The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 555, titled:

November Astrology Forecast 2026

With Chris Brennan

Episode originally released on October 23, 2026

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2026/10/23/november-astrology-forecast-2026/

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo

Transcription released October 30th, 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking about the astrological forecast for November of 2026. All right, this is gonna be a deep dive where I’m gonna go into all the astrology of November sequentially. This is gonna be a solo episode, because Austin is away on a trip this week to celebrate Kaitlin’s birthday, although I did receive a mysterious letter from him via carrier pigeon that I’ll be reading towards the end of this episode. So I’ll save that for the end. But otherwise, because I just recently did a whole Venus retrograde in the news segment that I just released, like, yesterday, I’m gonna skip the news and jump right into the forecast here today, because I did that last month and it actually worked out really well and it seemed like a lot of people enjoyed that. So yeah, let’s jump right into it. Let’s get into the forecast for November without any further ado. 

So here’s the Planetary Movements Calendar that shows where the planets will start at the beginning of the month and how far through the signs of the zodiac they’ll get by the end of the month for those watching the video version. And we got a lot of stuff going on this month. So we have the continuation and sort of culmination of the Venus retrograde, which will finally go exact or finally end and go direct in the middle of this month on November 13th, the Venus retrograde which started in Scorpio in early October and then will station direct later in Libra on November 13th. We also have the second half of a Mercury retrograde which is technically just starting, what, a couple of days from now. Today is October 22nd; it starts on October 24th. And then Mercury will retrograde from 20 degrees of Scorpio all the way back to five degrees of Scorpio before stationing direct on November 13th, which is right in the middle of the month on the same day that Venus stations direct, which is gonna be a very powerful day or set of few days around November 13th this month. And we actually open the month of November with the cazimi when the Sun and Mercury conjoin on November 4th. 

We also have the Mars retrograde ramping up this month, especially when Mars goes into Virgo towards the end of the month on November 25th. That’s gonna be really important, because Mars is slowing down and getting ready to station retrograde on January 10th at 10 degrees of Virgo, and as soon as it goes into Virgo it squares Uranus right at the beginning of December. So we’re gonna be feeling that very strongly by the last week of November as Mars ingresses into Virgo and immediately begins that square with Uranus. 

What else is going on? Let’s see. We open the month with just coming out of the Venus retrograde, which has just come into or retrograded back into Libra. Here’s the Planetary Alignments Calendar for those watching the video version, just to give you a glance at some of the major aspects this month that we’re gonna be talking about, some of which I already mentioned like the cazimi on November 4th, the two direct stations of Venus and Mercury on the 13th, the Mars-Jupiter conjunction on the 16th. And around there is probably our biggest alignment of this month in terms of planetary alignments. And then later in the month when Mars goes into Virgo on the 25th, again, it moves into its retrograde sign where it’s gonna spend a lot of time because Mars is gonna be there and won’t depart from Virgo for the final time until, like, July of next year. So we’re really starting some long-term transits here by the end of the month. 

All right, I think that’s good for the little big picture overview at the beginning. Let me put up the chart for this month and let’s just get into a sequential breakdown of some of the transits that we’re gonna be looking at. 

All right. So let’s start today. So I’m recording this forecast a little bit early this month because most YouTubers put out their forecasts really early, so I realized I need to start getting on top of that. And also I like the electional chart better. But we’re gonna start here, because since it’s only October 22nd, there’s a few things that are forming right now towards the end of the month that are really gonna take us into and set the tone for early November. So the first thing is that Mercury is stationing retrograde in the next couple of days on October 24th. We see Mercury stationing retrograde there at 20 degrees of Scorpio, and already we’re feeling the intensity of this transit starting to build. Just yesterday, there was this huge report that went out worldwide that a major security bug was found in a piece of software called PHP that like, a huge number of the world’s websites runs off of. And it created such a major security breach or vulnerability that a lot of sites were told to either fix it immediately by installing the update, or that if you couldn’t to just take your website offline. And I actually saw at least two astrology software websites that announced that they were going offline, and it’s just really classic and funny Mercury retrograde stuff with that starting just a couple of days from now, but functionally since it’s already the 22nd, Mercury is already pretty much stationary at the degree that it’s going retrograde at. And then it will retrograde for the next three weeks through the sign of Scorpio where Venus has already been retrograde for most of the past month since the beginning of October. 

So it’s like, by the time we – so that’s one thing that we open the month with that I’ll talk about a little bit more. And the other thing that we are opening the month with here is that the Venus retrograde cazimi in Scorpio, the last Venus retrograde cazimi in Scorpio basically because we’ve been having those retrograde cazimis for almost a century now, and this is the last one we’re gonna get because after this point, every eight years the cazimi will take place in the sign of Libra. So we’re gonna get one last burst of that Venus retrograde in Scorpio and that energy that comes along with it in the next few days here as Venus conjoins the Sun on October 23rd and 24th. And then after that, Venus is gonna retrograde back into the sign of Libra, where it departed back in September after spending a few weeks going through that sign. And there’s something about the Libra sectors of our birth charts and especially the whole sign house that Libra coincides with that we’re gonna be revisiting at this time. So already by the 24th, 25th, Venus has retrograded back into Libra, and will be going through that sign for the rest of November before eventually stationing direct there on November 13th at the same time that Mercury stations direct. 

So those are two of the main things that I wanted to mention in terms of the setup for this month in terms of things that we move into November with right away on November 1st. But let’s see, other things going on right now in terms of the setup for the first few days – it’s really just, besides those two things. So let’s talk – because we do hit the cazimi of Mercury, that’s basically our first really major or notable event in November is on November 4th, Mercury conjoins the Sun exactly about halfway through its retrograde cycle. And that’s usually the point of resolution where things related to what was set up at the beginning of the Mercury retrograde that were problems or things that needed to be resolved or revisited start to head towards some sort of resolution even if they’re not fixed. But given that, and since we’re just starting the Mercury retrograde and the Mercury retrograde’s gonna be dominating the next week or two at least of news, I wanted to talk about and give some classic Mercury retrograde type significations since we’re gonna be seeing a lot of that in the news over the next few weeks. 

So classically, it’s things like miscommunications. We see people missing emails. There can be lost messages or sometimes you get mixed signals from somebody. More prominently and regularly and what we’re already seeing in the news is technical issues. Like, tech issues including glitches, outages, crashes, and hardware failures. There’s also just, like, snafus in general – like, mixups and scheduling conflicts and logistical errors are really common. Travel problems is one we’ve seen a lot – like, over and over again where there can be canceled flights, breakdowns when it comes to airlines or trains or cars or other things like that. In general, Mercury retrogrades are notorious for delays and projects that get slowed down or paused or diverted so that you have to go on some kind of side quest. More personally, Mercury retrogrades are really known as periods that are good for revising things, or going back and editing something, reassessing or rethinking a plan. Doing some deep internal work, which can sometimes be a dark night of the soul type, internal emotional work. Sometimes therapeutic work can be really good, especially if you’re going back and thinking about past issues or working through something. And then finally returns of things from the past, because retrogrades are always backwards-oriented in terms of their orientation. You can have people from the past or situations or even, like, items from the past suddenly resurfacing and coming back into the present. A lot of this is things that we’ve already been seeing over the past few weeks during the course of the Venus retrograde, which has been in the sign of Scorpio, which already in itself often brings back relationship dynamics or people from the past and then reminds you of them or brings them back into the present, especially in a relational context or sometimes in an artistic context or other things like that. But adding a Mercury retrograde on top of that in the same sign where Venus has already been retrograde is just gonna intensify some of those pastward looking orientations that are already so prominent over the course of the past few weeks. 

But now it’s going to put it more in both a technological context, an agreement context where maybe if there were, like, relational things that came up through the Venus retrograde, now it’s gonna focus on having to revise sometimes in actual writing some of those agreements and some of the negotiations or the things that were negotiated or that came up as tumultuous during the course of the Venus retrograde. 

So here’s the Venus retrograde in Scorpio which started on October 3rd, although there was a ton of time for build-up, especially ever since Venus first moved into Libra on August 6th since that’s the sign it will retrograde back to this month. And so there’s gonna be some themes that happened between August 6th and October 3rd that we’re already gonna be returning back to that we may have thought were, like, one-and-done type situations, especially if there were relationship or relational dynamics going on in our life, especially in whatever the whole sign house is that Venus has been transiting in your chart in Libra and Scorpio. Things that you thought were finished you actually have to go back to and do over again once or twice more, since Venus will pass in some instances the same degrees or the same natal placements in our birth chart three times during the course of this transit. 

