Parts & Charts: The IFS and Astrology Podcast

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

About Our Guest

Felicia Keller Boyle is an LMFT, business coach for private pay therapists, and host of her own podcast, The Bad Therapist Show. Before successfully growing her own six figure practice and launching her multi-six figure coaching business, Felicia spent years working in community mental health and agencies where she experienced the immense pressure therapists feel to put everyone first. After much soul-searching, she decided to see if it was possible to do great work and be paid well. Spoiler: It is. For the past seven years she's been helping ambitious therapists do the same and leave good therapist conditioning behind.

Felicia calls her podcast The Bad Therapist Show, and she means it as a badge, not a confession. She’s still licensed. Still renewing. Still a good clinician. But somewhere around 2021 she split off from the room where you’re not supposed to coach, not supposed to tell anyone what to do, not supposed to want what you want out loud — and built a business teaching other therapists to do the same. This week she joins KP and Chelsea to talk about what happens when the part of you trained to disappear into your client’s process has to go build a business in public instead.

You are listening to Parts & Charts: The IFS and Astrology Podcast. Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Parts & Charts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Therapists are trained to disappear. Whatever they think, whatever they want, whatever they’d say if it were their session — it stays out of the room, redirected back to the client, again and again, until redirecting becomes a reflex that doesn’t turn off at five o’clock. Felicia names this directly: she loves rules, she’s a rule-follower by nature, and the rule she took most seriously in clinical practice was that therapy is process-led, not opinion-led. You don’t tell people what to do. But there was a part of her that wanted to teach, wanted to lead, wanted to stand in front of a group and just say the thing — and therapy had no room for that part. Coaching did. Liberated Business, her program for therapists building and scaling private practice, is what happens when that part finally gets a job description.

This is parts activation in its most literal form, business-flavored: not exiles and protectors in clinical language, since Felicia isn’t IFS-trained even though she’s currently a client in it herself, but the same architecture underneath. A part that follows rules so well it built an entire professional identity on self-erasure. Another part that’s been waiting since childhood — the puppeteer behind the church curtain, the kid leading a group that never asked for a leader — for permission to be looked at. The business isn’t just a business. It’s the place where the part that performs finally gets to stop apologizing for wanting an audience.

KP pulls the chart and finds exactly this tension built into the architecture: Felicia’s sun and chart ruler both sitting in the most private house there is, while Jupiter — expansive, lucky, loud — sits in the most public one, in Pisces. A person whose core identity is structurally guarded, who has nonetheless been performing since she was small. And then Mars in Capricorn in the eighth house, the house of real intimacy and shared resources, which reframes the whole conversation: Felicia isn’t bad at vulnerability, she’s built vulnerability into a craft. Professional vulnerability. Vulnerability with a fee attached and a clear beginning and end, brick by Capricorn brick. That’s not a workaround. That’s the actual shape of the gift — the eighth house doing what the eighth house does, slowly, on purpose, for other people’s benefit before her own.

The “bad therapist” framing earns its keep here, too, because it isn’t really about being bad at therapy — Felicia is emphatic that she’s good at her job, good enough that she’s almost offended when someone implies otherwise. It’s about being a good rule-breaker, which is its own discipline. She talks about skipping high school constantly her senior year — not to do anything illicit, but to go study for harder classes than the ones she was assigned to attend. Same instinct, different decade: know the rule, understand why it exists, and break it anyway when you’ve got a clearer reason than the rule does. That’s the same engine that let her leave a stable clinical identity to build something the rulebook didn’t have a category for yet.

Running underneath all of it is the 2023–2025 stretch — grief after her brother’s death, a business slump that lined up almost exactly with an astrological progression her astrologer later named and dated, and two and a half years of fighting weather that was telling her to rest. Felicia didn’t rest. She launched a podcast and invested in SEO instead, the opposite of what her astrologer would have advised in real time. It worked out — her business calls this period the rocket ship now — but the episode doesn’t let that read as proof the fight was right. It’s proof that sometimes the bruising and the outcome arrive together, and the chart’s job isn’t to spare you one or the other. It’s to eventually explain both.

What we get into:

What happens to the part of a therapist trained to disappear when she has to build a business in public

“Bad therapist” as identity, not confession — rule-following, rule-breaking, and the difference between the two

Sun and chart ruler buried in the most private house, next to a Jupiter that wants an audience

Mars in Capricorn in the eighth house: vulnerability as a craft, not a deficit

Why therapists specifically struggle with visibility and marketing, and what coaching gave Felicia that clinical work couldn’t

The 2023–2025 progression: grief, business malaise, an astrologer’s blunt forecast, and the two and a half years spent fighting it anyway

“Choose your hard” — Felicia’s operating philosophy for entrepreneurship, no spiritual bypass attached

Find Felicia:

The Bad Therapist Show — abadtherapist.coach — Liberated Business, one-on-one coaching, and the Magic Sheet (her private-practice fee calculator) Links below>

Website

Magic Sheets Private Practice Fee CalculatorLiberated Business

The Bad Therapist Show

Instagram

Parts & Charts is co-hosted by KP Kaszubowski, Hellenistic astrologer and APM educator, and Chelsea Owens, licensed IFS therapist.

Work with us / stay close: Subscribe to Parts & Charts on Substack — episodes and in-person workshops land there first. → partsandcharts.substack.com

Meet your Moon. KP’s guided audio course for meeting the Moon as an inner figure, on your own time. ($42) → https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon

Work with Chelsea. Licensed therapist, Leo moon, first house everything, art supplies on every surface. → www.chelseaowenstherapy.com

Work with KP. Astrology readings (written, voice note, or live; in person if you’re in Wisconsin), Astro Parts sessions, and Book Doula — a monthly retainer for people serious about making the book real, three clients at a time, waitlist when full. → Book Doula Waitlist: forms.gle/3LwpmAinnBN2Q4aY8 → Schedule a 1:1 session: https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=22372975

🌟 Credits Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski — performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther.

Thanks for reading Parts & Charts! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Every other part in your system has a job — protectors protect, managers manage, firefighters put out the fire. Exiles are the ones with no job at all. They just hold the feeling. This week KP asks Chelsea, the resident IFS therapist, to teach the foundations of exiles: who they are, why your protectors guard them so fiercely, and why grief — the step most of us skip — is how you actually reach them.

You are listening to Parts & Charts: The IFS and Astrology Podcast.

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Parts & Charts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

There’s a part of you balled up in the corner of the room with a blanket over its head. It’s young. It’s holding something heavy — shame, a rejection, an attachment that ruptured or never formed — and it has been holding it for a long time. In IFS, that’s an exile, and the rest of your system has organized itself around keeping you from ever feeling what it feels.

Chelsea Owens, a licensed therapist trained in the model, walks KP Kaszubowski through the foundations: how exiles differ from the protectors and firefighters running the show, why you can’t march straight up to a tender part (picture a stranger knocking and asking to speak to your four-year-old — of course the gatekeepers say no), and what the textbook arc actually looks like, from getting the protectors’ permission, to witnessing, to grief, to unburdening a belief like I’m unlovable and letting the part take on something new.

The throughline is grief — the piece Chelsea says we’re never really taught to do, the one protectors are most afraid of, the one that, when you stay with it instead of running, turns out to feel less like drowning and more like room being made. KP keeps catching the resonance with creative process: you can’t rush a revision to its tender center any more than you can rush a part to its. (She also clocks, mid-episode, that the novel she thought was about the medieval period is actually about her grandmother. The work knows before you do.)

And then the chart. KP’s distinction to sit with: a birth chart is a snapshot, but the moving sky — transits — is where this kind of process actually shows itself, which is why “you have an exile doing X” is exactly the wrong way to read a placement. Where to begin instead: Chiron for the named wound, and the Moon, the tender spot every one of us shares.

A note on staying in our lanes: Chelsea teaches the IFS model here; KP translates it toward the chart.

What we get into:

* What an exile is, and why it’s the one part with no job — it only holds the feeling

* Protectors as gatekeepers, and why reaching a tender part is slow on purpose

* The energetic “tell” that you’ve met an exile rather than a protector

* The arc from permission to witnessing to unburdening — and the new qualities a part can take on afterward

* Why grief is the step we skip, what our protectors fear about it, and why staying with it makes more room than it takes

* Where exiles come from: the classroom humiliation, the un-sent birthday invitation, the friend who stopped without a reason

* Reading this in the chart without flattening anyone: Chiron, the Moon, and transits as the place process lives

Work with us / stay close:

* Sun & Moon Workshop — in person, San Francisco. Solstice, June 21, at Birdhouse Gallery on Judah St. in the Sunset. Three hours of astro grounding, meditation, and art making — we meet the Sun and the Moon as inner figures and build something in response to them. Priced to cover the venue and supplies so the room can be full. → sign up

* Subscribe to Parts & Charts on Substack — episodes, in-person workshops, and the part-two we keep threatening (where the wounds actually live in the chart) land there first.

