Welcome To the Age of Hilarious: Esoteric Astrology with Emily Ridout
Astro-Yoga Instructor Emily Ridout returns to Vibe Rant to talk esoteric astrology, eclipses, and taking advantage of obstacles to author our own world. Is the Age of Aquarius coming? Are we already in it? Or is the entire idea of the great cycles a fabricated construct? Astrology is pretty nuts.
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In this episode
Core themes
Astrology as a Map for Change
Emily Ridout described her six week Astrology Academy, which she said was built to take students from beginners to readers of their own charts. She argued that horoscopes were less useful than learning the symbolism, because a chart works like a map for goals such as money, relationships and spiritual growth. She said she taught every yoga class with the current transits in mind and that a flow could shift brain and body chemistry toward a chosen change. Chance asked how far free will shapes reality and said looking at life as options was more interesting than fatalism.
Eclipse Season and the Unseen Venus
Emily explained that eclipse season begins when the sun sits within eighteen degrees of the lunar nodes, and she placed its start on October 19 with a partial eclipse near an invisible Venus. She argued that eclipses redirect people quickly, pushing them back on track in ways that feel either frustrating or freeing, and she advised against rash life decisions while Venus was out of sight. She described the November 8 lunar eclipse as transformation in the form of water and urged listeners to guard their minds and imagine a better world rather than buy into collective dreams of disaster.
Symbols, Letters, and Royal Ciphers
One speaker linked the Hanged Man's toes to the Tau, the cross and the letter T, arguing that these shapes carried solar and creative meaning across several traditions. Emily added that the circle, the cross and the crescent made up every planetary glyph. Later a speaker argued that King Charles's cipher carried the number 93, tied it to Neptunium and an eclipse code, and traced the word cipher to the Hebrew root behind the Sephiroth. Another voice wondered about the Rosy Cross, and a speaker speculated that calling a monogram a cipher hinted at playing a character.
Libra, Karma, and Seeing Clearly
Emily argued that Libra's scales, an inanimate object that still moves and can be manipulated, stood for the mechanical law of karma, meaning the predictable reaction to any action. She said Libra season offered a chance to see the actions at play and alter one's own karma, and she used cooking a pot of soup as her example. One speaker described karma and sin as natural consequence rather than cosmic score keeping, quoting comedian Owen Benjamin that sin makes you weaker. Another speaker wondered whether the earth itself worked as a living Akashic record, and a reply tied the Torah, Saturn and right measure to that idea.
Whether the Age of Aquarius Has Arrived
One speaker said they doubted the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, comparing the promise to utopian pitches from political movements and scientism, and claimed that calculations credited to Julius Caesar's astrologers put its start around 1746. Another speaker agreed that new age culture had rushed to paint the age in exciting terms, but argued that people alive today were dismantling an old system of control. Emily had earlier explained that the zodiac's slow drift against the stars changed what a chart meant. Later a speaker floated a sweater metaphor for the money system, and talk turned to a new zodiac.
Quotes
“This is the dawning of the age of hilarious. Welcome everybody to Wednesday night Vibe Rant, it's going to be a great time.”
“I'm really happy that she has asked to come back and is not scared off by our weird syncretism and giant leaps in logic.”
“We're all here wondering the same thing. How much does our free will choice have an effect on the reality?”
“I like to have the movement before the sitting. A lot of people will do their meditation first thing, which is a good strategy too, just to make sure it gets done. But for me, I was just laying there for seven or eight hours.”
“My big thing is people love horoscopes. They love going to astrologers. But what is really useful in astrology is learning the symbolism of it and being able to use it like a map. So if you want something to happen in your life, for example, anything from spiritual development to having more money to harmonious relationships, right, those things are particular energetic formations in your particular chart.”
“Things move in and they move out very quickly and we're redirected, right? If you've gotten too far out of your course, you get pushed right back on track. And this can be incredibly frustrating or freeing, right?”
“When you can see clearly, you see the actions at play. And if you see the actions at play and the reactions they are creating within the closed container of whatever the environment is, then you can start to take actions to alter your karma, right?”
“Someone born 2000 years ago is very different, even if they had a very similar set of placements as someone today, they would be very different than us today. Culturally, linguistically, in level of awareness on certain things.”
“I focus a lot on astrology on my channel, right? I'm always talking about the signs right now. I'm talking about Libra and everything. But I almost think that being able to learn how to read a chart is like my last frontier, you know, it's something that I'm like building up to.”
“I just think about a lot of the constellations that I get into, like Libra as an example. So, you know, it's the scales, but some of my resources have said that actually it was the Tower of Babel at one point. And then other resources have said other things about what Libra looked like and how it was part of Virgo, you know?”
“So on Friday, I'm doing a live lecture, I'm calling it Seven Gates to the Great Beyond. I'm talking about the symbolic value of the number seven, and how there's a lot of different myths and stories and just works of art and stuff that suggest that there's seven main levels to the afterlife journey.”
“I kind of enjoy still identifying with the old way, but experimenting with this like, wow, am I this? There are two selves. I'm literally looking at two selves, the self that was public. And I'm learning about the self that is private.”
“A good metaphor might be the hourglass. You know, we can come real close to perceiving the entire hourglass very briefly. But the truth is we're always at the gate, at the in-between point. That's the now. And we can never be all of the past. We can never be all of the future.”
Emily Ridout is a folklorist and AstroYoga specialist who blends astrology, yoga, and tarot; she appeared on InnerVerse (multiple times) to discuss her book AstroYoga for an Aquarian Age.
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