancient Greek culture as the deity of light, harmony, balance and a clarifying light at the centre of it all. 

Later in the episode we touch on how and where Apollo has shown up in Spyros' healing work. Including the first time, when he was in the position of healer for a young man who had gone into a coma following a motorcycle accident. Here the god helped him to stay in a state of observation whilst the pain, suffering and emotion swirled all around him.

We talk about the cultivation of the mind necessary to be in right relationship with such potent energy fields. And the risk, that Spyros himself has suffered personally, of having one's system blown open when that light is unmediated. 

Which draws us to the field of the Muses or the Angels or the Daimones. Whatever one might call that layers of consciousness that is neither this nor that, both... and. And how they can help us to create from a steady hearth rather than from bright sparks that leave us singed in the end. 

Spyros will be hosting a retreat for men in Greece in October. I'll be personally attending. For more information on that click here. 

The episode artwork is from the West Pediment in the museum in Olympia. We discuss the scene in the episode – The Centaurs vs the Lapiths. Apollo stands in the centre of a chaotic battle between consciousness and instinct. Victory, in this sense, is not a case of overpowering the instinct, but of locating the light whilst being open to it all.

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Firstly I suppose I should say... *Spoiler Alert*

Although let's face it, the story is over 3,000 years old. By now you should probably have heard of it. 

Secondly, there is a Post Script here to listen out for. An 'after the credits' scene if you will. Definitely stay tuned for that part. It ties the episode together. 

The episode itself has been brewing for the last month, since the release of Nolan's The Odyssey in cinemas worldwide. 

Of course, everyone with even a pinky toe in the world of Greek Mythology has commented on it by now. And in that sense, I'm certainly late to the party. 

Still, it didn't feel right to miss the opportunity altogether. So here is my contribution.

After watching the movie I went back to read the Iliad followed by the Odyssey. About 30 hours of reading. I wanted to become steeped in that mythic landscape. To imagine myself in an ancient hall, lit by torches and the hearth, being transported into another world by the rhythmic tones of the bard.

It was that trance state I wanted to enter, as best as one can when actually just reading lines on a page translated into English that don't actually retain that rhythm and flow. And juxtapose that trance with the modern version of staring at a screen.

Both of these forms take you to another world. The bard exercises your ability to generate images inside of your mind. The movie screen generates the images for you. 

All this to say, I wanted to speak from my personal experience of Odysseus, as our most polymorphic of literary characters, and how it connects to the great quest of our lives: becoming who we actually are. 

I consider that to be what the sun is symbolic of in astrology. Not as seperate from the moon, but as an extension of it. To be oneself and fully related. That would be the 'soli-lunar' task of becoming. 

So this episode, which is a BONUS episode within the planets series, is a chance to enter Odysseus' world. His naming ritual that coincides with his wounding. His movement out of the cave and into the light past the threshold guardian. The owning of his name, his lineage, his place and his fame. And his return home to reclaim his throne. A throne that is threatened by many false selves that we know as 'the suitors'.

I'd love to hear what stirs for you in the story. Particularly the places that your mind and soul keep returning to. That (t)horn in the side that draws you back to it again and again. As wounds that have bestowed upon us the endless gifts of our mortal lives. 

YouTube and Patreon seem to be the best place to leave comments these days. See you there. 

Cover Art is Ulysses deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey. Joseph Mallord William Turner. 1829. Oil on canvas.

The translations I returned to (The Iliad and The Odyssey) were both by Emily Wilson.

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Doing an episode on the sun, our central fiery point that takes up 99.86% of the mass of our solar system and gives the system itself a name, turned out to be quite the task. 

Enormous, if you will. 

I've always found that the Sun in astrology felt a little... flat. Two dimensional. It was though we were looking at the image with that singular eye that the sun conjures to our minds. The image of the all-seeing-eye of the Cyclopes that, in reality, has no depth perception. 

So, this episode is an effort to add a second eye (I?) to the sun. To see it as a series of 'both... and' propositions. The still centre of it all AND the cacophony of sound and light that springs forth from it. The first breath of creative fire AND every subsequent humble endeavour. And as Apollo, the archer seeing from afar AND the one enamoured with life on earth, particularly the floral world whom he chases but can never obtain. 

