Muertos, Logic, and Visiting Aunt Eleanor
Dates and times are given for U.S. Pacific Time zone. Click them to see the date and time where you are. NOTE: Daylight Saving Time ends in the U.S. on Nov. 1 at 2:00 a.m.
Aunt Eleanor
Let’s say you’re a bright, curious, Mercurial little girl. You love to read, love riding your bike with your friends, and love to talk. So much so that your mom, just to get a little break, sends your away for a few weeks each year to visit your Aunt Eleanor – who, for the purposes of this example, plays the part of Venus – in her beautiful home, which will stand in for the sign of Libra.
Aunt Eleanor is a beautiful, elegant, refined. She dresses in cool pastels, speaks in a soft voice, and lives in a house that’s about three times as expensive and fancy as yours. It’s a little bit intimidating at Aunt Eleanor’s, where everything is in its place with no homey bric-a-brac to distract the eye. Still, you love it there. Soft music is always playing lightly in the background. Interesting art hangs on the wall. The garden is carefully sculptured, each element perfectly arranged.
And the best part is that Aunt Eleanor LOVES to hear what you have to say! She asks many questions about your life and seems genuinely interested in the answers. She teaches you the names of artists and musicians and gives you piano lessons. She teaches you dance steps, and the two of you waltz across the gleaming floors and expensive rugs in her parlor.
This year, Aunt Eleanor will be as happy as ever to see you. But she may also be a bit on edge. The neighbor’s new dog won’t stop barking, and she isn’t sleeping well. The city is replacing pipes in the street in front of her house; a fine layer of dust covers the piano.
So, you will enjoy your visit to Aunt Eleanor, in her beautiful home. But it will be a little less restful and peaceful than usual.
And that’s more or less what it’s like for Mercury and Venus as they enter Libra this week (Oct. 27, 2020, 6:34 pm PDT, and 6:41 pm PDT, respectively) . Because what awaits them in the coming weeks (through Nov. 10 for Mercury, Nov. 21 for Venus), journeying through this normally sanguine sign, are hard aspects to Mars in Aries (the unhappy dog) and Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in Capricorn (municipal earthworks). Even in temperate and civil Libra, any planets – not to mention Aunt Eleanor – would be hard-pressed to maintain serenity in planetary circumstances like this.
Days of the Dead
Each Full Moon is a big, luminous, noisy, emphatic message that something is missing from your life. The Sun’s current season is propelling you along a particular trajectory, but at this Full Moon you might sense that something you really need is at the opposite end of the path.
When the Sun is in its Scorpio season, it emphasizes the magical and otherworldly, things that can’t be perceived with our ordinary senses. But the Full Moon in its opposite sign, Taurus, reminds us that before we can give ourselves over to the magical world, we have to fully inhabit the sensual, everyday, here-and-now.
This Full Moon falls on Halloween (Oct. 31, 2020, 7:49 am PDT), which seems to make that autumn festival a lot “spookier” than usual. But the Taurus Full Moon is, to me, the opposite of spooky. Instead, it’s a big, shouty reminder that we’re here to learn from, and to celebrate, life. On Nov. 1 and 2, Mexicans celebrate Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It’s traditional to picnic among the graves of their ancestors. They create beautiful altars with candy, bread, fresh flowers, water, candles, and photos of loved ones who’ve passed away. What a good idea it is, to celebrate the dead with the life that we’re so fortunate to have.
The Sun and Moon very closely aspect the planet Uranus at this Full Moon. We live in a world where everything can change, literally, in a moment. The best we can do, then, is to make friends with change. To regard it as an inevitable part of life – normal, really – and as regular as the seasons.
Earning your A
I studied Communication in college and had a liberal arts major’s typical fear and suspicion of mathematics. But in all my years of school, one of my favorite classes was the one that fulfilled my math requirement: symbolic logic.
How elegant, this system of statements and proofs! They looked beautiful, dancing neatly across sheets of paper on my dining table. And although I found them incredibly difficult and frustrating, I worked on them night and day, determined to master them. And in the end, I did. I received one of only two A’s in my class of 40 students. It remains one of my prouder achievements.
This week’s Mercury/Saturn square (Nov. 1, 2020, 11:06 am PST) recalls the time around September 23. Since then, you’ve been working on something that’s really stretched you intellectually. So much so that now, when you thought you’d turned in your final assignment, you’re going back to it. You’ve already gotten your A, but you’re haunted by a concept that only you are aware that you never really grasped. So you’re cracking open your books this week, and by Nov. 6, when Mercury squares Saturn for the final time in this sequence, you’ll feel you’ve really earned your grade.
Writing and collages © 2020 April Elliott Kent
Jen and I explore all the week’s highlights in our latest podcast episode,
Ep. 53 | Our Taurus Full Moon Halloween Spooktacular!
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