Divine Redeemer Catholic Church, Colorado Springs. “I was having continuous thoughts of suicide. Sometimes it was just images of myself jumping out the 10th floor window at my office job, popping into my head unbidden. That’s not a sin. But if I stopped to think it over, if I looked over the edge and thought about jumping, that was a sin. The line between the unbidden image and the intentional thought is kind of hard to discern. Mostly, I just felt bad all the time about feeling bad all the time. Ugh. Also, my misery made me doubt God, but not believing in God is a sin, too. So I was going to confession every week, always confessing the same things: I don’t believe in God and I’m thinking about killing myself.” — H.D. Photo by Stacy J. Platt, from the series #exvangelical; all rights reserved. Exvangelical is a community for those who have left evangelicalism or fundamentalism to share stories of their experiences with others and receive support in a safe, affirming, private space.

The astrology of Tuesday’s congressional election is set within the wider context of many astrological events involving Pluto and Capricorn. Tuesday’s astrology does not stand on its own; there’s a long arc of history involved, because the United States is in its Pluto return, an event that happens just once every 250 years.

The Pluto return looks and feels like a great unraveling, a restructuring of society on every level, and even a kind of civil war. Any student of history will tell you that the United States is often divided and polarized, though this comes in peaks. We’re at one of those peaks now, and it seems to be getting worse.

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Sometimes it really does seem like the world is obsessed with death — every day, basically. This may be the root of all of our social ills, and our failure to fix the physical ones. Greed, for example, is driven by death-obsession (in case you were ever looking for a rational explanation).

Illustration of Albion by William Blake (1757-1827), from ‘A Large Book of Designs’.

Pluto, now minor planet (135340) Pluto, was discovered in 1930, between the two world wars, and just before the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and fascism throughout much of Europe. Named for the lord of the underworld from Roman mythology, he was known for wearing a helmet that made him invisible, and then he would kidnap people to the underworld. I’ve read that shrines to Pluto were often abandoned, as nobody wanted to go there.

One of my reads on Pluto as a collective entity is that it represents the obsession with death that seems to permeate societies everywhere, and most individuals within them. People are driven to do strange things when they don’t confront their fear of the unknown, including many shades of treating one another badly, running from their problems, drowning them in alcohol, failing to get help, and many other permutations.

Modern astrology often construes Pluto as an evolutionary force, meaning that it can drive people to the point where they have no option but to grow. Yet the way Pluto works, this often feels like “grow or die.” It’s nice that we have this (even though many people seem to prefer self-destruction to growth).

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Digital illustration by Charlie Lemay.

This week, Venus makes its interior conjunction to the Sun in Scorpio. Said in plain terms, Venus is passing between the Earth and the Sun, and Friday, all three bodies align and form a conjunction.

We’ll be at the peak of Venus retrograde, in a year dominated by the retrogrades of personal planets. Sex and gender being such focused issues this year makes a good case for the validity of astrology.

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This week arrives with one of the more symbolic encounters along our current Scorpio journey: Mercury conjunct retrograde Venus. That occurs Monday at 4:20 pm ET.

Early suitors in America’s love affair with the police — Officers Reed and Malloy from Adam-12.

The most recent previous encounter was retrograde Venus square Mars in Aquarius. That was how last week felt — halfway between the Twilight Zone and a hostage situation.

The square was what I’ve been calling “the handoff” from the previously retrograde Mars (which took place most of the summer) to Venus (covered extensively in Empathy-Pathos). Interpret that any way you wish: like passing the baton in a relay race, a clash between the sexes, or Venus accepting the responsibility for introspective movement from Mars. Maybe a little of all three.

Our society is both terrified and in love with Mars energy. We are terrified of what we term “aggression,” which is more often self-assertion, desire and the willingness to stand up for oneself. I keep hearing from the mothers of young adult boys say what a harrowing time this is, as all the sensitive ones are worried about being called aggressors (this is not funny, not helpful, and it’s not politically correct in any sense of that concept).

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Listen to tonight’s Planet Waves FM here

The Libra New Moon takes place at 11:47 pm ET on Monday, Oct. 8, less than a degree away form the midpoint of that sign. An event at the midpoint of a cardinal sign is in itself significant, granting it expanded influence through a connection to the Thema Mundi, the hypothetical chart of the world (which has 15 degrees Cancer rising).

Justice by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris.

The closest and most striking aspect in this chart is a conjunction of the Moon and the Sun to Ceres. The first minor planet, Ceres represents the feminine principle as we associate her with Gaia, the Earth, and with the Virgin Mary. Ceres also represents the principle of liminality: that which is lurking on the horizon of consciousness, sometimes available to perception and sometimes not.

