ShukeDaddy and the Quest for the Cosmic Keys (Dan Shukis)
Dan Shukis is the astrologer host of Cosmic Keys Podcast, and a singer/songwriter/guitarist in the band Moonstone Quill.
Plus+InnerVerse Plus+
InnerVerse Plus+Hear every full episode
Every extended episode, the complete Plus+ archive, premium video and a private podcast feed for your app.
Cancel any time.
Get tuned with Chance
Tuning forks find where energy is stuck in the field around your body and bring it back into flow. Sessions over Zoom, recorded for you to keep.
30 Minute Consultations
Have something to look at, or looking for guidance? We can consult oracular tools, read your chart, or just talk through whatever you choose.
In this episode
Core themes
Tropical versus sidereal and pattern watching
Dan explained that he used the tropical zodiac with whole sign houses, and he defined sidereal as the zodiac tied to the actual constellations. He argued that tropical symbolism followed the seasons, so the meaning of Aries did not drift with the stars. One of the hosts agreed, saying the signs were conceptual metaphors for natural processes, and compared it to moving paintings between walls. Dan added that he sometimes borrowed sidereal ideas such as the fixed star Algol, and that any system could work if the practitioner watched for repeating patterns.
A day job, a podcast, and a band
Dan described juggling a day job, his Cosmic Keys podcast and his band Moonstone Quill, and he said a structured schedule had been surprisingly grounding after years of freelance instability. He told how he moved to Colorado in early 2020, played open mics with his bandmate Nate, and drove to Colorado Springs on impulse to buy a mandolin that Nate then picked up and played. Chance suggested a spirit team had nudged him there. The band played a run of shows in October 2020 before the second lockdown halted bookings.
How strong astrology really is
One of the hosts read a long run of astrology memes from the call-in line, and the group joked about sun signs, Scooby-Doo characters and zodiac behavior at restaurants. Dan said that if astrology were truly real it usually sat around a three out of ten, with only occasional tens, and that people claiming a constant ten were wrong. A host noted that Dan sometimes admitted on his own show that he did not believe in astrology that day. Dan argued the best astrologers offered possibilities rather than doom, and that natal charts were fixed while transiting planets moved across them.
Ghost stories, Hellier, and Randonautica
Gordy called in and told of a ghost tour on the Queen Mary, where his wife heard a voice and a stranger's phone was knocked from her hand, and where he described a smoky figure in a mirror that was dispelled by tall gold figures with staffs. The group then discussed the series Hellier and the Estes method of blindfolded spirit box listening. One speaker floated a theory that Randonautica and the Missing 411 cases might be connected, and another proposed that quartz deposits could hold a memory field for the earth.
Pluto, Uranus, and the coming decade
Asked about Pluto in Aquarius, Dan answered that it could be utopian or dystopian depending on perspective, tying it to the American Pluto return around 27 degrees Capricorn and to Venus and Mars gathering there in early March. He said Uranus in Taurus favored off the grid rebellion until 2025, then Gemini would push the fight toward the metaverse. Chance relayed a point from Michael Wann, made while talking with Mark Steeves, that a US Pluto return marks a new cycle, and he added his own view that bodies and land are one.
Quotes
“Seriously, multiple spirit teams working together. That's why it was so loud because your bandmates probably had spirit guides that were also like, Dan has to do this for it all to work out. So they're all just like, go there.”
“My belief is that any system can work as long as you're paying attention to patterns. You could say in 1962, the Saturn Jupiter conjunction happened at blank degrees Aquarius or another astrologer would say it happened at blank degrees of Capricorn. But as long as you're still making that connection that the same event happened today and in 1962, it's still a pattern.”
“So it's counterintuitive to what you would expect. Usually I would be like, go shoot for your dreams, honor your creative work and all that. I still think that, but for me personally, it's just been surprisingly better with a day job.”
“I was like, don't ask me questions. I'm going to Colorado Springs. Got the mandolin, got the camera and the PA speakers, came back and then I had to go to work. And Nate was just like, yo, I've been just playing your mandolin dude. Like it's so fun.”
“If astrology was truly real, I think most of the time, between a zero and a 10, it's usually at like a three. And then sometimes it is at a 10, but if it was at a 10 every single day, the moon would be moving and getting brighter and people would be like possessed or something, and going crazy.”
“It still is very convincing, but the more I'm doing it, the more I'm like, you can't be super dramatic with predictions and just be like, damn, all signs point to chaos on Friday. The best astrologers tell you possibilities and they tell you things that open your mind to possibilities you weren't open to before.”
“Like it was crazy with ghosts and things moving and my wife heard this voice of a guy go, I'm gonna knock that thing right out of her hand. And the woman next to her had her cell phone and it just got knocked right out of her hand.”
“And at the end of the bed, there's a big mirror. And in that mirror, I see this kind of smokey, tentacly thing kind of coming up through the mirror. And I know this is bad news. Like, holy shit, I'm seeing a demon right now.”
“And they had a staff. Each of them had a staff. But I'm flipping out and he just put his hand on my chest and instantly I was relaxed. And I knew, this is what we do. I got this. And they took it away. And it was nothing.”
“I think Pluto in Aquarius is very dystopian. Pluto is death and rebirth. It's the deep urge for power. And it's been doing its damage in Capricorn on the US because the US has natal Pluto in Capricorn, and it took 200 something years for it to come around.”
“If US is doing a Pluto return, that means everything has had a full return now on the whole sky clock. So we're getting back to kind of closer to the, like it's a new giant, bigger cycle, a new empire. It's not the same empire it was when it began.”
“Our bodies are an extension of the living soil. We are the land just animate in a temporary dance, but we go back to it. We came from it. We aren't really different from it. It's all made up of the same energy and spirit.”
“Uranus being an earth sign Taurus is like the off the grid, the physical, the IRL way of rebelling. And then after 2025, it moves into Gemini. And then we're gonna have to bring the revolutionary spirit and the rebellious spirit to the metaverse or whatever, because it's more of an air sign.”
Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
