On the Soul's Terms

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.

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

The series on the houses wouldn't have felt complete without one last fairytale. 

In this, the 40th and last episode of the series, we explore the German tale of Dornröschen, which loosely translates to 'the little rose inside the thorns'. 

It begins with a talking frog who crawls out of the water to deliver a prophecy to the bathing queen. And it takes us into those places in ourselves that feel dormant. We feel that these parts have such great potential in our lives, but they remain fast asleep. 

Until...

Well, that's the thing. The story takes us into the element of timing, of transits, of progressions, of gestation and of waiting until that which slumbers is ready to arouse. 

I'm joined in a very synchronous way by Milena Kadziela, a fellow astrologer and psychotherapist. She sends a transmission from London, in the middle of the night, on the Libra Full Moon. The moon was at 12°, which is the 13th degree.

Milena, a listener to the show, felt that the one element that was missing in the series was that of the intercepted house. It happens that she uses this very story, Briar Rose, to speak to those hard to access parts of the chart. 

And so, she joined us for a late cameo in the episode to drop her night wisdom on us all. 

If you'd like to find out more about Milena's work you can find her here. 

You can read the story itself here.

The image for the podcast is again from Artist and Patron, Lucy Dodd. Her work is also featured on episode 124 with Melanie Reinhart. 

With an overlaid princess from a 1981 edition of La Belle Au Bois Dormant & Autres Contes Merveilleux (Sleeping Beauty & Other Wonderful Tales), published by Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri and Hachette.

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

My guest for this episode is... well... me!

Astrologer Brian Clark interviews me, Chris Skidmore, in this episode as we look back on the journey that was the 12 Houses of Astrology. In no particular order, we move back through the images that captured our attention from the fairy tales, and revisit our 13 guests that helped us along the way. 

Thank you to all of you who have come along with me in the sacred role of 'audience'... it's your listening that makes this possible. 

Special shout out here to all of my wonderful guests. Find our more about their work by clicking their links:

Brian Clark: www.astrosynthesis.com.au

Cameron Allen: www.cadreamplanet.com

Collette Davis: www.collettedavis.com

Melanie Reinhart: melaniereinhart.com

Vive Oldham: www.viveandco.com

Libby Rose Waite: libbyrosewaite.com

Kira Sutherland: www.astrologyofhealth.com

Ryan Nielsen: www.yourveryownlife.com

Travis Elliott: travisjelliott.com

Amanda Simon: amandasimon.co.uk

Thomas Moore: www.thomasmooresoul.com

Michael Meade: www.mosaicvoices.org

Jason Holley: jasonholley.net

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

Melanie Reinhart joins me once more to speak into and from the 12th house of the wheel of houses. The episode itself is a wonderful example of how that which we talk about can sometimes be 'conjured up' by our speech. This is something that Gregory Bateson called a 'metalogue' - a word introduced to me by Melanie many moons ago. 

Our metalogue was a disruption from the gods of technology who seemed to think that some of what we shared was best kept in silence. And so we were kicked off the call at a particularly poignant moment in this one. 

None-the-less, the essence of the house was thoroughly explored. And we share with you whatever the deities allow us to reveal. 

This completes our 'series within a series' on the water houses - those elusive and hard to grasp places of reality. I'm forever grateful to Melanie for her generosity of spirit in sharing her depth of wisdom with us on the podcast. 

The image for the podcast cover is from Patron of the show, Lucy Dodd. It's a piece she calls "Sun Moon and Mermaid" made with, in her words, 'Iron oxide and Copper ink, blue spirulina, cochineal and some other stuff.' 

She completed it just as our Iron John episodes were released. 

REFERENCES

Authors & Thinkers

• Gregory Bateson
  → Concept of metalogue
  → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson
  
  
• Carl Jung
  → Concept of the numinous
  → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous
  
  
• Dane Rudhyar
  → The Astrological Houses: The Spectrum of Individual Experience (also published as New Mansions for New Men)
  
  
• David Abram
  → Cultural perception / reality frameworks
  → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Abram
  
  
• C. A. Meier
  → Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy (republished as Healing Dream and Ritual)
  
  
• Brian Clark
  → Rewilding the psyche (concept referenced)

Mythological Sources & Figures

• Hyginus
  → Fabulae (mythographical fragments)
  
  
• Dionysus
  → Greek god of ecstasy, twice-born myth
  → https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Dionysos.html
  
  
• Asclepius
  → Greek god of healing and incubation temples
  → https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Asklepios.html
  
  
• Ariadne
  → Associated with Dionysus, labyrinth, and Corona Borealis
  
  
• River Lethe & Mnemosyne
  → Rivers of forgetfulness and memory in the underworld
  
  
• Chiron & Chariklo
  → Centaur healer and his consort (associated with weaving/spinning)
  
  

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

The 12th and final house of astrology is often given a bad wrap. It's considered the house of hidden enemies and of our own undoing. It rules over places we'd rather not be such as prisons, hospitals and asylums.