→ partsandcharts.substack.com

* We’re curious. We want to map exiles and wounding onto real placements — Chiron, the Moon, and beyond. Tell us in the comments where you find this energy in yourself, and what house it lives in.

→

* Chelsea’s Oracle deck, Outer Realms for Inner Archives — a collage deck shaped by exactly this work, made the way she makes images of her own parts. Pre-orders coming; this email sign-up form gets you deck news only, nothing else. → subscribe here

* Meet your Moon. If the Moon is the tender spot for everyone, this is the guided audio course for meeting yours as an inner figure — KP’s active-imagination approach, on your own time. ($42) → https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon

* Work with Chelsea. If you’re in California and you’ve been looking for a therapist who will actually go there with you — the deep stuff, the weird stuff, the stuff you’ve never quite found the words for — Chelsea Owens is your person. Licensed therapist, Leo moon, first house everything, art supplies on every surface. She brings clinical rigor and genuine delight to the work in equal measure, which turns out to be exactly what the hard stuff needs.

👉 www.chelseaowenstherapy.com

* Work with KP. Astrology readings (written, voice note, or live; in person if you’re in Wisconsin), Astro Parts sessions, and Book Doula — a monthly retainer for people serious about making the book real, three clients at a time, waitlist when full.

→ Book Doula Waitlist: forms.gle/3LwpmAinnBN2Q4aY8

Schedule a 1:1 session → https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=22372975

🌟 Credits

Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski — performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther.

Collage cover art by Chelsea Owens.

On June 9, Venus caught up to Jupiter at 25° Cancer — the last time the two "benefics" will meet like this for about twelve years. Chelsea and KP sit with what happens when two planets who both say yes end up in the same room, why a no isn't always a wall, and how to actually receive a soft sky instead of trying to optimize it.

What is a benefic???

The benefics are the two planets the old astrologers called the ones who say yes — Venus and Jupiter. This week they conjoined at 25° Cancer, where Jupiter is exalted and Venus is more than comfortable. The Astrology Podcast’s Chris Brennan and Leisa Schaim called this one an extended warm hug, and given the spring we’ve had and the July that’s coming, we’ll take it.

But a yes isn’t automatically a gift. Two yeses together is how you end up overspending, overcommitting, saying let’s figure it out until you’re in trouble. And the malefics — Mars, Saturn, the ones who say no — aren’t villains. A no is a boundary. A no is discernment. This episode is about getting friendly with both.

What we get into:

* Benefic as “one who says yes,” malefic as “one who says no” — and why neither is good or bad on its own

* Venus applying to Jupiter, and how we get to take Venus’s role as we move into his energy

* Venus as a baseline state (Chelsea) vs. Venus as something you choose (KP, Venus in Scorpio)

* Jupiter’s verb: to cohere

* Charts with no “hard” aspects, difficulty levels, and why an easy chart isn’t an easy life

* A seven-year piece of homework about Saturn’s eventual move into Cancer

And the actual assignment, which is barely an assignment: don’t accelerate anything. Don’t launch on the warm-hug day because an astrologer told you to. Have the chocolate croissant and don’t do your homework while you eat it. Call the person. You are in a body for a finite number of moments and you only get to touch someone’s skin so many times — this is a week to remember that, before July asks something harder of all of us.

Parts & Charts is co-hosted by KP Kaszubowski, Hellenistic astrologer and APM educator, and Chelsea Owens, licensed IFS therapist.

Work with us / stay close:

* Sun & Moon Workshop — in person, San Francisco. Solstice, June 21, at Birdhouse Gallery on Judah St. in the Sunset. Three hours of astro grounding, meditation, and art making — we meet the Sun and the Moon as inner figures and build something in response to them. Priced to cover the venue and supplies so the room can be full. → sign up

* How was your June 9? Leave a comment on the episode post and tell us what showed up the afternoon of the conjunction. We want the real reports. →

* Chelsea’s Oracle deck, Outer Realms for Inner Archives — a collage deck, pre-orders coming. Drop your name on the interest form for deck news only (no spam, we promise). → Subscribe here

Work with Chelsea

If you’re in California and you’ve been looking for a therapist who will actually go there with you — the deep stuff, the weird stuff, the stuff you’ve never quite found the words for — Chelsea Owens is your person. Licensed therapist, Leo moon, first house everything, art supplies on every surface. She brings clinical rigor and genuine delight to the work in equal measure, which turns out to be exactly what the hard stuff needs.

👉 www.chelseaowenstherapy.com

Work with KP

* If this episode sparked something — a placement you want to understand, a pattern you keep circling, a chart you’re ready to sit with — KP offers 75-minute astrology readings on a sliding scale.

* KP is also now open to take on a few clients looking for a book doula. If you have a project in the works and you need support getting your book out in the world send her a message for more info.

* Book an Astro Parts Work session: acuity link

Book Doula waitlist: forms.gle/3LwpmAinnBN2Q4aY8

Astrology for Makers ↗ kpkaszubowski.substack.com

👉 https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=22372975

Go deeper into making contact with your personal moon as a part of you with the short audio course Meet Your Moon made by KP Kaszubowski — https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon

Thanks for reading Parts & Charts! This post is public so feel free to share it.

🌟 Credits

Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski — performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther.

Collage cover art by Chelsea Owens.

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

What is the 6th, secret, Love Language, you ask?

Well, listen to our conversation with long-time guest of the pod The Lilith Therapist—Lisa Broggi, therapist, astrologer, 12th House guide in which we go deep with the moon as a secret love language!

About Our Guest

Lisa Broggi — therapist, astrologer, and The Lilith Therapist — is back on Parts & Charts, and we went deep on the moon. Not just the sign, but the whole picture: house placement, aspects, conditions, and what it actually means to honor what your moon needs in relationships, in self-care, and in the recurring patterns you might not even recognize yet.

Lisa has a clinical eye for the moon as a tool in therapeutic work — she calls it a “therapy gold mine” — and this conversation showed exactly why. We talked about how the moon reveals your core emotional needs, what happens when those needs go unmet, and how the protective patterns that formed early in life show up in your closest relationships. KP brought the Hellenistic framework (dignities, rulerships, why Scorpio moon gets a bad rap it doesn’t fully deserve) and Chelsea brought the relational and somatic grounding. Lisa brought everything she knows about actually working with this in a room with clients.

We also did a rapid-fire pass through all twelve moon signs — what each one needs, how it moves, and where it can tip into shadow. It was a lot. In the best way.

Topics Covered

* The moon as a map of core emotional needs — and why it might matter more than Venus in relationships

* House placement as the arena where your moon needs to be fed

* Moon sign synastry: what compatibility actually looks like, and why tension isn’t disqualifying

* The shadow side of every moon — not as a verdict, but as a starting point for the work

* Saturn, Pluto, and Jupiter aspecting the moon: what gets restricted, intensified, or amplified

* A full pass through all twelve moon signs: needs, self-care, and what gets in the way

* How your moon’s ruling planet points toward what kind of movement, creativity, or expression supports your emotional health

Rapid-Fire Moon Sign Notes

Aries — needs movement and autonomy; one step at a time; Mars-ruled instinct over strategy

Taurus — sensory comfort, downtime, stability; exalted moon; shadow is rigidity, not rest

Gemini — Mercury-ruled; needs someone (or something) to bounce off of; language as emotional processing

Cancer — narrative and story as emotional access; the body as a way to close the loop; deeply feeling, needs to feel safe doing so

Leo — expression, appreciation, being seen; generosity as self-care; the sun as literal nourishment

Virgo — Mercury-ruled in an earth body; grounding the mind in highly personal, non-prescribable ways

Libra — relational processing; justice and fairness as emotional stakes; watch for conflict avoidance as the default

Scorpio — trust is the core need, full stop; emotional safety before depth is possible; not a bad placement — a rigorous one

Sagittarius — expansiveness, adventure, growth; fire sign that moves at its own tempo; needs room

Capricorn — perspective, projects, purposeful solitude; slower movement (yoga, weightlifting, rowing); loves something to build

Aquarius — lone wolf and community animal at once; individuality within belonging; genuinely cares, reads as aloof

Pisces — sensitivity that requires real tending; energy hygiene, healthy escapisms; body as barometer

Homework from Lisa

Think of a past relationship that didn’t work — a hard one. If you can, find their chart. Look at their moon sign. See what you can learn about what needs were in the room that never got acknowledged. You don’t have to be kind to the relationship to be honest about what it was teaching you.

