In our Q & A session on August 23rd, our new student, “L,” asked the following question. “Most of us have had many past lives. Which past life is shown in the birth chart? All past lives perhaps? Or the most relevant past life/lives? Or the most recent past life/lives?”

I responded during the call, and if you want to watch the “live” version, remember that if you are an FCEA student or Community Member, all those sessions are recorded, indexed, and always available to you. By the way, we know that for many of you, even here in North America, the timing of these Zoom calls is somewhere between awkward and impossible. Our apologies for that. There really aren’t any good solutions to that problem, other than us seeing to it that recordings are provided.

L’s questions are so fundamental to the practice of evolutionary astrology that I wanted to explore them a little more deeply here in this newsletter. Let me start by saying that it is of course quite possible to adapt our work to accommodate clients who aren’t comfortable with the idea of past lives. We can always talk about ancestral themes, DNA, and so on — or we can just bow deeply before the unknowable mysteries of the universe, and add the observed fact that, whatever the reason, everyone arrives on Earth with an inborn nature and certain astrologically-predictable challenges. In practice, I always ask my clients if the idea of past lives works for them. Only twice, in all the years I’ve been doing this work, has anyone ever said no. One was a professor at Catholic University in Washington D.C. – and he came back three or four years later and told me it was OK to talk about past lives this time. The other was a psychotherapist in Marin County, California — go figure!

First, here’s the simple part. L writes, “Most of us have had many past lives.” I think it’s more accurate to say that we all have had many past lives. Even people for whom this is their first human incarnation have lived in animal bodies. Have you ever met someone who behaved like a baboon, for example? Or like a dog fighting over a bone? For what it’s worth, my personal feeling is that some four-footed beings are ahead of some of us two-footed ones – that the reality is not as simple as “you graduate from animal high school and go to human college.” That’s just my opinion, and many metaphysicians would disagree with me. In fact, let me be clear: pretty much everything you’ll be reading in this essay is nothing but my opinion. Much of it is informed by Buddhism, Ram Dass, Edgar Cayce, and other wise teachers, but all these things are hard to prove or even to investigate in a foolproof way. Take what you like and leave the rest. These are the best truths I know.

L had a few more questions: Which past life is shown in the birth chart? All past lives perhaps? Or the most relevant past life/lives? Or the most recent past life/lives?”

“All past lives” would probably paint your chart black – it would require such a density of symbols that you couldn’t read anything from it at all. The deep truth is that a very great number of prior incarnations in various forms has brought you to where you are today. Fortunately, our techniques of nodal analysis filter all of that past-life information in an extremely radical way. Very little of that information actually gets through. These filters work in a very practical way, only telling you what you need to know. Everything else gets left out. You may have been one of the twelve apostles. Maybe you were Geronimo. You may have been Cleopatra – but if what your soul is working on in this lifetime isn’t connected to those particular past lives, there will be no symbolism in your chart for them.

• Maybe you were indeed “Cleopatra,” but you worked that karma out long ago. It no longer holds you back in any way. Poof – no nodal evidence for that lifetime appears in your birthchart.

• Maybe you were “Cleopatra,” but you’re not yet ready to wrestle with that karma. You’re saving it for a future lifetime when you are wiser and more evolved than you are today. Once again, poof – no nodal evidence for that lifetime appears in the chart.

That’s how the “nodal filters” work. So much of this line of thought is contained in one phrase that most of you have heard me say many, many times: what we see via nodal analysis is unresolved karma that has ripened. “Unresolved” means it’s still holding you back somehow in terms of your evolutionary intentions for this lifetime. “Ripened” means that the time has come for you to deal with it – you’re ready, in other words.

Back to L’s questions:

Which past life is shown in the birth chart? 

Answer: the one (or ones) that are actually pressing at you in this present life.

All past lives perhaps? 

Answer: definitely not all of them!

Or the most relevant past life/lives? 

Answer: L totally nails it here.

Or the most recent past life/lives? 

