TRANSCRIPT Ep. 369 | Mercury Cazimi: The Spirit of Experimentation!

TRANSCRIPT Ep 369 | Mercury Cazimi: The Spirit of Experimentation! (11.2.26)

Hello Invisible Friend, April here, and the date today is November 2, 2026. Welcome to Episode 369 of the Big Sky Astrology Podcast.

This week: Preparation meets opportunity as Venus retrograde sextiles Jupiter, taking us one step closer to resolving an ongoing financial or relationship issue. Mercury, also retrograde, makes a brilliant cazimi conjunction with the Sun on a Sabian symbol about invention. Look for breakthroughs. And I answer a listener question, sort of, about the astrology of death.

Venus sextile Jupiter (Nov. 4, 2026, 2:31 am PST)

Venus retrograde sextiles Jupiter on Wednesday, November 4th at 2:31 am Pacific time at 24°43′ Libra and Leo. This is the second of three sextiles between Venus in Libra and Jupiter in Leo.

Back on August 17th, when these two first came together in a sextile, it was just five days after an eclipse at 20° Leo. And this sounds fairly cheerful, this aspect, and so promising. But what I saw in actuality on the heels of that eclipse in Leo was a lot of stuff kind of falling apart in spectacular fashion.

Relationships were tearing at the seams. A respected astrology elder was involved in a scandal and uninvited from the UAC conference. I lost a vital source of income. And it all seemed to happen very suddenly.

This time around, Venus is retrograde. I’m not completely sure what effect that will have, but I imagine we’ll be flashing back to that sextile in August. Something comes up that sort of evokes those events.

With Venus and Mercury both retrograde, it is probably going to be something that you experience on a more internal level, rather than hell breaking out all around you.

The Sabian symbol for Venus is 25 Libra, Information in the symbol of an autumn leaf. I mean, maybe it’s information of some esoteric type, but maybe the information is just as simple as, things are finishing up. The leaf is old and crispy. The cycle is complete.

And Jupiter is at 25 Leo, a large camel crossing the desert. It’s a hard journey, but the camel is built for it. It’s a symbol that makes me think of the maxim, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

Something has probably ended in your life. Venus is in Libra, so it’s probably a money thing and a relationship thing. It might be connected to those fissures that happened in August.

Venus and Jupiter are considered the benefic or most fortunate planets. I’m not sure I really saw that back in August. Two relatives close to me, one who’s been having health problems since June, and the other one who she has been relying on, had a dramatic falling out.

But in the months since, my goodness, the one with the health problems has had a rebirth. And I think having to stand on her own two feet has made a remarkable difference. Sometimes benefic planets can be a matter of something negative happening that makes room for something positive. And I think that’s especially true with a sextile. Anyway, that’s how I’m choosing to look at it this time around.

What has ended in your life since August? What desert are you marching across, steadfast and determined? Did you think of getting off the camel at some point? Did people close to you count you out? The final sextile in this series is coming at the end of November at 27 degrees Libra and Leo, with Jupiter in a conjunction with the south node of the Moon and Mars. If you’re still planning to get off the camel, that could be the time.

Sun and Mercury conjunction (Nov. 4, 2026, 6:24 am PST)

The Sun comes together in a conjunction with Mercury retrograde on Wednesday, November 4th at 6:24 a.m. Pacific time at 12 degrees, 10 minutes Scorpio. At the moment of the conjunction, Mercury is what we call cazimi, or at the heart of the Sun. We talked about this pretty recently when Venus was cazimi. It is a bright, brilliant moment when the planet that’s joining with the Sun can have a spectacular breakthrough. This cazimi happens on Sabian symbol 13 Scorpio, An inventor experimenting.

Look for an aha moment during this cazimi period, which is when Mercury is within 17 minutes of orb of its exact conjunction with the Sun, and that will be between 3:27 a.m. and 9:24 a.m. Pacific time. It’s not that you necessarily solve a problem altogether, but some of the pieces begin to fall into place.

And I think there’s something interesting about this Sabian symbol, because it doesn’t show us an inventor who’s all ready to file for a patent. It shows us somebody who is still in the process of figuring things out. Experimenting means you’re willing to try something without knowing exactly how it’s going to turn out. You take one thing, and you put it together with another thing, and you see what happens.

Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it does something you weren’t expecting. And that turns out to be more interesting than what it was you were trying to accomplish in the first place.

