Ep. 2 Transcript - Benjamin Dykes On Electional Astrology - The Astrology Podcast

2021.05.6. Ep.
2 Transcript: Benjamin Dykes on Electional Astrology - The Astrology Podcast
Ep. 2 Transcript: Benjamin Dykes

on Electional Astrology
The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 2, titled:
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2021.05.6. Ep. 2 Transcript: Benjamin Dykes on Electional Astrology - The Astrology Podcast
Benjamin Dykes on Electional

Astrology
With Chris Brennan and Benjamin Dykes
Episode originally released on July 19th,

2012.
—
Note: This is a transcript of an audio

podcast. We strongly encourage you to
listen to the audio version, which includes
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Transcribed by Gülşen Altay
Transcription released November 6th, 2018
Copyright © 2016 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hello. I am Chris Brennan

and this is the second episode of the
astrology podcast. The show is available at
the astrologypodcast.com or you can nd

this on iTunes by searching for the astrology
podcast. I am recording this episode today
on Tuesday July 17, 2012. During this
episode, I will be doing an interview with Dr.
Benjamin Dykes who is one of the leading
authorities in the world today on the subject
of Medieval Astrology. I will be interviewing
Ben about a new book that he has just
published on the topic of electional
astrology. The title of the book is Choices &
Inceptions: Traditional Electional Astrology.
The book is a compilation of translations of
several Medieval text on electional astrology
with material from authors such as
Masha’allah, Sahl bin Bishr, al-Kindi,
al-‘Imrani, al-Rijal, and a later author known
as Bethen. The book is signi cant because
this is the rst time that many of the texts
contained in the book have been translated
in the any modern language and despite the
fact that many of these text are
foundational texts for the practice of
Western electional astrology, many of them
have not been available in wide circulation
at least until now. During the course of the
interview we will discuss some technical,
conceptual and philosophical issues related
to the practise electional astrology.
With that introduction out of the way, let’s

get started with the interview.
Ben, welcome to the show.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Hi! Thanks for having me

on.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. Thanks for being my

rst guest on the astrology podcast. Today
we are gonna be talking about your new
book which is titled of Choices & Inceptions:
Traditional Electional Astrology. I thought
that would be a good idea to start simply
de ning by our topic and maybe coming up
with the de nition of what exactly is
electional astrology for those who may not
be familiar with that branch? How would
you de ne it?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Well, electional astrology

very broadly, it is a very old branch of
traditional astrology and old idea that goes
back to other kinds of spiritual traditions too
basically, it has to do with choosing
auspicious times to do something and here
we are talking about using di erent features
of an astrological chart or even simple
things like the motion of the Moon which is
a very general thing to nd auspicious times
to act.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay and by act I guess

you actually included that in your title
because your title was kind of interesting.
You could have titled it perhaps ‘Elections &
Inceptions’ that would have been more
familiar to a modern reader but you
speci cally use the word ‘choice’ there and
why is that?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Well, a couple of things,

you know for one thing, some of the kinds
of texts that you will read, don’t just deal
with something with an event or an action
that is deliberately chosen, they do seen in
some cases to have to do with if so called
event charts as well but the word election
just means choice from the Latin verb eligo,
it is a normal word, it just means the choice
so like in a political election that is when the
citizens choose a leader so that is all it
means is a choice and I wanted to bring that
out particularly in the title.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure.
BENJAMIN DYKES: I called it election or

choices because it has partly to do with
making a deliberate choice and I also choice
inception because inception means a
beginning of something and that covers
event charts as well but also because there
is a linguistic di erence in the texts. What I
found was that in a lot of these texts when
they talked about an election or choice, it
often seem to have to do with instructions
for the astrologer that this is how you
choose the right kind of chart. I mean yes, a
person is choosing to act in most cases but
the astrologer is choosing the time whereas
when they would talk about the action
itself, they would often refer to it as an
inception or beginning and so I suggested in
the introduction that this word election
which strangely enough does not seem to
appear in earlier Greek sources, this idea of

a choice might have been a term of art
among astrologers and they instead
referred to the action itself or what was
happening as an inception or beginning.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Interesting. Yeah, that

term inception obviously I am very familiar
with that because in the earlier Greek texts,
they would usually refer to this branch both
of if electional astrology and inceptional
astrology under the same heading just as a
katarchic astrology using the Greek term
katarche which just means a beginning or
inception.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, it is interesting how

we don’t use that where we kind of
distinguish or at least modern texts tend to
distinguish between elections almost as
being beginnings that will take place at
some point in the future like selecting on a
auspicious moment to do something in the
future versus an inception chart being,
casting a chart for some event that are
already occured in the past in order to see
study the astrology of that event but it is
interesting that at least originally they dealt
with both of those under the same heading
essentially.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, that is my

understanding of it.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. Well and that is a

very important and this was the, I guess the
second or third branch of traditional
western astrology. You have mundane
astrology which deals with cities and
nations, you have natal astrology which
deals with individuals like casting a chart for
the moment of their birth, you have horary
astrology which involves casting a chart for
the moment of a question in order to
determine the outcome of the question and
then you have electional astrology which is
choosing auspicious moments to begin
ventures or undertakings although I guess
even electional astrology we should
probably rethink whether not that is even
appropriate because it is perhaps the term
inceptional astrology would be more
appropriate since it is really just the type of
astrology that deals with studying
beginnings essentially. Right?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Maybe. The problem that