About Lisa Broggi, The Lilith Therapist

Lisa is a licensed therapist, astrologer, and the creator of the Feed Your Moon workshop. She works with clients through a lens that integrates astrology and depth psychology — with a particular focus on the moon as a gateway to understanding your emotional world, your relational patterns, and your oldest coping mechanisms.

She takes coaching and therapy clients, offers astrology readings, and now teaches workshops.

🌕 Feed Your Moon Workshop — June 14th

Lisa’s upcoming live webinar goes deep on all things moon: core needs, emotional processing styles, self-care by placement, and the shadow material that shows up especially in relationships. A recording will be available for those who can’t attend live.

👉 https://theliliththerapist.podia.com/feed-your-moon

Mentioned in This Episode

* Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (the “beautiful need” framework)

* Married at First Sight (Chelsea’s cultural reference for moon-based matchmaking)

* Arts & Parts & Charts in-person workshop, San Francisco — June 21st, the beginning of Cancer season, with Cancer sun Chelsea Owens and Cancer moon KP Kaszubowski | Register here: https://tinyurl.com/partsandcharts

Parts & Charts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Parts & Charts is co-hosted by KP Kaszubowski, Hellenistic astrologer and APM educator, and Chelsea Owens, licensed IFS therapist.

Work with Chelsea

If you’re in California and you’ve been looking for a therapist who will actually go there with you — the deep stuff, the weird stuff, the stuff you’ve never quite found the words for — Chelsea Owens is your person. Licensed therapist, Leo moon, first house everything, art supplies on every surface. She brings clinical rigor and genuine delight to the work in equal measure, which turns out to be exactly what the hard stuff needs.

👉 www.chelseaowenstherapy.com

Work with KP

If this episode sparked something — a placement you want to understand, a pattern you keep circling, a chart you’re ready to sit with — KP offers 75-minute astrology readings on a sliding scale.

👉 https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=22372975

Go deeper into making contact with your personal moon as a part of you with the short audio course Meet Your Moon made by KP Kaszubowski — https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon

Chelsea is at Esalen. Possibly naked, likely howling at the blue moon in Sagittarius.

And I am here, with my snoring old-man-dog in the background, talking to my webcam. Holding up a paper doll I made of my Venus like it’s show and tell in peak 2020 COVID.

ANYWAY HERE IS THE WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT:

Arts, Parts & Charts.

→ San Francisco. In the Sunset @ Birdhouse Gallery 2548 Judah (31st & Judah).

→ Sunday, June 21st, 1 - 4pm. The longest day of the year, which feels appropriate because this workshop will contain multitudes.

→ Three hours. You will go inward and meet your planets (da sun and da moon) as actual living figures you can talk to. Then you will make them out of arts and crafts supplies. There may be glue guns????

Is this serious soul work? Yes!!!!

Is it also going to be chaotic and delightful and possibly transformative in ways you didn’t budget for emotionally? Maybe!!!!!!!!

Chelsea will be back from Esalen by then. Presumably clothed.

Link to register → (I love this little arrow, don’t you? →) Arts & Parts & Charts: The Sun and The Moon - Creative Workshop

Use this code for 20% because we are so grateful for you allowing us into your inboxes week after week <3: PARTS

+ shoot KP a question if you have one:

A Long Shot:

Chelsea and I want to host 1 or 2 more workshops in the SF area while I’m in town visiting June 17 - 21. If you know of a place that would be open to this, let us know!

You’re listening to our conversation with Chef Carla Contreras — chef, food stylist, content strategist, and the person who has perhaps the most fully developed personal practice around tracking the moon that we have ever talked to.

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Carla has been tracking the moon since the beginning of 2020. Not casually. Daily. She knows when the moon enters a sign because her body tells her before the app does. She schedules her podcasts, her travel, her client calls, and her recordings around it. I booked this podcast because of his Aries moon, she tells us, twenty minutes in. There are no coincidences here.

What she has built, over five years, is not a system she’s selling. It’s a relationship — with the moon, with her own birth chart, with her body — that has gotten specific enough to be useful and supple enough to be a practice rather than a rule.

This episode is what that looks like up close.

About our guest

Carla Contreras is a trained chef, a food stylist of thirteen years, a podcast host, and the founder of Nourishing Creativity. She has built thirteen profitable Substack publications. She is a projector in Human Design (4/6 profile), Aries sun, Pisces stellium, Scorpio moon — and three years into mentorship with her Incan teacher Puma, from Chinchero, Peru.

The Incan philosophy at the center of her work is Ayni — reciprocity. Nothing goes one way. Energy moves between you and the world, and within that exchange there’s room for extra abundance and generosity, including toward yourself.

Nourishing Creativity (Substack): nourishingcreativity.substack.com

Instagram: @chefcarlacontreras

On the moon as a personal map

Carla’s practice did not begin as a system. It began as noticing.

She started paying attention in early 2020. When the moon was in her sun sign — Aries — she noticed: go time, let’s party, let’s come to coworking, let’s go to New York City. When the moon was in Pisces — where her stellium lives — she noticed: let’s create, let’s dream, let’s make the podcasts. When the moon was in Gemini, her rising sign, the energy was so distinct that her friends started texting to ask is it a Gemini moon today? They could feel it through the phone.

What emerged, gradually, was a working knowledge of which lunar days she could schedule on and which she shouldn’t. Leo days — where her Black Moon Lilith lives — she protects. I do not schedule a podcast. I do not schedule anything important if I can avoid it. Taurus days — where her Chiron sits — she rests. The donkey is so freaking smart. The donkey is like, okay, I’ve climbed up this mountain and we need to take a break.

The map is hers. It would not work for anyone else exactly. That’s the point.

On the void-of-course moon, and the practice of honoring transitions

The moon goes void roughly every two-and-a-half days, between leaving one sign and entering the next. Some void periods are twenty minutes. Some are most of a day. In KP’s framing, it’s the moon making no significant aspect to any other planet — not in communication, not translating, not doing the relay work she usually does.

Carla loves the void moon. In the past, I have really not honored transitions. The moon being void is honoring a transition.

For KP, the void moon is email day. Wrapping up things. I’m not going to start anything. For three Aries / Libra / Cancer suns in a room — all initiating signs, all want-to-start-things energy — the void moon is the cosmos giving permission to drift.

🌙 Want to try tracking the moon for yourself?

KP Kaszubowski made a free companion page with the full how-to, plus a Notion template you can duplicate to log your daily state.

Get it here → https://kpkaszu.notion.site/The-Moon-As-Attention-3609fb7abf1480178952eecaeb6352a7?pvs=74

On not asking whether it’s good or bad

Carla names this as the thing she has had to learn slowly, and that she most wants to hand to other people: there’s not good or bad with this.

Earlier in her practice, she would text her astrology friends a meme of herself in distress when she saw a Taurus moon on the calendar. She does not do that anymore. The shift was subtle and took years. This is a gift, and I get to rest. This is not labeled, quote unquote, good or bad.

KP names what’s underneath the temptation: anticipatory anxiety. The fear of the hard day before the hard day arrives. The way knowing what’s coming can make you tense up before there’s anything to tense against, which then shapes how the day actually unfolds. If you ease in, if you let what happens happen, the experience is the experience. It’s not good or bad — because you’re not putting that anticipatory energy on top of it.

Carla agrees, with a small refinement: she would not call those days bad. She would call them challenging. And challenging days need rest. I know today is a Leo moon. I’m going to go to bed at 8 p.m. with my kids and skip Netflix. That’s not surrender. That’s strategy.

On the body, the cycle, and the practice of being pulled by the waves

Chelsea asks how the menstrual cycle interacts with the moon — whether tracking one disrupts or syncs with the other. Carla, deep in perimenopause, gives the answer that surprised her too: when womb healers and pelvic floor practitioners ask her what part of your cycle are you in, she increasingly answers it’s an Aries moon.

She’s not bypassing the body. She’s noticing that for her — Pisces stellium, deep waters — the astrological moon and the physical body are running on the same frequency. I’m pulled, like with the waves.

This is also a generous frame for anyone whose cycle has changed, paused, or never matched the calendar. Hysterectomies, perimenopause, hormonal shifts, lifelong irregularity — the moon is still there. I’m tuning into the planet, which just happens to tune into my energy as a human.

