The Week Above - October 21st-28th 2018

The Week Above is a weekly astrological "weather report" detailing the major planetary configurations for the week ahead. All times given are in Eastern Time. There will be references to your birth chart and your Sun, Moon, and Rising signs throughout. If you aren't sure of what that means, check out Astrodienst for free online chart drawings, and Cups & Crowns for the basics of how to understand a drawn chart.

If you enjoy my writing and find it valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon. Future posts will feature horoscopes for all twelve signs if certain goals are met.

The Sun enters Scorpio - October 23rd

It’s officially Scorpio season.

Scorpio is the sign of the things kept hidden in the dark, the things most folks would rather avoid. Shame, fear, taboos, insecurities, skeletons in your closet, monsters under your bed, societally unacceptable forms of sexuality… All of it belongs to Scorpio.

It’s the perfect time for Halloween.

Venus has been in Scorpio for a little while now, and the Sun joins her this week, adding his expressive, bold voice to her subtle, insouciant one. It’s a masc-femme combo in a sign that has moments of combining masc and femme in odd ways.

It’s also a sign ruled by Mars, planet of aggression and war. But Scorpio approaches these things from behind, and gets at its enemies where they’re most sensitive and least expect it.

Therefore the ego expression and will to create this month are colored in ghoulish shades of black, orange, and purple, taking on the underworld and underbelly tones of the Scorpion during the Sun’s time there, lasting until November 22nd.

Expect your will to be seen in the world to take on a more martial, cunning, genderblended tone this month if that will to be seen is core to who you are. I’d recommend taking the Scorpion’s method to any fights you get into over your right to exist as a sovereign soul, and fight from the shadows until it’s safe to come out into the light.

It is notable that upon moving into Scorpio, the Sun immediately runs into an opposition with Uranus. Uranus provides an electric jolt, and a startled scorpion is prone to sting on instinct. Tread lightly among the vengeful, and expect stories in the news of sudden acts of retaliation against perceived threats.

This transit will affect you most if your Sun, Moon, or Ascendant is in Leo, or if you were born on the New Moon or at dawn; or if you are a performer or otherwise prone to being in the spotlight.

Full Moon in Taurus - October 24th

It is difficult to feel nurtured and held when the ground you stand on is unstable.

It is not easy to feel safe without a solid hand to hold.

Taurus moons are supposed to give us that stability, that earthiness, that nurturance. But this one is right up against Uranus, planet of sudden shocks to systems. It’s trying to find stability, but the earth is moving underneath it.

The Sun, whose opposition to the Moon makes her Full, is close to Venus, deep in the retrograde underworld. The love that we need to feel nurtured may have a bitter taste this moon.

So what do we do about it?

There is stability to be found in instability. There is medicine to be made from bitter herbs. There is love to be found in the unlikeliest of places, and indeed, this Full Moon will bring all sorts of things out from hiding, especially love you never knew was there before. Take a light into the back of the closet, and you may violently sneeze at the dust and cough from the cobwebs, but there’s a good chance your grandmother’s ring is hiding back there too.

So take heart that there is love to be found and love to be shown which never wound have come out from hiding if the moment wasn’t bringing things out of the dark.

Shake things up. Discover an unexpected self-care routine. Find comfort in feeling uncomfortable. Learn to dance on moving ground. It’s a paradox, but so are all the best truths about life.

This transit will affect us all, on some level or another, but particularly those whose Sun, Moon, or Rising sign is Scorpio, Taurus, or Cancer.

Venus Cazimi in Scorpio - October 26th

In her retrograde journey to the underworld, the center point, the darkest time, is as Venus comes to conjoin the Sun. And then, at the very center, the very Heart of the Sun, she burns bright and burns hot and burns with the Sacred Fire, the Queen of Heaven earning her crown.

