This week the Moon gathers silver light as she strides the second quarter of her monthly journey, approaching but not attaining fullness. Meanwhile, Mercury’s Thursday conjunction with Saturn looks over serious discussions, solemn considerations and melancholy thoughts, burdening the early week with a heavy tone. A more pleasant Friday follows, and Saturday sees Venus enter the sign of the Scorpio, readying us for a review of the use and abuse of desire.

Reaper’s Delight: Conjunctions to Saturn in Libra

This week and the next have Saturn at the crux of their concerns. Saturn, bestriding the late middle degrees of Libra is privy to one, two, three conjunctions with other planets during the first half of October. The first, the grim judge’s conjunction with Venus, is already a few days behind us. The next, quick Mercury’s meet-up with Saturn, is only days away- occurring on Thursday. The last is the Sun’s yearly reunion with the glum reaper, which happens next Thursday, the 13th.

While conjunctions with Saturn often tend toward the doomy, this year Saturn is in a rather auspicious condition, making his stern rays considerably more benefic. We’ll see Saturn’s use Libra’s scales to politely, but firmly, point out the imbalances in our life, strongly suggesting that we bring these areas into equilibrium.

This week, in particular, sees the conjunction of swift Mercury and slow Saturn in the sign of the Scales. Conversations slide away from the usual Libran frivolity and toward the serious. Important negotiations are underway, key contacts are made. The sense of impending judgment may squelch a celebratory tone, but this is a fine week to forge a master plan, to hammer out a contract or negotiate a truce. Don’t let the too-serious tone put you off. Instead, engage unflinchingly with the duties that are yours. You will find that obligations met and tasks accomplished transform burdens into blessings with shocking alacrity.

Desire’s Tutor: Venus into Scorpio

This Saturday, Venus departs the mirrored halls of Libra and descends into the bowels of Scorpio. Venus is considered to be in her detriment in Scorpio, temporarily putting people in a crankier place, making it harder to find harmony, and tempting us to compensate with unwholesome pleasures. We’ll be dealing with the evening star in her goth get-up until November 1st, when Venus moves into Sagittarius.

There is an important undercurrent of review writhing beneath Venus’ slow cruise down Scorpio’s underworld river this year. It was in the confines of the Scorpion’s sign that saw Venus’ last retrograde. Last fall’s lessons on both the fulfillment and frustration of desire will come up for review over the next month.

Horoscopes ♈ ♉ ♊ ♋ ♌ ♍ ♎ ♏ ♐ ♑ ♒ ♓

Horoscopes are not a real chart reading by an experienced astrologer. However, they are fun and can be reasonably accurate. In addition to referring to your Sun sign, read your from Ascendant and Moon if you know them. If you don’t, find out. I’m a long time fan of the free chart generation software at astro.com.

♈ Aries: The Ram

This Thursday Mercury reaches conjunction with Saturn in Libra, the messenger communicating hard truths and asking for real commitments. There is a contract you’ve written that bounds what passes between yourself and others, an invisible set of laws which you have drawn up with your words and deeds. You may find it has come to either agree to what you’ve signed up for or draw up a new draft.
Venus enters Scorpio on Saturday the 8th, bringing you back to the lessons learned about the tangled complexity of working with others, the sticky combination of resources to accomplish something you could not achieve alone.

♉ Taurus: The Bull

This Thursday Mercury reaches Saturn in Libra, pulling you toward the hard balance of monies spent, not to mention the call to examine the ledger of your physical energies. Consider carefully both your fiscal and physical limitations as you review your standing this week.
Venus enters Scorpio on Saturday the 8th, beginning a review of lessons learned about the temptations and travails of desire. This set of lessons on the nature of desire, its satisfaction and frustration, make way for a refinement of your approach to relationships.

♊ Gemini: The Twins

This Thursday Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra, contracting your attention around exactly what you’ve been spending your creative energy on. What have you brought into being with your expenditures- and furthermore- what can you do to bring it into greater balance? Whether it’s a half finished book, a child or your life-style, the question of equilibriating what you have brought into being remains the same.
Venus enters Scorpio on Saturday the 8th, returning you to lessons you’ve been handed over the past year about the importance of keeping your physical and financial health from decay. The occasional holiday from desire, whether in the form of a fast or a tight budget, is an important key to staying strong.

♋ Cancer: The Crab

This Thursday Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra, bringing your thoughts to your living situation. This is an excellent week to become aware of the limitations of your crash pad and consider how you might overcome them. I would start with getting your mom to move out.
Venus enters Scorpio on Saturday the 8th, bringing you back to what you’ve learned about the relationship between creativity and desire. We cannot give birth to everything we can desire, but the lust to bring something into being is, nonetheless, key to its incubation. If you’re still letting your desire to create stagnate, October’s the time to correct that.

♌ Leo: The Leo

This Thursday Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra, bringing your attention to a number of chores that require attention. More than that, though, the conjunction this week highlights the degree to which you are applying an understanding of diplomacy to your interactions. You can still be you, just be less of a dick.
Venus enters Scorpio on Saturday the 8th, connecting you to family dynamics and emphasizing your living situation. The bright planet asks questions as she tours the stingered sign. Have your purged your relationships of old and stagnant feelings over the last year? Have you made your home a place where the energies circulate freely, or are things still getting stuck in old patterns?

♍ Virgo: The Virgin

This Thursday Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra, providing a rather stern cost-benefit analysis of your current situation. Take the facts to head (not to heart) and consider ways in which you could spend less and do more.
Venus enters Scorpio on Saturday the 8th returning you to what you’ve learned about the emotional facets of communication over the last year. Have you become more conscious of your tone’s effect on people, both for the better and worse? If not, bring your mind to bear on these topics. Sometimes the medium is message.

♎ Libra: The Scales

This Thursday Mercury conjoins Saturn in your own sign, prompting a series of hard and rather self critical moods. This stern review of your situation is not meant to move you to tears, though. If you can ward off the melancholy, it can serve as a profound week of self reorganization. Beneath what emotional reactions may come, there is a potent ability to bring equilibrium to the extremes still oscillating within you.
Venus’ time in Scorpio, from the 8th onward, brings you back to the lessons you’ve been privy to this year on the emotional weight of money. As Venus plows her way through the tunnels of Scorpio, you’d be wise to reflect on how easily money, and the lack thereof, is entwined with desire’s sticky strands. Don’t let your heartstrings be plucked so wantonly by the capricious hands of mammon.

♏ Scorpio: The Scorpion

Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra this week, pulling your attention inward, asking that you examine the progress you’ve made in reining in the more passionate extremes of your personality. What Saturn in Libra asks is not that you feel good or bad, but merely that you find and hold to the middle point between them. Try to put into words this week what a balanced relationship to your own passions looks like.
Venus enters Scorpio on the 8th , brining you back to the lessons you’ve learned about the nature of desire over the last year. Hopefully you’ve attained a level of mastery over your appetite for indulgence and propensity for asceticism, catching sight of the golden mean between them.

♐ Sagittarius: The Archer

This Thursday Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra, highlighting your place in the webwork of the larger social world. Important contacts and agreements arise for some, while a need to understand position and trajectory through the social world are important for all. Who are your friends again, and why?
Venus’ time in Scorpio, from the 8th onward, returns you to the past year’s lessons on what happens when you neglect and suppress your emotions. No matter how inconvenient, feelings don’t die when ignored. Instead, they transform into sinister revenants which stalk you endlessly. If you haven’t yet, do some ghost busting. Celebrate the acknowledgement of inconvenient truths and problematic desires.

♑ Capricorn: The Goat

This week Mercury conjuncts Saturn in Libra, bringing the structure of your professional position to the forefront. Contracts may be signed, and master plans pondered. Consider the stability of the positions you inhabit, and what you can do to bring a bit more harmony to your work professionally, as well as personally.
Venus’ time in Scorpio, from the 8th onward, brings you back to the lessons you’ve learned on the tangled nature of social networks and intense friendships. Hopefully, you’ll be able to say you’ve purged your social life of secret hostilities and stagnant emotions. If not, get to it.

♒ Aquarius: The Water Bearer

This week Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra, blowing thoughts toward your big picture, your long term trajectory. Turn your mind toward your direction and take the time to analyze whether you have brought into harmony the contradictions entailed in your proposed life-path. Though it may not be heartwarming to consider, it is far easier to switch paths before you walk down them.
Venus’ time in Scorpio, from the 8th onward, centers you on this last year’s lessons about the complicated nature of professional relationships. You’ve likely learned that business isn’t just business when people are involved. Hopefully as Venus plows through Scorpio’s underworld this October, you can say you’ve gained a certain sensitivity to the subtle dynamics of business relationships.

♓ Pisces: The Fish

This week Mercury conjoins Saturn in Libra, tying your thoughts toward your obligations to others, and theirs to you. Contracts written and unwritten define these exchanges. A bit of quick, conscientious work, will see debts paid all around.
Venus’ time in Scorpio, from the 8th onward, brings you back to last year’s lessons on the relationship between desire and long term goals. Though desire can pull you along a path, desire alone is not a consistent enough captain to plot a course. Look over how desire has both assisted you as well as led you astray over the past year.

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