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Your October Monthly Horoscope

Dear Friend and Reader:

         Here is your October horoscope, a tad late. I was working on the 12 sign readings for EMPATHY-PATHOS, and prioritized getting that to you pretty much on time (all but Pisces were done before Venus retrograde began). Those are extended, 40-minute-plus readings that take a detailed look at the current astrology, from 12 points of view. Single signs are available here; and all 12 signs are available here.

         The EMPATHY-PATHOS reading will still be interesting in two years, casting much light on the past. The reading is fresh and vital, right here and right now, and will help you get your mind thinking in useful, productive directions. All the signs have a focus on Chiron in Aries, by the way — a topic about which it’s difficult to source accurate information.

Coming soon — Jupiter in Sagittarius.

         What I’ve got for you today, in the form of the October monthly horoscope, does some looking forward and some looking back. Most of the signs have some focus on Venus retrograde, and some catch up on the end of Mars retrograde. A number of signs have important activity in the 12th house (the sign immediately before), and in those instances, I’ve focused on that.

         In Sagittarius, I mention Jupiter changing signs (entering Sagg) in about a month. The return of Jupiter to its domicile will be refreshing and will help offer some expanded perspective and who knows, maybe a little optimism for a change.

         Beneath the surface of what I’ve written, I'm already working with the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of Jan. 12, 2020, which will be a major theme of the forthcoming INTELLIGENCE annual edition.

         There are two aspects coming right up, which I will develop in an essay soon, if possible, though it will help just being aware they exist. Both involve Venus retrograde. The first is tomorrow: Venus square Mars, with Mars in direct motion and Venus in retrograde motion. To me this describes an internal condition (such as an apparent clash between the sexes) that is really based on inner tension.

         This tension becomes so unbearable that it is often projected outward in the form of conflict. That is not necessary. But to prevent that, taking ownership is necessary first.

         Second, on Oct. 15, is Mercury conjunct retrograde Venus in Scorpio. To me, this aspect is about speaking the seemingly unspeakable. This is an urgent necessity, and for that to happen, we will all need to be a little more comfortable with being uncomfortable. We will need to be a little more comfortable with revealing what we think and feel.

         It is crucial, however, that the truth not be weaponized, particularly where personal material is concerned. Truth only exists as itself, as a positive force, in a condition of trust. Plenty of deception takes place in what seems like an environment of trust, though clearly, it’s something else. In order to be able to speak our personal truth, we must have some assurance and agreement that it’s not going to be used against us: you, or anyone else.

         Trust is not only the missing element in society and in many personal relationships right now; it is actively under attack by people with an agenda, and that agenda needs to be seen for what it is. As A Course in Miracles says in so many words, there are no triumphs of love*. Where healing is made welcome, it will enter.

With love,

*There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is concerned with the "triumph of love" at all. The illusion of love can triumph over the illusion of hate, but always at the price of making both illusions. As long as the illusion of hatred lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you. And then the only choice which remains possible is which illusion you prefer. There is no conflict in the choice between truth and illusion. Seen in these terms, no one would hesitate. But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between illusions, for this choice does not matter. Where one choice is as dangerous as the other, the decision must be one of despair.

Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself which you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail. If you seek love outside yourself, you can be certain that you perceive hatred within and are afraid of it. Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality.