Whatever themes have been coming up for you this month around love, worth, self-love, self-worth, relating, partnering, money, and desire, they reach an action point this week. No longer is it time to talk about it or process it. Now you have reached the moment of taking action on these issues. Change has gotta come. Change has been eager to come. And now, finally, is the moment when something finally gives, and you can move onward from here.

But first you gotta go deep, deal with the issue at hand, feel it in your bones, in your soul. Let this Long Halloween reach a climax. The days leading up to Halloween will involve cleaning up from the climax, and with November begins the time of basking in the afterglow.

So let yourself be transformed by love, by desire. Let yourself learn these most important lessons of the retrograde cycle.

It can only get more beautiful from here.

The Week Above - October 14th-21st 2018

The Week Above is a weekly astrological "weather report" detailing the major planetary configurations for the week ahead. All times given are in Eastern Time. There will be references to your birth chart and your Sun, Moon, and Rising signs throughout. If you aren't sure of what that means, check out Astrodienst for free online chart drawings, and Cups & Crowns for the basics of how to understand a drawn chart.

If you enjoy my writing and find it valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon. Future posts will feature horoscopes for all twelve signs if certain goals are met.

Mercury conjunct Venus - October 15th

Relationships require communication. Relationships require digging into the dirt and muck and getting to the truth. Relationships require honesty - honesty that must be kind, even if it isn’t always “nice.”

Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? These three questions are often said to be the ones to ask yourself before saying something, and it is suggested that if the words do not meet at least two of these criteria, they are better left unsaid. Mercury in Scorpio excels at true and necessary, but not always at kind. On Monday the messenger deity gets some help with that from Venus, who in turn badly needs their way with words.

“Nice” is the enemy of kind. “Nice” is “I’m going to pretend that didn’t hurt me because I feel bad when I make someone else feel bad.” Kind is “I’m going to let you know that hurt me because I want us to have a better relationship.”

This is true regardless of the nature of the relationship. Romantic or not, two people with a connection of any substance are in relation to one another, and that dynamic is up for review this whole Venus Retrograde cycle.

So take the opportunity, if there is a conversation you have been avoiding with someone you care about deeply, to offer a prayer to Venus and Mercury and go into that discussion Monday with an open heart and a brave tongue. You’ve got this. The hour is ripe.

And the conversation is gonna happen sooner or later anyway.

Ceres square Pluto - October 17th

(Content note: Discussion of sexual violence)

Ceres is not generally one to get along with the God of the Underworld. After all, he kidnapped her daughter. And in traditional tellings of the myth, Ceres was so enraged at this abduction that she turned the planet into a hostile wasteland.

This is the myth we are living now. The young maiden, the goddess of the Fertile Spring, has been raped by a wealthy patriarch. The sexual violence inflicted upon young women by powerful men is everywhere, in everyone’s faces. The rape of the Earth by greedy corporations has reached a crisis point, and when Momma Earth ain’t happy, ain’t nobody gonna get out of facing her wrath.

The New Moon highlighted this aspect last Monday, and on the days before and after it. Think back to then. What were you doing when you faced the news that the bad guys seem to be making gains this round? How did you face that news?

More news is coming on the 17th around sexual violence against woman and ongoing violence against the Mother of us all. It is the same patriarchs who would deny the sovereignty of women’s bodies and of the body of the Earth. It is the same forces that would oppress us all to take from those bodies.

We must not fear the wrath of Ceres as she razes the Earth. We must not shy away from the howling rage at the violations suffered. We would do best to lean into that scream, lean into that fire, and show the world that we stand with Mother Earth, who is reacting to her violation by destroying her oppressors.

Sometimes it’s the only way to make people know you cannot abide by oppression and violence any longer.

So don’t do anything that you’re not okay with the consequences of, and certainly don’t randomly burn down a local business. But if you want to express your rage through direct confrontation with those who have violated your sovereignty, the Goddess of Earth is on your side right now.

Mars semisextile Neptune and Sun semisextile Jupiter - October 18th

The Ceres-Pluto story is shown from the other side here: The masculine energies are being snuck up on from behind by spiritual and divine forces of enlightenment-or-bust.