That is so often how the best ideas come to us. We spend weeks, months, sometimes years gathering information, trying different approaches, and turning a problem over in our minds. And then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, something clicks. We see a connection we hadn’t seen before. We realize that two things that we thought were unrelated might actually belong together.

That’s especially interesting with this Mercury cazimi happening during Mercury’s retrograde. We tend to think of Mercury retrograde as a time when we’re going backward, revisiting old ground, trying to fix things that aren’t working. But sometimes going backward is exactly what we need to do to ultimately move forward. We return to an old idea with new information or from a slightly different angle. And suddenly there’s this possibility that we didn’t see before.

Some of the components of this idea might have been collected around the time of the last Mercury cazimi, which was on August 27th. Maybe you just needed a moment to stand still and let the gears finally mesh. Mercury’s retrograde periods are perfect for a moment like this one, when something comes together in a sort of synchronicity, almost as though you were never planning it at all. But on an unconscious level, maybe you’ve been working on getting here for weeks.

With this conjunction in Scorpio, I wonder whether some of those breakthroughs might come from being willing to look deep beneath the surface. Scorpio is not satisfied with the obvious explanation. It wants to know what’s really going on. What is motivating something? What’s hidden underneath the first answer that we come up with?

So maybe the breakthrough isn’t necessarily a brilliant new idea. It could be that you realize you’ve been asking the wrong question all along. Or that the thing you thought was the problem is actually a symptom of something deeper.

And when you experiment, you have to leave room for surprise. If you already know exactly what the answer is supposed to look like, you might miss the answer that actually shows up. So around this cazimi, give yourself a little room to play with an idea. Revisit something that you have been puzzling over. Let yourself make an unexpected connection.

You don’t have to force a breakthrough. And you certainly don’t have to have the whole thing figured out by the end of the day. Just remember what questions were you asking back in late August. What ideas were you exploring? Or what conversations were you having? You might find that something happening now is connected to a thread from back then, even if you couldn’t have seen the connection at the time. And if nothing particularly dramatic happens on the day of the cazimi, don’t worry about it. Sometimes the breakthrough is just that you finally know which experiment to try next.

No major lunation – Void-of-Course Moon periods

And now it’s time for the Moon Report. There is no major lunation this week. The Scorpio New Moon comes next Monday. Here on the west coast of the U.S., it comes late on Sunday evening. But for every place else, it’s on Monday, so we will cover it in next week’s episode.

Meanwhile, we’ll just take a look at this week’s Void-of-Course Moon Periods.

On Monday, November 2nd, the Moon in Leo sextiles Venus in Libra at 4:10 p.m. Pacific Time. It’s void-of-course for 8 hours and 18 minutes and then enters Virgo on Tuesday, November 3rd at 12:28 a.m.

The Moon is in Leo and Venus is in Libra for this Void-of-Course Moon period. This reminded a friend of mine of one of her very closest friends whose Moon is in Leo, and he is hands down the best baker that she knows. So, this Void-of-Course Moon Period could be an excellent time to get creative in the kitchen. Consider making the start of this week more celebratory by whipping up a batch of cookies or some other sweet treat, which is ruled by Venus, and sharing it with others. Use this Void-of-Course Moon period to get in the habit of showing your appreciation for loved ones with something that you create.

On Tuesday, November 3rd, the Moon in Virgo sextiles Mercury in Scorpio at 10:57 p.m. Pacific Time. It’s a long Void-of-Course period, for one day, 7 hours and 41 minutes, and then the Moon enters Libra on Thursday, November 5th at 6:38 a.m. Typically, when the Moon and Mercury meet, we have an opportunity to express ourselves well. We can have an easier time blending the messages that we get from our heart and our mind. Since Mercury is currently retrograde, it’s time to go within to get to the bottom of a bothersome issue.

The Moon in Virgo likes to keep itself busy with practical activities, and you might be amazed at the insights you can have while you’re organizing a drawer. Use this Void-of-Course Moon Period to get in the habit of clearing your mind while sprucing up the dusty corners of your office.

And on Saturday, November 7th, the Moon in Libra sextiles Jupiter in Leo at 5:20 a.m. Pacific Time. It’s Void-of-Course for 9 hours and 20 minutes, and then enters Scorpio at 2:40 p.m. This transit could bring more of everything to your door – people, money, new opportunities, and experiences. With Venus retrograde in a conjunction with the Moon at the start of this Void-of-Course period, some people may not feel up to the task of entertaining or hosting others who are outside of their inner circle. Getting together with old friends you haven’t seen in forever would be an excellent use for this Void-of-Course Moon Period.