I would have, the only hesitation I have right
now about that, is that virtually anything
could be considered an inception but the
traditional astrologers had certain rules of
and about how you were supposed to
understand an inception. What I mean is
that you know sometimes people will cast a
chart for some event, let’s say a natural
disaster, thinking for example of Saint Lucia,
there was the tsunami in the Paci c I think it
was what 2006 something like that.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, 2005.
BENJAMIN DYKES: 2005 and at the time of

the tsunami astrologers were putting up
charts, treated the …… charts and they
would notice things like that Uranus was on
the Midheaven and that Mars was squaring
Uranus and they would see now, this shows
the quality of the event but Uranus is on
the Midheaven somewhere in the world 24
hours a day and there aren’t tsunamis
everywhere 24 hours a day.
BENJAMIN DYKES: I don’t wanna simply say

inceptional astrology because that would
make people think that just any old thing
could have a chart that explains what it is
and I don’t think that is true. We have to
bring in other ideas like the fact that an
event like a mundane event is often related
to another kind of chart which is called its
root chart just as an election or choice that
you make is going to be related somehow to
your nativity and that is the root chart. I
think there is a risk when we say inceptional
astrology, if people don’t understand how to
conceptualize that it can seem as though it
refers to just any old event that happens.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure and that was actually

an interesting discussion that takes place a
few times during the course of the book is
some of the authors that you translate it
since it is a compilation of translations of

Medieval texts they keep talking about this
issue of the root chart and it is something
that I don’t see a lot of discussion about in
modern text on electional astrology but
there seems to have been a debate about to
what extent you needed to relate an
electional chart back to a root chart or
foundational chart as you are calling which
is either a natal chart or even a horary
question apparently could act as a proxy
chart for the natal chart.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, those are the two

main mounts they talked about
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right, the idea is

essentially that the…, I guess could you
explain on that at least from the perspective
of the natal chart? What the idea is there
and using that as a root chart?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah. Well, the idea of a

root chart in some ways goes back to
Ptolemy, I am sure goes back to other
people, too. In the Tetrabiblos Ptolemy says
he compares a conception chart or the
conception to the nativity or birth and he
says…, he distinguishes between something
that is more or less an absolute beginning
and then something that is a derived
beginning and he says that the nativity is a
katarche which is normally the word that we
understand to mean a beginning but he
says the conception is an arche. The
di erence between them is that an arche is

more of an absolute beginning whereas a
katarche in Greek that little kata pretext
means according to word following so we
have an absolute beginning the conception
and then we have the nativity which is a
beginning that follows on the conception
and then but the birth might be a begin
more or less absolute beginning relative to
something else and likewise your
conception was a derived beginning
depending on your parent’s actions of their
nativities so what the traditional astrologers
very sensitive to is that almost no charts
stands alone. Every chart is situated in a
complex of other kinds of charts of greater
or lesser in uence and although you could
cast an election chart on its own, it wouldn’t
be a fairly complete election or one that is
very tailor to what you want unless you can
relate the moment of that electional chart to
something else that sort of grounds it or
roots it like a nativity or a favorable horary
question.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right, I think that what

was in Masha’allah uses a speci c example
in order to demonstrate this point of why
you need to pay attention to root charts of
casting an electional chart for a group of
people to take a trip and how di erent
people on that trip can have much di erent
experiences and one of them can get sick
and one can lost and another can come with
treasure or what have you and that a lot of

has to do with natal chart.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yes, that comes out in

Sahl’s Book on Elections and I believe
Abu’Ali Al- Khayyat who was one of
Masha’allah’s students also talks about it
and it gets repeated in another author’s’ so
probably Masha’allah is the one who came
up with the example and the idea is that you
can choose a favorable time for a group of
people to go on a voyage but that doesn’t
mean that everyone is going to have exact
same result and the reason is because some
of them are going to have certain things
going on in their nativities, you know
predictive methods that should show that
time wasn’t going to be good for them
anyway. In other cases you might have
chosen certain things in the electional chart
that for this person activated or highlighted
problematic things in their nativity so we
have to relate in order to be really through
to do the best job, we have to relate an
electional chart to some kind of root
whether it is the nativity supposing that we
know it or the other culminal alternative
that they talked about is a valid horary
question which for the most part they talked
about as something you would use if you
didn’t know your nativity but you can
imagine other reasons why you would use a
horary chart also.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, that was actually

really brilliant discussion that was in the
book and it made me thing because usually
astrologers are used to at least maybe to
some extent casting electional chart and
trying to refer it back to the nativity but in a
Medieval context they were saying
essentially that or some of the astrologers
were saying it, I guess there is not complete
agreement but if you did not have the natal
chart that a legitimate horary chart about
the trip or about the subject of the election
itself could stand in the place of the natal
chart because if the horary chart itself
says…, you know will the trip be successful?
or will we survive at the trip? , if the horary
chart says ‘yes’, then presumably the horary
chart is re ecting something that is also in
the natal chart or would be in the natal
chart if you had access to that so it is kind of
interesting.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, there was a debate

about that. Some of them would say that
yes, if the chart of the question says yes,
well the question isn’t going to contradict to
the nativity so it would becomes a question
of should you use let’s say Ascendant of the
question chart and treated as though it is
the natal Ascendant and make it strong in
the election and so on?, or some people
said you shouldn’t do that and that you
shouldn’t choose, you shouldn’t elect on the
basis of a good question, if you don’t have
the nativity because you might be featuring

something in the nativity that is a problem
so actually became really a debate in ethics.
It was an ethical debate about what are the
moral responsibilities of the astrologer if
you don’t have someone’s nativity?
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. It was interesting

how some of the astrologers came down
and di erent extremes where some of them
were saying if you do not have the natal
chart you should not do an election for this
person at all whereas there is this other
extreme, that was saying you know you
don’t necessarily need a natal chart, you can
just do an election and even if that is all you
have then that will be more useful to a
person than nothing at all.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah and it really and it

was al-‘Imrani who really brings this home I
think because he basically says if you are an
astrologer then you have to agree that
some moments and times are better than
others maybe none of them is absolutely
perfect but you have got to agree that some
times are qualitatively better even if a little
bit are better than other times so it is your
responsibility he said that even if you don’t
have the nativity, if you can’t choose the
best kind of time, this person is in need
coming to you for help and if you believe in
astrology it is your duty to do what you can
to give them the best election. He comes
down very strongly in that sense and
basically challenges his readers ‘Do you

believe in astrology?’, because if so this is
your duty whereas others are shying of and
say well if you can’t do, basically in his view
other people are trying to make perfect the
enemy of the good. He is saying you can’t
get a perfect election so you have to do
what you can whereas others are saying if it
is not up to our speci cations we are not
going to touch it.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and it is interesting.