-- ACIM Text, chapter 16 Aries (March 20-April 19) -- Let people be honest with you. This is a choice -- as much of a choice as to speak one's truth. Be open to listening, and to sharing your feedback -- though keep that part modest. The thing to remember is that people's story is not necessarily the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But that does not matter, really, because all statements are symbolic. Symbols stand for something else. What you need to listen for is that something else: what is being represented? Is it a feeling, an opinion, a concern, an idea, a challenge? One way to listen interactively is to say, "I hear you saying [whatever, which you state in your own words]." Then keep listening, for the correction. One thing to consider are the ways that someone might be speaking your truth for you. So keep asking yourself whether anything you hear is personally relevant for you. You might find that people will have a way of revealing your secrets to you, or putting into words what you cannot usually say. If any such material comes up, take the occasion to speak openly. Venus retrograde in Scorpio will offer you opportunities to share what was previously concealed, and to reach a deeper level of intimacy with yourself and others. You can follow this gently to unusually deep places, and learn easily what is otherwise difficult to grasp. Taurus (April 19-May 20) -- This year's astrology, including the retrogrades of Venus and Mars, is here to help you prepare for the long-term presence of Uranus in your birth sign. That began in May; it will retreat briefly for the winter, and commence for the next seven years in March. Uranus in your sign suggests the rapid, ongoing emergence of new ideas of who you are. The recent Mars retrograde and the current Venus retrograde seem designed to shake you loose from your preconceptions, prejudices and concepts (such as of self and other). This, in turn, will help you shed your skin each time the moment arrives. Most of what people are is contained within their ideas, and right now, all of yours are being subjected to a series of tests and verifications. That does not mean they are all wrong; rather, that you need to be bold about evaluating what is true for you, and not be afraid to ask any question -- of yourself, or of another. Venus and Mars retrogrades have been running what you might think of as test scripts that will facilitate just this kind of inquiry. You are being presented with circumstances that invite the ongoing questioning of what seems like reality. And at the moment, it's particularly easy for people to grasp where you are coming from, even if it does not feel that way. Gemini (May 20-June 21) -- You are no longer subject to what other people think you should believe. You never were, though it was difficult to feel your way to a point of independence. This largely involved your reticence to be controversial or to seem aggressive by challenging people -- even if that challenge came only in the form of you being you. Events this year have shown the futility of this approach; circumstances have taught you that you have no choice but to assert yourself, if you want your mind to be free. Conflict, challenging people, and challenging yourself are how you figure out who you are. You cannot live in avoidance of conflict, on the level of ideas. That would be the equivalent of putting a bag over your head, and calling yourself a visionary. You must say what you see, and not be afraid to be challenged, to be wrong, or to call out what is obviously false. This does not mean being a jerk, though it will help to cast off any fear of being seen that way. You can be friendly, funny, and argumentative, and still be a good sport. It helps if you don't take yourself so seriously that you can't take being made fun of. Your sense of humor is the most useful talent you can bring to any discussion of reality. See the humor in everything. That's a sign you're perceiving the world with an open heart. Cancer (June 21-July 22) -- Current activity in Libra is encouraging you to settle in and make home. If you're happy where you are, then that's the perfect place. On the home front, the place to start is to take charge of your kitchen, your food supply, and the preparation of meals. This is the center of any meaningful concept of home, particularly for you. Take the role of the one who nourishes and nurtures, as an active practice of karma yoga. Give this six months, till the vernal equinox, and then re-evaluate your life, your relationships, your sense of grounding and safety, and your sense of home. When it comes to intimate partnerships, begin by considering inwardly any concerns you have. This is different from stuffing them down. Quite the opposite -- you're hanging out with any issues in an active and conscious way, seeking first within yourself for the source of the conflict. You might decide that you have some accountability or at least the ability to resolve things on your own in a way that sets you free. However, you might notice that you have an actual concern you want to raise, and the time to do that is after you've done an accountability check on your own. Projection is a serious problem, and you are the only one who can do something about it. Account for what is the product of your own mind and feelings, and you will be a lot happier. Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) -- You must take care of yourself: rest, food, sunshine. That, and just the right amount of work, which could be a bit more than most people are capable of. Then, intersperse generously with rest, food and sunshine. It will also help if you gradually remove sources of conflict from your life. You have seen the toll it can take, on your productivity, and on your ability to feel good. A great many people live with conflict as a way of life, or in some way depend on others to disrupt the flow of their existence. To the extent you thrive on chaos, for whatever reason, it's time to eliminate that. This includes choosing friends and partners who are respectful, because that's a better way for you to live. These things need to be long-term commitments. There will be some delay between the time when you rotate the wheel, the rudder moves and the ship begins to turn -- so the sooner you start, the better. Part of why removing conflict is so important is that you will make room for supportive people, who demonstrate their love and appreciation of you. Don't be afraid to turn this into direct support, and ask for the help that you need, when you need it, or better yet, well in advance. For example, take leadership and make sure the workloads that surround you are reasonably distributed. You have amazing vitality, though you are not invincible -- nor do you want to be. Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) -- When you think of wealth, think of food. When you think "bottom line," think food. Your bank account is one thing; what you are able to eat is another. The beauty of food is that there reaches a point where it costs less to eat better, especially if you've been eating out of the house a lot. Organizing your life around food will require you to do some adjusting, restructuring and rethinking, and you will be happier, healthier and probably wealthier for it. Then, there's a related subject, though it might not seem that way, which is your ability to speak (or write) your personal truth. This will require a process of discovery that is currently well underway. A series of aspects with the retrograde of Venus are offering you a rare opportunity to be courageous, to be self-inquisitive, and to find words for what might otherwise, at other times, seem impossible to express. The concept of secrecy, as you experience it, needs to come under careful review. Nothing is ever really kept private; the question is whether it's expressed in useful, wholesome ways, or ways that are toxic and self-defeating. At this time in your life, you have a profound need to learn how to be articulate, about what matters the very most to you. That means developing the ability to speak from your center, though particularly gathering the focus and discipline to be able to express yourself in writing. For the benefit of your health, sanity and strength, there is no substitute. Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) -- Current planetary movements involving your birth sign describe Libra as the sign of individuality and introspection rather than the sign of relationships. This is in part associated with Venus retrograde in your neighboring sign Scorpio, which describes a deep journey of self-awareness for you. Yet it is this inner exploration that will bring you to a new place of contact with others. Even so, you must contract before you can expand. Your self-awareness must always be the property that leads you through any situation you find yourself in, because your "self" is the only thing you have that could possibly relate to the world. So in this sense, self-awareness involves monitoring your environment and how you respond to it. This implies a much larger concept of self than we normally mean when we say the word. Yet the prevailing lesson of Venus retrograde seems to be that you and your environment are so closely related, you can consider them the same thing. Still, the most dependable information will be found within yourself; and this, in turn, provides you with incentive to notice how you feel and what you're observing at all times. This is not so much a chicken-and-egg matter as it may seem. Notice how your perception of the world changes when your mood changes. Your feelings have the power to bend objective reality, so you may as well stay in contact with them. Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) -- It's often difficult for people to see, and to feel, one another's perspective. This leads to many needless misunderstandings, conflicts and disagreements. You are now in an unusual position to feel the perspectives of others as they feel them, or close to it, needing little explanation. All you need to do is focus and pay attention to how you feel, when considering another person's reality. The thing to note, in the first instance, is that how they feel will be different from how you feel. You may not be able to understand what you're feeling from an intellectual perspective. Just noticing the contrast will be helpful. If you are engaged in a dialog, you can make contact statements, which would be mellow: something like, "I get that you're agitated about this" or, "You seem worried." Whether you say anything or not, your ability to empathize, by itself, will be supportive. Meanwhile, following the recent Mars retrograde in the family and security angle of your solar chart, you are not willing to have the terms of your life dictated by others, and you're bold enough to speak up. When you are feeling where people are coming from, it will become obvious how little you need to say, or do, to assert your independence. Mostly, you need to be yourself, and give people the space to be who they are, and never argue the case for your own freedom. You don't have to. Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) -- You will have a more positive outlook once Jupiter has ingressed your sign on Nov. 8. Until then, you can make the most of things, and you have plenty to work with. The most helpful thing you can do, to that end, is to take responsibility for your feelings. The current social trend is for everyone to hold everyone else accountable for how they feel inside. This is not helpful, because it's not true. Your feelings are your responsibility, which is good news because that means you can influence your emotional responses, evolve how you feel, and understand the inner conditions leading to any particular response you might have to any situation. Said another way, taking responsibility for your feelings is a fundamental step for emerging from any form of victim consciousness that you might experience. It will also help you address fear, once you recognize that nearly all of it is an internal experience having nothing to do with an actual situation in the world. Jupiter ingressing your birth sign will help you figure out how little you have to worry about, and focus on what actually matters. Yet in the month before that happens, it will be an excellent exercise to sort out what is coming from inside you and what is coming from outside. This is a real question. It may be the only question. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) -- What has your life been like, in this year of Saturn in your birth sign or rising sign? Old-school ideas about this transit describe it as a time of enforced maturity. It could also indicate the sensation of being held down, on practical matters or emotional ones. Yet for this transit to work its wonders, you will need to take full ownership of it. The message of nearly any Saturn transit is to internalize what Saturn represents. First, that means taking responsibility for time: or, you might say, taking possession of your life on Earth as a finite thing. Then there is taking up the matter of authority as an inner function rather than an outer one. Saturn becomes your friend when nobody has to tell you what to do. Yet the cautionary side of this is that people can become harsh masters of themselves when Saturn is in the neighborhood. People can be much more strict with themselves than anyone else ever was with them. Whatever else may be going on, and whatever you may need to accomplish, you need to give yourself flexibility, room to maneuver, and room to make mistakes. Saturn is an influence associated with what we learn and who we become in the long run, not the short. This is associated with character development and also with your understanding of time. Under the influence of Saturn, time must become your friend and ally rather than an enemy that stalks you. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) -- Anxiety is one of the most serious problems the world is facing right now, particularly here in the Western world where people have a little less to worry about than many other places. Many, many people deal with anxiety, more or less effectively. I bring this up now because you have both Saturn and Pluto in your 12th solar house, and that can be a formula for stress or panic. If you know this, you can have a model of what it's about and how to handle yourself. You will also be able to tap into the resources that are involved. Both planets in Capricorn, and Venus retrograde in Scorpio, describe distinguishing what has been passed down to you through the generations from what is actually your self-acquired personal property. I suggest you make a long-range plan of sorting this out (and, it's a topic I've reflected on in many annual readings for your sign, which you can find here, open access). However, there is one immediate thing to be aware of. Mars in your sign has entered new territory for the first time since going retrograde many months ago. Mars will lead you to strive for what you want, and to push people, a little and sometimes a lot. That can come with a backlash of guilt. This is the thing to watch. All guilt is the product of a childhood dynamic. It does not mean you've done something wrong and certainly does not make you a "bad" person -- though that is the feeling. Pay attention to how you feel at the end of the day. Let yourself off the hook, offer apologies if necessary, and connect your feelings to how you were treated as a kid, and how you responded. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) -- This year has brought many changes to your circle of friends, how you're viewed publicly and how you see yourself as a member of the community. Yet these changes are secondary to the inner work you've been doing, associated with Mars retrograde in Aquarius. Though you may not see or feel it yet, there are few transits that could do more to set you free from your inhibitions, your fears, and your inner pressure to conform. Conform to what exactly? Whatever line people are expected to toe, however that manifests for you. Given that the Mars connection is 12th house (ancestral material) and Aquarius (family of origin material), what you experienced -- whatever it was, and it may have been weird -- has involved setting yourself free from the karma and the ideology of your family. Given that this involves the 12th house, the experience itself, and your sense of liberation, could well be a little below the level of full awareness. However, it might also be plain and in your face, requiring only placement in proper context. The sex question is vital: the idea that you've somehow been set free from the negative patterning of the people who raised you, and whatever weight of the past they carried. However, set free is only the beginning, and it's a real commencement only if consciously claimed by you. You must plot your way forward, and take each step as a wholly conscious act. You are not all those other people. You have your own place, your own time, and your own way. Keep reminding yourself of that.