So I’ve been talking about Venus retrograde a lot in episodes over the past month, but just to reiterate first some basic significations of Venus retrograde and then some that I’ve learned and we’re really found or seen become very prominent as I’ve been doing episodes on it this month. But frequently you get, like, the – there’s been a lot of break-ups, I’ve noticed, because when Venus goes retrograde and conjoins the Sun, there’s like, this wrenching motion where Venus and the Sun are being pulled apart and traveling in opposite directions. And sometimes people can feel like they’re suddenly moving in different directions from their partner or from a lover or from some other relationship. Sometimes this can also result in, like, severing old alliances. But the flipside of that is that sometimes, because Venus has that backwards-looking orientation, it can be about eventually reconciling or forging new alliances with people or having somebody from the past come back into the present and the classic, like, an ex relationship coming back into your life and then having the choice of whether or not you want to resume that relationship. 

During the course of the retrograde, there’s been a lot of stuff about, like, shifting desires, people recalibrating their values and trying to figure out what’s important to them and what’s not. Sometimes your tastes can change during the course of a retrograde, especially depending on what house the retrograde is going through. We’ve seen a lot of scandals under the Venus retrograde, a lot of people doing rude or shocking acts, or sometimes upsetting the consensus reality or the established order of things, sometimes in a provocative way, and sometimes that’s provocative in an interesting way, and other times it’s just provocative in a kind of gross way. Sometimes this has led to a fall from grace for different people. We’ve seen people in some instances be humbled as a result of that, or go through a sort of dark night of the soul or an internal sort of Inanna going through the underworld and the descent of the underworld story. And you know, sometimes you emerge out from under that, and that can be a really tough process or a very tough sequence of events that’s taking place over an extended period of time. Especially this Venus retrograde because it was square Pluto and square Mars, a lot of dynamics involving power struggles and control and manipulation and other things in relationships were coming up very prominently, not just in lover relationship dynamics but also in some instances we were seeing a lot of stories about mothers or maternal figures and really difficult, sometimes negative or toxic things coming up in those sort of relationships. So even family relationships sometimes are impacted or reflected in this Venus retrograde. 

But sometimes on the other side of this, especially now that we’re getting to the second half of the Venus retrograde, there’s the potential for hitting the lowest point at the cazimi, which is happening in late October, but then there’s starting to be a turn towards moving towards the other end of the cave and eventually emerging from the underworld. So in some instances, we’ll see some people making surprise comebacks, or reinventing themselves, or in some instances, people returning from obscurity, especially from the past. Like, there’s been a surprising number of people because of the eight-year repetitions of Venus who are like, people you hadn’t thought of or like, celebrities you hadn’t thought of in years or people in your personal life you haven’t thought of in years that suddenly come back from the past and have this interesting resurgence in some sense. Like, there was a funny one just the other day where it was, like, in the movies episode, I mentioned that the Nickelodeon show The Secret World of Alex Mack came out during the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1994. And then what’s funny is just, like, yesterday or a day or two ago, the actress that was on that show just did Dancing With the Stars, and they did a whole performance, and the whole cast of the movie 10 Things I Hate About You was there, and it was this great and really beautiful and touching blast from the past, and they were also paying tribute to Heath Ledger, who was a major actor in that movie who passed away really young. So it’s interesting seeing sometimes these surprise comebacks or these people returning from the past that you hadn’t thought about in a long time, but then how that evokes a lot of emotions in people, and it takes a lot of us back to a point earlier in our life that in some instances we hadn’t thought about or had become disconnected about in some way. 

And that kind of connects with the Scorpio piece of this that I want to talk about a little bit more, because I was realizing that this month, one of the things about Scorpio is it’s like, a fixed water sign. And on the one hand, the fixed quality can sometimes come out through a sense of endurance or something that’s permanent or long-standing or immovable. And so I had the example of a performance artist, for example, who did extremely long public performances that became tests of endurance. And at one point, she had a partner who did those tests with her, and they got into tensions in their relationship and eventually broke up partially because she, with a Venus retrograde in Scorpio – this was Marina Abramovic – was like, used to sitting with for extended periods of time and had that internal sense of being able to do something for a very long time whereas it would start to hurt him eventually and he’d have to stand up or quit. And eventually this caused a tension in the relationship, and eventually they broke up. And that had me thinking a lot about the nature of Scorpio as a fixed sign, and in her instance, the concept of endurance being part of the performance or part of the artistic expression. 

But Scorpio is also a water sign, and as a water sign, there’s an element there that has to do with emotions and with feelings. But they’re like, fixed or hard or long-standing emotions and feelings. And Scorpio is also the sign ruled by Mars, which as I talked about in a recent episode, is not just – like, when the Greeks inherited astrology from the Mesopotamians, they tried to pick certain gods in the Greek pantheon and assign those to the planets based on what the Mesopotamians had picked earlier. But they ran into an issue with Mars where they ended up assigning the god Ares, the god of war, basically, to Mars, which picked up one piece of the earlier Mesopotamian assignment of the god Nergal who was a god of war and fighting and things like that and conflict. But the other side of the Mesopotamian god Nergal that was lost is that Nergal was also the god of the underworld. And when the Greeks assigned Ares to Mars, they lost that underworldly component which then would have been associated to some extent with any Mars-ruled signs like Scorpio. 

So it’s funny then in modern times that there’s been, you know, attempts to assign Pluto, which is the ancient god of the underworld Pluto or Hades to the sign of Scorpio. And one of the reflections I’ve had over the past couple of years is that it’s almost not necessary if you just remember back to those original associations of Mars as the god of the underworld. And I think in Scorpio especially that comes out really clearly. 

So I wanted to mention that, because I was realizing recently that one of the things you sometimes find in Scorpio – because Scorpio coincides with the part of the year in the northern hemisphere where western astrology was created where all of the leaves are falling off of the trees, and there’s this sense of things going through the nature cycle of death in preparation eventually for a rebirth the next spring. But nonetheless, there’s this component where in Libra and Scorpio where the light is beginning to fade. The concept of darkness is increasing. And there are some notions of, like, death and dying or decay that are becoming more prominent at that time. And one of the things about that, then, in conceptualizing Scorpio as a fixed water sign and thinking about Venus spending a lot of time there that comes up is the notion of cemeteries and the feelings, the fixed feelings that are associated with cemeteries where a cemetery is not just a place that somebody goes – or you go to and there’s just a bunch of dead people there, but in fact if you go to a cemetery, you’ll often see hundreds and hundreds of flowers because there’ll be people that return there over and over again that are still alive in order to go back and to visit loved ones that have passed away. And in that way, a cemetery actually has a very deep reservoir of emotion and connection with the past, and an enduring sense of permanence in the sense that the people that go to the cemetery think of the people that died, and they’re always thinking of a fixed memory because each of the people that passed away is sort of locked in time at whatever age they passed away. 

So that was an image for me that came up during this Venus retrograde in Scorpio as I was trying to understand better some of the positive and constructive but also deeper meanings of Venus in Scorpio as a fixed water sign. And that’s been some of the more positive ways that I’ve sort of come to an understanding of it or I’ve seen it manifesting in recent times. 

So in news stories, as I’ve talked about in the past few episodes, there’s been especially because it was squaring Pluto and Mars, there’s also been a lot of tougher significations. So toxic relationships and struggle love has been a major theme of Venus retrograde in Scorpio, as well as sometimes themes where you get that fixed theme. But if it’s in a toxic or negative sense in terms of relationships, it can become themes of obsession or stalking or power dynamics or other things like that have become very prominent over the last month in some relationships or in some news stories. There’s also sometime instances of deep betrayals and different things like that. 

So I’ve also seen as I’ve mentioned a bunch of stories involving really difficult dynamics with the mother, family trauma, sometimes postpartum themes, which is another adjacent thing when it comes to mother issues or toxic mother issues. There’s been a lot of unburying of hidden secrets from the past. Like, one of my favorite ones was how I had found in the history episode that Amelia Earhart was declared dead back in, like, 1938 under a Venus retrograde in Scorpio or just after it. And now recently there was a crew of researchers who went out because they thought that they saw on a satellite image her plane; they thought they had found her plane, and they sent out a whole expedition to search to see if that was actually it. I don’t know what happened with that; I think they may have found that it was, like, trees, or maybe they’re still investigating it. I’m not really sure. But the point was that the story came back from the past, and there was this sense of trying to unearth or attempting to unravel buried secrets. And that was coming up with Venus, but I think that theme is gonna continue and intensify in some ways as we get Mercury going retrograde over the next few weeks as well. 