You get both technical issues there and
technical quests as well as moral ethical
issues and that was one of the unique
things I think about some of the texts that
you translated here is that there were these
unique discussions about the moral and
ethical position of the astrologer and what
they could do to help clients and what they
should do which you don’t see very often I
think in a lot of texts because they are
usually technical texts basically and not
ethical discussions.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, that is one thing

that is so nice about al-‘Imrani because
yeah, few of the astrologers you know
openly re ect on what their profession
means so it was really refreshing to nd this
discussion.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. We have mentioned

some of those names a few times, maybe
we should backtrack a little bit and talk a
little bit about what the nature and scope of

the book is and which authors are included
in the translation. The book is basically a
compilation of Medieval texts on electional
astrology dating from the eighth century
through about the 12th or 13th century.
Correct?
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay and it is a collection

of texts that were originally written largely in
Arabic and then were subsequently
translated into Latin and now you have
translated all of them from either Arabic or
Latin into English and it includes six major
authors who wrote signi cant texts on
electional astrology in the Medieval
tradition. Could you talk a little bit about
some of these authors?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Sure. Well one, people

might have heard this name before, he is
called Bethen. I think his name is probably
assumed, he is probably adopting the name
of the one of the mansions of the Moon as
his name and that is a work on planetary
hours largely. We have Sahl who is a very
famous guy, this is a new translation of his
work on elections. He comes from the
Masha’allah lineage both he and Abu’Ali Al-
Khayyat and so the material that he is
reporting is most likely straight out of a
book on elections by Masha’allah in the
Arabic, it is probably largely word for word
so what we really getting is Masha’allah’s

views on elections.
CHRIS BRENNAN: And Masha’allah was like

c. 775 C.E.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, the last half to the

last quarter of the seven hundreds and I
think he died in about 815 or so.
CHRIS BRENNAN: He is practising in Iraq or

in Baghdad during the early ourishing of
astrology during the Medieval period.
Correct?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right. He was one of the

famous people along with the Umar al-
Tabari who was chosen by the cale of a
Baghdad to…, the cale of to elect a chart for
the foundation of the city so he was a very
well known guy reports a lot of important
material and one reason he is important is
because he independently of Umar
translated into Arabic Dorotheus’s ve part
work on astrology including Book V which is
on choices and inceptions so…,
CHRIS BRENNAN: And Dorotheus is

important because Dorotheus is one of the
earliest text that we have that survive
somewhat into modern times. One of the
earliest text on Western on Hellenistic
astrology basically but it is the earliest text
on electional astrology that survives more or
less intact dates about a year somewhere

around the 75 C.E.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right, he is very early rst

century A.D., his work then you know was
very popular and he was very well respected
some of his Greek material we nd him in
Hephaistio a few centuries later but his
work then went over to the Persians, it was
translated into Pahlavi and underwent some
changes and then nally was translated
independently by both Umar and
Masha’allah into Arabic and we know this
not only from reports but we have Umar’s
Arabic and then we have all of this material
from Masha’allah that we can make a one to
one correspondence between sentences in
Masha’allah & Sahl and Umar’s Arabic
except that Masha’allah’s material is lineage
some of the instructions of slightly di erent
so we know we are dealing with two
di erent translations here so there is Sahl,
there is a work on the Moon by al-Kindi,
major work on elections by al-‘Imrani, also I
have translated the entirety of Book VII of al-
Rijal which is interesting because near the
end he shows that he had access to bits of
Valens that I will think anyone knew or
pretty much no one knew they had access
to so those are the some of the authors in
the book.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay, so we got ve major

Medieval authors that are all writing
separate texts on electional astrology. Some
of them are kind of drawing on each other

and then all of them in someway seem to be
in uenced by this rst century author
Dorotheus of Sidon who wrote this very
important and in uential work that covered
electional astrology in Greek in the rst
century so and then Dorotheus’s text was so
in uential because it was written in Greek
and then it was translated into Persian and
then the Persian text were translated into
Arabic and then the Arabic translations
became the foundation of virtually all of the
later electional text in the Medieval tradition
so we see hints of Dorotheus’s rules for
electional astrology sort of popping up in all
six of the major authors that you translated.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, he is looking very

strongly in the background in all of these
works.
CHRIS BRENNAN: One of the things that as I

was reading at this past week so those are
really interesting to me in being as familiar
with Dorotheus and especially Book V of
Dorotheus as I am is there is some parts
where…, because Dorotheus’s text we have
today is very badly damaged and it has
incomplete and it has interpolations and
some of the sections obviously went on or
in the original should have been much
longer than they are now but I noticed some
discussions where it is almost like they have
extended discussions of material that was in
Dorotheus and that makes it kind of exciting
because perhaps we confuse some of these

electional text that you just published and
translated in order to reconstruct some of
the passages and Dorotheus that seem to
be somewhat pretailed. Have you looked
into that?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah and I think that well

with Masha’allah for example you know it is
a…, what I think is that if we look at this
Masha’allah lineage of authors particularly
Sahl and Al-Khayyat, their natal material
Sahl’s book on nativity is researchly word for
word in Arabic taken from a work of
Masha’allah’s that I have translated as the
book of Aristotle from a Latin translation, if
we put together these works of Masha’allah
because you can again with the natal work
you can go sentence by sentence and
compare them with sentences in Umar, I
think that between the natal work that we
already know about anything from the
Masha’allah lineage on elections as well as
some of the material on questions that we
nd in The Book of the Nine Judges and in
Sahl as well as some other bits and pieces, I
think in the future will be able to largely
reconstitute what the original Dorotheus
probably was, you know Pingree did a lot of
groundbreaking work in that area by
identifying passages of Dorotheus in
Hephaistio. I think with these Arabic authors
will get even closer so that is very exciting to
me.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, that is very exciting

