Astrology of 10/18 – 10/24: Wisdom of Descent

I write these forecasts every Saturday… after working on themes for this forecast largely around Scorpio, secrecy and reveals of information, the internet is now abounding with #metoo – people coming forward about being on the receiving end of sexual harassment (and movements of people owning up to being perpetrators as well). These are major Scorpio themes – sexuality, betrayal, violation – given voice as Mercury and Jupiter have both just entered Scorpio and approach a conjunction at the start of the week. We see a correlation between this planetary signature and how massive and public this movement of conversation is around sexual violation (and some might also think, how obvious its ubiquity – Jupiter rules the obvious/overt). With Jupiter and its larger-scope proclivities, we may also reflect on how this is not just an isolated social issue but also a cosmological one, involving patriarchy’s long history of treatment toward the Earth and the dimension of the feminine itself.

On the inner level this week, think to how Mercury is a psychopomp, moving between the realms and the Underworld. There are some types of wisdom that emerge only from Underworld journeys – not perpetual expansion upward and out, but the expansion that comes from down and in. We’re in a new Jupiter space, Jupiter speaking to how it is we expand at a given time. We are out of the sign of Libra, which may relate to things like active listening and social skill, charisma. In Scorpio, we get primordial. We get comfortable with what otherwise makes us squeamish. We recognize our fears. We get up close with our deepest desires.

The wisdom of descent emerges from making contact with the qualities of selfhood we engage with when we are willing to really go there – down the rabbit hole, into the inner labyrinth, into the very depths of Psyche and Soul, into the core magnet of being. I thought of this pointedly for what #metoo signifies – that we are at a place where being aware of more progressive social mores and speaking the language of those mores is not really it – just a step toward it. Just a boiling over of the pot. What underlies it? Where is the actual transformation?

One has to descend to find out. Into the places where roots, and not just the tops of plants, grow. The soil of psyche. The place where psyche goes even deeper, into ancestry, into past lives, into the transpersonal. Upward and out is not the only virtue.

Many have made the descent because of subversion – they’ve had to. What about taking a descent because the Earth calls for it? Because there is a question we don’t know the answer to? With much social conditioning about the answers always being ‘out there’ somewhere, what if we all knew how to make contact with the deep interior?

(Top image: The Dream, Mohamed Malas, 1987)

Here’s our week:

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October 18

Mercury in 1 Scorpio conjunct Jupiter in 1 Scorpio: 1:55 AM PDT

• Still so early into the sign, the possibilities of these placements are new and open. It is possible that we hold secrets (Scorpio), which the reveal or communication of would result in luck, gifts, benevolence. Keep an eye out for opportunities in which a reveal of your inner-world is totally possible and in new context, in a sense of you’ve never been in this position before. Do you leap into the threshold?
• A few words on secrecy as an act of agency. Sometimes, secrecy is in itself expansive – it is the opportunity to let something gestate and form without too much interference, like keeping the lid on an alchemical process. Are we secretive by free will and authority, or by fear? When it is only fear, this is the territory I want to speak next to:
• When we are secretive, we attract the same closed-ness from the external environment. Many of us have had the experience of voicing our inner world only to be ill-received by our environment. But what about when the conditions are right? What about when our inner-world is in harmony with the outer world but we’ve yet to create a verbal, or otherwise communicative bridge? We may find ourselves less alone, and more intimately engaged, then we thought possible.
• The verbalization of secret fears, doubts, wishes and desires.
• The value and luck of being a trustworthy person.
• The quality of listening to your hunches (when they feel clear), or becoming more self-aware of these intuitive faculties. Primordial awareness and paranoia are different.

