That left us with Marie O’Neill, Joey Paynter, and Teal Rowe: the survivors! And our three treasures. There are so many ways that our selection process could have crashed and burned. God is good – it didn’t. We are so fortunate to have these three fine human beings on the FCEA team.

We’re on our second round of tutors-in-training now. They are all promising. We’ll see how many of them stick with it. I’m not going to name names yet out of respect for their privacy. This time around, we did a better job of approximating fairness. For this second cycle of potential trainees, we opened up an application process. We didn’t advertise it in a big way, but it was announced in Catie’s “Dean’s Corner” newsletter for the month of May 2021. I immediately want to point out that we are not currently soliciting new tutors since we’re not sure we will need them. For the sake of archiving FCEA history, here’s the link: – Expanding the Herd

How many tutors will we eventually want? That of course boils down to the question of how large the FCEA will grow. Naturally, we have no idea.

Again, my aim in writing this newsletter is simply to be as honest, open, and transparent as I can possibly be about how we’ve selected our candidate tutors. Even though the results have been blessedly perfect so far, the process itself has admittedly been imperfect. Obviously “who you know” (namely, Catie, Jeff, or me) has been a big factor in it, and that’s ultimately not fair to anyone. My only excuse is that the system was cobbled together under extreme pressure and we did the best we could. And we are getting better at it. The pressure still remains though – Catie, Jeff, and I continue to be grievously over-extended, teaching, creating material, administering, and all the while putting out the inevitable brush fires as best we can. Because of all that, in order to move ahead as efficiently as possible, I ask any of you who are interested in possibly tutoring to please refrain from contacting any of us informally – for example via social media – and instead just check the FCEA newsletter for any future tutor searches down the road. We’ll announce them, just as we did last time.

The long-term solution? 

The FCEA is becoming more solvent, and we anticipate hiring some much-needed technical and administrative help very soon. That will make a big difference – but that’s Jeff’s department, so I’ll let him make those announcements when the time comes.  

Until then, it is onward through the fog. As my friends in the tech world often say, “Perfect is the enemy of good enough.” We’re doing our best, I’m proud of what we have accomplished – and I promise that the best is yet to come.

I knew that this break would give me some unbroken time to write. Even after all these years, I still love doing the readings – but a chance to write is also something I relish too. After the marathon of creating the four Elements books, I wanted a project that was a little easier though. It dawned on me that this would be the perfect opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and that is to create a collection of my articles and newsletters. So that’s exactly what I am up to. It will be called The Endless Sky: Collected Astrological Essays, 2002-2021, and I expect it will be available before the end of the year.

My dear friend Jaan Uhelzski has agreed to write the Foreword. I’m really happy about that. She’s an astrologer herself, but her main claim to fame is that she was one of the original rock’n’roll journalists for the old Creem magazine. She was even on stage in makeup with the band KISS once, and I have a photograph to prove it. Some of you may be too young to remember the magazine. Suffice to say, I expect Jaan’s writing will be edgy, as well as professional.

Meanwhile, creating the new book remains a big job, even though much of the writing is obviously already done. With Saturn in Virgo on my Midheaven pestering my poor innocent Mercury via a quincunx, of course none of the articles were good enough as they sat there. I’ve had to line-edit each one of them, re-writing them here and there, adding some later thoughts, and so on. I’ve also written a brief introduction to each one of them individually, placing them in context. In the “new writing” department, I’ve added a substantial introduction and a serious concluding chapter. It’s been a lot of work. Still, in all honesty, some of the material is old, and much of it has been available for free on my website in the past. It just felt like time to bind everything under one cover for the sake of convenience and easy reference.

The articles range widely. Interested in the meaning of Mercury retrograde? Curious about Eris, the new planet? Planets in Exaltation or Fall? Wondering if transits still work after someone is dead? (Yes – and we prove it with Vincent Van Gogh and Jim Morrison) It’s all in there. I think The Endless Sky will be a fun read for astrology fans – the kind of book you leave on your bedside table or in your bathroom, picking it up at random.

