The Astrology Of October 2020: Magma Splatter

Matt Kleberg

The Beast circles around the room, pulling its skin taught, brown-grey and elephant like, holding its wings back in a high tension state, imperceptibly mumbling and growling, fangs and jumble of jagged teeth grinding, biting the corners of its tongue, shuffling its hooves across the concrete. It checks the door again. Still locked, and looks at the plate glass double mirror, its own angry reflection, what’s on the other side? It checks the doorknob, still locked, it burns, skin sizzles, it draws back its taloned hand, shrieks inside as there’s no point in letting out any expressive sounds any longer. It’s useless. It knows that now. Having argued with the ceiling tiles for months and months. The teleprompter flashes: “wanna chat?”— it flicks it off with a snap. Nope. Why would I? Nothing to report. Pacing, pacing.

The Beast wakes up from a nap, head tapping the floor to sense the self, picking some scales off the forearm, tasting its own blood, arching its back, kicks one hoof into the air, rolls onto its ribs, bites at the concrete, swipes the side of its face into the floor, hops up, does a couple stretches and spins in place, considers getting back down on the ground, no, instead, pacing, pacing, pacing. Try the knob, glance at the mirror. Pacing, pacing.

This used to be the place. It chose to be here. This is where it all happened. There was moss on the rocks, which got scraped off to reveal concrete. There used to be a hillside over yonder where it’d take its prey and munch through a purple sunset and digest into twilight. That became a desk. There was a dark lane of trees, an old ox cart track, ruts and stone walls, swamps and cedars swallowing historic cemeteries, it would look for love, other beasts strolling the lane by night. Now there is a scratch in the wall there, thats it, a mark on the face of the cell.

There’s no way out there’s no way out there’s no way out there’s no way out there’s no way out, wait. The Beast approaches its reflection. Snorts in its own face. Swipes a finger through the glass fog. Draws a character. It’s old name. Erases it. Stares into its own eyes. Deeper and deeper into the pupil holes. Lost. It places its palm against the surface, gives a slight push. It’s stiff but there’s some give. There’s a bit of flex. It looks over its shoulder at the door. The knob waiting in silence cool as brass but it knows it will burn its fingers like it has for the past year. There’s no way to open and walk. The Beast returns to its reflection. Heart pounding, blood pumping, lungs filling, nerves tingling, skin prickling, saliva flowing, tears welling, raises up on its haunches, makes a wild cry and with both fists shatters its reflection, destroying any remaining semblance of self. There’s nothing on the other side but it dives, on weak wings atrophied from low ceilings, battles against gravity as it propels through the void in search of more meaning.