All right, other things. A lot of like, espionage, leaked files, hidden cameras, whistleblowers. I think a lot of that’s gonna get intensified with Mercury going retrograde in Scorpio this month, and it’s already come up a lot with just the Venus retrograde. We’ve got a lot of true crime and cold cases being solved or being revisited in some ways, like the guy that was – one of the guys involved in the murder of Tupac was convicted under this Venus retrograde just recently, or there was new information about the OJ Simpson case which that court case really got started under the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1994. And then all of a sudden, there’s news headlines recently about him having a possible accomplice or that there may have been another person involved in those murders with him. So sometimes, like, cold cases getting solved or coming back again in different ways. Actually, there was another one with that where they may have identified the Tylenol cyanide killer from, like, 1982, and a new group was alleging that they think they’ve identified the guy. So we’ll probably see a continuation of that during the course of this month, especially because the Mercury retrograde – it’s gonna retrograde back, and it’s gonna square Pluto. So we’re gonna get an intensification of some of those Pluto themes as well, although maybe I’ll save that since we’ll talk about that more later in the month. 

There’s been a theme of poisons and pollutions and different things like that which is a recurrence of some of like, 1960s environmental focus and Silent Spring type dynamics as well as the founding of the EPA. But also just stories involving poisoning seem to come up, especially with Venus retrograde in Scorpio. And with Mercury going retrograde there, I kind of suspect that part of what’s gonna happen is some of the things that happened when Venus was retrograde in Scorpio last month in October are gonna be revisited and perhaps we’re gonna see some exposes where some things are discovered when Mercury goes retrograde in Scorpio around some of those same degrees. 

All right. So let me get back to the chart here, though. All right, here we go. So we’re back to the chart here. So why I wanted to bring all of that up is because the month on November 4th is opening with this Mercury retrograde cazimi. And the cazimi always happens at the halfway point right in the middle of the three-week retrograde cycle, and usually at the cazimi I see some of the issues at the beginning when Mercury stationed retrograde that involved miscommunications, delays, snafus and technical glitches, they start to head towards a resolution at this point around November 4th. And they’re not fully there yet. In fact, it’ll still take another week-and-a-half before Mercury stations direct and things start to become more fully resolved. But there will be a glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel, and a vision of how things will be resolved around this point on November 4th. And part of the reason for that that’s also helpful, and it’s one of my favorite and most positive aspects of this month that I think we get two of, is on November 4th, Venus – which has retrograded back to 24 degrees of Libra – forms a sextile with Jupiter at 24 degrees of Leo. And this is actually I think one of the most positive aspects this month are these two sextiles that we’re gonna get – one towards the beginning and one towards the end of the month – where first we get the retrograde one, which is Venus’s return back to Libra. It has unfinished business in the Libra house or sector of our chart, whatever whole sign house that is, and it’s forming this really favorable – it’s kind of a weak – it’s a sextile, which is not the strongest aspect, and it’s always backwards in the order of signs. So it’s not super helpful for Jupiter, but Jupiter is trying to help out Venus as Venus is returning back to the Libra sector of our chart. So it’s probably more helpful for Venus and less helpful for Jupiter. But I think this is gonna help us to resolve some of the things that both the Mercury retrograde and the Venus retrograde have brought up in the Scorpio and Libra sectors of our birth charts, especially because there’s probably some connection between those two topics or those two areas of our lives because Venus has retrograded from Scorpio into Libra. And what I’ve noticed in the last three Venus retrogrades is oftentimes when a retrograde crosses a sign boundary, it will connect the topics associated with those two whole sign houses in our chart. So for example, if, like, I don’t know, if Scorpio is your 10th house and Libra is your 9th house, it may connect the topics of career and travel. Or if let’s say Scorpio’s your 7th house and Libra is your 6th house, it may connect topics of, like, work and health. So pay attention to those two houses especially this month, because there will probably be some overlapping connections between those topics or those areas of your life that are otherwise normally separate if you pay attention. And I think that’s where some of the resolution is gonna come, especially around the middle of the month when both Mercury and Venus station direct in those signs on the same day and begin moving forward again. 

Let me do just – I wrote down a few keywords for Venus-Jupiter that might be worth just mentioning here to give you some ideas of what you might be seeing in the Libra sector of your chart and to a lesser extent the Leo sector across the Venus-Jupiter sextile axis where there may be some sort of welcome relief of something that’s been really heavy up to this point or where you’ve been struggling with something, giving you a little bit of breathing room or a little bit of grace. Sometimes there can be, like, warm gatherings – like, a light warm gathering or a celebration or some socializing that feels good to have some good company where you’re sort of sharing a little bit of joy or humor. It’s just a sextile, so it’s not, like, gonna be crazy good, but it’s a little something and we’ll take anything we can get this month, especially coming out of October with all the super, super heavy and sometimes toxic stuff. There can be a reconciliation or developing some sort of feelings of forgiveness where you, maybe after a long conflict with somebody – especially one that’s been happening during the course of this Venus retrograde – you might consider extending an olive branch to that person or reaching out, and maybe starting to, I don’t know, establish some sort of good will or some sort of harmony between the two of you, even if it’s something that feels a little bit tenuous or a little bit weak at first because you’re coming out of a period of conflict or a period in which maybe there was a separation or a disruption in the relationship. But this is at least providing some sort of opportunity for a reconciliation. It can be a good period for generosity and maybe offering a gift to somebody or receiving a gift. Doing favors or otherwise just having some sense of mutual support between two people, especially in the Libra and the Leo sectors of your chart, can be really helpful. 

I would hope that there’s, like, sometimes during Venus-Jupiter aspects, we’ve seen peacemaking and diplomatic breakthroughs or finding common ground or sometimes making compromises in a person’s personal life. Because of some of the stuff happening later this month that we end the month with, like the Mars-Jupiter conjunction and then Mars going into Virgo and squaring Uranus right at the very beginning of December, I am not super optimistic about some of that. There may be some, like, light news headlines about diplomatic breakthroughs or peacemaking happening around this time, but I sort of suspect that some of that is gonna fade away pretty dramatically later in the month and in early December when we hit some of the tense aspects that we talk about later in this episode. But nonetheless, I’ll mention that, because it did kind of come up in June where around the Venus-Jupiter conjunction just after it, there were some announcements about, you know, peace deals, and those lasted for a few weeks until the Mars-Uranus conjunction hit and then, of course, everything fell apart. Yeah. 

So those are some of the things I wanted to mention about positive things happening at the beginning of the month around this cazimi of Mercury and the Sun and especially the sextile between Venus and Jupiter, which again, because Venus is still retrograde, it will still have this backwards-looking orientation of probably trying to fix or smooth out something from the past. But things start to change immediately after that, because the next day we go into November 5th, and one of the things that’s really important is that Mars enters its shadow degree at 20 degrees of Leo on November 5th. So let me put up the Mars retrograde diagram again to show you why that’s important. 

All right, so here’s the Mars retrograde diagram, and the reason why this is important on November 5th is Mars passes over the degree of 20 degrees of Leo that it’s gonna eventually retrograde all the way back to and station direct on April 1st. So it means anything past this point, sometimes there’ll be events that happen after this point where we’ll get a transit, especially to our natal chart, and we’ll have some experience of that either being a little bit constructive or alternatively very annoying and problematic and tense and conflict-oriented, but we’ll think that it’s something that’s one-and-done, and then we’ll attempt to move on from it. But then for some reason, Mars will go retrograde in January and February and March, and it’ll grind back over and return back to those degrees for a second or eventually a third exact hit to whatever that natal placement is in our birth chart. And oftentimes when that happens, it signals the unfolding of a sequence of events or sometimes a sequence of either direct action or a sequence of more direct conflict that plays out over an extended period of time. So I’m gonna be paying attention to especially events in time that are connected to early November once Mars enters that shadow degree that end up being connected to that period in early April when Mars returns to that degree, but also really it’s just opening up an entire span of time where Mars is gonna hit any natal planets within that range of degrees between 20 Leo and 10 degrees of Virgo three exact times over the course of the next several months. So pay attention to that. 

