The Mad Monk Möbius Strip

Today’s big event, my dears, is of course the burgeoning full Moon in Aries which I wrote about at the end of last week’s forecast, for a full description refer back, but shall I say, it may prove a hot time in the old town, as sexual relations, relationship dynamics, impulsive moods, strong bonds and individual fire are on the menu, in opposition but giving and taking at the same time. With Venus conjoining Mars in Virgo it may be hard to tell who is detailing the program and who is jerking the controller, but sequential and detailed fevers of body and emotion will come into contact in pairs of people, so consider if you want that to manifest as painful or pleasurable or a combination as it will linger and fade over the next two weeks before a new cycle is seeded. Otherwise, as your thumping or bleeding hearts are spotlit by the gleamy glint off chains of oaths you’ve made with family and friends there is a memo handed to you before the Lunar Lake Of Fire: “Remember to keep Action Artful and Art Weaponized.” The handwriting looks like yours but from another time, something you scribbled last month and lost in your purse or in the leaves of a book you only then glanced and sniffed. Now the advice hits home.

The 6th sees the waning Moon conjoin Uranus in late Aries, the opposition with Jupiter is separating, but only by a couple degrees. The depth charges Uranus sent into our systems and the systems of our life might have upset our stomachs, but despite some indigestion we become surprisingly receptive to experimenting with new developments, and might even begin to drain certain activities and attachments to our more recent endeavors and adventures to make room for the new innovations and inspired ideas; the bric a brac we’ve collected over the Summer looks pretty shabby under the light of a Prometheus’ torch, and at this point we probably are more likely to pull the trap and let it fall into the incinerator; this is not necessarily without emotion; the catharsis of being released from your captivity is still a weepy one, and the free world is not necessarily your comfort zone, so there is likely to be conflicted feelings and farewell toasts made to moth eaten sweaters and silent amplifiers, whether they be inorganic objects or anthropomorphic analogues.

From here Luna proceeds to ingress Taurus at 8 pm, where she stays until the evening of the 8th. This is her exaltation and should be considered and used as necessary over the two day stretch. The Moon here can help us apply balms to relax, as well as find our resources and mingle work and play, as does a bear who knows not that he works when he forages for berries or follows scent across several miles to a spawning stream. This is lucky as Venus squares Saturn on October 7th and followed by Mars’ square to Kronos on the 10th. Hard aspects to Saturn is something Venus hates, and she hasn’t done this since the moment she stood direct out of retrograde last April, but then she was on her throne of ultimate exaltation, now she is only minimally dignified and in fall, as well as conjunct Mars. The ruler of the sign she is in is combust the Sun and obscured, looking out into space; It’s just her and the malefics. The Moon is in no position to aid her until the morning of the 8th, but even then is weakening by dignity and waning. As projects draw to a close we must sacrifice aesthetic to meet deadlines and work a hot pace, often becoming cruel with our editing pen, slashing our own designs with the red marker, or worse, the actual axe. It might be here that beauty and pleasure are of little to no concern, although, Venus moves quick enough to at least make this a brief chapter, hurting but not for very long. For those of you in perpetual aesthetic vacillation this could work to your advantage. The leaky roof trumps the intricate trim-work, simple as that. You’ll not care over winter under feet of snow what the exterior of your house looks like when the outdoors are frozen shut and sparkling Orion is slight in time compared to the roar of Vulcan in the cast iron companion. This is the proverbial tomorrow’s perspective, October 6th, 7th and 8th’s might be a bit different. Alternately, this could be the bugle to arms heard by a slumberer who just prostrated onto their cot. Keep marching Mars says, and Saturn adds “in time! hup! one two…”

Mercury and the Sun are well into the second decan of Libra by the superior conjunction on the 8th. As this applies over the previous Mercurynight into Sunday, it is sure to be an applicable aspect. What will Mercury be looking to up above? He searches for relationship with celestial beings, gods, deities, angels, aliens, stellar spirits— when he makes contact he engages readily in conversation and is keen to mediate discourse and draw up pacts or agreements. This is a hard time for the Sun, who’s job it is to be itself, but here focuses on others instead. Perhaps a handy problem if sympathetic action or possession of a higher being is what’s on the agenda where forgetting ones own identity is mandatory; the part of the Invocation when you assume the godform and speak as if divine, your footfalls thundering to the floorboards. This is a superior conjunction as the Sun enters the Via Combusta, or Fiery Way, a tract of the Zodiac uncomfortable for the luminaries, but useful for magicians. This is when the Morrigu makes her speeches that incept the action of the Tain. It is the fall winds carrying crow cries that stories of carrion are told after everything forefield has been plucked and cleaned, like the very bones stooped over by Vultures, in this wind raspy voices speak and for those that wish to listen oracular songs are sung. Interesting that this occurs celestially, with Mercury directed upward to Corvus, the crow of stars, as if in consultation with the black feathered carrion bird who picks at the entrails of the universe, the starry bowels spilt unto the firmament. This is paralleled with the last superior conjunction upon entering Cancer on the 21st of June. Then Mercury looked to celestial mothers and stellar milk-streams. Now he looks to scavenger mothers and streams of blood, who tell tales of instigation that start wars which produce many slain on the battlefield so she can feast and feed her young. There is something loose-lipped (or beaked) about this period, and of course it begins in Libra when we grow social and talkative. It is neutral Mercury’s job to merely listen, as it is the magician’s also in this case. Listen well to the sayings of the oracle and pay her politely for her words, you are not meant to bend or chew a Sybil’s ear.