On the strategist’s invitation

Toward the end, KP asks Carla — projector, content strategist, builder of thirteen profitable Substacks — how she’d advise someone who wants to start.

Carla’s answer:

Start with your sun sign, rising sign, and moon sign. Note where they are. Then watch what happens when the transiting moon passes through each of them. Write it down. I had lots of energy. Oh my goodness, Gemini moon, lots of energy. The pattern emerges from a month or two of notes.

Get an app to make it easy. Carla uses Dara (99 cents, no affiliation) for moon position, and Align 27 for an additional layer — its color-coded green / yellow / red days have helped her name when a hard day is happening without needing to assign cause. When I’m having a really hard time, I’m like, oh — is it a red day? Is it a red day? Do I get to sit and journal and have cacao and be with myself before I start my work day? Maybe.

The practice is not prediction. The practice is discernment. What is your relationship with an Aries moon? What is your relationship with a Gemini moon? What is your relationship when the moon is void of course? Build that relationship. Trust it. Then — and this is the move Carla keeps coming back to — disconnect from the predictive astrology when you need to. Get rid of the apps. Get rid of reading anything. I get to have my own relationship with my birth chart and the astrological weather.

Also in this episode

* Carla’s debilitated Scorpio moon, and why she is one of the most in-tune Scorpio moons we know

* Why the cards we pulled before recording were uncannily specific — chocolate bar, pizza, dumpling, three of pentacles, nine of cups, the chariot

* Ayni — the Incan concept of reciprocity Carla is being mentored in

* Cacao as Carla’s daily ground, and the scientific footnote about its possible runner’s-high chemistry

* The caballo-and-burro metaphor — the horse and the donkey, the running and the resting

* Why some signs are harder than others to live through, and what your Chiron and Black Moon Lilith might have to do with it

* KP’s quiet mission to make people with debilitated placements visible as good examples

* Whether NASA could please send Carla to the moon

Go deeper into making contact with your personal moon with the short audio course Meet Your Moon made by KP Kaszubowski — https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon

Quotes

“I’m tuning into the planet, which just happens to tune into my energy as a human.” — Carla Contreras

“I would not have, three years ago, talked about honoring transitions. Or pausing in any way, shape, or form. I’d be like, that’s annoying, I don’t like Taurus, I’m an Aries, let’s get moving.“ — Carla Contreras

“What is your relationship with an Aries moon? What is your relationship with a Gemini moon? What is your relationship when the moon is void of course?” — Carla Contreras

“There’s not good or bad with this. This is a gift, and I get to rest.” — Carla Contreras

“I’m leaning into how can I self-source this.” — Carla Contreras

“Astrology is not an ‘exact’ science. It’s a contemplative science.” — KP Kaszubowski

“If you ease in, if you let what happens happen, the experience is the experience. It’s not good or bad — you’re just not putting anticipatory energy on top of it.” — KP Kaszubowski

“I am so jazzed up about the moon just from hearing all of your experiences. I’m sold on using the moon to help me.” — Chelsea Owens

Work With Carla

Check out her resource on Ceremonial Grade Cacao as a Coffee Replacement here: https://www.carlacontreras.com/blog-recipes/coffee-replacement-make-ceremonial-grade-cacao-at-home

Nourishing Creativity (Substack): nourishingcreativity.substack.com — Carla’s home for the podcast, essays, and offerings on creative and spiritual practice

Instagram: @chefcarla

The Moon Guide: Carla has created a special discount code for our community to download her Moon Guide. Use the 1-month free link here to gain access to her community: https://chefcarla.substack.com/0a238c45

Mentioned in this episode:

* The Dara app — moon position tracking

* Align 27 — energetic day tracking

* Puma — Carla’s Incan teacher in Chinchero, Peru

* The Cacio e Pepe tarot deck — Chelsea’s new favorite

Work With Us

KP Kaszubowski — Hellenistic astrologer · Astro Parts Work · poet

KP has opened up Astro Parts Work sessions and is currently reviewing her Book Doula waitlist — taking on 1–2 more clients this year for people ready to finish that book for real this time.

Book an Astro Parts Work session: acuity link

Book Doula waitlist: forms.gle/3LwpmAinnBN2Q4aY8

Astrology for Makers ↗ kpkaszubowski.substack.com

Chelsea Owens — Licensed therapist · Certified IFS Level 3

Chelsea works with individuals using Internal Family Systems therapy — the same framework she brings to Parts & Charts. Now accepting new clients.

Book an IFS session: chelseaowenstherapy.com

Chelsea’s Substack ↗ chelseaowens.substack.com

Credits

Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski — performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther.

You’re listening to a just-us episode of Parts & Charts, where Chelsea Owens unpacks parts activation and KP Kaszubowski shares about tracking transits.

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

There's a kind of baseline self you move through your day as, and then something happens, and you're not at baseline anymore.

You're activated. Chelsea names this in IFS terms — a part is being activated. KP names it as a transit — a planet has moved over a planet in your birth chart, and something in you has noticed.

What parts activation looks like

A sudden shift in mood. A reaction that feels bigger than the situation. A familiar pattern surfacing again. Physical sensations — a stomach ache that isn’t about what you ate, a chest tightness, a throat that can’t get words out. Strong urges to act with fight-or-flight intensity. Or what IFS calls blending — when a part gets so close to you that you can’t see it as separate.

It’s needing something. There’s nothing wrong with that. It just happens.

What a transit is

The moment you were born, we took a snapshot of the sky. That’s your birth chart. The planets didn’t stop moving. When a transiting planet makes contact with one of your birth-chart planets at an exact degree, that’s a transit. It’s almost never silent.

🌙 Want to try tracking the moon for yourself?

KP Kaszubowski made a free companion page with the full how-to, plus a Notion template you can duplicate to log your daily state.

Get it here →

The big idea

A transit doesn’t make something happen. It brings attention to what’s already there.

Two people with the exact same transit live through it as two different days.

Which is also why sometimes a major transit passes through and nothing happens. Maybe I already worked through that. Maybe 10 years ago it would’ve been a different story. The transit doesn’t bring the wound. It brings the light.

How long does an activation last?

Chelsea’s medicine woman told her every strong emotion lasts about 90 seconds. Maybe true, maybe not. Either way, transits are not emotions.

Some transits are minutes. Some are days. Some are nine to ten months — which is how long Saturn has been opposing KP’s Sun, Moon, and Mercury.

A quick field guide to the planets

Moon (fastest) — feels like attention. Goes over a placement every day or two. The easiest planet to start tracking.

Mercury, Venus, Mars (inner planets) — short cycles, daily-life weather. Best place to begin if you want to learn.

Jupiter — one year per sign. Expansion as a theme. Generally pleasant company.

Saturn — 28 years per cycle. Slows you down. Not punishing you (Chelsea wants this on the record). But hard. You don’t go to Saturn for ease.

Uranus — 86 years per cycle. Disrupts. Brings things to the surface. The genius planet, the table-overturner.

Neptune, Pluto — once-in-a-lifetime transits. Neptune softens edges and sometimes dissolves them; an overdose is what the hell is happening? Pluto goes deeper than this paragraph will.

On parts that think they’re you

A digression that turned out not to be one. Most parts genuinely believe they are self. I am you. I am Chelsea. Especially the parts whose job has been close to you for a long time — the achiever, the manager, the one who’s hard on you so no one else has to be. Their work has fused with the shape of who you became.

You can’t tell them they’re not you. That’s hurtful. They really truly believe it. You spend time with them. You validate it. You let them slowly find out.

Preparing for a transit you can see coming

When you know a hard transit is landing on a hard day — a Mars contact on the day of a difficult meeting, a Saturn check-in on the day you’re giving a talk:

KP’s move: Treat it like you’re about to run a marathon. Breathe that morning. Meditate. Get your carbs, your protein, your fat. You can’t predict the intensity, but you can take care of yourself ahead of time.

Chelsea’s move: Ask the part what it needs in order to feel you with it. I’ve got you. I’m showing up for you. What else would help us prepare?

This is the whole methodology in one move. The transit names the weather. The parts work names what’s living inside you that the weather is going to land on. Neither one alone is the full picture.