All right, so Mars enters its shadow on the 5th. The next major event I wanted to mention is just we get our first lunation four days later on November 9th, and this is gonna be a New Moon in the sign of Scorpio. So let me animate the chart and move it to that exact – it takes place right on the boundary between days, depending on your timezone, but on like, East coast time it’s November 9th already at about 16 degrees of Scorpio. And there’s kind of good news and bad news with this one. The good news is that it’s still pretty close to that Venus-Jupiter sextile where Venus is at like, 23 degrees of Libra and it’s sextile to Jupiter at 25 degrees of Leo, although it’s moving pretty far away. The other good news is that it’s ruled by Mars, which then is applying to that sextile with Venus. So on the one hand, we have Mars and Jupiter, which are forming a conjunction in the sky which I’ll talk about in a little bit that I’m nervous about because it tends to expand conflicts and it tends to indicate things like mobilization, and there’s a tension between war and peace which is gonna be the major focal point this month as those two planets are coming together, especially mid-month. From the middle of November onwards they start getting very close to not just a conjunction of Mars and Jupiter, but a triple conjunction of Mars and Jupiter and the South Node. And earlier around this New Moon and prior to it, Venus is in there trying to help out to offset things and to try to shift things more towards the peaceful aspects of what Jupiter wants to indicate. So Venus is helping to balance things out and make things more peaceful here around the time of this New Moon earlier in the month by applying to that sextile with Mars. But the downside is that only lasts for so long, and Mars is gonna clear that sextile with Venus pretty quickly and then just head straight for the conjunction with Jupiter and the South Node after that. But at least for this New Moon, I like the sextile with Venus and Mars and Jupiter. The only downside is, like, it looks like the next aspect after the Moon itself conjoins the Sun is that it then applies to a square with Mars. So I think that’s giving some intimations of some of the conflict and some of the tensions that are gonna be coming up over the course of the next month, especially once we get two weeks into this lunation cycle and once we hit the next and second lunation of the month, which is a Full Moon which is gonna be closely conjunct Uranus and amplifying what will eventually be – what we’ll end the month with, which is a very tense and very chaotic and volatile square between Mars and Uranus that’s coming up in late November and early December. 

So good things and bad things is on the one hand you’re like, closing out a cycle here – a lunation cycle – with the Sun-Moon conjunction and having some of those resolving conflicts and attempting to put a peaceful end to some of the things that happened in the last month, especially under the Venus retrograde and the Mercury retrograde and especially as those two planets are only four days from stationing direct at this point. But on the other hand, there’s some not good intimations for the future with the Moon applying to square Mars and Mars applying to conjoin Jupiter. 

So this brings us to the next aspect, which is the first huge turning point this month which is on November 13th. And this is when both Mercury and Venus simultaneously station direct, basically at the same time around the same day, which is a super unique and uncommon thing to happen because both of their retrograde cycles are so different. Where Mercury goes retrograde for three weeks three times a year, Venus only goes retrograde every year-and-a-half for about 40 days. And to have both of those direct stations and both of those retrograde cycles end on the exact same day really gives this sense that in two separate areas of our life, a lot of us are gonna feel this period of after treading water for the past several weeks – especially the past three to four weeks – this feeling of suddenly emerging from the swamp and starting to slowly move forward again. 

So that may indicate that there’s some delays in things that happen earlier in the month that aren’t fully resolved until the middle of the month. I remember there’s one of the elections like a few years ago – maybe it was the 2020 one – where it happened right when Mercury was stationing direct, and it took forever to count the votes and there was delays in really fully determining the outcome of that election to a certain extent. So there may be, like, a similar feeling here where there are some things that are still in a process of slowness and delay and miscommunication and sort of being up in the air or undecided in some sense, especially in our personal lives, but then all of a sudden on November 13th, there is this very notable turning point where things start moving forward again, albeit very slowly and very cautiously. So I think that’s really good news, because both of those retrogrades – I guess we’re just getting into the Mercury retrograde, but especially the Venus retrograde has already brought up so much stuff. Sometimes toxic underworldly stuff or stuff that people are processing in terms of their interpersonal relationships, in terms of stuff that’s brought up from the past, in terms of current circumstances and their attitudes towards things. But at this point, we’re finally gonna start to feel that there’s some resolution with all of the things that both of those planets have been bringing up in our lives. And I think that’s definitely something to look forward to. 

The only downside is, it’s like, you know, Venus has the lovely sextiles with Jupiter and Mars while it’s stationing direct. So it feels like the Venus retrograde is ending on a more positive note than where it started, where it stationed retrograde with those really tense and toxic squares with Mars and Pluto. Mercury, on the other hand, has retrograded back super early in Scorpio to early five degrees of Scorpio, and it’s stationing direct square Pluto, which is at about three degrees of Aquarius, having recently over the past month stationed direct in Aquarius in that sign. So with the Mercury direct station, even though there’s this sense of, like, forward movement suddenly after a period of looking back into the past or a period of things glitching out and slowing down and going awry, there’s a tension to the forward momentum and the turning point that Mercury has at this point due to that Mercury-Pluto square. And some of the different keywords that we often see come up during Mercury-Pluto squares are, like, there can be investigative breakthroughs where we’ve seen a bunch of instances of reporters that are digging up buried truths or exposes coming out, or there can be, like, whistleblowers or leaked documents or other things like that are pretty common we’ve seen over the past several years of forecast episodes. And one of the things with that that’s actually really interesting is with the website hack and the website vulnerabilities that were just announced over the past few days and a bunch of government agencies announced that everybody needs to patch these immediately, some of the reports are saying that a lot of the websites are going to be vulnerable, but that some of the people getting hacked may not know about it until later. That it’s only gonna be later that a lot of people realize that somebody got into their system and did something weird with their website. And so I sort of think of that when I’m looking at this Mercury stationing direct in Scorpio but squaring Pluto is, like, suddenly having a realization or having something dug up and having the truth suddenly become clear, but that it was about something recently happening in the past during the course of this Mercury retrograde that might not have been good or may have had an underworldly or sort of even criminal component. So that’s gonna be one element to watch out for with Mercury stationing direct, even though ultimately it’s good. It’s like if somebody finds out that their website was hacked at that time, they will have the opportunity, hopefully, to fix it and then to start slowly moving forward again and rebuilding things. But that’s still gonna be a bit of a process. And so that’s gonna be happening in whatever the Scorpio house is in each of our charts. But with Mercury-Pluto combinations, there can also be periods of obsessive thinking that we’ll have to watch out for and mental fixation, of kind of going down rabbit holes or getting into compulsive research periods, and you kind of have to watch out a little bit for developing tunnel vision during those times, especially because Mercury’s gonna hold that square for such an extended period around that week. 

Sometimes there can be some really harsh truths that come out at this time, and some people having tough conversations or confrontational conversations that kind of, like, cut to the core, where sometimes the quiet part can be said out loud. And you have to be really careful if you get into one of those dynamics or one of those conversations to not exert power over somebody or not exert it in a way that’s inappropriate or a way that’s overly controlling or manipulative, because sometimes that can come up with Mercury-Pluto, especially when people get into verbal power struggles where they’re giving ultimatums or there’s a sense of coercion or trying to control a person or control a narrative. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of that when it comes to headlines around the time of Mercury stationing. Sometimes there can be censorship or themes of secrecy that come up with Mercury-Pluto. I’ve talked about the cyber vulnerabilities and data breaches, but also issues with spyware revelations or deep tech glitches probably becoming more clear during that time. I’ll talk about some of that a little bit later with some of the things that are changing with the Uranus-Pluto trine that’s happening later this month. 

But the final thing is I want to mention about the Mercury square Pluto as Mercury stations direct in Scorpio is so many people have been doing so much intense work in the Scorpio sector, and some of the toxic dynamics that have been dredged up or the things from the past – sometimes this can be really useful, and I’m hoping people are able to use this Mercury direct station to develop some really deep, introspective, and psychological insights. And sometimes people can have really deep therapy breakthroughs around the time of the Mercury-Pluto square doing things like shadow work or recovering the root cause of a problem. And that work is oftentimes not easy. Like, it can bring up some really difficult or even traumatic things. But sometimes you can have insights during the course of that process that can truly change your life for the better if you come to an understanding not just of, like, other people’s actions and motivations in your life, but also in reflecting on your own actions and motivations and truly getting a deeper sense of who you are and what makes you tick and how you can improve things in order to communicate with other people better or in order to have relationships with other people better if you understand some of your own deepest tendencies and sometimes unconscious types of actions or themes that you tend to repeat in life. So those are the pluses and minuses with Mercury stationing direct in Scorpio square Pluto this month around November 13th. 

All right, so this is one of the turning points in the month after Mercury and Venus station direct is a few days later, like during the course of this week basically, Mars conjoins the South Node at this time in the middle of November and around the same time immediately after that, Mars conjoins Jupiter on November 15th and 16th. And around the same time, the Sun is coming up to a square with the nodes, a square with Jupiter, and eventually a square around Mars at the same time. This combination is really tricky. It’s really complicated and problematic, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about it because each of these combinations does something different. And it’s kind of hard to synthesize them, especially because this triple combination of Mars, South Node, and Jupiter is actually pretty rare. I found one about a century ago in 1905, 1906 that was this close, but otherwise, historically those combinations don’t tend to happen that close in the order of degrees very frequently. So let me break down one or two of them separately, because that’ll kind of give us a little bit of insight. 