As such, it’s fitting that Ceres also represents the collective grief of women (she loses her daughter to the underworld, for half the year, anyway, which is a mythological representation of why it’s cold in the winter: the Earth is grieving for her).

Recent events surrounding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court describe a kind of prolonged political winter, and have illuminated the anger and a sense of loss that many women feel in our time, and perhaps have felt for time immemorial. When grief of any kind is suppressed, it turns to depression, rage and chaos.

Yet apropos of the theme of liminality, we cannot ignore the grief of men: the untold millions who have died in wars for years, those who have been injured and disfigured, and those forced to serve (which means to kill people they often know are innocent); the agony of those falsely imprisoned and executed; the fathers who have lost sons, daughters and wives.

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We’ve been witnessing the effects of the Venus shadow this week, and now Venus is about to station retrograde. This week will end on a different note from the one it is beginning on, particularly in the public sphere.

Yet in the private sphere, the retrograde seems to be begging a question. I’m not sure what the question is; something like: How do you feel? What do you want? What do you need? What are you afraid of? What is your deepest secret?

Who are you, and who do you want to be?

Rather than interpreting this week’s aspects, I want to let these questions hang in the air, and in inner space. The direction of the retrograde is surely inward, and toward the past; yet to be meaningful, I would propose we embrace these on the level of an inquiry rather than rushing to a conclusion.

There are many questions that deserve not just answers but careful and thoughtful consideration.

Your weekly horoscope is below. I’ve looked closely at the astrology in the second segment of tonight’s Planet Waves FM. The first half-hour of the program addresses my first few years of astrological practice, my learning to work with Chiron, and the process of healing from trauma and transgression.

Thank you for listening, thank you for being a subscriber, and thank you for trusting us as your astrologers.

Tomorrow’s Full Moon is conjunct Chiron and Salacia. I didn’t mention that in Friday’s special edition on the Full Moon. I said most of what I wanted to say there; I add some more in tonight’s Planet Waves FM; I’ll take a moment here and add Salacia and two other asteroids to the mix.

To recap, the Full Moon (tomorrow at 10:52 pm EDT) makes many aspects; the obvious are the conjunction to Chiron and the square to Saturn. Adding a touch of intrigue, we are now in a long conjunction of Vesta and Saturn in Capricorn. Vesta warms up Saturn with her feminine energy and power of devotion to the sacred flame.

There is one other thing, though: Chiron and slow-mover Salacia are in a long conjunction, so we get a taste of that energy.

Salacia is a new point, not so very mapped out by astrologers (yet) except for us here at Planet Waves. Technically (120347) Salacia, it was discovered on Sept. 22, 2004, exactly 14 years ago. A “classical Kuiper object” or cubewano (cousin of 1992 QB1), Salacia is out in the region right beyond Pluto and takes about 272 years to go around the Sun.

It meets the plane of the solar system at an odd angle — see diagram below.

My take on this point is that it exemplifies not just our obsession with salacious material, but a struggle to mature in the face of that. It seems that the only discussions our society can have about sex involve scandal, violence or product consumption. There is no sex; there is just sexy.

Every last subject vaguely related to eroticism causes inflammation of some sort, and yet we are force-fed endlessly, and even tend to imbibe on our own.

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Let’s look ahead to an aspect on Oct. 10. That’s a few weeks out, but it’s the thing that the Venus-Mars retrograde processes are building toward. And it will be the central chart in the forthcoming EMPATHY-PATHOS reading.

That aspect is Venus retrograde in Scorpio, square Mars in Aquarius. As of this time, Venus will be newly retrograde, and Mars will have just cleared its shadow phase and have entered new territory for the first time.

Photo from the Venus and Mars album cover. Listen to that masterpiece on this sample of Wings Over America, featuring the magnificent Linda McCartney.

It would be difficult to come up with a chart, from all possible options, that exemplified the social situation, at least in the United States, better than this one does. It seems to describe a total impasse, where Venus in Scorpio feels silently entrenched in emotions she cannot express, and Mars in Aquarius would seem to be free to say and do whatever.

This impasse will not be resolved until the Venus side of the equation speaks up. We’re getting some of this right now, though usually it’s about venting rage. This could be healthy in a therapy context, where the full spectrum of feelings connected to that rage can be safely explored.

It is only destructive in a political context where there is no containment, no basis of understanding, no common ground.

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