Venus enters Sagittarius Wednesday shortly before 5 am EDT. Mercury follows eight hours later. Before lunchtime on Thursday, both Venus and Mercury will each have taken their turns with a square to Chiron in Pisces and a fire trine to Uranus in Aries. That is a large number of incidents in a short period of time. It will be at once reasonable and useful to consider it all as a single event. For you, this concurrent aggregate of ingress and aspects will imply a challenge that is also an exceptional opportunity to see the forest without losing track of the trees. We can start with the trees.

Every object in astrology functions as an archetype, representing something in your life. Venus correlates with matters of attraction and its counterpart, repulsion. Most of us are aware of what we find attractive. Fewer are conscious of what we attract to ourselves. Mercury corresponds to mind making itself known. It’s not unusual to know your own mind, or express it. It takes a little more effort to receive the thoughts of another. Our relationship to any given planetary archetype is most clearly revealed when the planet changes sign.

When an object first enters any sign, the archetype is conserved but its visage is altered. For the last several weeks, both Venus and Mercury have been expressing their essence from behind the mask of Scorpio, a fixed water sign. During that period, now closing, any patterns of thought or fascination initiated in late September may have been either persisted with or transformed as they were carried forward, depending on the choices you made. In all likelihood it was a series of experiences intuitively related to each other by their emotional content, along with a sense of outward confrontation connecting to inward tension. Even as that process is approaching culmination, it is now time to anticipate a substantial shift.

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Detail from the altar of poetic curiosities, Sacred and Profane festival. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Today is Monday, Oct. 31, 2011. We have a waxing Moon in Capricorn — sign of institutions — all day for Halloween. Anyone planning to dress up as one of the 1% tonight? Or maybe an ATM machine? If you can figure out a way to wear your pup tent, you could go trick or treating as your own Occupied encampment. That said, the main astrological aspects this week have to do with the planet of disguise (as well as denial, delusion and drugs): Neptune. Our three personal planets (Mercury, Venus and Mars) are all splashing into Neptune in one way or another. Just as it’s prudent to wade into unfamiliar waters rather than diving in headfirst, so too is it wise to slow down a little with these aspects.

Venus and Mercury are in the last degrees of Scorpio. Venus moves into Sagittarius early Wednesday morning, and Mercury follows suit later that same afternoon. During their last couple days in Scorpio, both planets square Neptune in late Aquarius. We tend to want our personal planets to feel very solid and real. But when inner planets encounter Neptune, it can create doubt and a dreamy kind of idealism. This kind of setup can mess with our emotions and intuition. (It is rare that Mercury, Venus and Mars all make aspects to Neptune at the same time.)

If you have any Halloween festivities to attend tonight (or if you had some lush encounters over the weekend), bear in mind that you might be a bit more prone than usual to get stoned and think you’re in love — or simply to think you’re in love even without any substances altering your consciousness.

After Mercury and Venus square Neptune, they ingress Sagittarius and then make squares to Chiron. This has the feeling of a sudden awakening — the sensation of, ‘how could I have missed this?’ It’s likely to be something emotional, such as a perception or emotion. Think of squares to Neptune followed by squares to Chiron as coming out of denial — a feeling that we Westerners rarely experience.

After the emotional complexity and uncertainty of Scorpio planets square Neptune, they ingress a sign known its love of freedom, travel and adventure, and where there can be a feeling of extreme clarity rather than the potential doubts of the current days. This could be spurred by some event, emotion or reaction. Get used to the sensation of these planets being in Sagittarius, square Chiron, before you make any irreversible decisions, particularly based on injured emotions, office politics or any form of deception.

Meanwhile, Mars in Leo is working up to an opposition to Neptune. This is another summons to clarity, honesty and choices based on intelligence and discernment.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Scorpio weekly for Oct. 8, 2004.