And yet, deep in this oceanic place in our charts we may meet the gods themselves. Figures from the collective unconscious who shape shift and morph, reveal and conceal themselves into and out of our minds. 

It's a place that has associations with Neptune, Jupiter and Pisces; the deepest places of the ocean where our surface world probes can't reach. A place where Saturn, brooding and moody as he is, is in his Joy. Yes, that's right, Saturn has a joyful place. 

In order to enter this house we need to leave our conscious tools at the door. We need to journey away from the known world on a wonderful sea journey with fantastic companions. 

Hercules' 12th labour, Ariadne abandoned on Naxos and Hephaestus, the wounded goldsmith whose workshop is in a cave under the sea, will help us get a better feel for this place. Help us take a good look around and see what it is that we might be missing about this much maligned house, and what secret treasures it might be already, right now, shaping and re-shaping in the forge. 

Podcast Cover: "Mercury Confiding the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs of Nysa" by François Boucher.

Carl Jung – Modern Man in Search of a Soul

James Hillman – The Myth of Analysis

Arnold Mindell – Process-Oriented Psychology

Mircea Eliade – The Forge and the Crucible

Walt Whitman – Song of Myself, from Leaves of Grass

Roberto Calasso – The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

The Delphic Maxims (including “Know Thyself”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims

• Heracles and Cerberus • The Labours of Heracles
•  Theseus and the Minotaur
•  Ariadne and Dionysus on Naxos
•  Hephaestus and the forge beneath the sea
•  The Golden Net of Ares and Aphrodite
•  Cronus and the Golden Age

• The Twelfth House • Neptune and the Oceanic Realm
•  Saturn’s Joy in the Twelfth House
•  The Water Houses: 4th, 8th and 12th
•  The Ascendant as Threshold (the “door-slab” of the chart)

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

Part Two of our wanderings with Iron John/Hans. The episode begins with the moss bed made for the boy in the forest. Ryan shares soulful reflections on moss itself; known as a 'boundary layer' that draws moisture not from the ground up but from the air down. Moss forms little cups to gather water from the electricity in the air, which must be one of the most Aquarian/11th House symbols I've ever heard. 

We re-enter the story where we left off in part one; the boy is learning to listen in to his inner most knowing. In speaking for the scent of the wild flowers he shows us that his time asleep on the moss transformed his sense of reality. He is becoming ready to work with the gold/wound split in his consciousness.

In the second half of the story we encounter much Chironic imagery. A three-legged 'hobblety jig' horse speaks to our current moment as Chiron moves through the last phase of Aries and Saturn/Neptune through the first. What does this story tell us about Aries energy, wounded kings, lost wildness and the world's deep thirst?

It's a longer episode than most, but once you listen in you'll see why. To get the most nourishment from this story we needed to move more with Kairos time than Kronos. The result, however, is a very nourishing alchemical brew. 

So grateful to Ryan's wife, Holly Parson Nielsen, for the artwork for the episode. It conjures the movement of the story so well from the well to the moss to the gold. Thank you Holly. 

If you'd like to know more about Ryan's work, or perhaps book a session with him to explore his approach to astrology, mythology and the dreaming body, go to yourveryownmyth.com.

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

Ryan Nielsen joins the podcast again (see episode 104 for our circuitous meanderings on Allerleirauh) to explore the Grimm tale of Iron John (or Iron Hans) whilst reflecting about the cusp between the known and unknown worlds (the 11th and 12th house cusp). 

Iron John is a story that was made famous by the poet Robert Bly in the 1990s. It became the central story that he worked with in his book by the same name. Robert uses the story to illustrate the many trials and tribulations in the process of becoming a man in the modern world. 

Ryan and I pick the story up not from the hands of Bly but from the creative commons of the story itself. We let the images lead us. The story comes alive in a new way in this conversation as we riff and bounce and feel and atune to it with the backdrop of the 11th and 12th house to guide us. 

If you'd like to connect with Ryan he has just launched his new website: yourveryownmyth.com.

Join us on Patreon to discuss the episode! You can join in for free or pledge some appreciation. 

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

Astrologer Jason Holley joins me again on the podcast today to delve into the 11th house - the house of groups, the polis, mass media, theatre, the audience, 'the people'.

It’s a rich and far-reaching conversation that, we both felt, got right to the heart of this complex and often misunderstood house that takes us into the entangled world of collective consciousness. 