Answer: not necessarily — karma often takes a while to ripen.

I always like to underscore the fact that we don’t read astrological charts the same way that we read newspapers. Symbolism is not literalism. As we do nodal analysis, our aim is to invent a story that resonates emotionally with the person’s actual karma. Liberate yourself from the feeling that you need to find the literal reality of anyone’s prior lifetimes. We can’t do that and we don’t make that indefensible claim, nor do we burden ourselves with that impossible task.

If in a prior life, you were literally a rock star, but I tell you a nodal tale about how you were a movie star, I’ve done my job – that story is close enough to ring the right emotional bells. Same thing if I tell you a story about how you were once a victim of religious persecution and the reality is that you were a victim of racial or gender prejudice. In other words, the story doesn’t need to be literally true in order to be emotionally relevant – and thus capable of triggering a cathartic reaction in the client. Remember: everything starts with the south node of the Moon – we’re talking about the history of the emotional body, not a checklist of biographical “Mercury” facts. We don’t typically remember our past lives in a concrete way. What we remember is what they felt like. That “Moon energy” is what reincarnates with us. That’s where we store the hurt. That’s what we see in the chart. And that’s where we look for the cure.

Built into this line of thinking is another practical point. Most of the time in practicing evolutionary astrology, we tell a single “once upon a time” past-life story. That simplicity may or may not reflect literal reality. Karma, by its very nature, tends to be habitual and repetitive. Might a soul cycle through several lifetimes in which it kept making the same mistake over and over again – marrying the wrong person, for example? Sure! But our single past-life tale covers all of those emotional bases and that’s the point.

Perhaps the most slippery question of them all is one that L didn’t ask. What exactly reincarnates? That’s a conundrum that keeps philosophers and metaphysicians talking until the wee hours.

Here’s how I understand it. I’ve been a Capricorn with an Aries Moon for almost seventy-five years now. After all that time, I’ve gotten pretty used to it. But at the moment my physical body dies, will I still be a Capricorn with an Aries Moon? That’s hard to answer – something of that imprint might survive in my post mortem consciousness for a while. But if we accept reincarnation, we know for sure that when I am reborn, I probably won’t be a Capricorn with an Aries Moon anymore. In other words, what reincarnates will not be my present personality.  Among people who are drawn to the idea of reincarnation, there is often a naíve attitude that “you” just come back again in a new body as if nothing had really changed. It’s obviously a lot more complicated than that. The reality is that “you” as a personality are truly dead and gone.

So what else are you besides your personality?

That brings us right back to our slippery question: what reincarnates? Your soul? Here in the western world, we often use that word. Buddhists generally don’t like it. That’s because they aren’t comfortable endorsing the idea of any kind of eternally separate individuality. Instead, they often refer to the mindstream.

In some ways, mindstream is a more rigorous concept. In other ways, I might say what’s the difference? For what it’s worth, I do use the word “soul” myself – but let me explain why “mindstream” works better when we’re wrestling with the profoundest kinds of metaphysical questions, as we are here.

At some undetermined point down the line, I won’t be a Capricorn with an Aries Moon any longer – but, for good or for ill, my mindstream will have been conditioned by all my experiences in this lifetime. In other words, something far bigger and more ancient than my personality will digest everything I’ve learned as Steven Forrest with his Capricorn Sun and his Aries Moon. It will all enter my mindstream. But underlying that immediate addition to my mindstream is another, deeper sedimentary layer – that’s all the accumulated impressions of my own prior lifetimes, digested and turned into feelings, attitudes, understandings . . . and errors, hurts, angers, and so on. My experiences as Steven Forrest will simply join that larger flow.

• The mindstream is what reincarnates, not the personality – but underlying and shaping my future personality is that mindstream. Hopefully, as a result of being myself for all these years, it will be a little wiser and a little clearer.

Purifying that mindstream – teaching it love, not fear, generosity rather than grasping, acceptance, not aggression – is the purpose of life. Your present chart is just your particular current tack on those ancient, eternal challenges. It shows you where you’re stuck and exactly what you need to do to get free.