Full Moon Aries

-separating from Chiron

Venus ingress Virgo

Pluto stations direct

Mercury opposite Uranus

MarsRX square Pluto

Venus trine Uranus

Sun square Jupiter

Neptune sextile Jupiter

Venus sextile Mercury

Sun opposite Mars

Mercury stations RX

-Moon conjunct Uranus

-separating from Uranus opposition

Sun square Pluto

New Moon in Libra

-separating from square to Pluto

Sun square Saturn

Venus opposite Neptune

MarsRX square Jupiter

Venus trine Jupiter

MercuryRX opposite Uranus

Venus trine Pluto

Sun ingress Scorpio

Venus trine Saturn

Mercury cazimi Scorpio

Venus and MercuryRX ingress Libra

Full Moon Taurus

-Moon conjunct Uranus

-Sun opposite Uranus

Charles Francois Lacroix

Full Moon Aries, New Moon Libra, Full Moon Taurus

This month the luminary ball gets passed between the Lesser Malefic to the Lesser Benefic, our planets of Yang and Yin respectively, Mars and Venus, as Mars rules the month’s initial Full Moon in Aries followed mid month by a New Moon in Venus’ diurnal domicile Libra and ending October out with an outrageous full Moon in Taurus on the final calendar day. The climactic juicing up of incendiary, impulsive, action oriented Aries while Mars is in house, retrograde and separating from a square with Saturn is not as straight forward and direct as Mars is dying to be here. On the very 1st of the month we’ll get a sloshing over cup of critical activity like splatterings of lava spurting from the pressure and rendering things around us melted down, burnt up, irreparably damaged or separated from their source. A swelling series of amputations of appendage from mechanism. This of course is unfortunate space weather and shitty circumstances will illustrate this, but the larger pattern playing out is one of us cutting ourselves out of imprisonment from within the machine. What if there was a world outside of this one and every which way our reality is overbuilt and imploding upon itself has us surfing the magma to the shear unknown waiting for us after Saturn and Jupiter ingress into Aquarius by Winter Solstice? This lunation is an event of upsurge in the vital juices which are overly constricted, and with it we get some red hot and dangerous suddenly piercing this way and that, so be warned, we are certainly in the hard hat area and working conditions require additional safety measures, although there is no avoiding operating the powertools at this point, and some ends of this infrastructure are about to get lopped off and burned out so if you are not destroying something in your life constructively you might be headed for a surprise botch job as the operation falls into your lap for you. We might get really excited about something or other here, and we could find ourselves all amped up to cut the cords and attempt sequences of severance that are normally too intimidating to consider, and there is some body wisdom packed away in the image of the psychopath thrashing against his restraints. The straight jacket was put on for his own good, so he doesn’t hurt himself, because he’s crazy; but is he so crazy? Who is behind the sick mind who prescribed rubber rooms, lobotomies and shock treatments? Why medical experts of course. Flash forward 2020. Here’s the cracking point. If you’ve wondered what the mental health impact of “draconian measures” might be look around and see if you can see any permanently traumatized friends and family, I’m sure you’ll find some. And I’m sure history will see what we’ve done this year as horrific and inhuman mismanagement. This is on all levels, fires, information, schools, security, authority, economy, ecology; all wrong. Glance at the world stage then slowly turn and square your own personal life in your vision. At which constructs do you move towards with your plasma torch and sawzall? The traffic controller directs the movement: ok don’t stop, go but slowly, slower, keep moving, slowly, wait, waaaiiit, ok now, go go go go go go go GO GO GO GO GO GO, stop, stop stop, now keep moving, slowly, slowly, slowly etc. etc. Not a great environment for extracting mangled mechanical systems with powertools, although we literally no longer have any option, and our emotional steam kettle is about to blow its top. The Moon is also bursting with amphetamine flavor on top of Chiron, highlighting that this is probably all about hurting ourselves, like turning the scalpel inward in some sense and locating the boil, lancing the poison, extracting the shrapnel. The instant result is an upwelling of gore, but the eventual outcome is a healthier system and some learned lessons, some integrated visions of oracular wellness. To get there we have to bite the bullet and sleep with some snakes.

Stanley Scott

The October 16th New Moon in Libra is another kettle of fish. Now we are on the Venusian end, sowing seeds into the dark, silent moments of potential manifestation. Values, desires, attractions, connections, pleasures, aesthetics, in the mode of the cultural, diplomatic, relational, mediative, hosting arts, equality and justice. But this contemplative nod to our intentions comes square to both Pluto and Saturn, contextualized by a societal collapse and a Plutocratic empire in a holding pattern of oppression and mismanagement. We’d all like to come into accord but it might not be possible. Society and nature, or the structures left in your life which are probably getting swallowed into the shadows all say unanimously no, equal agreement is just not on the table. When we are left with the only option to agree to disagree this does not mean we continue to argue, but set the parameters on the scales of fairness as best we can. We might find difficulty in measuring correctly, the equipment is weighted unfairly, there’s no way around that, the game is fixed, but there are balances we might make in this problematic meditation exercise that are more deeply nuanced than we might realize at first with our rational minds, such as simply, nature isn’t fair, life isn’t fair and the illusion that it can be can be as destructive as the agendas which pursue to tip the scales all the way to one side. The nuances we find in the balancing of the balanced imbalance are where the realizations here emerge. Universal equilibrium rather than flat line fairness. What we are looking for is relativity and a way to understand each other and have hard conversations about how we relate, rather than a mechanical leveling of the playing field. I’m describing the astrology itself here. The metaphors are yours to stretch out toward the current moment in history and your personal affairs. Although, this quiet moment of problematic and ominous rebalance in the dark is likely the natural follow up of having lopped off important components around the Aries Full Moon when we were drunk with passion and loaded with artillery.

William Patrick Roberts

Of course by October 22nd the Sun slips itself into something a little more fucking dark and deadly as he spirals down into the dungeons of Scorpio and we orient ourselves with getting even more serious and willing to plunge into problems and pull our hearts out and proceed through the dark night of the soul with them clutched in our fists. For some (Scorpios) this is their cup of tea, and for many others this is simply terrifying, but can somehow also be oh so good, just right. This switch into even more desire drive sets us up for the explosive Full Moon in Taurus tightly conjunct Uranus on Halloween (ha ha ha). With a stroke of luck this lunation is ruled by a Venus in rulership so the pleasure potential is palpable, although she is also opposite Chiron so she is likely still attempting to put the pain inflicted from the last Full Moon’s eruptions back into balance with radical balms. Take the principles of sensual gratification, rhythm, groove, fertile creative tangibility and methodical movements and turn the voltage up on them until they glow like Las Vegas and vibrate themselves apart. There is extreme mischief possible here, an inability to hold or control inhibitions, and plenty of wild disruption to the regular patterns. We might see major market rodeos in the market value, and some absolute debaucherous bashes disguised as costumed balls in a year spent ironically already behind masks and kept out of close contact. Uranus-Taurus-Moon isn’t having any of that. This will be dangerously Dionysian despite the ever looming shadow of restriction. Set your parameters for discovery and a new way to do a regular thing. After we hack our way out of our cage, shedding all security features, and spend some time considering achieving new balance in an already bad situation, we here begin to bring our new unorthodox methods out into the world and se how they roll. All I can really say is good luck, hang on and have fun. Also take notes. It’s all experimental.

*

Sir William Hamilton

Mars Retrograde

And our backwards moving military correspondent Mars hosting not only the Aries Full Moon early in the month but also a few other notable aspects along the way. Mars retrogrades are periods where we do things that are normally too difficult for us to be willing to attempt and what results is a test of our capabilities and tactical approach to an onslaught of incoming obstacles. The procedure is actually something that in the end tunes up our abilities and makes us more aware of our power, even though the events throughout are often the opposite of affirming feeling. Mars square to Pluto on the 9th follows up the Saturn square separating from the week prior. We likely by this point made a mess of things mechanically, and the debris is probably visible in the city streets as well. This is not all bad. The overbuilt systems needed a tear down, even if the rebuild will have to wait for more than a couple months down the line, we’ve carved out our work space. We’ve faced the music, but now we deal with the unknowns. Anyone who has ever done renovation work knows that opening up the walls reveals rot hiding within and often much more than a small section ends up needing to be cut away. Pluto spits some unprecedented problems from the shadows that had been lurking in the no where zone— but also presents initiatory experiences and major threshold crosses. Once you have crossed the line there is no going back so you become someone more experienced than you had been before by facing your fears and doing the difficult work despite the dangers.

Pietro Fabris

The Sun opposes Mars on the 13th, marking the middle of his retrograde cycle. At this point he’s on his way out, even though that means digging himself back out of the rubble he’s created. Mars remains up Shit’s Creek, but he’s sen the light, got the memo, heard the news, woke up to what needs to go down to navigate back to where he’d like to be and knows more about how he should be operating and acting on the go to get there. This is also a moment in Mars’ two year long synodic cycle, so larger sweeps of power and capability and efficiency, vitality and energy might all be considered. Where have you gotten yourself into your personal power journey since September 2nd of 2019, a time when we were specifically purifying and centering upon or precision effectiveness of operation and mechanical perfection or even divine inspiration, and now that we have gotten all the way to maybe more powerful than the world will allow us to be, how do we make mechanical cuts that lead us to a year from now more steady and effective than before. It might have been little things then, details and accuracy, and now those particulars allow us to wield considerable energy, but to really use it properly we have to cut our selves out of the box we’ve built around ourselves a long time ago and exit our place of protection and safety.

George Cruikshank

On October 19th Mars squares Jupiter and gets some mechanical coherence on this, and all the problems within the array that need to to be fixed. This is like a diagnostic report of everything that’s wrong with your car that you’d have to resolve for it to pass inspection. Not a jolly delivery of knowledge and gnosis, but if you are going to improve your martial form and progress in your path of practice these are golden legends to engage. Interestingly, Venus trines Jupiter from Virgo at exactly the same hour, which brings in precision logic from the aesthetic angle that Mars was considering last September when he came conjunct the Sun. There is a a multiple delivery here, the mechanical order form, the parts list, the instruction manual, a video tutorial, some aesthetic direction, how to improve the functionality of the machine as well as clean the lines, make it more functional, faster and look more right and ready for competition in one go. This is not a slack or relax realization, but some lucidity offered to bring shop affairs into better self awareness.

*

Max Beckmann

Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio

A rather prominent signature of October is Mercury’s retrograde in Scorpio, ruled over by a retrograde Mars in Aries. Mercury went retrograde in Scorpio last year, and some dark yet meaningful communications and travels and revelations were unleashed, although then the ruler of Scorpio was in Libra, having an awkward time dealing with social dynamics and trying to act without rocking the boat too much. This time around Mars is fired up, pacing in his cage, willing to kill and planning a jail break. The assessment of our emotional boiler rooms are going to be a lot more loaded and weaponized this round. Effectively less delicate which is good, but the deepness of the wounds beneath the bandages we’ll be lifting will be much more severe. In this sequence we are trying to communicate something in the appropriate mood of seriousness and depth of meaning. We are dissolving the forms on the canvas until they are mired and melted and then reworking them until they convey the appropriate impression of incendiary impulse and focus of spiritual inertia. From emotional miasma we begin our investigation and with persistent psychological sleuthing, beyond the point of loosing the thread we find ourselves in a more sensical sequence that describes a plot hung on more potent pillars of passion than when we began and inspires action even in the most restrictive of times. A confusing, emotionally saturated and intense episode and one that might be no stranger to grief but is likely oriented to figuring out how to become literate of ourselves on deeper levels of the soul than we might have been able to touch initially.

Before plunging into the depths Mercury opposes Uranus on the 7th and then sextiles Venus on the 12th. Epiphanies from our value systems and connective beckoning from our desires and attractions inform us both from sudden and disruptive epiphanies and collaborations from the processes we are working through on other life layers. This remains significant as the Moon trines Uranus, sextiles Mercury and then conjoins Venus on the day Mercury stations retrograde, October 13th, highlighting this circuitry between these nocturnal signs, Taurus, material methods and organic rhythms radicalized by Uranus, Virgo where Venus is obsessing over aesthetic details, and Scorpio where Mercury is correcting our expressions of the soul deep or gut wrenching. How we experience sensuality, how we make what we make and experiment with what we have in a disrupted world, what are the particularities of desire and how this is communicated and expressed to properly convey where this all registers and forms meaning from our most intimate centers. The voltage remains on as Mercury pivots upon and passes by the live wire opposing Uranus again by the 19th. Surges are going to be coursing through our visceral bodies. We might have to adjust our pace and move differently.

Han Bing

Mercury’s conjunction with the Sun occurs on the 25th, where we gather insights about our hungers and the ruthlessness of our intentions. You can’t convince a wolf to not be a wolf. Animals are animals, it is dangerous to treat a wolf like a dog, or a panther like a kitten, lest we forget. Nature does what nature does, something we might be reminded of multiple times under the skies of October. As we are still considering such messages whispered into our ear Venus and Mercury enter Libra at the same time from opposite ends. Mercury might be still retrograde, but now he is copresent the ruler of Libra, and receiving resources of charm, grace, diplomacy, artfulness, elegance and balance. This Mercury is correcting social errors and attending to reworking relationship rifts with special skill, and has much more pleasant things on his mind. This will likely be quite a balance from the rest of the intensity and pressure. Although as there is a pile of problems still in a late cardinal sign it will not be a diversion from the greater narrative, but a player in the larger game, even if it is a socially more cognizant one.

*

Pablo Picasso

Venus in Fall, Venus in Rulership

Venus enters her traditional Fall on the second day of October and remains there until some of the last days of the month. For these weeks she will be nit picking details, adjusting aesthetics, critiquing beauty, processing desires, getting technical with connection and reverse engineering the pleasure principle. This is pretty apt for a Mercury retrograde in a sign of deep primal instinct and animalistic desire. We might find ourselves paying particular technical attention to sorting out the nuts and bolts of what our inner depths dictate and have to listen to our passions in some collaboration with getting our priorities straight, not from the perspective of what we think we should do, but what feels right, what we connect with, what satisfies our desires, and how those systems within us operate in actuality. 2020 has posed quite a few problems with its massive insistence on contraction and restriction, and we are at the point where we are figuring ourselves out in a repressed and depressed world. Ready to primal scream and identify our own sexual circuitry and have the animal design within us throw us into a lycanthropic fit? Well we probably can’t be ready for our monstrous transformation, not something you can prepare for, but in a world that has decided to be completely inhuman we get to witness what its like to become wild beasts, from the inside out. The operation might be technical, and messy emotionally, but the goal is to get our desires met deeply in a more efficient way.

Along the way she trines Uranus on the 10th, which instigates some unorthodox and experimental methods, sextiling Mercury right before he turns retrograde, which suggests the experiments result in some very interesting circumstances indeed, we’ll certainly have to rethink things now. Venus then opposes Neptune on the 18th, the parameters and settings around getting satisfied just right are maybe getting completely confused, but somehow we are navigating from intuition and just following our fantasies and its relatively streamlined, despite the world being haunted by corruption and in a state of oppressive system collapse. Throughout the days which follow there’s somehow a lucid way to sneak our little bit of pleasure out of the works even if its mostly a matter of finding the needle in the haystack and hitting it just so we might find our little niche with persistent research and testing that jives with the current dark days of the soul. This could be just the sequence we needed to realize as we get bay the final countdown of October Venus delivered to her homesign and able to achieve full expression at last of grace and harmony. We might have in our own ways achieved awareness of how to host and charm and socialize effectively in the fallen over building that is current society. Society itself might only offer us maladies but if we keep and cultivate our cultural values we can keep our balance within it, derive pleasure from connecting with one another and attend to our creative and artistic sensibilities.

*

Franz Marc-Tyrol

Jupiter Direct Working Out Of Capricorn

While this is all transpiring Jupiter is creeping into motion and working on walking his way out of the impressive halls and oppressive gates of Capricorn. The Sun Squares him on the 11th, as we are all looking for a little coherence and wisdom and some what the fuck is going on behind the scenes up top in the high office we are buzzing and calling up the chain, hey, come on, wake up, we need some help here. We don’t know if we maybe instead should look down into the dungeon where our Master Of Ceremonies is likely shackled to the wall, held hostage by the malefics on a tear. Not only can he not hear us through the thick stone walls but he’s been drugged, as Neptune sextiles Jupiter the next day— what’s going on is far too confusing for even him to make sense of it anyway so don’t bother asking? If you want to know where things went wrong go back to the beginning. Whatever we heard about anything at all causing this crisis back in December and January was incorrect. So are the draconian measures worth it? Are the restrictions working? —Against what? Jupiter might answer in reply. We didn’t even have anything right to begin with and have just been reacting in fear from the beginning, and now the whole thing is going to collapse as a result. Jenga. Analysts will be pulling their hair out trying to untangle it for centuries, unless of course an AI figures the whole thing out over night on Winter Solstice December 21st 2020 as the astrology suggests and then yes, we did this all for nothing. Really we did this to realize we can’t trust the system or who manages it at all, zero, no one can, and the mode of operation it ascribes to is dead, completely. The result will be the acknowledgement of larger scope systems and multiplicitous patterns in a world of complexifying awareness and the data sets that exponentially expand with it. What we know about ourselves no longer fits into the box, its spilling out of the format and thats a problem as big as 2020.

Mars in retrograde motion squares Jupiter on the 19th as Venus trines Jupiter. Every aspect these planet makes is a call to a wider coherence that comes back in some sense inadequate. We are having to build a supercomputer to deal with the data load but Jupiter prints out a shopping list for the auto parts store. It’s just not going to do it. We need an altogether new approach. We might get things demolished this year and couple base mechanisms repaired in the process, but only to realize that we can’t go on this way and we need other ideas completely. October is part of the count down days of the machine ceasing to operate or be relevant. We have only a few months left before we won’t even attempt to fix the problem at all anymore, and simply crumple up the blueprints and start over.

Prabhakar Pachpute