Along the way we speak on:

• diurnal motion as the lived logic of house meanings
• the 11th as context maker for 10th house vocation
• Jupiter’s joy, morale, and shared vision
• theater, polis, and mass media as 11th house arenas
• fifth–eleventh polarity of eros and audience
• Athena’s birth as vision turning into action
• Medusa’s image as power carried into public life
• hopes and dreams versus cynicism and dissociation
• worldwork, conflict, and group process as remedies
• all our relations beyond humans in the group field

Cover Artwork: James Gurney - Clashing Rocks

Further reading

• Homer — The Iliad (Zeus, “the plan of Zeus”, collective order and fate)
• Homer — The Odyssey (Athena as Mentor; Telemachus and guidance/destiny)
• Ovid — Metamorphoses (mythic transformation as a living psychological process)
• Roberto Calasso — The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (brilliant modern retelling/interpretation of Greek myth)
• Arnold Mindell — Sitting in the Fire (worldwork, group fields, conflict as an intelligence)
• Jacob L. Moreno — Who Shall Survive? (psychodrama and group dynamics foundations)

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

What happens when personal destiny meets the wider world of friends, teams, and the public square? We dive into the Eleventh House as the arena where your hard‑won calling turns into collective contribution, guided by Aquarius’s twin rulers—Saturn, who sets the frame, and Uranus, who refreshes it. Along the way, we unpack how projection travels from siblings to partners to society, why the traits you disown often show up as “the group,” and how to retrieve that gold without losing yourself.

We lean on myth and psychology to make it practical. Jupiter, in joy here, models leadership that holds tension without collapsing into control or chaos. Athena shows how to carry real achievement into service with clarity. Hermes, the psychopomp, translates Twelfth‑House visions into language the public can actually use. And the dance of Apollo and Dionysus reveals why cultures need both order and creative disruption to stay alive. From festivals that loosen roles to structures that protect dissent, the message is simple: give the trickster a seat and the rules a spine.

You’ll also hear how Hercules and the Argonauts illustrate an Eleventh‑House upgrade to leadership—when the central hero steps aside, the system wakes up and many gifts emerge. We explore participation mystique in both its light and shadow: the ecstasy of healthy belonging versus the danger of melting into the mass. Expect grounded cues for spotting the difference and for building teams that are resilient, creative, and humane. If you’re ready to turn personal genius into public good—without burning out or blending in—this conversation will meet you where you are and stretch you where you’re going.

If this sparked something, subscribe, leave a quick review, and share it with a friend who leads or longs to belong. Your support helps more thoughtful listeners find the show.

* the above was autogenerated by Buzzsprout's AI.

The podcast art is oil painted on canvas by Leonid Ilyukhin - Apollo and Dionysus.

I mentioned a book by Arnold Mindell called Sitting in the Fire (but I mistakenly called it Standing in the Fire. Also an option but not the correct name of the book). This book is well worth looking into if you'd like to find out more about how Process Oriented Psychotherapy works with groups. Truly visionary stuff for our times. 

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

Michael Meade rejoins the podcast to discuss all things 11th house; the house of collective consciousness, groups, teams and the Polis: society at large. The 11th is where the great mystery occurs in the interaction between the individual cell and the whole organism. 

Michael's words act as a steadying force in unsettling times. He brings us back to a sense of cohesion and collaboration, reminding us of our internal spark of life that he calls the Genius. In his vision, that he draws from ancient wells, he sees a world of individuals waking up to the truth within their souls and participating in the creation of a new world as the current paradigms collapse. The more this happens the more gold within the cracks of the world are revealed.

In these times of upheaval and uncertainty, Michael gives us a soothing balm whilst encouraging us to step forward and participate in the great theatre of life. 

Within this episodes theatre we meet the following characters:

• Phaëthon
  The figure who takes power without inner maturity; the danger of inflated authority disconnected from soul.
• Christ
  The one nailed to the crossroads of collective tension; sacrifice, revelation, and the danger of myth hardening into dogma.
• Dionysus
  The twice-born god; Eros, ecstasy, dismemberment, and the return of soul energy that culture tries to repress.
• Tiresias — the blind seer; inner sight over literal vision; prophetic knowing that comes through loss, transition, and a life lived between worlds.
• Hermes
  The trickster and messenger; boundary-crosser, mediator between worlds, carrier of transition.
• Vishnu
  The cosmic dreamer; the world inhaled and exhaled through cycles of dissolution and renewal.
• The Trickster
  Disruptor of rigid systems; brings medicine through paradox, humour, and mischief.
• The Genius
  The indwelling spirit unique to each person; purpose as something listened to rather than achieved.
• The Outsider
  The one on the margins; carrier of renewal and new imagination when the centre collapses.
• The Bodhisattva
  The figure who returns to the broken world rather than escaping it; compassion in times of collapse.

Visit Michael Meade's website here where you can find links to his podcast, books and offerings.

Cover Art: The Fall of the Rebel Angels - an oil-on-panel painting created in 1562 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Join the Newsletter!

Podcast Musician: Marlia Coeur
Please consider becoming a Patron to support the show!
Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.