news just because Dorotheus I mean really
that text is the foundational text on
electional astrology for most types of
electional astrology over the past 2000
years so being able to recover and
reconstruct that original text would be very
important and very useful for anyone who’s
interested in practising electional astrology.
BENJAMIN DYKES: We are agree.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay, so speaking of

practising electional astrology, let’s talk a
little bit about some of the general
principles of electional astrology that are
outlined by some of the authors in this
book, just to give an overview for those who
aren’t familiar with electional astrology what
kind of things you might look for and what
you might trying to, if you are going to trying
elect auspicious chart for new venture
undertaking.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Well, al-‘Imrani talks

about this best, I think. He is clearest about
breaking this down into stages you have
more general kinds of rules and
approaches to the electional chart and then
especially if you have a good nativity or
reliable nativity, you can get more ne
tuned, there is certain general things you
want to do to make this circumstances or
nd circumstances that are generally
favorable for action right o the bat that
aren’t very particular to your action. For

example you wanna make sure that the
Moon is in a good condition for most
actions, in some actions they point out you
don’t want it in a good condition, it depends
what you are looking for but you would
want let’s say the ruler of the Ascendant and
the Moon to be in a good condition maybe
in one of their dignities or in a good house,
you would want the Lot of Fortune and its
lord to be in a good condition and the way I
look at the Lot of Fortune it is because you
want this person to be favorably placed
within the ow of events which is roughly
what the Lot of Fortune means refers to
being in the right place at the right time to
take advantage and have opportunities so
those are some general things you might
want for any kind of action, that is in a very
general level.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah and that comes up

in almost every election, they always seem
to mention the Moon and they always seem
to mention Ascendant and speci cally the
planet that rules the Ascendant so the Moon
and the ruler of the Ascendant is being two
most important planets in almost every type
of election that seems come up.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, because they say

that the lord of the Ascendant signi es the
person who is undertaking the action so
that is the agent and the Moon describes
the cores of the events themselves. What is
been happening?, and what is going to

happen?, so you are trying to make sure
that the person is acting well and able to act
well, they are in the right place at the right
time and the events sort of owing towards
what you want them to be so those are all
very general and it is important to point that
out because and al ‘Imrani often does point
out that he is not going to keep repeating
this.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Because you know if the

Moon for example is applying to let’s say
Jupiter, she is applying to Jupiter everyone in
the world at that moment but it is not going
to be good for everyone in the world to do
just any action they like and that is why you
need a nativity to help make it more speci c,
if you are doing like a fth house type
action, you want to then narrow this down
and make the fth house more favorable
that kind of thing.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and even the

identi cation of the rising sign itself helps to
locate the natal chart, too that native’s
speci c location on earth whereas the
position of Moon of course what apply to
anyone no matter where they are at
moment in time
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yes, exactly and so what

you might even want to do then and this is
one think they suggest is that you might

want to make sure that you know not only is
the Moon good and Lot of Fortune and all of
that but you might want to make the
person’s natal tenth house, the Ascendant
of the election to really link their natal
impulse to act which is the tenth house with
their role as being the initiator of an action
in the election which should be the
Ascendant so there is all sorts of ways they
try to make the speci c to a person and a
place and a time.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and that can actually

with the Ascendant that brings up one of
the real distinctions I think between modern
and traditional astrology which is that
modern astrologers tend to look at the
entire chart as representing the native and
representing di erent almost parts of the
native’s psyche whereas traditional
astrologers tend to segregate things a bit so
that is really always the Ascendant and the
ruler of the Ascendant that directly
represent the native themself and their
body and their physical constitution
because they are borned at that moment in
time.when that sign of the zodiac was rising
over the eastern horizon and then all of the
other houses really to other…, usually at
least to other people in the person’s life or
other areas of the native’s life and so in that
way the Ascendant becomes the point that
is in a natal chart most closely associated
with the native and then in the same way in

an electional chart it becomes the house
that is most closely associated with the
person who initiates the action at that time.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right and in this sense it

is a lot closer to a horary astrology or
questions because I mean let’s say if you are
engaging…, whether you are engaging in a
partnership that would be more of an
election or you are asking a question about
a partnership in a horary chart, if you are
looking at the seventh house, you don’t
want to look at the seventh house as being
your beliefs about your potential business
partner, you want to know what is actually
going on with your business partner
because if we look at it that way then we are
able to use in electional chart or question
chart to diagnose possible problems or to
see other things that are going on with the
other person which we wouldn’t really able
to see if we viewed everything in the chart
as just to re ection of our own subjective
mind.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right, the seventh house

is not your suppressed, I guess internal
vision of the other default other person in a
electional chart or horary chart literally
represents the other person that you are
inquiring about or your marriage partner or
what have you.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right or the experience,

the actual experience, the objective
experience of relationships for example,
yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Okay, so yeah this

really explains why then the ruler of the
Ascendant and any planets plays in the
Ascendant would gain added importance or
perhaps the most important when you are
trying to construct an electional chart
because the Ascendant and the ruler of the
Ascendant literally represent you and
literally represent what you are initiating at
that time, although then brings you to one
other rules which is that some of the
authors seem to emphasize trying to make
sure that the topic associated with what you
are initiating at that time that the ruler of
that house is well placed so that if you are
let’s say taking a journey you might look to
the ninth house and the ruler of the ninth
house and trying to make that well placed
and what have you.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, in that sense again