Also in this episode

* Parts that get activated are often guarding something more vulnerable underneath — protectors lit up because an exile is close to surfacing

* Why the moon is the best place to start tracking transits — daily, observable, low-stakes

* Why Jupiter is the second-best — one year in each sign, expansion as a theme, generally pleasant company

* Inside Out as an unexpectedly accurate model of internal systems of parts, activation and blending inside the system

* The KP-and-Chelsea hypothesis: inner planets for daily activation, outer planets for the year-long deep work

* I assume someone listening is like, this is way too much. The Saturn-return apology to anyone whose head is spinning.

* The two-and-a-half-year horoscope nobody will write for Capricorn risings

* Veiling, baseball shirts, and Chelsea’s California collar (watch the video to see what we’re talking about! 😉)

Quotes

“When a part’s really blended, it’s really, really close. You don’t really have a lot of separation or perspective on what that part is. It’s just so close and it’s really needing something.” — Chelsea Owens

“Most parts so truly believe they are self. They really truly believe — oh no, I am you. I am Chelsea.” — Chelsea Owens

“For 10 months, Saturn has been applying a really difficult opposition. What it’s looked like to me is chronic fatigue, inability to push through. I knew it was going to happen. The way it has showed up in my life was not predictable.” — KP Kaszubowski

“I can place myself into people’s situations often. Sometimes I would be very clear, like, yeah, this feels like an activation. But then there are some TV shows I’m watching that I can tell — I’m not activated. I’m just feeling what’s happening.” — KP Kaszubowski

“Saturn isn’t punishing us. Period. You heard it here first on the pod. We’re reclaiming it.” — Chelsea Owens

“You don’t go to Mars to look for information about ease. Maybe pleasure, but not ease.” — KP Kaszubowski

“The moon, I would say, feels like attention. When the moon’s going over your natal Mars, it’s bringing attention to that Martian energy inside of you.” — KP Kaszubowski

“What if there isn’t somebody you need to get rid of? What if everything’s fine and I’m actually kind of healthy and happy right now?” — Chelsea Owens, on the doom horoscope

“Treat it like you’re about to run a marathon. Breathe that morning. Get your carbs, your protein, your fat. You can’t predict the intensity, but you can take care of yourself ahead of time.” — KP Kaszubowski

Want to start tracking transits?

KP recommends starting with the moon (daily, fast, observable) or Jupiter (one year per sign, generally expansive).

Next week’s episode: Chef Carla Contreras on tracking the moon for vitality, business, and creativity.

Work With Us

KP Kaszubowski — Hellenistic astrologer · Astro Parts Work · poet

As well as her Astrological Interpretation Readings, KP has opened up Astro Parts Work sessions and is currently reviewing her Book Doula waitlist — taking on 1–2 more clients this year for people ready to finish that book for real this time.

Book an Astro Parts Work session: https://bit.ly/3PlwLKQ

Book Doula waitlist: forms.gle/3LwpmAinnBN2Q4aY8

Astrology for Makers ↗ kpkaszubowski.substack.com

Chelsea Owens — Licensed therapist · Certified IFS Level 3

Chelsea works with individuals using Internal Family Systems therapy — the same framework she brings to Parts & Charts. Now accepting new clients.

Book an IFS session: chelseaowenstherapy.com

Chelsea’s Venus in Gemini Substack ↗ chelseaowens.substack.com

Thanks for reading Parts & Charts! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Do you also want to go inward and meet your Moon figure? Here’s the link to get your own Meet Your Moon audio course made by KP Kaszubowski: https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon

Credits

Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski — performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther.

All collage art is made by Chelsea Owens.

Liked what you watched / read? Here are some of the greatest hits:

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack (partsandcharts.substack.com) — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

And go over to Maeg Keane’s Substack to read more ⤵️

Astrology and herbalism, Maeg tells us, more or less co-arose.

Working with plants — people have been doing that since prehistory. Paying attention to the stars and noticing patterns and seeing what it might mean about weather or agriculture or politics or eventually even individual people’s lives — that is also extremely, extremely old. The earliest written records of plant-star-planet combinations go back to around 400 BCE, though Maeg is sure it’s older. That’s just the record we have. Most people who were practicing medicine were practicing it with plants, like most of the global contemporary world does right now, and they were doing so alongside watching stellar omens.

So when Maeg got interested in both, what relief! I didn’t have to be a Mercurian Gemini person and like take two disparate things and put them together. They were already together.

The framework, drawn from a Neoplatonic cosmology and other traditions less canonized by white Western philosophy, is this: everything in the heavens cascades down into the earth. All of us are built out of things from the heavens. It’s a ladder of connection and affinity and relationship. The same way any of us are made up of our birth chart — Maeg is full of Mercury and Venus and Mars and different inflections — so are the plants. So are stones. So is the garbage on my street. So is a book. To different mixtures.

Which means if you’re trying to get to know one of the planets really well, you can go to a being or a thing that is very of that planet and ask it what it can tell you about the thing it’s mostly made out of.

About our guest

Maeg Keane is a writer, astrologer, and herbalist who runs Third Sister. In Maeg’s own words: I consort with the spirits of the stars and of the green world. Astrology and herbalism are two of the ways I listen to the sparkling fishnet of timespace that holds us, and of which we are a part.

Maeg specializes in the 5th house — a part of the birth chart that gathers stories about desire, pleasure, joy, and the part of us that wants to make things — and in the fixed stars, sort of getting the whole sky back versus just the ecliptic.

Website: third-sister.com

Book a reading: third-sister-dio.as.me

Substack — The Gleaming Feast: maegkeane.substack.com

Instagram: @maeg.thirdsister

Bluesky: @maegkeane.bsky.social

On the fifth house

The fifth house’s oldest association is actually with children. Not your childhood — literally the kids you’ll have. But it became about generativeness in general, the erotic in general. Not just children but the force of life that creates all kinds of things in your life besides other humans.

It’s Venus’s favorite house, no matter where she is in the chart or what sign coincides with that particular part of the chart. She loves it there. Joy. Pleasure. Playfulness. The creative. The place that makes you want to unfurl and make and reach out in some way to the world. I have so much life in me, it has to come out somehow.

What Maeg saw in client after client who hadn’t even come for a fifth house reading, was the surprising vulnerability of this place. It has all the best, I think, the best words that life has to offer. And yet people would say yeah, it is really, really hard when I can’t get to that place. And it’s really hard to be in that place.

Maeg cannot tell you the number of clients sat with who can’t make art — they can, but they’re not — because they’re still hearing their parents say don’t waste those art supplies, they’re really expensive. People who went to art school and it just killed their creative flow and process completely. People who’ve taken a long break, maybe even because of a fifth house reason, like pregnancy and early parenthood, who are coming back asking who am I now? What — am I going to write the same book I was writing before I had this kid? I have no idea. People who do creative work for a living, which is supposed to be the dream, but it totally changes their relationship to that work because of the money stuff and the visibility stuff and the reputation stuff and the pressure.

Maeg’s own fifth-house ruler is Saturn in Capricorn. Having Saturn as the guy who stewards your joy is a weird fit. That’s part of why this reading exists. There’s a version of: I give a reading because I’m masterful in this part of my life, like — good luck. And then there’s a version that’s like: I give a reading about this because I am in here with you. And that’s very much my approach. It’s a very Mercury, like, I’m alongside you, man. I get it.

A note for anyone with an empty fifth house: you’re fine, Maeg promises. Having an empty fifth house does not mean you are empty of joy or play or creation. The ruler of the fifth is really where it’s at. Everybody has one of those.

On remediation, more or less — and on a blackberry plant

When KP Kaszubowski asks about remediation, Maeg gently declines the word. I don’t explicitly offer what I think of as professional remediation, because I think of that as a really rigorous process that is studied for a long time and is most robust in the Jyotish tradition.

But there’s plenty you can do that venerates the planets, which they really like. And you also can just get to know your planets better, which I do think is magic. I think that it actually makes an impact in your life to get to know the planet itself, just like as an inherent being.

You can do devotional work — light a candle on the day of the planet, because all the planets have days of the week. Leave out offerings. You basically treat them like you — lowercase-g gods. Because they kind of are. Hang out. Read hymns. Find poems that you think speak to them. It can feel really awkward and goofy. I feel awkward and goofy when I do it. But it’s also worth it.

Or — alongside that — plants are really good ambassadors of the planets. If you really want to get to know Jupiter, hang out with sage, a Jupiter plant. What can sage teach me about Jupiter? If Jupiter is lending his attributes to this plant, what can I learn about this plant’s stories? Its ecology, biology, how it collaborates with the human body? What is it like to grow it? Or do lemon balm. Sit under an oak tree. Have a feast: Jupiter loves fatty foods and an overladen table.