Semisextiles are considered a minor aspect by most astrologers, but I find them to have powerful, tangible effects you don’t see until suddenly you do. The semisextile works in the blindspot of a planet, sneaking around in the shadows like stage crew, setting the scene so the audience (you) never notice what they’re doing or that they’re doing it, just the end results.

Mars and the Sun represent masculinity-as-cultural-constructs. They show how the concepts of maleness and masculinity are expressed and codified, modeled and expressed. They may not represent the true inner masculine nature for everyone, but they certainly show the cultural contexts for them and how those contexts are constructed and internalized.

Neptune and Jupiter represent one’s relationship with the Divine, the greater spiritual truths, the numinous, the Higher Wisdom. Other things as well, but what they have in common most of all is the line to the gods we can pick up and call them on.

So that line is getting a jolt of electricity sent straight down it from them to us, right in the cracks in the armor of masculinity-as-an-institution, masculinity-as-it-is-felt, masculinity-as-it-is-understood.

So men may find themselves shocked by how different their understandings of themselves-as-men are on Thursday as divine revelations come out of nowhere and barely register as such. If your social media is full of LGBTQ folx, expect some more folks to come out as non-binary or trans this week. Gender is a construction overall, and finding that maleness doesn’t make sense anymore (individually and/or ontologically) is indicated here.

And if you’re trying to get one up on patriarchal power, this week gives you a chance to do that while they’re distracted. Godspeed.

Mercury square Mars - October 19th

If you didn’t have the important conversation you needed to have with your partner on Monday, it may just happen spontaneously on Friday. Possibly with some more contention than it needs.

Fortunately it’s happening with contention that is naturally focused on what both parties have in common in terms of outlook and priorities. Things are easier in the verbal altercations and contentious conversations than they may seem at first - the outcome may come faster and more smoothly than it looked like it would early on, with the end result being less dissatisfying than you were worried it might be.

Soothe the wounds that happened over the weekend - it’s a good weekend for it.

Moon in Pisces trine to Jupiter - October 19th - 21st

What a beautiful Moon. What a beautiful weekend.

I don’t usually cover the Moon on this blog, but this one is too nice to pass up. From 4:21pm on Friday, October 19th until going void on at 7:48pm on Sunday, October 21st (Eastern Time), the Moon in Pisces moves towards a trine with her ruler when she’s in that sign, Jupiter.

This makes for a weekend full of expansive, spiritual, fertile, and bountiful possibilities. This makes for a weekend that’s good for getting pregnant, starting creative projects, getting spiritual work done, getting scholarly work done, starting a research project, making new friends, meeting new lovers, having a party, going on a journey, and just generally activities you want to turn out to be fun and productive. It’s some of the best you can do during this time of Venus Retrograde in Scorpio.

Have fun this weekend, you’ve earned it.

If your Moon, Ascendant, or Sun is in Pisces, you’re likely to have an even better time, although maybe more prone to relaxation than productivity, unless you already work in spiritual, philosophical, academic, or publishing fields.

Venus Retrograde in Scorpio and Libra 2018: A Haunted Heart

The heart remembers.

The heart remembers the girl who kissed you in second grade. The heart remembers the boy who told you you weren’t pretty when you were twelve. The heart remembers every love and every crush, requited or not.

The heart carries these memories with it everywhere you go—of pain, love, ecstasy, grief, communion and abandonment. The heart knows things the mind has forgotten.

Sometimes this is a good thing: You remember moments of joy in times of sorrow and love in times of loneliness. Other times it is the opposite, and the heart becomes heavy with its burdens.

Your heart is full of ghosts.

On October 5th, 2018, Venus—planet of love, beauty, value, and worth—stations retrograde in the tropical sign of Scorpio.

She remains in the Scorpion’s subterranean waters until Halloween, when she returns to the sign of Libra, a much happier home for her.