it is very close to horary astrology and there
is a historical connection there and we have
talked about it in another interview in other
places that yeah, you would want let’s say
there to be a favorable connection may be
between the lord of the Ascendant and the
lord of the ninth so that your action of
initiating something is well connected with
the topic of travel in that case so just as you
might ask in a horary chart ‘Will I go on the

journey?’, or ‘Will the journey be successful?’
that very same kind of connection would
help answer yes or no.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and the relationship

between those two planets, say between
the ruler of the rst which represents you
and the ruler of the ninth which represents
the journey represents or sometimes
literally represents how you will relate to
that journey and how the journey will go for
you essentially.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah and in that sense I

think one way, maybe not the ultimate way
but one way to think about elections versus
questions is that a question is almost like
an election ahead of time because the very
same rules that you would use to interpret
whether you know someday as a good day
to travel or often very same rules you would
use to interpret in earlier horary chart that
asks ‘Will I travel?’
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right.
BENJAMIN DYKES: There is a conceptual and

the temporal relationship between elections
and questions which I think is interesting
and should be explored more.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah and that distinction

between past and future brings up one of
the other major rules and distinctions in
electional astrology that is kind of unique if

you are coming out of…, most people I think
approach electional and horary rst coming
out from a natal perspective and in natal
astrology it is not always clear what you do
with applying and separating aspects but in
electional astrology becomes like a core
doctrine and the doctrine is essentially that
applying aspects indicate things that will
develop in the future after you initiate the
election or the action or the inception
versus separating aspects indicate things
that happened in the lead up to initiate in
that action or that occured at some point in
the past and set the stage for it so that is a
kind of tied as well.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah so it is a lot more

concrete because they were talking about at
a particular action at a particular time rather
than a general kind of tendency in the
nativity that only gets turned on or o at
certain points.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. Yeah, it has much

more I guess concrete usage in that sense
and as a result of that you really end up and
certainly some electional authors seem to
emphasize paying much more attention to
the applying aspects and paying perhaps
less attention or putting less emphasis on
the separating aspects because the future
itself is more relevant since you are looking
to create a strong foundation for the future.
Would you say that is true?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah because you are

acting and you wanna see what is going to
happen next with your event or with your
actions? , so yeah the applying aspects is
going to be very important.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and so that would

apply to both the ruler of the Ascendant so
you would want to the ruler of the
Ascendant to be applying towards either
favorable planets or at least favorable
aspect with other planets in the chart and
you would also want the Moon as a
secondary signi cator to also be applying
towards favorable planets like bene cs
Jupiter and Venus or applying at least to
favorable aspects to other planets in the
chart.
BENJAMIN DYKES: In most cases that is true.

In some cases you don’t want that to be
true. For example al‘Imrani reminds us in
several places that I think it is when you are
hunting a fugitive, you don’t want the Moon
to be in a good condition because the Moon
represents the fugitive, you want that Moon
to be you know applying to a square with
Mars or something like that.
CHRIS BRENNAN: All right.
BENJAMIN DYKES: And so what that does, is

get aspect to that question of ‘What do we
do if we don’t know a nativity?’ ‘Should we
avoid any contact between the Moon and
you know and Mars or not?’ depending on

what your nativity is like, you might have to
tailor the rules speci cally to your situation.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, that might be

surprising to some people because I think if
you are to apply electional astrology just
generally, then you might just think that in
all instances you should always have like the
ruler of the Ascendant and the Moon
applying to bene cs and never applying to
male cs or another planets but in fact one
of the authors I think makes the point that
in some instances based on the natal chart
like if a person has Saturn ruling the
Ascendant or if Saturn is the ruler of the
nativity then you might wanna make Saturn
in much more prominent planet and it
might not be as di cult or male c of a
planet for the native when it comes to using
in that in their electional chart.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, especially if in the

nativity that same Saturn is, you know
shows powerful actions and is doing
something good for the native.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right, whereas conversely,

theoretically you could have a bene c that is
actually in a very poor condition is like in the
debilitated by sign and is in the12th house
and is a icted by Mars or something and
then if you make that like a very prominent
planet in the electional chart then you run
the risk of actually invoking the di cult
basically placement in the natal chart which

could potentially back re on the election.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right, either a back re is,

there is a problem later or it just doesn’t get
o the ground. Yeah, so that is where the
astrologer has to you know understand the
rules or understand the what we are trying
to do and you know to tailor the rules to a
nativity but also as some of them say also to
know when to not obsess about the details
and just do the best that you can.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right, right.
BENJAMIN DYKES: If you are waiting a…, you

know if you wanna get married with
someone for example and you want the
absolutely perfect election for marriage
what if that election doesn’t happen until 3
o’clock in the morning two years from now…
BENJAMIN DYKES: …then when you are not

really getting out of electional astrology
what you are supposed to and the perfect
election is not going to help you if you and
your partner are fundamentally
mismatched. You know, let’s say natal chart,
this is something that al-‘Imrani points out, if
your natal chart shows that marriage is
going to be a disaster for you, you shouldn’t
be looking for a time to elect marriage
probably or you should be very careful

about it.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah and just speaking

generally for a minute aside from the book,
just on my own personal practise like in
doing electional charts for clients like you
really, the perfect election a doesn’t exist
like there is almost no such thing as a
perfect election and because you are always
working with time constraints because there
is always some kind of time constraint no
matter what because you know worst case
scenario somebody is gonna wait like 20
years for the perfect alignment of planets in
order to launch their business or what have
you, you know they have got to do it in the
next two months or three months or maybe
best case scenario next year maybe have a
year to work with but in that context you
really just create the best electional chart
you can and even just…, practically speaking
even just trying to get a good electional
chart itself that has all of the right things
and has the ruler of the Ascendant well
placed and the Moon well placed and the
male cs not too prominent and nothing
hugely debilitated even that in that of itself
is di cult enough and narrows it down to a
small collection of potential chart that
sometimes it is hard even at that point to
then incorporate the natal chart and then
incorporate that is another variable that you
have to then pay attention to and look at.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right, yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah so electional