Maeg got to know Saturn through blackberry. Eating blackberries on Saturdays. Sitting with a blackberry plant for a while at a berry farm. Doing a lot of research about the folklore and different uses, especially through Maeg’s own ancestral lines — Irish stories about blackberry. That taught me a lot about that planet. That isn’t just like me reading Vettius Valens, which is also great, but it’s not the only way.

KP catches what’s structurally Saturnian about blackberry mid-conversation: it’s a sweet fruit, and it’s also a boundary plant. It’ll give you a little sting. It’ll hurt a little bit if you try to pass through it. You can’t go fast. You have to take the berries gently. You can’t just throw a hand in and grab. It’s a plant that tiny animals hide in. And in herbalism, one of its primary uses is for diarrhea — it tightens lax tissue. One of the things Saturn’s really good at is reforming loose structure in the body so that there’s a way to not sort of accidentally spill out and empty out.

On the wood betony moment

The first time Maeg ever communed with a plant deliberately — and it was sort of semi-deliberate — Maeg was supposed to be doing what’s very common in herb schools, a plant of the week or a plant of the month, where you pick a plant and you do everything you can possibly do with it. It’s your buddy.

Maeg sat down with a tea of wood betony and sipped it. Got the flavors, of course, and then also like sensations and images. And I was like, whoa. That was very new. I was very like — I’m going to be a scientific herbalist. I don’t get any of this woo stuff, you know? Like it was — and the plants were like, jokes on you.

That didn’t last very long.

On the plants Maeg keeps near

Strawberry. A whole summer of being completely insourceled by it. I wrote like a 37-page — Maeg could call it a zine, but no, people who make zines should get credit for what they do with zines. It’s a PDF. Strawberry just like took me everywhere. Othello. Strawberry farming. Stories from folklore. Queer theory. It just took me on such a beautiful ride and it kept just showing up at these like really precious and beautiful moments just like saying hello. Plants really like it when you like plants. And planets really like it when you give them attention. They will give you gifts for paying attention, for giving them visibility, in the spotlight, I’ve learned.

Ivy. A Saturn plant, with really strong ties to Dionysus and Ariadne. Maeg has not yet written the ivy monograph. Some plants Maeg has tried not to learn about, because I’m trying — like, it’s almost like one way for me to honor them is to learn all about them, everything that I possibly can. And some of them it’s like, I’ll be more present with you if I don’t do the academic deep-dive that I’m prone to doing.

(KP, separately, is in a strange standoff with the fixed star associated with ivy — having looked it up roughly three hundred times and being, somehow, not yet permitted to remember its name.)

Beach rose. Lining the coast where Maeg’s grandparents lived. Their thorns are like so sharp and many — like you can’t even touch the stalk. There’s no space. It’s all thorn. But it’s a five-petal, bright pink, with a burst of yellow in the middle. I love them so much. They’re not only there, but that’s where I know them from.

On the seventh-house mirror

Maeg ran a reading once called So You Think You Hate That Sign. Almost no one took her up on it. People love to hate other signs but they don’t actually want to talk about why that might be wrong. The pitch wasn’t great. But the idea was: whatever sign you feel the most uncomfortable with, for whatever reason — that’s still in your chart. Let’s re-complexify it.

Chelsea names what’s underneath this in IFS terms: the U-turn. The You-Turn. When someone’s coming in — maybe you’re complaining about your partner, my gosh they didn’t do X, Y, and Z — we encourage that person to do a U-turn so you’re just looking back at yourself. How are you showing up? What’s this response or this reaction? What parts of you are having that reaction and response? And what’s underneath that? Probably some younger part of you that had some thing happen, that felt this way with your parents. When we get activated about other people, it’s always something about, you know, yourself.

Maeg picks it up: based on what you just said, it’s reminding me of the mess of the seventh house. This idea that the seventh is a place of the other. It’s the place of the other who’s beloved. It’s the place of the other who’s, like, abject and difficult or, like, triggering you for some reason or accusing you, but just by existing. The enemy in some way, which is also like often a projection of some kind. And it’s a complementary opposite of the first house — you. You can’t really disentangle them.

The IFS U-turn and the seventh-house mirror, doing the same work in different vocabularies. The chart was already saying it.

KP and Chelsea both have significant placements in the seventh. Both work one-on-one. It’s great to hold space for someone and also understand that you are receiving projections. You are also projecting. It’s full of dynamism, whether you’re aware of it in the moment or not.

On Chelsea, Tulsi, and a dream of Hawthorn

When Chelsea did her herbalism certification, what surprised her most weren’t the plants themselves but the tissue states — how my internal tissues and what different plants, how they’re helping. I’m so dry inside and I had no idea that there’s different things I can do to kind of balance that out. And the energetics. I knew it maybe intuitively, of course plants are alive and they have energy, but the variety and range of energetics that they can bring. I was just like — my god, this is like, we’re really blending the magic with science here.

That summer, Chelsea fell into a relationship with Tulsi. Took infusions every day, every day, every day, felt amazing. This is like, this is my plant. I really have a strong connection to Tulsi now.

But during the same stretch, a different plant came to her in a dream. She didn’t remember the context, just that Hawthorn arrived clearly and loudly and said work with me. Chelsea had not worked with Hawthorn at all, didn’t even know what it was. So she started. And learned like, it’s really great for the heart. And it’s just like a love. I think I needed that like love balm at the time. It was kind of a rough time relationship-wise. So I think that’s why Hawthorne came to me to help.

This is what Maeg keeps describing without quite saying directly: that the relationship runs both ways. You don’t only choose the plants. The plants come.

Hawthorn, Maeg notes, is tricky to pin to a single planet. Some traditions call it Mars for the thorns; some Venus for the flowers and the heart-medicine. It does have that heartache-protective quality while still being soft and supportive. It doesn’t keep things out. It’s just like — you can’t just grab at me. A Mars-and-Venus plant. A heart that won’t be grabbed at.

Chelsea ends the section already redesigning her own relationship to plants in real time: I’m inspired to do that now. Kitchen witchery — taking or to deepen the devotion of the plant and planet by having like a physical application to it. Whether it’s a food you’re creating using herbs, or making your own deodorant, or a tincture, or even just like room spray. However you can to incorporate or deepen the relationship to the herb and the planet.

On Alphecca, briefly (because Maeg could go for thirty minutes)

Alphecca is the alpha star in Corona Borealis — the crown of Ariadne, Dionysus’s wife. I really even — I mean, she’s famous for being Dionysus’s wife. She’s so much more than that. I love her so much. Currently projected to around 12° Scorpio.

It’s dance, mazes, flowers, perfume, parades — like not like a town parade, like a procession of people dancing, like Maenads. There’s a charm and an ability to move through social spaces that Alphecca confers on people. Sometimes associated with friendship. With being able to make friends.

Talismanic magic is really interesting, Maeg says, because the way that, if you make a talisman about a fixed star, it’s supposed to give you certain virtues or like nice things people want — but what people thought was valuable and virtuous and nice depends so much on the time period and the culture. One of the things people said the Alphecca talisman would give you was chastity, which is not my experience of her at all. She is a lust bucket and I love her for it. And she likes cake and treats. She’s a queen.

But she does know how to show up a certain way, which might be some of that chastity as in belonging to oneself. Etiquette and decorum and knowing how to handle yourself. And also: she can totally party. She is married to the god of wine and ecstasy. And he picked her out when she was heartbroken and just showed up and was like — how about something different?

KP loves Ariadne for being one of the only female lowercase-g gods who is treated well in marriage and treats herself well too. Maeg agrees. Mistress of the labyrinth. So much of her mysteries have to do with going into spirit realms and coming out safely. Because she has the thread that pulls you back.

For anyone who wants more: Marcus Manilius has one of the most beautiful passages about Alphecca. It’s so good. When you’re ready, read it to yourself.

Also in this episode

* Why Maeg sometimes refuses to research a plant on purpose

* Taste as a primary mode of communing with plants — probably Taurus stuff, maybe

* I assume that the plants are as complicated as we are and we have all the planets in us

* If we’re trying to build everything based on just replicating with what the ancients did, I think we’re going to be missing what the ancients were doing. They were inventing in real time too.