On Monday the 9th the pair begin to separate, Mercury summoned on from the Sun’s heart and then square Pluto in tandem, the raucous clang of the Void startling and sudden, like the brazen bowls hung around Delphi and Dodona, hissed and swooped at by black doves and winged women who hunch over skin drums with double ended mallets; this is like the opposite of the Full Moon before the weekend, something you see looming in a side-glance as you proceed from Hades or march away from the crossroads with eyes fixed strait ahead, no looking back. Pluto is near the fixed Star Vega in the constellation Lyra, now seen as simply the stringed instrument strummed by Orpheus but until a few centuries ago was seen as the Stymphalian Vulture carrying a harp in its beak. The plasma of this star feeds the vacuum of Pluto and even though Pluto’s immeasurable depths eat its light some electromagnetic aura permeates its blackness. Helios and Hermes, just separating from their ritual embrace, awe at the enormity of its exhale, their shoulders shiver and it is felt below Olympus on the grounds where we mortals dwell; Vega adds enchantment to a planet’s significations, spell-binding music and mysterious skill but in its negative context it implies deception; has the oracle lied? Was that the spirit you meant to conjure or an imposter. I shudder to think. Was that Zeus or his doppelganger Hermes saw when in the heavens? Will the Great Work end in peril, the temple collapsing into a chasm, monuments swallowed by the mountain, or may things proceed as stated, with alliances standing no matter what difficulties be faced? There are times when we question who is on our side, deamons and deities included, and it is not a bad idea to periodically check in and make sure your allies are pleased, human or non. Alternately, this might be a moment to unleash some particularly haunting and visceral music, inspired equally by the divine as the chthonic, the bells of heaven echoing in the halls of hell.

A very apt theme music for Tuesday the 10th, as Jupiter enters Scorpio at 9am (EST) during a Grand Cross formed by Mars applying to square Saturn, Venus opposing Chiron separating from her Saturn square and the Moon opposite Saturn in Gemini. Vibes to say the least. For those who love to look forward to Samhain there will be plenty of threads to follow. The wounds of love and the love of wounds, thorny roses romance, vampire kisses and the like, martial fire summoned under discipline and hot tempers made to sit and seethe, the blade white hot who wishes for the hammer blows and tempering quench, the idyl whimsy snagging us in the fray— the moment in a novel when the protagonist’s distractions are clearly fatal but you cannot reach within the text and slap some sense or shout forewarnings. Grand Crosses are usually brief, and this one involving the Moon will be almost momentary, but it may be that an alarm goes off in your head, and even though it sounds for 60 seconds at full volume, you remember that afternoon as when things changed.

…and change they will, as Jupiter will be in a new sign for the first time since September 9th of 2016. In Libra Jupiter expanded coherence of Justice, inflating what is silently fair and stoically diplomatic, rolling out wider sheets so that greater alliances can be added to the map, the binding chains that connect body to body growing too large for many to even lift or move. The world began to be seen as vast balances and imbalances, and imbalances that must be put in balance with balances and vis versa. Everything has its opposite and everything in the world must be, thus it cannot be banished but just placed on the proper side of the scale. As we are aware, this is all for better or for worse depending on your opinion and individual views certainly tampered with Jupiter’s agenda throughout his Libra phase as he opposed disruptive and volatile Uranus three times. We can trace Jupiter’s attempts but also see where they failed, faltered or were thwarted into bizarre mutation, and quite obliviously at that.

Entering Scorpio and free of Uranus’ influence Jupiter now salivates for knowledge and philosophy, learning and pleasure pursued with the ravenous hunger of the predator. Though its sights are set on prey wisdom this is still Jupiter, and is akin to the cloistered monk we know and love, but the one of the clerical underground, the ecclesiastic figures who by night copied out grimoire compilations by hand and conjured the demons their intriguing seals poetically promised. Hedonist friars, such as those François Rabelais portrays at the Abbaye de Thélème in Gargantua and Pantagruel. Indeed, by the second decan Jupiter searches for coconspirators and collaborators on the path; others to overturn stones with and indulge in the Salamander’s they find beneath. This opens up a whole world of transformative philosophy and spiritual understanding that metamorphoses those that step into the orb of the swelling paradigm. By the time the masses catch wind of what has been released from Scorpionic hot springs it reads as Sagittarian fire, motivational spirit and syncretisms. No bother, the world gets the medicine spoon fed, goals and targets just develop before their eyes and they run at them on borrowed legs. Jupiter’s times in Scorpio tend to see rises in occult interests, much to the shock of lifelong occultists, but this round the focus on magic, mystery and hidden or transformational knowledge might be a welcomed relief from political and environmental horror, and as stated, usually stimulates, stirs and stokes up the year that follows.

Free of Uranus for a year but not Neptune and Pluto which Jupiter repeatedly trines and sextiles. In this case harmonization with dark fantasy and the limits of material resources spell out sultry art and magic as well as an utter need to kill and rebirth our coherence of reality. Also of note, these encounters with the other outer two planets happen in pretty clear sequence following the first. What Uranus disturbed and broke created cracks that Neptune is free to slip through, Jupiter already willing to work in friendly proximity to Pluto. Old paradigms and spiritualities dying as new ones are born; let us hope as always that the emphasis is not on the NEW but on the REAL, the timeless rather than the temporal.