It's an episode effectively in two parts. 

Part One is to get a sense of the sun in Astrology. We sit in the temple (con-templ-ate), we stare at the glyph, we check in with the consensus of the astrological world. Then we feel the sun on our skin, allowing it to penetrate and worm our cells. We even get a sense of the scientific mythos, this ball of self-generating life, so hot at the core, cooler (relatively) at the surface, but then mysteriously blazing again as the 'corona': the sun's own royal crown. 

Part Two we get mythic and follow Apollo's many stories, allowing him to morph into the many shapes that our Zodiac itself allows. One moment plucking a lyre and giving us lyricism, the next pulling back the bow and reigning down arrows on his enemies. 

The journey takes many twists and turns, but returns us to a central image. Veiling and revelation. Being seen and unseen. Just like his birth place, Delos ("Visible"), at the centre of the Cyklades ("circle"): a humble floating rock from which all golden things are born. 

The image is Apollo of the Belvedere at the Vatican Museum. 

I am indebted to Carl Kerenyi and his book The Gods of the Greeks. 

Also to Apollodrus' Library.

And to the extensive work of Brian Clark on astrosynthesis.com.au.

(It's a fun co-incidence that this episode is released on 'Lion's Gate' 8.8.2026)

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The Moon pulls the tides of the ocean, but the question that won’t let us go is simpler and stranger: what is it pulling in us? Melanie Reinhart joins me for a wide, grounded, moonlit ramble through lunar consciousness, astrology, and the body. We start with the moon as a constant companion for earthlings, a reliable rhythm of waxing and waning that can steady us when life feels politically, personally, and collectively turbulent.

From there, we drop into somatic territory. We talk craniosacral therapy and the experience of “tides” in the system, from surface noise to the deeper mid tide and the long tide where time feels different. That becomes a living metaphor for the lunar path: not a heroic push to achieve, but a deepening that restores life force. We also bring in the Orphic Hymn to the Moon as an invocation practice and explore why reverence matters, not as an antique idea but as a way to relate to powers we still live inside.

We get practical about moon phases too: the dark of the moon as a window for retreat, the full moon as an emotional amplifier, and how lunar timing can support better choices in work, conflict, learning, and creativity. We move into dreams as night-world digestion, why forcing interpretations can block the nourishment, and how light pollution mirrors a cultural forgetting of darkness, sleep, and imagination. If you care about the lunar cycle, dreamwork, depth psychology, the Jungian unconscious, or the roots of astrology in the night sky, this conversation is for you.

*the above blurb was auto-generated by Buzzsprout's AI.

Cover Artwork is The Fairy of the moon by Hermann Kaulbach (b&w) circa 1891 with a background extension from Canva.

The Orphic Hymns including the one in this episode dedicated to the moon, and the invocation with Musaeus. It's the Thomas Taylor translation from 1792. Melanie's personal favourite.

Find out more about Melanie and her work here. She has many great books including, famously, Chiron and the Healing Journey.

Melanie reads from:

Dane Rudhyar, The Lunation Cycle: A Key to the Understanding of Personality, from the section “The Pattern of the Lunation Cycle.”

Rudolf Steiner, “In Pure Rays of Light”
The verse appears in Esoteric Instructions (GA 264), with related commentary in an esoteric lesson of 5 December 1907 (GA 266/I).

We discuss:

Iain McGilchrist's book: The Master and his Emissary and associate right brain activity with the moon and left brain with Mercury.

Jung, obviously, comes up a lot. I paraphrase this quotation from him.

We also talk about the Tides in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. If you'd like to know more about that the work of Franklyn Sills (may he rest in peace) is a good starting point.

Clearing up the confusion of the 'far side' vs the 'dark side' of the moon we go to NASA...

But always appreciative to Pink Floyd for creating such confusion but also such a cracking album.

Melanie also mentions the Dark Sky Movement. Such important work. Have a look at darksky.org.

We also acknowledge that "mentor" is not etymologically related to Mene or taurus. What we're engaging in during that section is a nice bit of folk etymology.