Quotes

“I didn’t have to be a Mercurian Gemini person and like take two disparate things and put them together. They were already together.” — Maeg Keane

“All of us are built out of things from the heavens. It’s just like this ladder of connection and affinity and relationship. So are the plants, so are stones, so is the garbage on my street, so is a book — to different mixtures.” — Maeg Keane

"When we get activated about other people, it's always something about yourself. It's something you don't love about yourself, or you're still trying to heal." — Chelsea Owens, on the IFS U-turn

“If you really want to get to know Jupiter, you can go to a being or a thing that is very of that planet and be like — what can you tell me about the thing you’re mostly made out of?” — Maeg Keane

“I was very like — I’m going to be a scientific herbalist. I don’t get any of this woo stuff. And the plants were like, jokes on you. So that didn’t last very long.” — Maeg Keane

"We're really blending the magic with science here, and it's so beautiful." — Chelsea Owens, on tissue states and energetics in her herbalism certification

“Plants really like it when you like plants. And planets really like it when you give them attention. They will give you gifts for paying attention.” — Maeg Keane

“If you’re resonating with whatever you’re working with, then that’s the relationship. I want to have relationships. It’s more interesting.” — KP Kaszubowski

“She is a lust bucket and I love her for it. And she likes cake and treats. She’s a queen.” — Maeg Keane, on Alphecca

Work With Maeg

Book a reading: third-sister-dio.as.me

Strawberry zine (and other guidebooks, classes, workshops): third-sister.com/store

Maeg’s writing — The Gleaming Feast: maegkeane.substack.com

Mentioned in this episode:

* Sarah Corbett of Rowan & Sage — rowanandsage.com

* Diana Rose Harper (co-taught Celeste Natura, no longer running)

* Vettius Valens — Anthologies

* Marcus Manilius — Astronomica (the passage on Alphecca is in Book 5)

Work With Us

KP Kaszubowski — Hellenistic astrologer · Astro Parts Work · poet

KP has opened up Astro Parts Work sessions (https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=22372975&appointmentType=89789886) and is currently reviewing her Book Doula waitlist right now, taking on 1 - 2 more clients this year for people ready to finish that book for real this time. Waitlist link: https://forms.gle/3LwpmAinnBN2Q4aY8

Astrology for Makers ↗ kpkaszubowski.substack.com

Chelsea Owens — Licensed therapist · Certified IFS Level 3

Chelsea works with individuals using Internal Family Systems therapy — the same framework she brings to Parts & Charts. Now accepting new clients.

Book an IFS session: chelseaowenstherapy.com

Chelsea’s Substack ↗ chelseaowens.substack.com

Credits

Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski — performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther.

Collage art used in this episode by Chelsea Owens

You’re listening to PART ONE of our Astro 201 Episode about The Moon with Shadow Work Coach Ashley Abubakar .

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

The night the Titanic hit the iceberg, the moon was new. KP looked it up on a hunch — she’d been watching the movie with Marty, who was doing his filmmaker thing, narrating what the shot got wrong — and something in her thought, what if there just wasn’t any light? And there wasn’t. A new moon means the moon is on the other side of us, dark side toward Earth, the night sky returned to its older, harder version of itself. They were going too fast. The watch was understaffed. Plenty of things went wrong. But also: nobody could see.

This is a small story and the episode is full of them, because the moon is not, finally, a metaphor. It’s a body. It pulls at the tides, it lights the road, it disappears for three days a month and the disappearance has consequences. Sailors used to know not to leave port on it. KP’s dad used to call the slim crescent God’s fingernail — like God was up there grooming, like the cosmos had a body too. That’s the register the episode keeps returning to. The moon as something you can actually look at. The moon as a fact before it’s a feeling.

Three women, three moons, one room. Ashley with her Sagittarius moon at the bottom of her chart, in the fourth house, the most private room in the building. Chelsea with her Leo moon in the first, the body itself, the front door. KP with her Cancer moon in the seventh, the house of the other, where the moon — which is at home in Cancer — gets to do its full job in relation to whoever’s across the table. None of them got to choose. Each of them, asked to describe how they meet their own moon, gave an answer that sounded nothing like the others.

About our guest

Ashley Abubakar is a shadow work coach and the founder of Moonshadow, a shadow work community structured around the rhythm of the lunar cycle. KP and Chelsea both met Ashley through the Tarot Book Club; the three of them call themselves the coven.

Find Ashley and Moonshadow on Substack: joinmoonshadow.substack.com

Ashley always looked at the moon to find her way back to herself. Growing up in a household that was sometimes loud and sometimes — as she puts it — stoically quiet, she needed a compass home, and the moon was the one thing she could count on to be there. Now she runs Moonshadow, a shadow work community structured around the lunar cycle. A Sagittarius moon at the bottom of the chart will do that — make a woman who loves to be alone build a community of people who love to be alone, then call them in twice a month at the new and full. The episode names the rare quiet of this: a mutual reception in her chart between Jupiter in Cancer and the moon in Sagittarius, two planets sitting in each other’s signs, doing for each other what neither could do alone. Like Matt and Ben, Chelsea offers. The most supportive partnership. The ride or die.

Chelsea has the Leo moon in the first, which means the body is the front of the house, and the body has not always been an easy place to live. She talks, gently, about the 90s, about Kate Moss, about the long project of un-learning what a body is supposed to look like. Her moon is in tense conversation with Pluto across the chart — the planet of what cannot be said, the power dynamics that move through a culture without anyone naming them — and there’s a sentence in the episode that lands with surprising weight: that’s why this stuff is harder for me to language. She tried to meet her moon in a guided meditation the night before recording and got a blank. The thinking mind kept rushing in to fill the silence. The moon, pre-verbal, didn’t take the bait.

KP’s Cancer moon is unaspected — in conversation with no other planet in her chart — which sounds like a deficit and isn’t. It means the moon does her job without negotiation. The moon is changeable by nature: a different face every night, the only celestial body whose appearance to us is its actual mood. A Cancer moon, KP says, has a consistency to her changing. She’s good at letting new information move through her body and out again, the way the tide does, the way grief does, the way any honest emotion does when it isn’t being held back at the door. This is also why she sits in a room of people and starts editing a podcast in her head before the recording is over.

What the three of them keep circling is the same observation, said in different vocabularies. The moon is how the body knows what it knows before the mind has caught up. A fire moon needs to move. An air moon needs to talk. An earth moon needs the idea made into something you can hold — Play-Doh, dinner, a folded shirt. A water moon lets the tide come in and trusts that it will also go out. None of these are personality types. They’re descriptions of how a particular body returns to itself. All energies of us must be expressed, Ashley said in another conversation. The moon is the one that won’t let you skip the step.

Near the end, Ashley describes meeting her moon in a guided meditation. The moon arrived dressed like Stevie Nicks, in a corner office on the top floor of a building in some city, an authority Ashley hasn’t quite reached yet but knows is hers. She’s the shadow I’m aspiring to be, Ashley says. Sometimes I have this ability to connect with her, and I’m always like, how do I get there? Of course the Sagittarius moon’s inner authority lives at the top of a tall building. Of course the path to her requires the elevator, the ascent, the willingness to keep going up. Of course Stevie Nicks. The chart had been saying it the whole time; Ashley just got to meet the woman saying it.

There’s more to say about the Cancer moon, which the episode runs out of time for, which is honestly fitting. The Cancer moon is the original to be continued. She’ll come back next week. She always does ;)

After listening to this ep, do you also want to go inward and meet your Moon figure? Here’s the link to get your own Meet Your Moon audio course made by KP Kaszubowski : https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon

Check back next week to hear more about Ashley, Chelsea, and KP’s Moon meeting experiences 😎

Also in this episode

* Why the moon was historically a masculine entity — and what shifted with Carl Jung and Robert Graves

* The case for sailing on a full moon, illustrated by a hunch about the Titanic

* Mutual reception, explained via Matt and Ben

* Why a moon in the fourth house is built for shadow work — and why a Sagittarius fourth-house moon builds a community of people who love to be alone

* What it means when your moon goes blank in meditation, and why that’s information

* The 28-day moon cycle and the 28-year Saturn cycle, side by side — and what KP finds awe-inspiring about the symmetry

* Air moons need conversation; earth moons need things made material; water moons let the tide carry them; fire moons need to move

* A quick parenting note for Sagittarius moons raising a Virgo moon child

Quotes

“I have always looked to the moon for a type of peace and quiet and serenity and almost like a compass back home.” — Ashley Abubakar

“Sometimes I’ll just be outside during the day and through the very corner of my eye, something will catch and I’ll be like — what’s that? And I’ll always be able to find the moon.” — Chelsea Owens

“What if the moon was new and that’s why they didn’t see the iceberg? And I looked it up. It was a new moon.” — KP Kaszubowski

“She’s always the shadow that I’m aspiring to be. Sometimes I have this ability to connect with her, and I’m always like, how do I get there?” — Ashley Abubakar, on meeting her moon

“It really is a profession that I’ve decided to take has helped me communicate my feelings a lot more. But as a child, I was very quiet and very private.” — Ashley Abubakar

“Pluto in conversation with the moon — that’s the planet of what cannot be said. The power dynamics moving through a culture that we can all feel even when we don’t have discrete evidence.” — KP Kaszubowski

Work With Us

Hellenistic astrologer · Astro Parts Work · poet

KP offers Hellenistic chart readings that treat the birth chart as a map of the psyche’s inner figures — not a verdict, a conversation starter. She’s also currently accepting a small number of practice clients for her Astro Parts Method sessions: guided meetings with your planets as parts, using active imagination. Interest form open now.