So one of the themes that came up very clearly earlier this year when we were at the Mars-Jupiter opposition is that fundamentally at the core, Mars is the planet of war and conflict, and Jupiter is the planet of peace. And at the Mars-Jupiter opposition earlier this year, for example, we had the sudden very rapid conflict where the US invaded Venezuela and abducted the president of Venezuela at that time. And there was this sudden puncturing of the concept of peace, basically. And any time Mars and Jupiter are in especially a hard aspect, there’s a major tension between these tendencies or these archetypes of war and peace. And so there can be themes where it can shift to either side of either escalating a conflict in a major way – so Jupiter’s the planet of expansion and Mars is the planet of war, so if you put those together, sometimes you get the expansion and escalation and amplification of a conflict. Other times you can have attempts to, like, broker a peace or to intervene decisively or put some sort of deterrents in place. So these themes of mitigation versus amplification are going to be very prominent this month, both in mundane events but also in terms of our personal lives as well, thinking about what sign Leo coincides with in your chart and that there’s going to be this intense for some of us tension either where something is escalating and it gets out of control worse, or alternatively where you’re successful in tamping something down and bringing a greater sense of peace by intervening very decisively in order to uphold that essentially. 

In a lot of the ancient delineations, like in Vettius Valens and stuff, they talk about Mars-Jupiter combinations having to do with military leadership, like generals and commanders. And there’s these themes of mobilizing forces and creating strategic alliances. Sometimes it can be about taking really bold actions that involve courage or taking a really big swing at something, which sometimes you can take a big swing and be successful, and other times you can take a big swing and just absolutely miss the mark and whiff it and sort of crash and burn as a result of that. But the tendency to want to take some sort of bold action is gonna be amplified at this time. 

I’m a little concerned that most of the attempts at action and especially taking big or bold actions around this time will have a tendency to either be unsuccessful due to the simultaneous conjunction with the South Node, which has a tendency to indicate themes of decrease and of loss. But also alternatively, the South Node can also show things that become hidden or covert in some ways, where you can have an action that’s taken, but it happens in a way that’s not apparent or where it’s happening sort of like, underneath the surface. And I’ll talk about some examples of that in just a little bit. 

So one of the dangers with Mars-Jupiter actions is a tendency to overreach. Like, I said, to take a big swing, but then to completely overreach or to have a sense of hubris or the idea that you can be overly confident in something, and as a result of your rashness or recklessness that you take a risk that kind of blows up in your face. And that’s another, actually, Mars-Jupiter combination keyword that we’ve seen over the past few years, which is like, something that blows up and it becomes a big explosion because Mars can indicate fires or explosions, and Jupiter just makes everything it touches much bigger and as big as it can possibly get. Sometimes people get into, like, fighting for their beliefs or ideological crusades or legal battles around this time. So that’s something to pay attention to with Mars-Jupiter combinations, especially in whatever house it falls in your chart. And the last thing is sometimes, like, yeah, really costly gambles can come up. And sometimes somebody can gamble and take a big risk and win big, but other times a person can gamble and lose big and basically lose everything. And I think for a lot of people, it’s gonna come down to how this is hitting your chart, whether you have a day chart or a night chart, whether it’s making positive or negative aspects to natal planets in your chart and other things like that. But the tendency is just gonna be to make really big, bold moves, and then some people are gonna be really successful in that and other people are going to fall short and it’s not gonna work out very well at all. 

So one of the things – I’ve been researching this for the past few months, like in the US birth chart episode, and especially focused on Mars-South Node conjunctions because I kept seeing those come up as problematic in different ways in US history or other world history events where I kept seeing instances of, like, surprise attacks and ambushes and undeclared blitzes and sort of coordinated strikes from the shadows coming up at different points, including instances where there were attacks in disguise or bypassing defenses and different things like that. In the US birth chart episode, it’s like, I mentioned how Mars was conjunct the South Node around the time of the September 11th attacks in 2001. And so it’s like, with that there were, you know, hijackers that were kind of disguised in a sense or disguising what their goal was, and then all of a sudden struck. And I think that was part of the hidden notion of the South Node to a certain extent. Or the Norway attacks in 2011 happened on a Mars-South Node conjunction, and there was a bomb that was used as a diversion, and then somebody did a massacre. Or the October 7th attack, the surprise attack of Hamas on Israel happened on a Mars-South Node conjunction in 2023. Or in 1941, I found that Operation Barbarossa was this surprise attack where Hitler and the Nazis suddenly invaded the Soviet Union and broke a peace treaty between the two on a Mars-South Node conjunction. Or even the Korean War broke out around the time of the 1950s Mars-South Node conjunction. So in terms of mundane events, that’s not a super great series of just historical ones. And I also noticed some financial ones that were kind of tricky that were Mars-South Node conjunctions where, for example, the biggest one was around the Black Thursday crash in 1929 there was this Wall Street panic that happened right around the Mars-South Node conjunction, and it triggered a crash and essentially triggered the Great Depression at that point. Or the Black Monday crash in 1987 was also very close to a Mars-South Node conjunction, or even more recently if you remember in early 2020, there was a Mars-South Node conjunction around February, and that’s right around the same time that Italy announces lockdowns and the Dow Jones in the US plummeted 1,000 points in a single day on the day of that Mars-South Node conjunction. So sometimes there’s these sudden drops or these sudden decreases in things that can even happen in financial sectors. And I think some of that’s exacerbated when we’re thinking about Jupiter being there and sort of blowing things up in some sense. 

Let’s see, speaking of blowing things up, the first Soviet use of the H-bomb happened on a Mars-South Node conjunction in 1953. We also had in Germany in the 1930s, there was a whole constitutional crisis and the dissolution of the Weimar Republic democracy happened around the 1932-1933 triple conjunction between Mars and the South Node, which is like, Hitler being named Chancellor in Germany in January, and then the Reichstag fire and essentially by March the act that dissolved the democracy. That one’s a little complicated because what’s interesting about that is that is a Mars-Jupiter-South Node conjunction, but it also had Neptune in there famously as well, which I think was the Reichstag fire component where there was like, Mars-Neptune and the potential for a false flag or using something as an excuse. But nonetheless, that is interesting, the combination of those three there with Mars, Jupiter, and the South Node. And then finally, even I noticed 1953 there was a Mars-South Node conjunction around the time that the Iranian prime minister Mosaddegh dissolved the parliament. But this is essentially what triggered the CIA and MI6 to do a coup to restore or to install the shah at that point in August. So it’s like, there are some themes and recurrences there. And this is stuff I want to research more to understand and maybe do full episodes on, but as I was trying to understand some of the potential for recurrences or historical instances of some of these extremely rare conjunctions that we’re seeing this month, these are some of the things that I was coming up with that are giving me pause because they don’t sound super great in terms of historical precedence. 

All right. So those are some of the things as I was thinking about this when it comes to the Mars-South Node conjunction and how that combines with Jupiter. In the US birth chart episode, it was interesting because when I established historically that the Libra rising birth chart was actually the most plausible one, it allowed me to situate when I was doing some of the historical research of events in US history, one of the things I found was the Mars-South Node conjunctions were kind of matching up with the house significations where, for example, the 1929 stock market crash that happened on the Mars-South Node conjunction, that South Node conjunction happened in Scorpio in the 2nd whole sign house of the Libra rising US birth chart, and there was a financial component. Or like, 9/11 for example happened in the 4th house of the US birth chart in Capricorn, and there was this home-based component where it was the first time the US had been attacked on its own soil since, like, Pearl Harbor or something like that. So it seemed symbolically relevant or resonant. And so it’s like, as I was thinking about this Mars-South Node-Jupiter conjunction and where that’s taking place, it would be happening in the 11th house of the US birth chart, which would be the place that has to do with friends and alliances. So I’ll be curious if there’s some sort of like, alliances type manifestation when it comes to this conjunction in particular. And of course, it’s happening in the rising sign of the leader of the country, so it should be very personally relevant to him, both in terms of the Mars placement there later in Leo, as well as the Ascendant degree. And obviously, one of the things when it comes to Mars-Jupiter since one of the classical meanings of that is, like, a build-up of forces or an expansion of some sort of military presence, is the potential for the US to restart the war with Iran, which is one of the things people are talking about now after the US midterms potentially, and that there are additional US forces – like, an aircraft carrier and 10,000 troops – that are on their way there right now and are supposed to arrive sometime in mid- to late November. But it’s like, we have this aspect, and then the next one, though, looks more potent to me, which is the Mars-Uranus square, which really kicks in at the end of November and beginning of December, and that’s the one I’m more paying attention to as the more potentially problematic one. But given some of the historical recurrences, it’ll be very interesting so see how the Mars-Jupiter-South Node conjunction plays out in the very middle of the month. 