Think of it like a shirt you’re wearing. You may like it, but tomorrow you’ll take it off and put it in the wash. Personalities are like that. Mindstreams – or souls – are a lot more lasting.

It’s time for another peek at the school’s chart. A long hard look at your own transits and progressions can help keep you honest, and it’s the same for the entity we call the FCEA. That’s how we walk our talk – we listen when the planets shine a light on our path.

Most of us have seen the school’s chart before – here it is again in case you’re newly part of the family. This time I’m showing it with the current progressions in the middle ring and the current transits in the outer one. As usual, for clarity’s sake, I’m not progressing the outer planets – they’re too slow to be of much practical use. I’m also only using the transits of Jupiter through Pluto – they’re the ones that have time enough to pack the symbolic punch of deep developmental meaning. Everything is set for July 14th. There’s nothing special about that date – it’s just when I happened to be writing this essay. All of these bodies move slowly enough that nothing significant will have changed by the time you’re reading this.  

One glance at the basic natal chart of the school and you can easily see astrology at work. We’ve obviously got a massive 11th house. That’s because we’re a tribe – a group of people who have come together for a common purpose. There’s lots of Pisces energy too – after all, we’re a spiritual tribe. Our path is one of education – there’s the Gemini Ascendant and the big 9th house. None of that tells us anything we didn’t know already, but it demonstrates a good reality check if you’re using an “event” chart like this one – if it’s not true in “obvious” ways, that’s a sign that the chart itself might be flawed. Births are pretty objective things. Not so the “births” of ideas, relationships, or businesses. If the chart doesn’t echo reality in a crystal-clear “duh” sort of way, you’ve probably got a problem. No worry, we’re definitely good to go in this case – the school’s chart represents our reality very well.

Look at all those transits and progressions! As usual, one glance is enough to make you feel like you’re juggling a few too many balls. Birthcharts are complicated enough, but adding transits and progressions can be overwhelming. Much of the art of our work lies in knowing how to edit the clutter – that’s always our first step. Diving in willy-nilly without a plan is invariably a recipe for catastrophe. Those of you who are currently in (or beyond) FCEA201 know that our basic tool here is what we call The Four Nets. If you’re just beginning our program, you can read all about them in The Changing Sky. Basically they are simply a rough method of sorting through a slew of transits, progressions, and solar arcs with an eye on thinking in terms of first things first.

In no particular order (yet), here are what seem to me to be the biggest things currently going on in the school’s chart.

• Transiting Pluto is squaring the school’s Uranus.
• Transiting Uranus will hit the Ascendant in two years
• Solar Arc Saturn is conjunct the school’s Pluto
• Transiting Saturn is sweeping through Pisces, hitting all of those Piscean planets
• Transiting Neptune is conjuncting Mercury 
• The Progressed Moon is in the 12th house heading for the Ascendant
• Transiting Jupiter will soon be squaring our Sun and Moon
• Transiting Jupiter will trine the Sun and Moon in two years

Got all that? The heart boggles in the face of it all. We need a way of getting a handle on the complexity. The Four Nets to the rescue! Be warned though – they’re flawed. I wrote them so I should know! By all means, use them, but only as a starting point. The trouble with the Four Nets is that they suffer from the same limitations we find with the orbs of aspects. What orb should we use for Mercury? The right answer varies with Mercury’s strength and centrality in the chart. If Gemini is rising and the person’s Sun is in the 3rd house, you’ll want to use wider orbs with Mercury – that’s because of that person’s enhanced sensitivity to those areas of life. It’s exactly the same with the Four Nets – a progressed Mercury, say, trining natal Neptune would rise higher in the Nets for people who have that same kind of enhanced Mercurial natal sensitivity – and it would sink in importance if they didn’t!

Remember: use the Four Nets as your launching pad, but not as your crutch!

