Astrological events love to come in clusters. Watching the sky for a while, you can get the feeling you do when you’re waiting for a city bus—why can’t they spread out and come every 15 minutes instead of four busses showing up at the same time?
Well, a lot of busses arrive in October, all within a very short time. Actually, we got a good start in late September, with the Libra New Moon happening two days after the equinox. If you remember, those last days of summer were like being propelled through a funnel. Now we are into autumn and I have some news for you about what the sky is offering.
First, we have the third and final Mercury retrograde of the year. This begins on Saturday, October 4 at 1:02 pm EDT (17:02 UTC). It lasts through Saturday, October 25 at 3:16 pm EDT (19:16 UTC). This is going to be an exciting Mercury retrograde, particularly right at the end—I’ll come back to that in a moment.
Mercury stations retrograde in early Scorpio. It then backtracks into Libra, covering half of that sign, and then stations direct. One thing that jumps out right away is that in traditional astrology, Scorpio is ruled by Mars and Libra is ruled by Venus. If you read old astrology texts, you find out that Mercury is gender neutral.
So we have a Mercury retrograde event that is likely to commence a new discussion of gender identity. This is an aspect of life that is fraught with controversy, because so much of the pain people are in is mistakenly associated with feelings about being either male or female. There is this thing called gender rage, which is anger projected at all members of the opposite sex, or any anger that is related to sex and gender.
Mercury will be making a series of visits to Libra and Scorpio, which looks to me like a shifting perspective—that is, Mercury taking on the feeling of maleness and femaleness in a series of sign changes. This could deliver the one thing we need the most in gender discussions, which is seeing and feeling life from the opposite (or seemingly opposite) perspective.
As happened during the last Mercury retrograde about four months ago, Mercury makes a series of trine aspects to a meaningful newly discovered planet called Nessus, which is about accountability. Yet Nessus also contains plenty of data about healing gender issues and resolving old injuries, such as from past abuse situations. When Nessus shows up, it points to the problem and it points to the solution. For that to work, it’s necessary to keep the main concept of Nessus in mind, which is accountability—that is the person who is actually going to deal with the situation.
Nessus reveals the futility of blame, including self-blame. At the same time the theme of Nessus suggests that accountability is essential; and that there must be someone willing to deal—and that someone had best be you. The story will vary from person to person, though with Mercury and Nessus involved there is the underlying theme of speaking the unspeakable or saying what has not been said, especially if it feels impossible to say.
Mercury transitioning back and forth from Scorpio to Libra emphasizes the theme of taking what cannot be easily expressed (Scorpio) and presenting it in a relational way (Libra).
During the Mercury retrograde, there are two eclipses. The first of these is a total lunar eclipse in Aries, exact early the morning of Wednesday, October 8. In fact it happens right at the midpoint of Aries, which you can think of as a hotspot in the zodiac. It’s also closely conjunct Uranus, which is another hotspot. The eclipse activates a grand fire trine that includes Jupiter in Leo and Mars and Pholus in Sagittarius.
As a South Node eclipse in Aries, this event relates to the process of giving up some identity construct that you’ve been living with for a while—perhaps a very long time, and replacing it with something bold and original. You will have plenty of support doing that, which will be accessed through consciously embracing the process of letting go of whatever that old personality construct may be, such as an outdated sense of purpose.
Both Mars and the presence of activity in Aries are in the aspect pattern. One possible collective manifestation of this could be some revelation about the militancy of humanity and of our time in history. As many have pointed out, this tendency affects people down to the level of our innermost thoughts, and is worth observing and questioning.
The second eclipse is even more interesting. It is conjunct Venus and is a story all its own—related to many other stories. The eclipse happens just after the Sun has ingressed Scorpio. By this I mean that the Sun enters Scorpio at 7:57 am EDT, the Moon and Venus enter Scorpio nearly simultaneously at about 5 pm EDT, and a solar eclipse conjunct Venus happens just before 6 pm.
I will say that another way. On the morning of Thursday, October 23, we wake up with the Moon, Venus, and the Sun all in Libra. By early evening they are all in Scorpio and align in an eclipse of the Sun. So that is a lot of change concentrated within a few hours.
With Scorpio, the theme of sex is again emphasized, particularly with the presence of Venus. Yet there is an odd counterpoint to the sex theme, which is Pallas Athene in Scorpio, very close to the eclipse. Pallas Athene is one of those aspects that says “sexless.” It says it in a few ways. Athena was born from her father’s head, without sex. She is a woman dressed in a suit of armor, which connotes a concealed or unavailable femininity.