All right, so I did want to mention the monthly electional chart for this month, because this actually does take advantage of and helps to mitigate and use the best version of that same Mars-Jupiter conjunction. And the most auspicious election or chart that Leisa Schaim and I found this month in our private Electional Astrology Podcast, which is for patrons of The Astrology Podcast through our page on Patreon, it’s set for November 22nd at 11 PM local time with Leo rising. So if you cast a chart for your location for that date, November 22nd, set it to your city at 11 PM – don’t do any timezone conversion or anything like that, we’re just setting it using local time – you should have a chart that’s roughly like this. And you want to adjust the Ascendant until it’s conjunct Jupiter around 25-26 degrees of Leo. So this is our best electional chart this month; it has Leo rising and Jupiter is exactly conjunct the Ascendant. And part of the reason that we chose this chart is this is a night chart. It’s happening at 11 o’clock at night. But that’s the best way to mitigate that conjunction where Mars is still very closely conjoin Jupiter, and Mars is also overcoming Mercury in Scorpio through that superior sign-based square. So we really want to mitigate that, because of some of tense conflict kind of warlike energy is gonna be very prominent from Mars this month. And the way to take the edge off of that and to turn it into a more constructive sort of bold, confident, but not as reckless version of Mars and version of a Mars-Jupiter conjunction is to make it a night chart. 

So when we do that, we have a night chart with Leo rising. The Sun is the ruler of the Ascendant; it’s in the 5th whole sign house. The Sun has just ingressed into Sagittarius, and when you do that, the Sun is actually in a mutual reception with Jupiter, which is in Leo. So they’re trading signs, which is creating a really positive relationship between the first house of self and the 7th house of creativity or that which you create as well as the sign of pleasure and enjoyment and fun and games and other things like that. We have the Moon exalted in Taurus in the 10th whole sign house in a night chart; it’s a little bit before the Full Moon hits, but the Moon is waxing. It’s very bright at this point. It’s in the sign of its exaltation. It’s lifted up both in terms of zodiacal sign, but also in terms of its house placement in the 10th whole sign house, which is the place of career and reputation and visibility and other things like that, which is very positive. The other thing that’s great about this chart happening a little bit later in November is both Mercury and Venus have stationed direct and are starting to move forward again past their retrograde degrees or past their stationary degrees. So this is better than, for example, if you did an election earlier in the month, then Mercury is still retrograde and indicating at least some slowdowns or delays or glitches with things, and Venus is also still indicating some relational things are having trouble getting going or are going awry or are doing something that’s sort of against the grain or stands out in some way. But here in this chart, both of those planets are direct; they’re moving forward again. They’re in relatively good shape. So that’s one of the reasons why we recommend doing the election later in the month rather than earlier in the month. 

What else? This chart’s not good for 9th house things, because it has Saturn in a night chart in the 9th whole sign house, which is the place of long-distance travel, education, philosophy, religion, also interaction with foreign places or people from backgrounds that are different than your own or someone from a background that’s foreign from your own. So it wouldn’t be a good chart for, like, a long-distance trip or some sort of interaction with a foreign country, for example. But otherwise, it’s a pretty good chart for a number of different things, including 5th house things having to do with fun and pleasure and enjoyment and creativity. Even the topic of children or things involving teaching younger people or other things like that is pretty good. 10th house activities are very good. 3rd house activities with communication, short-distance travel as opposed to long-distance travel, and just creativity in general, because Venus is ruling the 10th house, the Moon is exalted in the 10th house, and Venus is in its domicile direct in the 3rd are all very good. And the last thing is that this chart also really takes advantage of the sextile between Venus and Jupiter, which now is applying again now that Venus is direct and it’s headed towards a second sextile with Jupiter which happens later in the month which we’ll talk about in just a little bit. 

So very good chart. Huge improvement electionally this month over last month when the electional weather was much, much, much worse and much more difficult to find good charts. This is definitely an improvement. 

So yeah, so that’s our single best chart for this month, for the month of November. Leisa Schaim and I found 10 other charts if you need to do things at other points in the month that are not November 22nd when we have our best chart. So if you need to do things other days, you can check out our other podcast for patrons, which is called The Electional Astrology Podcast, which is available through our page on Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast. And when you sign up for that, we already released it this month, so all of our patrons are already watching that podcast with all of the other electional charts and the instructions for using them and tips on what the best charts are to use for different things and different things like that. So check that out today if you’d like to get more about the electional charts. And then Leisa and I this month were actually working on and trying to finish our year ahead electional report for 2027 where we pick out the single best chart for each of the next 12 months, and we sell that as a separate stand-alone recording at the end of each year. So we’re hoping to have that out by the end of November, and I’ll let everybody know as soon as that’s available. 

All right, so let’s move back to the charts and the animation for this month. Moving forward from the 14th, we get on the 15th and 16th a Mars-Jupiter conjunction. Mercury and Venus are moving forward at this point. The Sun does form first a square with Jupiter on the 18th, which is a little bit positive, but then it hits a square with Mars, which is pretty frustrating the very next day on November 19th. That can – I think it’s just gonna reactivate the Mars-Jupiter conjunction and some of those feelings of, like, tension between fighting versus making peace, or growth through a relatively cautious and temperate manner versus just going all out and doing something impulsive or over-the-top. And the potential that the first day on the 18th, it’s like, you get the optimistic side of that with Sun square Jupiter, but then on the next day on the 19th, you get some frustration or some conflict that arises as a result of the actions taken on the previous day. 

All right, I think that’s bringing us to we get the Sun departing from Scorpio and moving into Sagittarius on the 21st and 22nd, and that’s taking us towards our second lunation of the month. We get this Full Moon at two degrees of Gemini. So this is just after the Sun has entered into Sagittarius a couple of days earlier, and right after that we get our second lunation of the month where the Moon hits its peak brightness and is the most visible and is providing the most light at night on this date around November 24th. But what’s tricky is just it’s almost exactly conjunct Uranus where as soon as the Moon hits the opposition with the Sun and the Moon is in Gemini, it’s conjoining Uranus at three degrees of Gemini at the same time. And this is right before Mars – Mars is, at this point, at 29 degrees of Leo and it’s getting ready to make that ingress into Virgo over the next couple of days, at which point it will also start squaring Uranus. But it’s like, functionally, Mars is already four degrees from squaring Uranus at this point. So that Mars-Uranus square is already starting to build, which is very volatile as we’ve seen twice now this year when other Mars-Uranus aspects have happened. And the first Mars-Uranus square was at the end of February where the US launched the war on Iran with a surprise attack, and then the second Mars-Uranus hard aspect this year was in early July where the peace deal broke down suddenly and the US and Iran started shooting at each other again openly and went back to war at the Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. 

So this Full Moon that happens here on the 24th is highlighting and reactivating and sort of paving the way for that upcoming Mars-Uranus square. But it’s also just putting a huge amount of emphasis on the Gemini sector of our chart, and you’ll also notice that it’s setting up one of the other major outer planet aspects that’s happening this month, which is that Uranus is retrograding back at three degrees and it’s trining Pluto, which is also at three degrees but in Aquarius. So at the very end of this month, one of our last aspects is a Uranus-Pluto trine, which is the second trine we’ll get between those two planets. There was one other one earlier this year. And I’ve really been reflecting lately on what that’s doing with the Uranus-Pluto trine, and just in a mundane sense, we’re all kind of right in the middle of it. But I don’t know if everybody appreciates how on the one hand, we have Gemini, which has to do with talking and communication and short-distance travel because it’s ruled by Mercury. And we have Uranus there, and the rapid technological changes and advancements that that brings. And then on the other hand, we have Pluto in Aquarius, and we’ve seen that the whole AI revolution that’s happened over the past few years and the sudden shift towards AI being in everything and AI sort of dominating the global stock market and companies and all of these other things really started not long before Pluto ingressed into Aquarius a few years ago. And one of the things I was reflecting on is how all barriers in communication have suddenly started breaking down over the course of the past few years so that everything has a translator on it and there’s all sorts of conversations that are taking place at this point between people that are in different countries that are speaking different languages, but all of a sudden that barrier that language used to represent no longer exists because most social networks at this point include a button where you can just either translate things automatically if you choose to, and in some instances on some social networks, the posts are already pre-translated for you, and you don’t even have to initiate that. And so it’s like, people are interacting in completely different languages with each other and not necessarily even realizing it initially because it’s being translated automatically. And from just a pure historical perspective, even though that’s become commonplace at this point, that’s such a wild thing that’s happening historically that’s such a unique moment in history. And a lot of that technology and a lot of those barriers are being broken down right now as the technology is being perfected and fully implemented and rolled out under and around the time of this Uranus-Pluto trine. 