astrology can be kind of di cult and you do
have to end up weighing the pros and cons
of some of these di erent options and what
is more important ultimately?, and you
know what if you are gonna do an electional
chart what you have got a prioritize I guess.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right and they keep

pointing out that the you can’t let the
election take on all the responsibility for the
action, the election in a sense can only be a
modi cation of what is fundamentally in
your nativity? , so we have to go with the
basics of the nativity instead of obsessing
every possible detail in the election chart.
BENJAMIN DYKES: And a really good election

with really problematic natal situation might
not help somewhat but it can’t take on all
the responsibility for creating a perfect
situation with no problems in it.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah and that really raises

some you know additional side sort of
philosophical issues with astrology and with
the nature of free will and fate and what you
can change you know can use electional
astrology in order to change something that
doesn’t look good in the nativity because
from a traditional perspective there are
certainly placements that will say you know

that it will be more di cult to have a
marriage or that it will be more di cult to
have children or more di cult to achieve
one’s career aspirations or what have you
and to what extent can you really use
electional astrology in order to change you
know something when the cards are sort of
stacked against you for some of those topics
in the natal chart?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Well, not only that but

al-‘Imrani points out something interesting
which is that an astrologer ideally should
also know things about, if the astrologer at
least doesn’t have medical knowledge you
might have to availer of self of that, for
example he gives a speci c example of
electing the time for a woman to conceive,
he says but you want to make sure that you
know she sees a doctor that you can rule
out any possible medical conditions, you
know the astrology would help you she has
a seperate medical condition but another
situation might be what if you want to start
a business, but you live in a town in which
there are absolutely no opportunities, the
best kind of election in a town that who is
real event doesn’t have any real
opportunities isn’t going to help you.
BENJAMIN DYKES: We need to understand

what can do astrology do strictly
astrologically but how do we as astrologers

also place these astrological choices and
inceptions in a real world context.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and how much are

things I mean that is fundamental question,
also as how much are things xed from the
moment of birth? , and how much live away
do you have working with that versus you
know if the natal chart says repeatedly
something about a speci c topic whether is
good or bad? How much choice do you have
to change that or alter that using something
like electional astrology or using something
like you know some concept of free will?
Yeah, so I mean I am sure a lot of people
have di erent views on that but obviously
this is something that gets raised as an issue
and that astrologers have to still sort of
argue about from time to time.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, I agree.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay so as far as…, so we

talked about the ruler of the Ascendant, the
Moon, we talked about looking at their
applying aspects versus their separating
aspects obviously, also you want them well
placed by sign and by house, by sign that
would I guess technically from a traditional
standpoint that would be things like being
in the planets own sign or one of the signs
that it rules or perhaps the sign of its
exaltation versus the sign of its fall or its
detriment perhaps.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, in most cases that

is true, in another cases you have situations
where unusual qualities of the signs that in
modern astrology especially you don’t hear
much about you have to take advantage of
those for example in certain medical
questions when you want to take certain
kinds of medicines it might make a
di erence they say if let’s say the Moon is in
one of the signs that chew the cud which…,
CHRIS BRENNAN: It is like Taurus or

something?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Taurus is one of them.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Signs of animals that

chew the cud might be good or not good
for taking certain kinds of medicines
because it might be to upset stomach or you
know something like that but you know how
many of us have heard of signs that chew
the cud, these kinds of thing can be relevant
and you will sometimes only hear about
them in these electional type texts.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure and that brings up

another point which is that one of the early
instructions that it seems a lot of the
authors give or there is almost like two
di erent approaches to electional astrology
and there is some overlap but one approach
that is very distinct seems to be like you
might have one conceptualization like that

you set up an electional chart and you are
trying make all of the signi cantors really
strong or whatever you conceptualize as the
strong positions like being in their own signs
or being exalted or being in the 10th house,
being angular or being con gured with
bene cs or what have you like the classical
sort of conceptualization of what an
auspicious placement is for signi cator but
then there is this another approach which is
also mentions several times by di erent
authors which is this notion that you should
try in match the chart that were electing
with the nature of the event so for example
Bethen early on in the book he seems to
recommend that for example in elections
that involved water to put water signs on
the Ascendant or if you were electing
something where you want it to be very
stable into last for a while that you put a
xed sign on the Ascendant or if there is a
situation that you don’t want to last for a
while for example I think one of them was
like getting engaged that you don’t want
that to last for like ve years so you want a
sign that indicates quickness you put a
movable sign or cardinal sign on the
Ascendant because that indicates that the
matter or the election which is basically the
engagement will go by quickly rather than
being stable and xed so that is one
approach for electional astrology that you
make the chart match either what the event
itself is supposed to be or what you hope to

achieve from that.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah and this is where

that idea of the di erent levels of speci city
come in, you know in any chart you might
want the Lot of Fortune to be in a good
situation or the Moon then you go one level
more speci c, then you say well if I am
doing a water related event or then I might
wanna water sign or if it is a fth house
event, I might want something good about
the fth house and then even the level that
is more speci c than that the probably be
things like…, well another level below that
would be making sure that features of the
person’s nativity are well treated in the
election and then a rule even more speci c
than that would be what is the exact nature
of the event?
BENJAMIN DYKES: For example with my

example about taking a medicine, you might
want all sorts of general things like the
Moon and the lord of the Ascendant and
stu to be have certain features, then you
might want certain things about you know
the sixth house to be in a good situation and
then things about the natal chart and then
nally most speci c you would want you
know let’s say the lord of the sixth to be in
one of these special signs that speci cally
addressed that taking of this kind of
medicine so you have all of these levels of

generality going from the most general that
could apply to any kind of action to the most
speci c.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and I guess backing