Meanwhile, Lila, the astrological cell phone app I’ve been helping to create has just launched in “beta” form – which means it’s a shortened, stripped down version, complete with some bugs. We passed a big hurdle just getting it out – and also getting it placed in the Apple store, which is not easy. Try heylila.com if you are interested. Eventually Lila will include lots of transits and progressions material, and I am madly writing all of that while I’m here in New Orleans too. 

I’ve always been all about creating easy stepping stones between simple Sun Sign astrology and the “real deal” as we practice it in the FCEA. Lila is part of that larger framework of intentions – it’s geared toward the general public, but the same choice-centered, evolutionary philosophy permeates it. The app will also grow more sophisticated over the next year – I’ve already written a lot of deeper material that’s not yet been unveiled.   

So that’s what I’ve been up to. 

When I get back home to California, I’ll be making more videos for our school. As the wheels turn in the Craftsperson program, we will soon need a demonstration video of a “real life” transits and progressions reading, sort of like the birthchart one I made for Ines . . . promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

We cannot tell a lie – with these upcoming courses, there’s a lot of hard work ahead. For one thing, this series of teachings takes a long time. When we take into account the 200 and 300 level coursework, we are talking about a commitment of 70 weeks. The FCEA is a serious, professional program. We think of it as more or less equivalent to training as a mental health professional or an attorney. There is a lot to absorb and the process cannot really be rushed without too much depth getting lost in the shuffle. We know there are people out there who take a six week astrology course and get their business cards printed up and their website launched. That’s not the FCEA.

What you have learned so far is how to read a natal chart. As you surely know by now, that’s a complicated task! Mastering it is a real accomplishment. In the first half of the Craftsperson program, the new FCEA 200 courses, you’ll add to what you already know by bringing in the ever-changing astrological environment as reflected in transits, progressions, and solar arcs. You will also learn about synastry – the astrology of human relationships. If you thought one chart was complicated, try reading two at the same time! You need to understand them both, plus their interactions, plus a powerful third type of chart called the Composite. 

With “predictive” astrology – transits and so on . . . well, you already know what to do with a person’s natal Mercury. Now let’s try adding three more Mercuries to the mix: transiting Mercury, progressed Mercury, and solar arc Mercury. Each one has something important to say, and each one is in conversation with not only the natal planets, but the other moving ones as well. 

Balancing all of this at once is tricky – but don’t worry! We think you will do just fine. That’s because you are already standing on the solid foundation we laid down in the FCEA 100 courses. You already know astrology’s basic language – and just like when you are learning to speak a foreign language, once you have mastered an initial vocabulary of 100 words, the rest of the process is a whole lot easier – you are on the glide path to eloquence. That linguistic skill is what you have already attained with your hard work in FCEA 100. Getting started is always the hardest part, so congratulations! You’re halfway there.

You’ve probably detected the fingerprints of my Sun sign, Capricorn, in our very structured, step-by-step approach to astrological mastery. Those same orderly values have guided us in creating the architecture of the 200 and 300 level course work. As I’ve said, with our Craftsperson courses, we are about to complicate the astrological picture enormously – but we will do it slowly and strategically. And, no surprise: we will continue to emphasize preserving your intuitive function above everything else – you will need it as the density of the data increases. 

Birthchart analysis, transits and progressions readings, and synastries – in astrological practice, those techniques are the big three. Most professional counseling astrologers spend at least 90% of their time employing that triad of tools. Long ago, I could have given up teaching and writing, and just focused on offering those three skills in my private astrological practice. It would have been a good life, a meaningful one, and a prosperous one. That is what we mean when we say that as you complete our Craftsperson program, you can truly call yourself a professional-level astrologer. Naturally, your skills will deepen with experience – that’s true in any profession. But even a brain surgeon has to start somewhere. That surgeon might not want to tell his or her patient, “hey, this is the first time I’ve ever tried this” – but logic guarantees that, just like you, every brain surgeon sooner or later had to solo. You will too. And we will help you succeed.