Let’s apply the Four Nets to the current astrological situation of the school. As we sort through our list of configurations while letting the Nets set our priorities, here’s what we see. (By the way, the numbered lines I quote in italics here are taken directly from the Four Nets handout in FCEA201. They’re also pretty close to what you’ll find in The Changing Sky where I first published them back in 1986.)

First Net

Our transiting Saturn is sweeping through Pisces, hitting all of those Piscean planets

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto making a conjunction or hard aspect to the natal Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Our Progressed Moon is in the 12th house heading for the Ascendant 

2. The progressed Moon passing over the Ascendant or Descendant.

Our transiting Uranus will hit the Ascendant in two years

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto making a conjunction or hard aspect to the natal Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Second Net

Our transiting Pluto square Uranus

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto conjunct, square or opposed to any sensitive point other than Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Our transiting Neptune conjunct Mercury

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto conjunct, square or opposed to any sensitive point other than Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Our Solar Arc Saturn conjunct Pluto

8. Any solar arc planet making a hard aspect or conjunction to any natal planet or point, or changing sign or house.

Our transiting Jupiter square the Sun and Moon

5. Transiting Jupiter conjunct, square, or opposed to the natal Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Third Net

Our transiting Jupiter trine the Sun and Moon

3. Any aspects made by transiting Jupiter not already covered.

What follows is probably the most important thing I’m going to say in this little essay: if you only looked at those First Net configurations and you did an in-depth job of understanding them and integrating them with each other, you would have been of enormous help to anyone who had been lucky enough to turn to you for counsel.

Never forget – we’re working for our clients, not to win some kind of award offered by a team of censorious techno-astrologers.

The bottom line is always to go as far with the Nets as you possibly can, but stopping just before your intuitive sense of the wholeness starts to get swallowed up in a lather of intellectual anxiety.

So what does it all mean? What can we learn about the school’s current evolutionary possibilities?

I’m going to be brief here since a thorough job of interpretation would require quite a lot of time and would be a lot easier to deliver orally rather than in writing. As you’re probably figuring out by now, I actually have two aims in writing this short essay. Obviously, one is to think about the school and our collective journey. The second one is to offer some guidance and encouragement about how to navigate the potentially-overwhelming labyrinths that the astrological symbols always create. Interpretively, this will be a simple strategic overview rather than a detailed analysis, in other words.

Let’s start with those three First Net configurations. They are our foundation. Beginning anywhere else could easily put the cart before the horse. The first thing I see is that while one of these First Net events is currently active, the other two crest in the near future and are thus less active right now. Let’s start with those two:

• Number one, the progressed Moon hits the school’s Ascendant on March 3, 2025.

• Number two, transiting Uranus soon follows, hitting the Ascendant in August 2025, retrograding over it that October, and making a final direct hit in January 2026.

• Finally, Saturn’s current sweep through Pisces – number three – can thus be understood as preparation for the new beginnings the other two First Net events are prophesying.

See how that simple insight based on the relative timing of these three events gives us an initial interpretive structure? We’ll start with Saturn, and try to see how it can prepare us for those Moon and Uranus developments. Saturn entered Pisces in March 2023, but it will be crisscrossing our Sun and Moon between April 2024 and January 2025 – and note that Saturn’s finish in January 2025 comes just a few weeks before the progressed Moon hits the Ascendant and a few months before Uranus joins the Moon there.

We’ve hit upon a developmental sequence – and recognizing a pattern like that is pure gold in our craft.

Again, these configurations are vast subjects, but in essence with the Saturn transit through Pisces, we see the school in its current situation, which is that we are maturing. Reflecting that idea in material terms, we’ll probably be graduating our first class of master-level FCEA astrologers early in 2024 – there’s a very concrete (Saturn!) maturational milestone! Given Saturn’s nature, we’ll probably also be facing various (surmountable) obstacles – that’s usually part of Saturn’s signature too. The process of navigating those obstacles is often what actually matures anyone, the school included. Saturn usually also demands some hard negotiations, some compromises, and some sacrifices.