up a little bit to the most general things
which is the most general thing basically
that you can pay attention to is the Moon
and I was reading through some of the
recommendations the things they say to
avoid speci cally in the text because the
book is kind of nice because some of the
translations actually give these ordered list
of things that you should try to put in your
electional chart and you make it auspicious
versus things you should try to avoid. Some
of the notes that I wrote down for things
you should avoid that are associated with
just the Moon. If you are just looking at the
Moon’s placement which for example if you
couldn’t control the time of your election
and the only thing you could control is
perhaps the position of the Moon you might
wanna avoid a putting the Moon under the
beams for example or putting it too close to
a conjunction with the Sun that is one of the
things that was recommended although
there is an interesting exception to that
which is that if you want to make I think
some authors mention if you want to make
what you are trying to initiate at that time
secret or hidden and you should put your
signi cator, put the Moon under the beams

of the Sun.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Exactly and so likewise if

you were doing an action that you wanted
lots of publicity and wanted everyone to
know about, then you wouldn’t want the
Moon to be under the rays because that
signi es hiddenness.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah and that raises

important point which is that there is a type
of election for most everything and even for
some of the things there are traditionally
bad from an electional perspective like you
know having the Moon being in its waning
phase or having the Moon applying to
male cs. There will be certain types of
elections where you might actually want
that. I think Dorotheus for example says if
you are gonna build a house or if you are
gonna build something up, then do it when
the Moon is waxing or in the waxing phase
of its cycle versus if you are going to tear
something down or destroy something to
do it or initiate the action when the Moon is
in the waning phase of its cycle when it is
closing down.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right. Exactly, because

those signify increase and decrease or
raising something up, tearing something
down. Yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah and so that might be

an important thing to keep in mind
especially for modern astrologers that are
coming into, electional astrologer coming
into traditional astrology and seeing all
these ideas about ‘good and bad’ and
‘bene c and male c’ that in some ways it is
being contextualized in di erent ways is
things like growth into key and building
things up versus destroying them and so on
and so forth so even though for many types
of election there are certain things that you
will often try to avoid that are
conceptualized is not favorable, there are
always gonna be certain instances in which
those might be useful or might be
applicable.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, you bring up an

important point because and this is
something that applies to all areas of
traditional astrology. When a lot of modern
people especially don’t like those ideas of
good and bad is that a lot of that is those
are handy terms that describe everyday
experience and they are not meant to be
absolute. From God’s point of view, you
know Mars and Saturn aren’t evil or bad,
they perform their functions and even
though they indicate things like death. I
mean what would be world like if no one
ever died, probably be awful but you know if
you talked about an election you might say
that let’s say shooting someone is bad but
what if that person is an ex-murderer who is

trying to kill you and your children, well then
shooting them is probably a good thing so
this language of good and bad is often
contextual and we don’t just say good and
bad and stopped there. We are trying to
contextualize these actions and these
planets when we understand what the
person wants and I think in all branches of
traditional astrology that is what we are
doing with those ideas of bene c and
male c.
CHRIS BRENNAN: And just to interject there.

I do have to say if you are being chased by
an ax-murderer, I would not recommend
stopping to cast an electional chart, but that
is just me.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay so …,
BENJAMIN DYKES: Find a room to hide in

and then pull out your ephemeris or your
app or whatever it is.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. I can see the

headlines on the local news like ‘A local
astrologer dies by ax-murderer today found
clutching ephemeris.’
Okay. One other last point I want to mention

about the Moon because a few other things
they say to avoid when it comes to the
Moon but one of them that comes up

frequently and that a lot of people are still
familiar with and that I have been
researching recently is when the Moon is
void of course and I noticed that wasn’t
de ned and that kind of bugged me
because I have been realizing that there is
some debate over the de nition of void of
course recently and there are at least three
separate de nitions that are oating around
right now of what a void of course Moon
actually entails. Do you have any opinion on
that?
BENJAMIN DYKES: Well, I realize there are

several de nitions, the one that I would just
go with is that the Moon does not complete
a connection by degree or an aspect by
degree whether it is a conjunction or an
aspect, does not complete it before she
leaves the sign she is in that is how I would
normally understand it. The idea being that
a change in sign suggest the ending of some
old situation or opportunity and a
presentation of a new kind of situation or
opportunity and what you want is to have
an action that we are taking advantage of a
real opportunity that goes somewhere so to
have the Moon not completing or
connection with another planet before she
ends the sign means that you know the
energy just sort of peters out or something
else has to change before it can work and
you don’t really want that in election, you
want to be at the right place at the right

time for things to just to work.
BENJAMIN DYKES: I realize I am departing a

little from idea of the de nition.
CHRIS BRENNAN: No, no. I mean that, no

that is great.
BENJAMIN DYKES: But that is how I would

understand it in part because there is
another Medieval idea called escape and it
has to do with, you know two planets they
are trying to connect but one of them
changes signs so that the rst one can’t
nish its aspect with that until it also
changes sign but sometimes that second
planet that change sign completes an aspect
to somebody else in the meantime so to
speak escaped the rst planet and so this
idea that you are trying to complete a
connection before you leave your sign is
present in several of the de nitions so that
is the one I would normally follow but I
know the Hellenistic one presented in
Antiochus is a bit di erent, it seems to have
its own rational.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, when we spent

some time together working on that
de nition with Demetra. I guess we realize
that the apparently the original de nition of
void of course was that the Moon does not
complete any exact aspect with any other

planets within the next 30 degrees
regardless of sign boundaries apparently.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right, right.
CHRIS BRENNAN: It is curious. I mean at the