Our Craftsperson program embraces not just our 200-level courses, but also the FCEA 300 courses. In those classes, we will add some more advanced techniques to what you know already – we’ll be working with the phases of the Moon, for example, along with lunar declination. We’ll also delve more deeply into all the planets, both in the natal chart and in motion. You will see many, many more real-life examples of planets in action. Your confidence will grow, as will your vocabulary and your arsenal of metaphors. We’ll get to know Chiron a lot more deeply. We’ll meet the newest major addition to the astrological syntax – Eris, orbiting way out in deep space far beyond Pluto. There is so much to know! But when you have internalized the Craftsperson material, you will have reached a significant plateau. The mountain continues upward, but once you arrive on that plateau, you can practice astrology effectively, helping other people with skill, confidence, and a significant degree of mastery.

Thanks for being part of our maiden voyage. Your feedback has been enormously helpful. Even more importantly, your faith and enthusiasm has sustained us as Jeff, Catie, and I have climbed our own mountain, often hanging onto cliffs and ledges by our fingernails, trying to stay one step ahead of you.

Once again, a deep and sincere congratulations to all of you on completing your Apprentice level work and entering our Craftsperson program.

For the student Zoom call on May 20th, we are going to try a different approach. The first 30 minutes will be the usual Q & A. During the second 30 minutes, we will put an actual chart up on the screen – and that second “30 minutes” might turn out to be 45 minutes, we’ll see how it goes.

We’ve usually been getting 12- 15 questions submitted for each program. I’ve generally managed to answer most of them. Next time, we will need to be pickier. I’ll choose between four and six of the most interesting ones and respond to them in that first half hour. Then we’ll put the chart up on the screen.

Which chart? And how to deal with the time limitations? Here’s how we plan to do it . . .

Everyone is free to submit a chart – and it’s fine if it is your own. Jeff is going to come up with some random method for choosing which chart we will use. All charts are interesting, so we have no agenda there at all. I’m sure that he will be fair and transparent about his selection methods. For purposes of confidentiality, we will obscure the identifying characteristics of the chart – but please do remember that these Zoom calls are archived for future student use. The analysis will be available to FCEA students “‘til the sun refuses to shine and the mountains tumble to the sea . . .” If potentially having your chart made public makes you uncomfortable, think twice about submitting it. Again, we’ll not show your name. Realistically, however, it’s not too hard to deduce birth information from planetary positions, and from there, someone might connect the dots.

Since we will have only 30 or 40 minutes to spend with the chart, we will need to keep the process very focused. If you choose to submit a chart, please also submit a question about some specific configuration within it – a planet or node or aspect, whatever . . . even a human question, such as “talk about career” or “why did I marry that creature from Outer Space.” I will use that question as our launching pad, and see where it leads us. Again, the clock will be our guide there. We’ll cast our interpretive net as widely as time allows.

We know that once you have learned the basic vocabulary, much help comes from seeing real-life interpretation in action. That’s what this little half-hour demo will be about. On a closely related note, I recently did a birthchart reading for a woman in Switzerland. She has agreed to let me use it as a teaching tool in our school. Usually with the private work I do, I just make audio recordings. This one is a video. It runs about two hours in length and it’s divided into four more “bite-sized” parts.  My aim was to create an example of how I actually bring all of our 100-level course material to a practical, integrated focus with a client who is not an astrologer. We’ll find a place for it very near the end of the Apprentice Level part of the FCEA program.

Meanwhile, let me chime in and wish a warm welcome to our newly-fledged FCEA tutors, Marie O’Neill, Joey Paynter, and Teal Rowe. They were all already fine astrologers, and they faced a steep learning curve mastering Moodle and the specific content of our program. Six began; three survived – and thanks for hanging in there!

When in doubt, always look for that north star: what is the true core of your mission? What would you be a fool to compromise? For me, once again the bottom line was bringing evolutionary astrology to a wider audience. I didn’t care about impressing other astrologers. I cared about reaching people who didn’t already know about it. On that flight, five miles high over God only knows what land or ocean, I began jotting down some ideas. First and foremost, I knew that before I died, I needed to “write down everything I had learned about astrology” – impossible, of course, but that dream is what led to my four Elements books, which I started writing in early 2018. I also began musing on how I might continue my teaching, or even expand it, in a way that didn’t involve me being on the road so much. An online school was the obvious answer, but I knew very little about how any of that worked. 