To say the least, the past few years have come with many valiant attempts by your psyche to purge and release you from ancient patterns and, oddly, this has become a pattern of its own. I would propose that in the process, you’ve become intimately familiar with who you are, in many respects finding yourself increasingly determined not to be that way. This is requiring a kind of progress that is among the most difficult to negotiate. Aspects of you that are fully invested in a relationship need to change, yet within the context of that relationship. Will a person close to you let you become who you are becoming? Or is the whole affair threatened by the act of your growth? Ah, let off some of that pressure. They face some big movements of their own, with which you may surely cooperate. Set a good example and let the next stage of life be born.

Note, The Oracle is a random selection from the Eric Francis horoscope archives. Each day we publish one entry from among the 10,000 in our database. It’s a little slice of horoscope history — but chosen by our Oracle program, which always speaks to the present moment. New horoscopes are published each Friday plus twice a month in Planet Waves subscriber edition and Planet Waves Light. And for your annual reading, check out Light Bridge.

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Go within. Use what you have. Draw on infinite resources that you can access without relying on others. You do this in partnership with yourself, and your Self. When you do act, however, you will find that there is support out there that is waiting for you.

Four of Swords, Seven of Pentacles, Nine of Wands from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.

I wrote earlier this week that tarot doesn’t take any holidays, and this reading bears that out. On Wednesday, I drew six cards to illustrate the first part (the ‘cross’ aspect) of a Celtic Cross reading.

On the horizontal axis, the middle card — Card 1, the Current Situation — and the card to its right — Card 6, the Near Future — were the Four of Swords and the Nine of Wands respectively. Here, we seem to have a development of this progression, as another card intervenes to add a piece to the puzzle. This card, the Seven of Pentacles, also seems to want to work with the energy of Card 2 — the Influencing Factor — in the Celtic Cross reading, which was another Seven: the Seven of Wands.

So, to recap, in the Celtic Cross reading of 26 October, we had: Current Situation — Four of Swords, Influencing Factor — Seven of Wands, Near Future — Nine of Wands.

In this Weekend Tarot Reading, we have: Left – Four of Swords, Centre – Seven of Pentacles, Right – Nine of Wands.

Some great symmetry going on. What does it mean? This is my take on it — much of which will be mirrored from the earlier article.

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There are many ways to use Planet Waves horoscopes, written by Eric Francis, but only one way to read them: become a subscriber. You’re invited to try them out free for one month by clicking here. Then decide for yourself if you’d like to take them home with you, so to speak. Subscriptions include horoscopes on Fridays and articles by Eric on Tuesdays and Fridays, plus access to full-issue archives and the Oracle divinatory tool. Stop by the Planet Waves Store to see the full range of written and audio astrology offerings.

By Maria Padhila

It hits me in the oddest times and places. I’m just pulling up to the school the other day, to pick up my daughter, and there it is: I’m actually doing this. This is really happening.

Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.

Later that night, when I went to see the acupuncturist, it happened again. She looked at me and said: “This is your magic. You made this happen. You’re surrounded by love now, and you thought that would never be possible. But it’s real. You brought this into reality.”

The next night, I had a long phone call with my best friend — the other best friend, the one who knows I’m poly. I was discouraged about writing, mostly, and many other things, and full of despair that I’d ever really get my work out there and get it seen. “There are so many sensationalist crap books out there,” she said. “All that I was a call girl, and I was a geisha stuff. Maybe your story is just too real.”

“I remember you talking about this before the person even came into your life — you were thinking about it, working it through, trying to bring it out into the open. And then the right person was just there.”

“You know,” she said, “I think people would accept someone being a crack addict before they’d accept being polyamorous. You know, the way all those right-wingers who are addicted to painkillers and whatever that stuff they’re taking is? That’s easier for people to accept. Because that’s not something they can control. People see it as something that just took over, that they couldn’t help.”

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Hello — I’m welcoming another round of queries for those interested in participating in the daily astrology project at Planet Waves. This is a team writing effort, which we are designing under the ‘many hands make light work’ principle of cooperation. I would rather work with astrology students who know less rather than more. You’ll need to like research, like the writing and editing process, and be ready to learn. You will turn your basic knowledge into advanced knowledge pretty fast, and have a real experience of doing astrology. Write to me at dreams@planetwaves.net (with a clear subject header please) if you’re interested. –efc