As one quick illustration of how this Saturn transit has already been at work, think of the big school Zoom Q & A calls that we do. From my point of view, the last two or three of them have been the smoothest ones ever. That’s because – live and learn, Saturn-fashion – we’ve created a format that really works: an hour on the submitted questions, half an hour or so on a chart reading, and the rest of the time for spontaneous discussion. We learned from our experience and improved things. We matured – and that’s pure Saturn.

With those two other big First Net events heading for our Ascendant, we’re focusing on building a vision for the future, but succeeding there requires some reflection  and patience. Building that “vision” is the message of the progressed Moon’s current position in the 12th house. Once that vision is “cooked,” the Moon hitting the school’s Ascendant in 2025 will be something of a “Grand Opening” – and with Uranus hitting the Ascendant at about the same time, we can safely “expect the unexpected.” We will also very probably take off in some novel or surprising directions.

That’s the message of the First Net.

Those novel and surprising directions are echoed further as we move into the realm of the Second Net. There we see Uranus in the spotlight once again, but this time because transiting Pluto is squaring it. That’s happening throughout all of 2024. Meanwhile, transiting Neptune is back and forth over our Mercury between May 2024 and January 2026. That transit echoes the “vision quest” elements we saw in that First Net progression of the Moon through the 12th house. Together these two Second Net transits caution us against the kind of unrealism (Neptune) that could lead to a real mess – something that Pluto squaring a 12th house Uranus warns us about as well. Right now, Saturn is teaching us to keep our feet on the ground. Our job is to remember that!

Solar Arc Saturn made a conjunction with Pluto in July, and that energy is still very active and represents more of the same. There are bumps in the road – delays and maybe a few minefields as well. We acknowledge all that, but we keep perspective – these are Second Net events, not First Net ones. We counsel alertness and caution, but not fear.

Moving on in the Second Net, transiting Jupiter squares the Sun and Moon between August 2024 and April 2025. That warns us specifically against over-extension – and it further focuses the cautionary notes we just struck. Concretely, the chart might be counseling us, for example, against taking on too many new students or new tutors, or simply spending too much money.

A little further down the road, transiting Jupiter moves beyond those squares to the Sun and Moon and slides into trine aspects with them. That happens between August 2025 and April 2026. By then, the progressed Moon is in the 1st house and Uranus is snicker-snacking back and forth across our Ascendant. If we’re careful, if we do the hard Saturn work, and if we let ourselves gradually feel our way into a new vision, we will have built the foundation for that new beginning, and I suspect we’ll be smiling gratefully at what we’ve created – there’s the message of Jupiter trining our Sun and Moon, probably bringing luck and opportunity.

Remember how you felt back at the beginning of this essay when I first listed the eight biggest events that were impacting the FCEA chart? Eight were enough to be overwhelming – and that was just the top eight! What if I’d added a bunch of Net Three events as well? Or Net Four? It’s simply too much for the mind to digest. But think about what happened to your attitude when we passed those eight configurations through the Nets.

• The First Net reduced them to the three most important ones – and with just three events, we could begin to get a handle on the message. Our “overwhelm” was greatly reduced.

• Even better, because they were First Net events we could reassure ourselves that we were keeping perspective and tuning into the big picture.

• Then we noticed a pattern in those three events. We reflected on their timing and we saw how one of them was currently setting the stage for the other two.

A strategic approach like that is how we go from confusion to a story we feel in our bones and which we can tell with confidence. Once we have the First Net figured out, we just plug some Net Two and maybe some Net Three insights into the basic “big picture.” Always, our sense of the integrated wholeness of things that Net One generates for us is our foundation.

Beyond that, we embellish it with lesser configurations until our brows start to wrinkle – or our clients start to look glassy-eyed.

With experience, we improve even further – we sense when that dreaded glassy-eyed moment is about to arrive and we say Amen just before we get there. 

The next thing you know, you’re a professional astrologer and an FCEA graduate.