Angels came to the rescue, as they often do when you follow your heart. With my progressed Moon in the 12th house, I knew that I should run on faith and be open to a new vision. Covid-19 helped me let go of my beloved-but-exhausting apprenticeship programs, along with half of my private counseling practice. I used the time to dive into completing the Elements series – 1728 pages in three years, which is a lot of writing! Just two months into that lunar progression, I had my first meeting with Jeff and Catie, which led to the founding of the FCEA. Our program launched a few months after my Moon progressed into the 1st house – right on schedule, in other words.

We’re proud of the FCEA, but my age-old dilemma still remains: how to reach more people? How can we bring this kind of illuminated astrology to a wider audience?  It can be so helpful, and yet so few people are aware of what we can offer them. There’s also a lot of dumb astrology out there, further muddying the water.

Angels helped there too. In 2017, former National Football League great, Ricky Williams, became a student of mine, as well as a dear friend. His wonderful wife, Linnea Miron, soon followed. Together, they had an idea for a serious astrological cell phone app based on my work – and we’re talking about genuine  “date, time, and place” astrology, not just Sun signs. We met over the last weekend of January 2018 and Lila was born. Ricky and Linnea had connections and resources beyond what I could imagine, and skills far outside my domain. They soon assembled a fabulous technical team. Meanwhile, I started writing the actual content. Here’s a link to a 3-minute video about the Lila vision, in case you are interested:

Lila Vision (click here)

Ricky Williams is hugely famous in the sports world, with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and a stadium in Texas named after him. We’ve also got the AstroTwins – Ophi and Tali Edut – working with us. Their astrostyle.com website gets 12 million visitors each month. Ophi and Tali are “popular astrologers” for sure, but they also know what they are doing astrologically. Blessedly, they think of themselves as evolutionary astrologers and they know my work well. I really liked them both right away. Interestingly, their Jupiters and my own are almost exactly conjunct. They now write that same column for ELLE that was once mine. Karma!

Between Ricky’s marketing power and that of the AstroTwins, we think Lila has the potential to get very big. Lila is definitely a glossy commercial project, but 99% of its actual content is my own. In preparing the material for the app, I’ve basically written yet another book in the past year or so. It’s a simpler kind of astrology than what we do in the FCEA, but it is still honest evolutionary astrology. 

The point of my saying all of this is that Lila offers the missing third ingredient in my grand strategy after the first two, which are the FCEA and my Elements books. That third ingredient is outreach. Between Lila itself and the support of the AstroTwins, we anticipate a lot more attention being drawn to my existing work. A likely side-effect is that the school will grow rather dramatically over the next two or three years. 

I want to thank all of you for being part of this process, for helping us smooth out the technical wrinkles in Moodle, and in getting our teachers, tutors, and material up to speed before we start growing. You are the first wave. Among you, I am sure, are some future teachers in the FCEA. I feel as if we are making history, and I appreciate your faith in us and the support you have offered.

One more quick point. Beyond writing the Lila material, I’ve been busily creating videos and written content for the more advanced FCEA courses. We’re excited about what’s in store next for you in the program. Once all the school material is created and Lila is launched, my own life will change a lot. For one thing, I will have a lot more free time than I do now – and if my personal history can be trusted, that time will quickly fill up with other projects, one of which will be more active, higher-level teaching in our school. I look forward to seeing more of all of you when the pages of that chapter start turning.

Astrologers are often hired to “pick a date” for a wedding or the opening of a business. That branch of our craft – called “electional” astrology – is a powerful, helpful technique. You’ll learn about it later in the FCEA program. The reality is that this birthchart for the school “elected us” rather than the other way around. And that is actually the way the universe usually works – every moment has an astrological personality, and everything “born” in that moment reflects it. No one has to believe in astrology for that to be true. Every breath you take has an astrological signature – although I’d be quick to add you can go crazy thinking about that too much.