Consider this a month-long Halloween for your heart.

Love is kind, love is warm, love is gentle. But love is often accompanied by pain, and that pain compounds and weakens when it is not dealt with appropriately. Venus’s retrograde through Scorpio will take us on a journey into the underworld of what we love and what we value, and remind us of what loves or once loved us. That can mean exes popping up out of the woodwork, or discovering a family photo album in the attic, or remembering why you stopped painting so vividly you have no choice but to pick up a canvas and brush once again.

When you deal with the darkness in your heart, when you acknowledge the pain and do what it takes to move through it to the other side, you find that it is full of light as well. And that by scraping out the encrusted justifications and coping narratives from around those wounds, you create a great deal of room for love and light and all that is beautiful and holy.

So don’t be afraid of the ghosts haunting your heart. We all have them. And when, instead of trying to banish them with holy water and banging of pots and pans, you offer them tea and conversation and help them find the solace to move on… You are likely to discover that the mysterious film on the mirrors has disappeared, and the furniture stops rearranging itself behind your back.

After All Hallows’ Eve things get much less spooky. Venus’s retrograde through Libra from October 31st until November 16th takes us out of the haunted mansion and into the temple of beauty where we may find ourselves better able to integrate the lessons of Venus’s time in Scorpio. We can find ourselves letting all the love and light in that there is, shocked by how much room we have for it in our hearts now that we’ve cleared out all the clutter.

November 16th, Venus stations direct in Libra, and the heart is moving forward from there, newly birthed and cleaned of all its gunk.

If you enjoy my writing and find it valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon. Between this posting and October 5th, I will be posting brief horoscopes for all twelves signs in a Patrons-only post, telling you what to expect from this time of Venus’s retrograde. I am also available for readings.

The Week Above - September 9th-16th, 2018

The Week Above is a weekly astrological "weather report" detailing the major planetary configurations for the week ahead. All times given are in Eastern Time. There will be references to your birth chart and your Sun, Moon, and Rising signs throughout. If you aren't sure of what that means, check out Astrodienst for free online chart drawings, and Cups & Crowns for the basics of how to understand a drawn chart.

If you enjoy my writing and find it valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon.

Venus in Scorpio - September 9th

What Love wants and what it needs can be very different.

Love wants kindness. Love wants everyone to get along. Love wants harmony and beauty and things to go smoothly. Love is defined by these things, among others.

But one cannot love another effectively if one is not willing to be radically, nakedly honest. Love requires Truth, and Truth can sting. Love requires vulnerability, and vulnerability can lead to pain.

Scorpio is the sign of going into the deep, dark places that scare us and dealing with what we find. This is why Scorpio is the sign of the Healer—because that is what it takes to heal. This is why magical works of finding hidden treasure belong to Scorpio.

Scorpio is foreign territory to Venus. She cannot be who she usually is there. But if she plays her cards right.. If she embraces the great unknown and allows herself to be naked down to her sinew... She might find herself transformed there.

Venus will be in the sign of Scorpio, fittingly, until Halloween, her stay lengthened by a retrograde in October. She will make a brief foray back home into Libra during November, then be back in Scorpio from December 2nd until January 7th. It will be a long period of needing to know what Love can be when she gets comfortable being uncomfortable.

This transit will affect you most if your Sun, Moon, or Ascendant is in Taurus or Libra, or in tight aspect with Venus in your birth chart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Mars in Aquarius - September 10

Our ideas of masculinity, as a society, are stuck in the past.

Outdated contexts, social constructions that are falling apart at the seams, ideals based on a vision of what used to be that has little to do with how it actually was and less to do with how it is today.

Aquarius is the outsider, the rebel, the one who does not fit in. It conceives of the future before it comes; it drags us towards the potential for what may be.

Mars is the planet of will, of passion, of drive... Of war, of strife, of anger... Of strength and athleticism... Of the ways that we construct masculinity, within ourselves and as a society. It is not maltreated in Aquarius, but it does not easily find a home there either, wandering as it does, a stranger in a strange land.

