Linemen at Work
Mercury trines Saturn this week (Oct. 21, 2024, 11:35 pm PDT, 13°11’ Scorpio and Pisces), placing thought processes, learning, and communication under the influence of Saturn’s seriousness, pragmatism, and perseverance. Here’s an opportunity to organize thoughts and information, streamline communication and technology systems, and delve into research and the difficult parts of a big project.
If you’ve been putting something off because it just seemed too daunting to work out the details or gather information about it, delay no longer. This aspect can really help things flow more easily.
Mercury’s Sabian symbol at this trine is 14 Scorpio, Telephone linemen at work. Repair communications by reaching out to somebody you haven’t spoken to in a while, or approaching a sensitive topic with a boss, parent, or other authority figure. You could be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.
Pushing Back
The Sun squares Pluto this week (Oct. 22, 2024, 7:15 am PDT), one of two squares the Sun makes to Pluto each year. Pluto, when it’s in aspect to the Sun, can have a way of making us feel unimportant. Anything that we very much want to do might also suddenly feel as if it’s trivial, a bit silly, and generally not worth doing. But when the Sun connects with Pluto, it’s essential to push back against this demoralizing influence. The Sun’s promise is that each of us is vitally important, and that includes you.
If you’ve been putting everyone else first while the Sun has been in Libra for the past month, now is the time for a little course correction. If you don’t stand up for yourself against the seeming indifference of Pluto, then no one will do it for you.
Stripping Off the Layers
We enter the Sun’s Scorpio season this week (Oct. 22, 2024, 3:15 pm PDT, through Nov. 21, 2024). Scorpio’s season in the Northern Hemisphere means the days are short and the shadows are long. The flat, autumn light is less forgiving, and if we look in the mirror, we see every imperfection. In the darkness of the longer nights, it’s somehow easier to locate our faults and weaknesses, fear and grief. But it’s a little harder to share them, because that means admitting them to ourselves first.
I don’t think we change as we age. I think we just become more comfortable being who we’ve always been. We don’t feel the need to be false—more cheerful, more accommodating than we feel—in order to make others feel more comfortable around us. We become our Scorpionic selves, stripped of artifice and the comforting fictions of youth.
The Scorpio journey is about stripping off layers, year after year, and getting to know the essence of who we are. We may not be able to count on good genes or good luck, and some bad decisions can’t be undone. We may lose loved ones. We will probably lose some of our health. But we never lose the person we are underneath our clothes, underneath our skin.
Cupid at the Door
Planets in aspect to the Moon’s Nodes reveals the forces that are helping or hindering the process of personal growth. As Venus in Sagittarius makes a trine to the Moon’s North Node (Oct. 22, 2024, 7:37 pm PDT, 06º23’ Sagittarius), it’s on Sabian symbol 7 Sagittarius, Cupid knocking at the door.
Venus inspires with beauty, enjoyment, or love, and the North Node symbolizes the goals for achievement and evolution that we set for ourselves that might seem completely unattainable. But if we reach out in a spirit of love, like Cupid knocking at the door, offering our beauty and artistry, then we might actually find that the Aries North Node goals of fearlessness, courageous, and directedness are not so unattainable after all.
Venus does symbolize relationship, and that’s important. But it also celebrates the pure, personal enjoyment of the world and its beauty – and in Sagittarius, specifically the love of nature, animals, and exploration. Any opportunity you take this week to enjoy the natural environment and new experiences, the closer Venus draws you to your bold, Aries North Node adventure. When we feel nourished by beauty and our enjoyment of the physical world, then we stand on a much stronger foundation to move forward in the direction of our evolutionary path.
The Hero
Any Last Quarter Moon is an invitation to review, reassess, and come up with a plan. The Leo Last Quarter Moon (Oct. 24, 2024, 1:03 am PDT, 01º24’ Leo), in particular, wants to frame our individual journey in heroic terms. Over the past year, how have you been heroic? Have you shown an example of positivity, heartfelt creativity, or shone your warm light on others who needed shoring up? Uranus in Taurus, and Pluto taking steps in and out of Aquarius, have made this a challenging year for the Leo spirit; sunniness and joy have been in short supply, and seemed naïve even when we could summon them. Pluto’s hard reaction to Leo’s warm creativity has been disheartening, and Uranus in Taurus has continued to destabilize the normally unshakeable lion.
The chart for this Last Quarter Moon, with the Sun and Moon in difficult aspects to a Mars-Pluto opposition, is full of drama, control struggles, and all kinds of excuses to give up. Of all the lunar phases in the year, the Leo Last Quarter is when we’re asked to decide whether we’re going to slink off to a dark cave and lick our wounds, or whether we’re going to move ahead and live with our whole hearts.
Showing Up
Here’s something that all professional creatives know: Your deadline doesn’t care whether or not you’re feeling inspired. If you’re a writer, for example, some days you write not because you have something you’re burning to say, but rather because you owe your editor 1500 words by 5 pm.
But here’s something else we know. If you sit down in that chair every day and write, then you’ll be in just the right place when inspiration strikes.
This week, Mars, the work planet, is sextile Uranus, the planet of inspiration (Oct. 24, 2024, 5:13 pm PDT, at 26º10’ Cancer/Taurus), on the Sabian symbol 27 Cancer: A storm in a canyon. Just maybe, that means our work is about to take a new, unexpected, and exciting direction – but first, we have to show up for it.
Writing and images © 2017-24 by April Elliott Kent
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