The FCEA could hardly be more Piscean. Obviously having both the Sun and the Moon there guarantees that. But with Gemini rising, Mercury becomes the ruler of the chart – and it too lies in Pisces. Then there’s Neptune, the modern ruler of Pisces. It’s conjunct both Sun and Moon by a fraction of a degree, further pressing the school in that “fishy” symbolic direction.

All of those Pisces energies are operating in the 11th house. On the surface, there is a very simple, obvious truth in that symbolism – we are, after all, an organization. Many of us have come together united by a common purpose in classic 11th house fashion. We are all “friends” in that 11th house sense too – although words such as teammates or allies are often more accurate. 

Once again, we see how in this “random” choice of a moment for Jeff, Catie, and me to sit down and start talking, the astrological signatures of what was actually being born were all there. 

To be true to ourselves and genuinely glad to be alive, we all need to be true to our Suns, Moons, and Ascendants, as well as to the rest of our charts. With all that Piscean energy, for the FCEA, doing that means that we need to remain true to our mystical heart. Add that collective 11th house energy, and the full picture emerges: we are a mystery school. 

A full analysis of this “birthday” chart is a bit beyond the scope of my musings here. Let me just add a few more points as simply as I can. Pisces is the 12th sign, always resonant with the 12th house – where we find two more planets: Uranus and Mars. That adds another log or two to the mystical fires. That rebel Uranus also rules the Midheaven, so our public destiny reflects the “troublemaker” role of a mystery school in the context of our fundamentally materialistic society.

The 9th house is interesting too. Venus is there in Aquarius, but we also see that Capricorn south node, ruled by Saturn and conjunct it, with Pluto only a degree and a half from the node. The karma of the FCEA could be seen as that of “a university,” given the “higher education” significance of the 9th house. But of course, with Pluto in the mix, this nodal structure looks pretty heavy! It also feels extremely solitary – there’s the fingerprint of Saturn and Capricorn. 

My first thought is that historically many mystery schools needed to keep their existence secret in order to avoid persecution. I suspect that is what we are looking at here.

The Cancer north node is in the 3rd house – teaching leaps out again, but this time it has a warmer, gentler quality. Ruled by that Piscean Moon in the 11th house, there is a feeling of sweetness, outreach, and public transparency about the dharma of the FCEA, as opposed to its battle-weary “secret handshake” karma. 

I could say more, but I’m out of space. Let me plant one more seed though. Each one of you is part of our tribe and your presence is potentially a very specific gift to the rest of us. If, for example, you have a lot of sensitivity to around 6 degrees of Aquarius, you may help us “do our Venus.” Maybe you’re tuned into the middle of Pisces. If so, please remind us of our mystical heart, especially if we ever start letting “the world be too much with us.”

Meanwhile, my own Sun is in the middle of Capricorn, very close to that Saturn. I guess my job is to be Gandalf or Dumbledore – or maybe just grandpa. Finally for those who like that whole mystery school vibe, the logo for the FCEA is derived from the aspects in its birthchart!

Many of these online meetings will take the same form as the first one – they’ll be driven by questions submitted by all of you, both FCEA students and community members. I will take about an hour and try to answer as many of them as I can. Realistically I probably will not be able to get to everything. That means that we will “curate” the questions, selecting the ones that promise to be most helpful to the most people. Going through the submissions in advance takes some time – that means that we need to receive them 36 hours before the call. 

Priority will always go to questions that have the most general relevance. That usually means that the ones which begin with “in my chart” won’t make the cut. Given that the FCEA has just been launched, for a while we will also leave out any questions that are ahead of the current learning curve – at this point, that means that we will not be looking at anything involving transits and progressions or any of our other more advanced topics. As the program matures and students advance, we will welcome more sophisticated material. Right now, we want to be careful that no one is left behind.      

With 75 or 100 people in the Zoom-room, these monthly programs need to be rather structured. Catie and Jeff will moderate, and we will run a fairly tight ship, limiting interruptions and comments. If that many people begin a free-form “chat,” chaos quickly ensues. Again, our aim is to provide the most benefit to the greatest number of people in that hour or so. We need to use the time efficiently, avoiding going down any rabbit holes.