So that’s one of the images that I have as I’m thinking about this Full Moon in Gemini from a mundane perspective in addition to the transportation perspective where it’s just, like, local transportation is becoming fully automated, and that is not rolled out everywhere but it’s being rolled out extremely rapidly. Like, I’ve run into – in Denver, Google’s fully rolling out their Waymo automatic taxis, like, AI taxi service, and I’ve seen, like, I don’t know, a couple dozen of them. I keep running into them more and more frequently on the streets of Denver as I’m driving around over the course of the past few months. And that’s another one of those instances where even though it’s becoming commonplace, it’s not fully there yet; I guess it depends on what city you’re in. But in some cities, like on the West coast in California or other places increasingly here in Denver, it’s just becoming commonplace that not only are there AI-driven cars that are driving around, but also that the humans aren’t driving cars and that the entire process of driving around locally and mobility is something that’s becoming automated outside of human hands, basically, where we’re at the turning point that will end up coinciding with especially the broader Uranus in Gemini transit over the next six to seven years, at which point it’ll be fully complete, I’m sure. But this period where Uranus and Pluto are trining seems to be an incredibly important pivot point for a lot of that in terms of local travel becoming automated in addition to the language barriers around the world being almost completely eradicated on some sense, at least online or digitally. Although increasingly in person as well. 

So that’s one of the things that this conjunction makes me think about in terms of this being another important turning point and in terms of advancements in that. But also on a more personal level, just thinking about because this Uranus transit is still pretty new and pretty fresh for all of us, having only gone into Gemini over the course of the past year or so, and we’re also still dealing with Pluto coming off of its station, having retrograded back to two degrees, and now it’s never gonna get this early in the sign again. So some of the rapid changes that have been happening in our personal lives in the Gemini sector of our chart over the course of the past year or so as Uranus has been moving into Gemini will probably start to become really loud around the time of this Full Moon around November 24th where there’s been some instances where I see people having this greater need for, like, freedom and liberation and change and sort of getting rid of any restrictions that have been holding them back up to this point, and sometimes that’s happening voluntarily, like if it’s happening in your first house or your 10th house. Other times those disruptions are being experienced from other people in your life and you’re sort of experiencing it as an external thing. But I think that’s gonna be something to pay attention to, just having this Full Moon so close to Uranus because a Full Moon represents a culmination of events and a sort of shining a spotlight on that specific part of our chart, which is whatever whole sign house Gemini coincides with in your birth chart. But one of the things that it’s also shining a spotlight on is just the need to integrate change into your life in some way, whether that’s something you’re experiencing deliberately, or whether it’s something that you’re experiencing as an external thing. 

And that’s gonna become very important, because that’s gonna become intensified over the course of the next week as soon as Mars moves into Virgo, which takes place just one day later on November 25th. It’s later in the day, depending on your timezone, but we see by November 25th and November 26th, Mars heads into Virgo where it’s heading for that square within three degrees. But it also has just entered into a sign that it’s gonna spend a lot of time in over the course of the next at least, like, half a year, basically because this is the sign that Mars will go retrograde in in early January. And this is gonna be an intense retrograde because it stations so closely square to Uranus. And as soon as Mars goes in, we get our very first exact square – let me animate the chart – on December 4th. So December 4th, Mars hits three degrees of Virgo and it squares Uranus at three degrees of Gemini. 

So these are always really volatile times where there can be sudden and unexpected disruptions that sort of come out of left field, and that we don’t anticipate, that suddenly disrupt the normal flow of things. So sometimes this can be, like, in mundane events we’ve seen surprise attacks or we’ve seen a war break out or a conflict break out unexpectedly. So for example, the last Mars-Uranus square we had was at the end of February, and I think it almost to the day coincided with the beginning of the war between the US and Iran. And in history, I’ve seen and done some research that Mars-Uranus conjunctions often do show up in Iranian history, and Nick Dagan Best also did some really interesting research that we’ve talked about related to that. So I’ll be especially paying attention to that due to the prior precedent of the Mars-Uranus square from last February, as well as the Mars-Uranus conjunction that happened in early July, and the potential for that to restart things again around this time in late November and early December. 

It also, though, could relate back to other events that took place in late June and early July around the time of the Mars-Uranus conjunction that happened then, because that was the start of a new cycle between Mars and Uranus, and therefore this is the waxing square or the first square that takes place after that conjunction. So for many people, that conjunction back in July may have laid some seeds or laid a new foundation that we see a major turning point – we see people hitting a major turning point in late November and early December under this square. And normally, that would just be a one-time event where you would see tension come up, and we’re gonna see a lot of unexpected – sometimes there’s technological disruptions that take place under Mars-Uranus squares. Sometimes we see conflicts break out. There’s gonna be a lot of things happening very rapidly and quickly in the news over a very short span of time, like we see the pace of news events really pick up around those squares. But what’s weird about this square is – let me animate it. See, Mars starts slowing down in December, and then eventually stations retrograde here at 10 degrees of Virgo in early January. So that’s only, like, eight degrees away from the square with Uranus, and then Mars retrogrades back because it’s gonna make another square with Uranus while it’s in the middle of its retrograde here around the middle of February. So then we get a second square with Uranus, and then eventually Mars will retrograde back, and it will station direct in the sign of Leo it looks like in early April, weirdly conjunct the South Node and Jupiter again. So we’re gonna get a return to some of those archetypal experiences, either in mundane astrology as well as in terms of our personal lives. Like, there’s something that’s not finished about the Mars-Jupiter-South Node conjunction that happens in mid-November comes back into our life by especially April of 2027. And then eventually Mars stations direct there in Leo, and it starts moving forward again and hits one last square with Uranus, which happens here around late May of 2027. But then it’s back in Virgo again in the same sector of our chart that it entered in late November and December and January, so then we get this second pass of Mars through the Virgo sector of our chart, which does not wrap up and finish until the middle of July when the entire retrograde sequence of both degrees as well as signs is finally over and Mars finally moves into the sign of Libra. 

So that’s really important, because what that means is that as soon as Mars went into Leo, it began a transit through two signs in our chart and two whole sign houses that it’s gonna be doing more or less off and on in those two signs all the way through the middle part of next year, through July of 2027. And it’s unlocking a sequence of events that will play out there that especially have to do with in a constructive sense either actions and needing to be more active and take more bold or sometimes risk-like actions in a certain part of our life where we’re being pushed to be more decisive or we’re being pushed to expend a lot more energy in a certain area of our life, whatever houses Mars is transiting for an extended period of nine months. Or alternatively, it’s an extended period in which we’re experiencing some conflict or some irritation or some discomfort that’s causing tensions in those two sectors of our chart for an extended period of time. And the thing that’s the most tricky about that, though, for me and for us in the immediate future is just the fact that it really starts with and features those Mars-Uranus squares so prominently early on and that we get three of them, basically. Because that component of Uranus is something that’s really hard to anticipate, and it often brings up things that you can’t plan for because it’s something that often comes out of the blue. 

Obviously with Uranus transiting Gemini, some of us are already experiencing radical changes in the Gemini sector of our chart already. Like, whatever house that is in your chart. But Mars will tend to really accelerate that and create much more of a sense of pressure to move forward and to make decision or cutting changes to cut something out of the life or to make a division from something much more rapidly than we might otherwise do. And that’s part of – because both Uranus and Mars indicate things that are really fast or very rapid, and that’s one of the reasons why the headlines start moving really quickly around the time of Mars-Uranus hard aspects, and this will peak around December 4th especially. 

So that’s why I mention that, because I want everybody to think about the sign that Mars is moving into in terms of Virgo, because that’s gonna be such a major shift that happens on the 25th and 26th, and it’s gonna be bringing in energy that each of us is gonna need to learn how to work with over the course of the next eight or nine months or so. 