October 19

Sun in 26 Libra opposite Uranus in 26 Aries: 10:34 AM PDT (see New Moon)

New Moon in 26 Libra: 12:12 PM PDT

• The Sun and Moon (conjunct to form a New Moon) are opposite Eris and Uranus in Aries, and square Pluto in Capricorn. The missing piece of this T-square is Cancer, suggesting that we experience the energies of this Moon differently if we take some space to account for the Cancerian sector… this can relate to the difference we feel in our intellectual space and the kinds of actions we take when we have done some kind of yes… self-care. With apocalyptic energies in the world (disasters, fires, violence, etc…) it is all too easy to go on a stress bender and lose touch with the realm of gentleness, soothing, consoling, comfort. See to it that as you work with the dynamic influx of energies (creative, tense, what have you), that you’re not ignoring your basic comfort and safety needs which might give you greater rooting/endurance to take on the times.
• The taking care of self versus taking care of others is not a split duality. Sometimes, we take care of ourselves by taking care of others (we actually have that emotional need). When we think we can show up for others once we have figured out ourselves, this is not always true. Pay attention for moments where the line between who is being nourished (yourself or other) is so blurred that it invites a new worldview of what the human ecosystem is. (Taking space for oneself can be similarly supportive of all individuals involved.)
• Pay attention to the areas in your life that are calling for you to get out onto your edge – not to be retracted into some kind of bovine repose of homeostasis. Illumination and creativity happen here. Thunderbolts. Dynamism. This is not simply being unbalanced. To *what* is being balanced? With Uranus opposite this New Moon, we are coming into contact with the planet of brilliance and flash insight. Balance is a perpetual, impulsive act; and here we are balancing with something that can really shake the status quo.

October 22

Mars enters Libra: 11:30 AM PDT – through December 9, 2017

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

• The above quote can be seen as a Mars in Libra like sentiment – it is a relational love of independence, a tension between giving and receiving, being with and being separate. We can find more Martian heat in our relationships, whether that is our desire to engage in them or our defensiveness of identity as we feel we lose ourselves in another.
• Mars in Libra calls to mind the assertiveness/aggressiveness of courtship and the ways in which we apply ourselves toward another or are pursued by another. It can speak to how we will peace, justice, and relationship into being. Far from passivity, this is about doing something to love someone else or the planet. What we end up having to watch out for is the covertness of this kind of assertiveness-aggression. We may think we are helping one another or offering a gift, but what if this is not desired? How do we deal with everyday rejection, beyond trying to fight it or win someone over to our side?
• The knight who courts is an image for this placement. Our acts of extension toward another being have certain codes of nobility, ethic, justice, etc.
• When we are so inspired by someone that we want to win them over, we might also listen to the courage and beauty that is emerging within. It takes courage of heart to pursue another. And we meet our own fire. If we are rejected, we do not push forward. We know how to ask or make moves, while respecting the other’s free will. Being inspired toward another person, such that we will take action on interior and exterior levels, is a refinement of one’s own courage and arts of love.
• Mars can be a little incognito in this sign, unless we understand the microaggressions and subtext implied. This is like being polite rather than expressing anger. How do we read this and how do we take part in it? Are there more creative (and still peaceful, a la Libra) ways to address conflict? In some arenas, like martial arts, conflict itself is an art. We might fear conflict to the extent that we lack tools or worldview to understand the value of its heat. Recommended reading – The Awakened Warrior and ideas/teachings from the relationship and intimacy coach world. (Mars – coach – Libra – relationship. It’s a thing! Many of you know I like Layla Martin’s work)

Sun enters Scorpio: 10:27 PM PDT

(Image: Amber Strickland by @light_witch on Instagram)

The Sun enters Scorpio and heightens its approaching conjunction to Jupiter in Scorpio and its separating conjunction to Mercury in Scorpio. These are some potential themes:

• An expanded awareness, intellectual and/or instinctual, or our shadow and the jewel it holds cloaked within it. The ways that our shadow spelunking is not just to clear ourselves of the shadow but to learn how to integrate it. (When I was a kid, I lived in a place with rattlesnakes, and was told that baby rattlesnakes had a more poisonous bite because they were not yet able to control the amount of poison their bite dispensed. In a way I think of the shadow similarly – it’s a massive amount of power, which, for lack of maturity in knowing how to use that power, we have pushed the shadow into the depths where it becomes distorted, since that which is suppressed tends to become distorted.)
• As we begin to understand our shadow more, we might find ourselves feeling more wealthy – (Jupiter relates to abundance). It is like finding an untapped resource within the self and also integrating a part of our completeness which before was off-limits/inaccessible, even if it came out through other channels.
• It can be really important to listen to the wisdom of our desires and to try to uncloak the meaning of our desires, which may be heavily symbolic of something else. Or, sometimes the literal desire at hand might even be the key (this can be said as well for those who are already keen on the symbolic, and are ignoring the literal right in front of them). As an example of listening to the value in desire, someone might have the desire to be appreciated for how they participate in their community. For whatever reason, they think this desire is wrong – that they should just do good work and not be attached to the outcome. This might be true on some transcendence layer, but it does ignore truths that occur on a tender emotional human layer, in which the nervous system and feeling body might actually light up with positive chemicals when it has the experience it desires. We are not always transcendent beings. We are also biological, and many of our social and spiritual traditions have a way of overtly or subliminally separating spirit and matter or making a hierarchy between the two. Sometimes our so-called lower desires have an intelligence that is actually in harmony with our higher desires. Can we synthesize and build bridges between our lower chakra desires and upper chakra ones? How would our cosmologies and philosophies reflect this?
• **Natural law applies to desire – meaning there are still boundaries and loving ethics in the universe, beyond the humanly constructed ones. Disturbances to this are like a disturbance in the force. Embracing desire is not a free for all – if desire impinges upon another’s free will that is violation, not the embracing of desire.

October 24

Mercury in 11 Scorpio trine Neptune in 11 Pisces: 8:56 AM PDT

(First image unknown, second image Los Ilustrados)

• This can be a good transit to note how you feel your nervous system interacting with your imagination. If we spiral and vortex into negative-fixations (fears and anxieties) versus what happens if we use that same laser focus of Mercury in Scorpio to construct imaginative/ideal spaces and immerse ourselves in them as though they are real. This need not be an escape from life but is an amazing practice to dip into ritualistically to gain some agency with one’s nervous system. Rather than chemically reacting to things, we could generate our own chemicals. In a less direct way, we are doing this whenever we got lost or absorbed in doing something we are positively fascinated with, like a flow state activity.
• Some of these experiences I am alluding to above occur at edge spaces. Such as, when you’re so in love or having an amazing experience with another (peak state) and it immediately triggers anxiety about losing that person, and all your scarcity/abandonment stuff comes up. In this way, our anxieties or thoughts can actually just show us where our evolutionary edges are. At that moment where fear arises, are we ready to expand into new possibilities of what is possible, what we are willing to receive? (It’s okay to be loved?)
• With Mercury in Scorpio trining (harmonious aspect) Neptune, it is exceptionally easier to soften these psychic edges I referred to above. The risk alternately is that we may not note a reason or much zest to do so. For anyone deep in a transformative process already, you may note more ease at making breakthroughs or feeling grace matching your efforts this week.
• Having compassion for ourselves and others in the way that we reveal (or don’t reveal) information. Our concept of what is secret and what is not may be more porous than usual, heightening intimacy and even spiritual lucidity but also running the risk of exposure in ways that is self-undoing. Remember that not everyone has earned your stories/trust and that secrecy is valid. Different situations will call for different amounts of disclosure – one situation of self-disclosure can be intimate and valuable, and another can be undoing. Listen to your intuition.

Thanks for meditating on the planets with me this week! Let me know what you think in the comments.

With love,

Sabrina Monarch

Sabrina Monarch is a soul-centered Evolutionary Astrologer who publishes weekly astrological forecasts. She has been collecting astrological experience for over a decade. She also enjoys kundalini and ashtanga yoga, hiking and creative writing.

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