Where the rubber meets the road in astrology is actually looking at charts. The trouble is that there are very few truly simple questions about any chart. Astrologically, everything is connected to everything else and so looking at a single chart on the shared screen could easily take up the entire hour. We’ll probably do exactly that! But not right away. At this point, we think briefer, more generalizable questions do more good for the majority of us. Don’t worry – if you are hungry for more integrated, in-depth chart analysis, there are also plenty of videos of me presenting complete interpretations a little further on in the FCEA curriculum. 

Down the road, we plan to create an index to the archives of these Zoom calls. Students and community members will be able, for example, to look up “house cusps” and go directly to the video recording of me discussing them on January 26. We anticipate this index becoming an increasingly valuable resource over the years as the calls accumulate.

With FCEA students spread over the globe, finding a convenient time for these Zoom events is pretty much an impossibility. What we have settled on is the idea of alternating them monthly between  8:00 AM and 5:00 PM-Pacific Time. That is not a perfect solution, but 8:00 o’clock in the morning at my house is around 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon in London and midnight in Beijing. When the clocks read 5:00 PM here, it is 1:00 in the morning in London and 9:00 AM in Beijing. “Convenient” might not be the first word that comes to mind, but perhaps “workable” does.

Compounding the time zone challenges, we are doing these calls on weekdays rather than weekends. That’s just me taking care of myself. I already have to work on some weekends. Sacrificing another weekend per month would not be a popular choice on the home front. 

Again, I repeat that all of these Zoom calls will be recorded and archived. That means that no one ever has to actually miss one. Since all the questions are submitted in advance, no one even misses the chance to ask questions. Sometimes, when time allows, there will be follow-up questions and comments. People watching later will only miss having a chance to participate in that part. Everything else is equally accessible to them.

One monthly Zoom call does not seem like much “Steve time.” One or two students have expressed frustration that I am not more directly present and available in the program, even though you will see plenty of me on the instructional videos we have recorded. I’d like to address that issue directly here. My response comes in two parts.

First, at a personal level, one of my aims for the FCEA is to create a vehicle for this kind of astrology to continue to grow and to be taught after I am gone, or after my physical and mental capacities are reduced. I am eager to pass the torch onward to Jeff and Catie and to our wonderfully able crew of tutors-in-training. I have no plans to retire, but at age 72, I would like to have more free time to do some exploring of my inner and outer worlds. All of that dictates a smaller role for me in the day-to-day running of the school.

Secondly, as the FCEA moves forward, we plan to host various Craftsperson and Master level activities. I anticipate my interacting with our more advanced students in a much more direct way. Those plans have not jelled specifically yet, but we are committed to them. I really love “live” teaching with a small group, coaching people as they present their own interpretations. Post-Covid, we do anticipate holding some physical gatherings – classes, even conferences. Because of the international reach of the FCEA, I want to be fair to people who live far away, so there will be some online dimensions to these higher-level programs too.

Bottom line, I do anticipate being more actively involved in teaching for those of you who master our more foundational course work. Much of the actual shape of that teaching really depends on something imponderable – the angels’ plans for my physical body as I move deeper into my seventies. (My dad made it to 83 and mom almost to 96, so I’m optimistic.) 

Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing you every month.

Finally, I’d like to add one more point about our monthly Zoom calls. After the formal Q&A discussions, we always have some social time. One of the things I miss most about the old Apprenticeship Programs is the fun of just hanging out with interesting people, laughing and comparing notes. “Zoomland” is a new world of course. I have been happy to discover that it’s warmer and more human than I had feared. As we build the FCEA community, these social times play an important role. Because it is hard for fifty people to have a conversion, Jeff has been exploring Zoom “break out rooms,” where smaller groups can gather, or two people could even have a private conversation if they wanted. It’s something we’re making up as we go along, getting used to, making it human. Please join us for that part of the program as well.

Finish up the post here.