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The Planets Series begins with our closest and most intimate neighbour: the moon. 

The moon represents the dreaming mind, our instinctive life and our guidance system to the emotional waves of our turbulent lives. 

Each of these elements of the moon is explored in this episode with the help of three mythic figures:

• Selene as a personification of the moon riding her white cow through the sky, visiting her lover Endymion (one who finds himself within) in his cave as he dreams the eternal dream.
• Artemis as the wild, instinctual life that stays true to her nature and close to her essence. 
• and Hekate, the triple goddess, who has her home in the underworld. It's Hekate who arrives in our most desperate times of need to accompany us in the realm of grief and loss. 

The second half of the podcast begins with the image of Grimm's Hansel staring longingly back at his home as he's taken into the woods by his step-mother to be abandoned. He drops white stones on the ground that are then lit up by the moonlight to guide him back home. 

From there we visit Mnemosyne's cellular memory, the thread-weavers and the way Ithaka pulls at Odysseus.

The Gorgons, including Medusa, will help us relate to the moments we feel unrelatable. There are many links between Medusa, the ocean and the moon. Including the Orphics calling the moon's face the Gorgoneion.

And finally Rilke with some soul-soothing words in his poem 'You Come and Go'.

Cover Art: Endymion : Effet de lune, ou Le Sommeil d’Endymion (The Sleep of Endymion), Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, 1791.

I leant heavily on Gods of the Greeks, Carl Kerenyi, 1951

Very thankful to Brian Clark, Melanie Reinhart, Travis Elliot and Milena Kadziela for their help in the creation of this podcast.

For my German audience... The poem at the end from Rilke:

Du kommst und gehst

Du kommst und gehst. Die Türen fallen
 viel sanfter zu, fast ohne Wehn.
 Du bist der Leiseste von allen,
 die durch die leisen Häuser gehn.

Man kann sich so an dich gewöhnen,
 daß man nicht aus dem Buche schaut,
 wenn seine Bilder sich verschönen,
 von deinem Schatten überblaut;
 weil dich die Dinge immer tönen
 nur einmal leis und einmal laut.

Oft wenn ich dich in Sinnen sehe,
 verteilt sich deine Allgestalt;
 du gehst wie lauter lichte Rehe,
 und ich bin dunkel und bin Wald.

Du bist ein Rad, an dem ich stehe:
 von deinen vielen dunklen Achsen
 wird immer wieder eine schwer
 und dreht sich näher zu mir her,
 und meine willigen Werke wachsen
 von Wiederkehr zu Wiederkehr.

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I disappeared for a few months, went a bit underground, and even partially relocated my life to Greece so I could be a little closer to the gods I keep talking about. Now I’m ready to return with something simple, specific, and surprisingly alive: a new astrology podcast series on the planets, approached as characters of the psyche rather than abstract symbols on a page.

If the houses are the places where the saga of a life unfolds, the planets are the ones living it. I’ve been thinking of them less like an internal family system and more like an internal solar system, each planet representing a different part of the self with its own aims, needs, and ways of moving. We’ll take an imaginal voyage through the horoscope, stopping at one planet or luminary at a time, experimenting with what it feels like to become the Moon with its craters and shadow, the Sun with its heat and power, and Mercury with its fast, message-carrying urgency.

Myth will be one of our main guides. Because the planets share names with Greco-Roman figures, their stories give us a rich way to watch archetypes behave: who allies with whom, what gets opposed, and how a planet’s gifts can become traps when they run the inner world unchecked. The order of the series follows the Sun’s movement through the zodiac, exploring the ruler of the sign we’re in, beginning next week with the Moon as ruler of Cancer, then the Sun for Leo, then Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, plus a bonus planet and a special guest.

As usual, I’ll be joined by guests to explore each planetary archetype. We start with my dear friend, colleague, and mentor Melanie Reinhart for the lunar conversation. If you’d like to go deeper, paid Patreon members can join a monthly reflective Zoom call to ask questions about personal placements and continue the threads we leave open. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find this mythic astrology journey.

* My words here underwent a clean up from Buzzsprout's AI.

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