One of the keynotes of Pallas Athene is a voluntary giving up of womanly sexuality and other trappings of femininity to serve another purpose. Yet that purpose may indeed be sex, because there are plenty of conventional gender attributes that get in the way of honest sexual relating, be it physical or in conversation.
Pallas Athene also represents strategy. This is an interesting subtopic of sex, which sometimes seems to call for total surrender to spontaneous creation, and at other times can call for (or even require) a conscious strategy.
One’s sexual strategy might be as mundane as pregnancy prevention or safer sex (too sophisticated for a great many people) or figuring out how to get the sex you want, including with the specific person you want. Strategy can be thought of as any conscious adaptation, such as deciding you have a fetish and finding the community that will help you fulfill that desire.
Most therapists would probably say that the concept of strategy is something to leave outside the door of our relationships, because they would associate it with having a closed heart, or not taking a “come-what-may” attitude. To those who place any value on sexual freedom, which I would define as embracing the conscious freedom to choose what you want, ongoing, we are in an era of history where some form of strategy is a necessity if you want to make contact with others.
There’s one last idea I can relate among this rather rich aspect pattern, made more interesting by a point with the inflections of Pallas Athene. You could say that Pallas represents politicization of whatever it makes contact with. This can work in many ways, though in Scorpio, we have the idea of sex turned into a political issue. With Venus in the mix, we have women’s sexuality turned into a political issue. And with an eclipse, it could be big. I say this knowing we are in an era of the female body being turned into a political instrument or worse, a battleground.
Notably, this eclipse is happening in the final stretch of a general election cycle. It’s a midterm election, though extremely crucial, because if the Senate becomes Republican, we can pretty much kiss goodbye the appointment of any pro-choice judges in the last two years of Obama’s presidency. All federal judicial appointments must be approved by the Senate. However, this aspect looks like it portrays some kind of immediate crisis, and we’ve had no shortage of those lately. Whatever it is could easily tip the election in key districts.
But the problem as I see it is much more deeply soaked into the emotions of our society—for example, the expectation that it’s somehow normal, useful, or productive to turn the female body into a battleground, or worse, some kind of political territory to be conquered.
In responding to any such attack, it’s possible to get drawn into the argument in a way where no matter what you say, you lose. Many different factions use sex or ideas about sex as a weapon, some under the guise of conservatism and some under the guise of progressivism. Both are equally repugnant.
What is lost in the discussion is that any expression of sex as power, or use of sex as an organizing platform, usually obscures the more fundamental right to experience pleasure. The right to choice—that is, to choose to use contraception and the right to abortion on demand, are all about a woman’s right to be sexual for her own sake, and to mitigate the consequences of sex. Taking away any such rights are an attack on emotional autonomy.
The Scorpio eclipse happens just before Mercury stations direct. The eclipse is the evening of Thursday, October 23 (21:56 UTC) and Mercury stations direct less than two days later. The eclipse occurs during what is called the Mercury storm, in what may be the most turbulent moment of that phase, in the days and hours right before Mercury changes directions.
This suggests that any sinister political plot could backfire. The Sun, Venus, and Pallas Athene align in an exact conjunction between the 24th and the 26th, which also implies an extended moment of clarity.
One last thought: Both of these eclipses make exact aspects to the chart for Obama’s speech last month, the one announcing another permanent war on terrorists. Obama made that presentation to the American people on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary—yet another exploitation of that incident, despite it being 13 years and no domestic terrorist attacks after the fact.
The eclipses of October make aspects to two extremely sensitive points in the chart for Obama’s speech, and I’m concerned that we could see another significant escalation of the war in the Middle East, which is now beginning to involve many more parties than in the past.
I have not mentioned that Mars is in Sagittarius, and will be making many aspects to sensitive objects in that sign through the month of October, prior to changing signs into Capricorn on October 26. I know it seems perfectly futile to resist such movements, which are being orchestrated by many forces that are out of sight, though it would be wise to remember who will be left with responsibility for the future, and left with the bill.
If Mars in Sagittarius says anything, it says think of the future. There is such a thing as the future, and it’s our most valuable collective resources—definitely something to consider.
I mean it. The future. We usually live like there isn’t one. But why?
This article appears in October 2014.