Delve into an old creative project or maybe have a spa day. If you’re strapped for cash, stay home and eat some of your favorite snacks while watching an old show or movie. Use this Void-of-Course Moon period to develop a habit of rejuvenating your psyche by training yourself to the little luxuries of life.

Listener Question: The Astrology of Death

In this week’s listener question, listener Chandler writes, “In his 1994 feel-good book of the year, The Astrology of Death, Richard Houck relates a question from a Hindu astrologer who said, ‘If you don’t know when you’re going to die, then how do you plan your life?’ Did a client ever ask you when he or she was going to die, and if so, how did you respond? Would addressing such a question in earnest involve identifying the client’s weakest or most dangerous natal planets, then consulting between transits, progressions, annual perfections, zodiacal releasing, and the like to determine if multiple techniques indicate a witching hour for a trip to that undiscovered country?”

Well, Chandler, it’s a great question and I am going to answer you very honestly: I have never learned the astrological factors for death. I’ve always wanted that particular event to come as a complete surprise to me.

That said, my astrology teacher often said that she saw a person’s death not in their own chart, but in the charts of those who were close to them, but I never thought to ask exactly what she was seeing that spelled death to her.

Now, I don’t know a lot about this particular question, but from my understanding of basic astrology, I would associate death with the 8th house, with Saturn and Pluto, maybe the 12th house and the 4th house. For one’s own death, I would assume the 1st and 7th houses, any planets that are in them, and the planet that rules the 1st house connecting with the 8th house ruler or with Pluto. And from my limited experience of looking at these charts, any of Saturn through Pluto in a close transiting conjunction with the angles.

For the death of someone close to you, the ruler of that person’s house in your chart – in other words, the 3rd house of your chart would indicate a sibling in combination with the 8th house or Pluto and maybe Saturn on the cusp of that house. I’d look at eclipses too. The deaths of my close family members, for example, all showed eclipses within a few degrees of the house cusp of my chart that signified them. One other thing that I’ve actually noticed in people’s charts is the solar return Sun in the 5th house, which seemed weird to me. And then I realized, oh, that’s the 8th house from the 10th.

In other words, if you begin with the 10th house and you count 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that takes you to the 8th house from the 10th, which is the 5th house. So the 10th house symbolizes one of the parents, and of course the 8th house can be associated with death.

It’s not the only way that that can play out. So don’t run to your solar return chart and start freaking out if you have got the Sun in the 5th house for that year, but it is one of the possibilities. So anyway, in my limited experience, these are the factors that come to mind.

People have skirted around the issue of death with me in readings from time to time, but it is almost always about the death of somebody close to them, for example, an aging parent. And honestly, I can see the practicality of knowing about this, though my clients have all been very careful to say they don’t expect me to be able to tell them that exactly. And I’m careful to tell them that I skipped astrology school the day they talked about death.

But anyway, these are the kinds of things that I would suggest to them, the ones that I mentioned earlier.

The way I prefer to speak to important matters like this one is from a place of having really studied it myself, really researched it. Because what often comes up is something that isn’t obvious, and maybe it’s outside of these conventional considerations.

And I don’t have that for you. And I haven’t even read Houck’s feel-good book of the year.

Now, as for the Hindu astrologer’s hypothetical question, I’ve personally had no problem planning my life, despite not knowing the day of my death. Then again, I’m the type of person who doesn’t like knowing important developments in a TV show or book in advance. No spoilers, please.

If you want to understand your life, I’d say it’s enough to simply know that one day the end will come. Mortality puts everything into bold relief. But if your life philosophy is to live each day as though it were your last, it’s not a bad way to plan. The death of someone close to you can be absolutely life-changing.

And yes, it can absolutely change the direction of your life. I’ve lost both parents and a brother all very suddenly. And each of those deaths happened when I was in the process of making all kinds of plans for my life that went spectacularly awry.

Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. And on all days but one, it’s what continues happening. Chandler, I don’t know if that’s helpful, but it is honest!

If you have a burning astrological question that you’d like me to answer on an upcoming episode of the podcast, just leave a message of one minute or less at speakpipe.com / bigskyastrologypodcast. And someone, please do this – it’s been a very long time since I had somebody’s actual voice on the podcast!

Or you can email me at april at bigskyastrology.com and be sure to put “Podcast Question” in the subject line.

Donor Thanks

Well, that’s everything I have on my show sheet. So I’m going to wrap this one up.

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That is it for this episode. Join me again bright and early next Monday, and until then, keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars.