Mercury goes retrograde today. Put down the pitchfork.
Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio today and runs backward until mid-November. Before the group chat blames it for every dropped call, here's what I actually do with these three weeks:
Back up your phone. (You should anyway. Mercury is just the reminder.)
Re-read texts before sending, especially anything written after 11pm.
Lean into the re- words: review, revise, reconnect. Old friends tend to resurface. Let them.
Bonus: Venus has been retrograde since early October, so it's a lovely season for an honest conversation and a terrible one for an impulse tattoo. Not that I'd know anything about that.
Hunter's Moon on Monday, so the spring tides are building. Water came right over the bottom of the slipway this morning and the gulls looked personally offended. Moon's in charge, as ever.
I let an astrologer read my chart blind. I took notes.
Theo (saturn_returns) offered to read my chart knowing nothing but my birth date, time and place. Being who I am, I recorded it and scored every claim afterward: hit, miss, or too vague to count.
Results: a lot of vague. A couple of clear misses (I am not 'secretly theatrical'). A handful of hits I'd expect from anyone who has met an engineer.
And one I can't shake. He said my Moon in the 4th house suggests I show love by fixing things for family. Last winter I spent forty hours restoring my farmor's broken mantel clock. I've never mentioned that here.
It doesn't prove anything. One data point is an anecdote. But I went home and wound the clock, and it felt like more than maintenance.
Scorpio season, Thoth edition: its three decans map to the 5, 6 and 7 of Cups, titled Disappointment, Pleasure and Debauch. In that order. Most accurate forecast I've ever read.
Venus has vanished into the sun's glare
All summer Venus was my evening companion, blazing low in the west after sunset walks. This week she's gone, lost in the sun's glare as she passes between us and it.
Astrologers call this stretch Venus retrograde and say it's a time to revisit what (and who) we value. I've been doing that gently: unsubscribing from things, calling my sister, letting a couple of old resentments go.
But honestly my favorite part is what comes next. In a few weeks she'll reappear on the other side of the sun as the morning star, which gives a chronic sunrise chaser the perfect excuse to be up at dawn in November. See you there, Venus.
Sopdet before dawn
Up at 5 to feed the cat (Bast's representative on earth, as she would remind you), and Sopdet was blazing over the neighbor's roof. Sirius, to most people. In ancient Egypt her return to the dawn sky announced the flood and the new year; this time of year she's just a bright, flickering companion for insomniacs and cat owners.
The Egyptians tracked 36 decan stars rising through the night, ten days each, and some Middle Kingdom coffins have star clocks painted on the inside of the lid. Possibly so the dead could tell the hour (the purpose is debated; I like this reading). I saw one in a museum years ago and still think about it: someone wanted their beloved to never lose track of time.
Poured a little water on the balcony for her and went back to bed.
Cheshvan, the month that smells like wet leaves
Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan today. Cheshvan has no holidays at all; after the whirlwind of Tishrei it's just... weeks. Some people call it Mar-Cheshvan, the bitter month.
But my study group spent last night in Sefer Yetzirah, which gives every month a letter, a sign and a sense. Cheshvan gets the letter Nun, the sign Akrav (Scorpio), and the sense of smell. And Berachot 43b says smell is the one pleasure the soul enjoys and the body doesn't.
So that's my practice for a month without holidays: noticing. Wet leaves on the walk to shul. Woodsmoke from the neighbor's chimney. Challah at 4pm on a Friday. Not a holiday, but holy enough.
Saturn return, second pass: a field report
Quick context for anyone new: about every 29 years Saturn comes back to the spot it held when you were born. Mine is in early Aries, and Saturn has been crossing it this year in three passes: once in the spring, once now on the retrograde, and once more early next year.
I used to roll my eyes at this. I'm a data analyst; I like things I can graph. But I've kept notes since March, and here's what the pattern looks like so far.
Pass one was the eviction notice. Not literal (well, a little literal; my landlord sold the building). Everything that had been 'fine for now' stopped being fine.
Pass two, this one, is the audit. Saturn doesn't punish, it reconciles the books. I've had more honest conversations in six weeks than in the previous five years. I told my dad I was proud of him. I quit the volunteer committee I'd been quietly resenting since 2023. I started therapy, which I had been 'about to start' for three years.
What I didn't expect: it isn't all heavy. There's a strange relief in finally doing the thing you knew you had to do. Like setting down a box you forgot you were carrying.
If you're 28 to 30 and everything feels stress-tested, you're not failing. You're being asked what's load-bearing. Keep what is. Thank the rest and let it go.
I'll report back after pass three.
Hesiod would be very confused in Melbourne
Hesiod says to plough when the Pleiades set at dawn. They're getting there: every morning this month they hang a little lower in the west as the sky goes pale. In Boeotia that meant autumn, mud and wheat.
In Melbourne it's spring. My neighbour is already building tomato cages, because round here everyone plants tomatoes on Cup Day. Same stars, opposite season.
I've stopped trying to force the old calendar onto the southern sky. Now my notebook has two columns: what the stars meant in Greece, and what the land is actually doing here. The gods seem fine with it. Hestia has never once asked which hemisphere her hearth is in.
Two birthdays, one of them set by the moon
Amma texted at 5:10am: 'Today is your star. Go to temple if you can.' In our Tamil family your birthday isn't only the date on the calendar. It's also the day the moon returns to your birth nakshatra in the month you were born. Mine is Revathi.
Growing up in Toronto I found this mortifying. Two birthdays, and one of them moved every year. Now I love it. The Gregorian one gets cake and coworkers. The star one gets an archana on my lunch break, the priest chanting my name and my star, a phone call with Amma, and a quiet hour of feeling claimed by something much older than me.
If you've never asked your elders what star you were born under, ask. It's a very good excuse for a phone call.