very least we have a problem or there is this
curious historical issue were that appears to
have been the original de nition of void of
course and then at some point in the
Medieval tradition it appears to change that
was involving not making an aspect to
another planet before it moved into the
next sign and then there is this separate like
third issue that I only became aware of
recently where apparently I think it was rst
Sue Ward who has done a lot of great work
with William Lilly and then on horary
astrology has put forward the argument
that Lilly’s de nition of the void of course
Moon is that the Moon does not make an
applying aspect with any planets within I
think in the next 12 or 13 degrees
regardless of sign boundaries and that can
occur that any point in the sign even if it is
not the last aspect that the planet will make
in that sign.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right, if she is not

applying within orbs at any given moment,
she is void in course.
BENJAMIN DYKES: And I think when we

talked about this earlier, Lilly has some
ambiguous statements about that. It can be
a little hard to pinion down because he does
I think at one point basically give the
de nition that I gave….
BENJAMIN DYKES: …if you wonder the

complete one you know she is void of, she
doesn’t complete it before she leaves her
sign but yeah, so there were some changes
in de nitions and I think they were reasons
for some of those changes as well, some of
the ideas for example in the Hellenistic
de nition, show up in the Medieval
de nition of a feral or wild planet which is
the interesting idea on its own.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, it seems like there is

a lot of new aspect de nitions they are
introduced and I still can’t help thinking of
some of them must have been introduced
for the purposes of horary at that point in
order to provide additional means by which
planets could either complete their aspects
or could be stopped or frustrated from
completing those aspects.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right and I put a table in

my introduction to traditional astrology
book in one of the appendices to show that
if you look at these de nitions you get from
the Persians they are trying to go through
every possible permutation of whether a

planet being blocked, are they being
blocked in the same sign or di erent sign? ,
are they being blocked by retrogradation or
by planet would direct motion? , is it this or
that?
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
BENJAMIN DYKES: And so they are trying to

de ne di erent kinds of situations that will
cover all possible planetary situations and it
makes sense to me that would be in the
context of questions or horary that they do
that.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Well yeah, I think

those were some of the main questions that
I wanna to ask you about your book. What
other projects are you working on at this
point? You just published this book and
literally just came out a week or two ago and
people can get on your website. Correct? ,
bendykes.com
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, they can get it on

my site. I am now moving into the mundane
part of my…,what I call my essential
Medieval astrology cycle, the rst volume is
going to be on weather prediction, comets,
eclipses and choreography which is where
you assigned, you associate di erent
planets or signs di erent geographical
regions so that is going to be the rst
volume and then the next couple of
volumes are going to be other works on

mundane astrology that deal more with
politics and interpreting history
astrologically so conjunctional theory you
know Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions, there are
even like mundane profections and other
mundane time lord systems that will appear
in these books.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Excellent. You completed

a series on natal astrology, you completed a
series on horary, even now completed
entire book or two on electional astrology
and now you are moving into your focus on
mundane astrology.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah and I am really

excited about this material, it is an area that
a lot of people don’t really know a lot of
about but the material that was being
produced by the Persians and published in
Latin as well, you know spent many
centuries and it is really exciting interesting
material, I rst got introduced to it by Rob
Zoller, a seminar of his and it was just
amazing so I am really excited to get to work
on this series.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, Zoller is one of the

only people I know who is really done a lot
of work with an issued actual predictions
based on the technics of Medieval mundane
astrology…
BENJAMIN DYKES: Right

CHRIS BRENNAN: …and I think some of his

like his September 11 predictions which I
think he is most famous for, is one of the
things that was partially based on that.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Yes. Yeah, it was.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Well. Great. Well, I look

forward to some of those publications then.
Okay. Well I think that about does it for this

interview so everyone should check out
your website bendykes.com and order the
book and yeah, we will have to have you on
again next time once the next book comes
out.
Thanks for joining me on the show.
BENJAMIN DYKES: Okay. Thanks for having

me.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Well. That is it for this

episode of the astrology podcast. I hope you
have enjoyed it and I will see you next time.
   
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2021.05.6. Ep.

2 Transcript: Benjamin Dykes on Electional Astrology - The Astrology Podcast

Ep. 2 Transcript: Benjamin Dykes

The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 2, titled:

Benjamin Dykes on Electional

Episode originally released on July 19th,

Note: This is a transcript of an audio

Transcribed by Gülşen Altay

Transcription released November 6th, 2018

Copyright © 2016 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

CHRIS BRENNAN: Hello. I am Chris Brennan

the astrologypodcast.com or you can nd

With that introduction out of the way, let’s

Ben, welcome to the show.

BENJAMIN DYKES: Hi! Thanks for having me

CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. Thanks for being my

BENJAMIN DYKES: Well, electional astrology

CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay and by act I guess

BENJAMIN DYKES: Well, a couple of things,

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure.

BENJAMIN DYKES: I called it election or

appear in earlier Greek sources, this idea of

CHRIS BRENNAN: Interesting. Yeah, that

BENJAMIN DYKES: Right.

CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, it is interesting how

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, that is my

CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. Well and that is a

BENJAMIN DYKES: Maybe. The problem that

CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, 2005.

BENJAMIN DYKES: 2005 and at the time of

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure.

BENJAMIN DYKES: I don’t wanna simply say

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure and that was actually

since it is a compilation of translations of

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, those are the two

CHRIS BRENNAN: Right, the idea is

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah. Well, the idea of a

di erence between them is that an arche is

CHRIS BRENNAN: Right, I think that what

treasure or what have you and that a lot of

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yes, that comes out in

CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, that was actually

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, there was a debate

the nativity because you might be featuring

CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. It was interesting

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah and it really and it

basically challenges his readers ‘Do you

CHRIS BRENNAN: Right and it is interesting.

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, that is one thing

CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. We have mentioned

little bit about what the nature and scope of

BENJAMIN DYKES: Right.

CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay and it is a collection

BENJAMIN DYKES: Sure. Well one, people

so what we really getting is Masha’allah’s

CHRIS BRENNAN: And Masha’allah was like

BENJAMIN DYKES: Yeah, the last half to the

CHRIS BRENNAN: He is practising in Iraq or