Book a chart reading www.kpkaszu.com

Astrology for Makers ↗

Chelsea Owens

Licensed therapist · Certified IFS Level 3

Chelsea works with individuals using Internal Family Systems therapy — the same framework she brings to Parts & Charts. Her sessions are warm, rigorous, and grounded in genuine clinical training. Now accepting new clients.

Book an IFS session https://chelseaowenstherapy.com/

Chelsea’s Substack ↗

Credits:

Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski - performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther

You’re listening to PART TWO of our 12th House Episode with Astrotherapist Lisa Broggi.

My dawg, Parts & Charts is blessed by Lisa’s lush insights and experience — we are very lucky to have her on AGAIN! Stay tuned for more guest episodes with her. There are endless amounts of topics to cover :)

Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

About Our Guest

Lisa Broggi aka The Lilith Therapist is a licensed therapist who integrates astrology into her work using the birth chart and current planetary transits to support clients in their healing and growth. She is also an astrology coach and educator, working one on one with clients and also offering online workshops and courses focused on astrology, healing, and reclaiming personal power so individuals can show up in the collective with their unique gifts. You can find her on socials as @the.lilith.therapist on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Here’s the thing about the 12th house: it doesn’t want to be understood.

It wants to be survived, dissolved into, and quietly thanked on the way out — which is, if you think about it, how most of the important things in a life actually work.

Nobody understands grief. Nobody understands the ocean. Nobody understands what happens in the last half hour of a good dinner with people they love, when the plates are mostly empty and nobody wants to be the first to stand up.

Lisa gets there through headphones. Taurus in the 12th, doing its slow sensory disappearing act — the body going still until whatever needed to move has moved. Chelsea goes to the ocean, or to Esalen, or to a Dharma talk, or into her own apartment for a week of careful solitude she has the good sense not to apologize for. KP goes to libraries. Same house, different waters. Everyone with a 12th house — which is everyone — has a version of this.

The textbooks, the apps, the astrology content designed to be frightening so people keep scrolling, they all want to name the 12th the house of self-undoing, hidden enemies, isolation, loss.

Which: sure, fine, sometimes.

But it’s also just what a certain kind of energy looks like before anyone’s taught you how to use it.

Lisa names the sponge, and the conversation slows down around it, because this is the thing that cracks the episode open. You walk into a room and you pick up what isn’t being said — the grief under the small talk, the resentment under the compliment, the want nobody in the room has given themselves permission to name. And then something comes out of your mouth, and it lands a little too hard, and people call you intense or triggering or too much, and you weren’t doing it on purpose. You were just reading the room. You were in the soup, as Lisa puts it, and one of the things about being in the soup is that you don’t always know where you end and the soup begins. Alone time isn’t a preference for a 12th house placement. It’s a calibration. It’s how you figure out whose feelings you’ve been carrying around all afternoon like somebody else’s coat.

Two vocabularies meet in this episode. Lisa reads the 12th house cusp through IFS — the signs as managers and firefighters, the strategies the psyche built to handle what it couldn’t metabolize in the open. KP reads it through a Jungian frame — closer to a map of unconscious material anyone with that placement was always going to have to meet, and the archetypal shape it takes when it finally meets them. Different languages, similar observation: something has been working on your behalf, mostly unseen, and naming it gives you choice about how it gets expressed. Otherwise — and this is KP being plain in the best way — sometimes it just turns into cigarettes.

Lisa shared her “Unison” story — her most alive 12th house memory: A Billy Joel and Elton John concert. Not even a song she particularly loved. The music drops out entirely and thousands of people keep singing Crocodile Rock a capella into the dark, and something opens up in her that has not, strictly speaking, closed. She had no language for it then. She has a little now. It’s a full-body reaction she still can’t quite talk about without almost crying. That’s the 12th house — the moment the self thins out and something else floods in, not as loss but as company.

KP tells another version, a client of hers who described community singing. You show up. You learn a song together. You sing it a few times. You go home. I don’t feel like I’m myself, the client said, but I’m part of everyone. There are a lot of definitions of the 12th house, some of them elaborate, some of them in Latin, and none of them are as good as that sentence. It isn’t the loss of the self. It’s the temporary porousness that lets a person locate a self worth coming back to. The self doesn’t go anywhere. It just stops being the loudest thing in the room for a minute, which — honestly — is a mercy.

You cannot see the 12th from where you’re standing. It’s where human beings put God because we can’t see God from here either. The Sagittarius 12th goes on a quest — into a library, into a book, into a paragraph that rearranges the furniture. The Cancer 12th house goes to the ocean and talks to the mermaid. The Taurus 12th puts on headphones and doesn’t move until something clears. They’re the house doing exactly what it does, which is find the path to something bigger by disappearing into it first.

You may feel like you’ll lose yourself. Or you may come back with more information than you left with.

Healthy hermit is a diagnosis and a lifestyle. Find your sign. Find your escape hatch.

Also in this episode

* Why the zodiac sign on your 12th house cusp maps to protective strategies, and how to read it without judgment

* The case for IFS as a clinically “woo” modality — and why that isn’t an insult

* Lisa’s Taurus 12th: control parts, resistance to change, and surviving the Uranus in Taurus transit like a graduation

* Healthy escapism as a legitimate 12th house practice — community singing, horse therapy, hot springs, and the Marin Headlands at the edge of the world

* Why 12th housers sometimes say the unspoken thing in the room, and what to do about it when you’re the one doing it

Quotes

“All energies of us must be expressed. And if you know what your 12th house energy is, you have more choice in how it’s expressed. Otherwise, sometimes it turns into smoking cigarettes.”

— Lisa Broggi

“The 12th house is boundaryless — which is why you really do have to actively work to stay in your body and have boundaries. But there’s something super spongy and porous about it. You are a sponge. You are picking up energy everywhere you go.”

-Lisa Broggi

“What comes out of my mouth will be something that’s in the room but not spoken about — and I’m not doing it consciously at all. Some people say 12th housers can be really triggering to other people. But it’s just — you’re in the soup.”

-Lisa Broggi

“The 12th house sign — the zodiac sign — could be really great for understanding what some of your major firefighters are. Like, this sabotage. How do you abuse it? You want to find the healthy expression of that.”

-Lisa Broggi

“The 12th house paths are the way to find God.”

-KP Kaszubowski

“The 12th house is where we as humans choose where God is. It’s the vantage point we can’t see from — so that’s where we conceive of source and spirit. Our 12th house paths are the way to God, if we want to be reductive.”

-KP Kaszubowski

“Moon in the 12th, the ocean is my mother, no s**t.”

-Lisa Broggi

Work With Us

Hellenistic astrologer · Astro Parts Work · poet

KP offers Hellenistic chart readings that treat the birth chart as a map of the psyche’s inner figures — not a verdict, a conversation starter. She’s also currently accepting a small number of practice clients for her Astro Parts Method sessions: guided meetings with your planets as parts, using active imagination. Interest form open now.

Book a chart reading

Astrology for Makers ↗

Chelsea Owens

Licensed therapist · Certified IFS Level 3

Chelsea works with individuals using Internal Family Systems therapy — the same framework she brings to Parts & Charts. Her sessions are warm, rigorous, and grounded in genuine clinical training. Now accepting new clients.

Book an IFS session

Chelsea’s Substack ↗

Lisa Broggi

Licensed therapist and Astrologer

Lisa Broggi’s website and teaching offerings

* The Lilith Therapist TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the.lilith.therapist

* Lisa’s website: https://www.pinkmoontherapy.com/

Credits:

Music “Vape Juice Dave’s Bistro” composed by Scott Cary (Wild Western Avenue) for the feature film RINGOLEVIO (2020) directed by KP Kaszubowski - performed by Scott Cary, Max Wikoff, Else Albeck Gasparka, and Sarah Luther

The cover image is a collage by Chelsea Owens.