Therefore the challenge upon us all, as Mars traverses this unfamiliar landscape from September 10th to November 15th, retracing some of its steps from this summer, is to ask ourselves what future we wish to fight for, what masculine ideal exists beyond the confines of society, what passion can take us beyond the bounds of the present day.

This transit will affect you most if your Sun, Moon, or Ascendant is in Aries or Scorpio, or in tight aspect with Mars in your birth chart; or if masculinity and/or passionate will are important parts of your life.

Jupiter sextile Pluto - September 12th

Like the turning of the seasons, a gradual, subtle pattern of life comes into sharp focus this week.

This is the third of three Jupiter-Pluto sextiles, the previous two having taken place in January and April of this year.

Jupiter represents the human desire to understand the grand themes of the world, whether via philosophy or religion or educating the higher mind. He is buoyant in outlook, his eyes toward the horizons. He's a likeable ol' chap.

Pluto is the underworld principle―resonant with (but not ruling!) the sign of Scorpio, he too takes us to the dark depths most would rather avoid. Taboos of sexuality, chthonic powers and drives, volcanic eruptions arising from the unconscious. As you might assume, he's pretty intense.

Together in a supportive aspect, we find ourselves dealing with themes of occult philosophy, tantra in its original and Western senses, incredible heroism in the face of personal demons, and views towards foreigners that lose sight of nuance. It is a theme to this year's politics, certainly, but also to the personal journeys we undergo. History, after all, is fractal.

Look back to themes and symbols that came up for you around mid-January and mid-April of this year; if you spot a pattern, it should return this week.

This transit will affect you most if your Sun, Moon, or Ascendant is in Sagittarius or Pisces, or in tight aspect with Jupiter in your birth chart; or if you are an occultist, priest, or educator.

Venus opposed Uranus, sextile Saturn - September 12th

The ongoing trine between Uranus and Saturn has been a theme of the past couple of years. It is an especially strong one this August and September.

There is a tendency for sudden shocks to existing establishments, and sudden establishing of things whose existence is shocking. Things break into pieces and reform as stronger versions of what they were or something else entirely, or they just break into millions of pieces and those pieces are composted into fertilizer for growing the next big thing.

Venus, in the territory of necessary truths, interacts with this pattern as soon as she enters Scorpio on Sunday, but brings it forth throughout the week. Sometimes Venus likes you to see her coming, sometimes she likes you to see her going. Therefore this aspect and its impact on Love, relations, and aesthetics may not make itself known until the 13th or 14th, but it will make itself known somehow.

This is an amazing time to surprise your partner with something unexpected for the two of you to do together―a night on the town, a poem you wrote about them, a fetish you've been waiting to reveal... Something new and exciting. And I recommend you do so. Astrology lets you pick your poison and turn it into medicine. Shake things up in a fun way and Uranus is more likely to have your back.

This transit will affect you most if your Sun, Moon, or Ascendant is in Taurus or Libra, or conjoined Venus in your birth chart.

Mercury opposed Neptune - September 13th

Mercury retrograde has a lot of stereotypes.

It gets overhyped in a lot of ways, but certain patterns do emerge. Among them are afflictions such as delays, mishaps, and plain old weirdness around communication, transportation, short-distance travel, and technology.

These sorts of effects are also known to happen when transiting Mercury is in hard aspect to Neptune, as they are the first half of this week. The emphasis in this context tends more towards the "plain old weirdness" side of things, so I wouldn't over-fret. You might just find yourself talking to an old friend and running out of time because you spent too long discussing your grandparents' respective taste in ice cube trays, for example.

I wouldn't back up my hard drive on Thursday, though.

This transit will affect you most if your Sun, Moon, or Ascendant is in Gemini or Virgo, or in tight aspect with Mercury in your birth chart, or if you are a writer, tech worker, or lecturer.