So the good news, however, is there are a couple of positive aspects that we end November with that allow us to wrap up some problems or wrap up some issues that we’d been dealing with for a few months before we fully shift into somewhat abruptly dealing with some of those Mars in Virgo and Mars square Uranus issues. So one of them is that Mercury hits its shadow degree around November 28th, 29th where Mercury gets back to 20 degrees of Scorpio, which is the degree that it went retrograde at. So at this point, some people, for example, if they have planets around 20 degrees of the fixed signs, at this point you’ll be getting what may the final pass of Mercury where it returns back to and gives you the third and final transit that you’ll have in that evolving Mercury retrograde period that we’ve been experiencing most of November starting in late October. So there’ll be a sense of completion, of things moving full circle, of some of the glitches or delays or snafus or other things being brought to completion and brought to some sort of resolution where some of the mixed wires and communication difficulties will be fully worked out by this point. And yeah, so sometimes with a Mercury retrograde, sometimes you’ll find yourself doing something and having to redo it one or two more times. And usually by the time Mercury gets back to its retrograde degree, you’ll usually do or complete that thing for the final time so that at this point it’s finished and you will not have to return to it after this point. So there’ll be a sense of completion and a sense of moving forward and a sense that you can exhale again. And one of the things that I like about that is that that happens pretty much simultaneously that Venus gets to 26 degrees of Libra and forms an exact sextile with Jupiter for the second time. 

So earlier in the month, we saw that retrograde sextile between Venus and Jupiter, but here we have Venus direct coming out of the retrograde and making one last forward-moving sextile with Jupiter from 26 Libra to 26 Leo. And this is the second most positive aspect of the month with the first sextile being the first one at the beginning of November. And I really like this aspect for some of the reasons I mentioned earlier and for some of the same keywords of the ability to create some sort of alliance to smooth things over, especially when we’re thinking about Venus coming out of the retrograde and sweeping up some of the problems or some of the separations that may have occurred during the course of the retrograde, or some of the issues that it may have unearthed in relationships or things that it brought up from the past. Here with Venus moving forward in its own sign and sextiling Jupiter, it’s really starting to attempt to mend and decide which relationships can be saved, and the ones that ended up surviving the retrograde at this point become strengthened and become reaffirmed. And there’ll be some people who will sort of like, reaffirm their commitment to and solidify relationships at this time. 

Depending on what house the Venus-Jupiter sextile is happening, it may be connecting those two houses in your chart, or it may be fixing whatever problems came up under the Venus retrograde signs and houses of like, Scorpio and Libra especially so that it may be sort of focalized on whatever the issues were there and just sort of like, wrapping those up, but also healing some divides that came up during the course of the Venus retrograde. So I really like that as a really positive aspect to end the month with, especially because then immediately after that in early December we get really super tense, dramatic, unexpected disruptive aspects with Mars squaring Uranus on December 4th. So it’s interesting and then by that point, like, Venus goes back into Scorpio in early December, and Mercury departs from Scorpio and moves into Sagittarius, completing the Mercury retrograde by sign. 

So there’s this real sense of moving forward by the very end of November, and coming out of I think that long period of especially Venus traveling through the underworld and going through the whole descent of Inanna narrative over an entire 40 day and 40 night period. And at this point, finally emerging back from the underworld and sort of reclaiming her throne in some sense, which is kind of like, a few years ago when we had the Venus retrograde in Leo, the day Venus stationed retrograde the Barbie movie comes out, and she’s living this idyllic life, and then she starts contemplating death and she doesn’t know why. And then she goes through this entire journey and then she comes back and her lover has, like, stolen her kingdom and corrupted it, which is very similar to the original myth in Mesopotamia like, 4,000 years ago. And then eventually she reclaims her throne and is renewed and refreshed. And by the time we get to this part of Venus direct around November 28th and sextiling Jupiter, Venus is also a morning star, and she’s gonna become very visible and bright and beautiful in the morning sky just before sunrise. And I think that’s the stage of the story that we’re at when it comes to the Venus retrograde is that, like, reclaiming your throne and coming back refreshed and renewed after a deep and somewhat intense sort of dark night of the soul and an inner journey in which many things were learned and some things were lost, but other things were gained. So that is the most exciting part that I’m looking forward to by the end of November is having that sense of completion, both with the Mercury retrograde story as well as the Venus retrograde story. 

But then we segue into December, and we get the December 4th Mars-Uranus square, and a whole new set of problems sort of arise somewhat suddenly, especially in the Virgo sectors of our charts once Mars goes into Virgo on the 26th but especially once it squares Uranus. But I guess I’ve explained sort of sufficiently some of the things that that brings up, and I’ll have to save a deeper discussion for that both historically and personally for next month when we do the astrological forecast for December. 

Let me see if there’s anything else I meant to mention. I think that’s pretty much it. We’re really just dealing with early in the month, like, the resolution phase of the Venus and Mercury retrogrades. We’re dealing with the Mars-Jupiter-South Node conjunction in the middle of the month. And then by the end of the month, we’re dealing with Mars entering its retrograde sign and squaring Uranus, where it’s gonna spend an awful lot of time all the way until July of next year, but we’re also seeing the final wrapping up of the Venus and Mercury retrograde stories and real direct movement in those areas of our life by the time we get to the end of November. So there’s some good things to look forward to for sure. 

All right, my friends. I think that’s it for this forecast in terms of the things I meant to say in the forecast section. So I was gonna read that scroll that I got from Austin. I wanted to mention also some things I have going on. I have – you know, a lot of people watch my videos each month and I put out a ton of free content, but I also have some online courses that I teach, and I’m actually running a discount sale and a promo code on all of my courses this month for a 15 percent discount if you use the promo code ‘RETROGRADE.’ 

So I teach a lot of stuff and put out a lot of free content here, but I actually hold back and I have a lot of my best content is available in my online courses that I teach through my course site at TheAstrologySchool.com. So the main course that I teach is the one on how to read birth charts, which is my Hellenistic astrology course, which is a course on ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts through intermediate and advanced techniques for learning how to read birth charts. And there’s over a hundred hours of video lectures there because I’ve been building different parts of that course and adding things to it continuously since 2010 – so for like, 16 years now – covering topics like sect, the significations of the planets, the rulers of the houses, annual profection, zodiacal releasing. And one of the things that’s cool about the course is I do a monthly webinar with students where we do live discussions of charts and I do interviews and we often focus on specific topics. Like, this last month we did one on Venus retrograde and how that was working out in the birth charts of different students as a transit. So you can get access to the recording of that as well as a huge archive of other recordings that I’ve been doing for years if you sign up for the Hellenistic astrology course. 

But besides that, I also wanted to mention that I have a new course on horary astrology that I’m teaching with my friend Rob Bailey, and I’m really excited about this because this course uses – it teaches you how to use astrology to cast a chart for a specific question that somebody has for you, and to be able to answer that single, specific question just based on the chart for the moment in which the question was asked. And Rob and I built this course which has like, 40 hours of lectures. We’ve got tons and tons of example charts that we share from our private practice of using horary. And specifically, the course is geared up to teach sort of the earliest version of horary that was focused on using whole sign houses using different Hellenistic and medieval techniques for answering horary questions that were first developed in the later part of the Hellenistic tradition and the early part of the medieval tradition. 

So that’s a really cool course, and Rob is actually gonna start hosting a monthly webinar session soon for monthly Q&As to work with students. So it’s a great time to sign up for that course so you can get in on both the pre-recorded lectures as well as those live webinars as well. 

And then finally, I also teach a course on rectification with my friend Patrick Watson where Patrick and I got together and we wanted to create a course to give people a systematic template for learning how to rectify charts in order to figure out what a person’s birth time is if you either don’t know the birth time or if you only have a little bit of information about the birth time and you want to be able to rectify the chart and narrow down the correct rising sign or the correct rising degree. 

So we’ve got over 22 hours of lectures on rectification in that course, as well as some real cases studies and client case studies and interviews, as well as some specialist interviews with other astrologers who specialize in rectification. And Patrick and I are also planning on doing some webinars there soon as well through Zoom to do some live Q&As with students. 

So all of the courses are self-paced. You get unlimited access for them as soon as you sign up. And you can start the courses right away as soon as you sign up, and also get access to the different quizzes, and each course you can take a final test and get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with us and use that as part of your professional practice if you want to go out and be a practicing astrologer. 

So in November, I’m doing a discount where you can sign up for one of the courses and get a 15 percent discount by using the promo code ‘RETROGRADE.’ And if you want to combine different courses, if you sign up for two or more courses, you already get a 15 percent discount by signing up for one of those bundles. But otherwise, the promo code goes from now until November 30th to get that 15 percent discount for one of them. So just go to TheAstrologySchool.com. 

All right, and the last thing is, as I said, Austin is away on a trip right now for Kaitlin’s birthday. But I did receive a small letter from him on a delivery pigeon. And this is what it said. It said, 

“My dearest Christopher, 

I write you now from an unknown, underground location. I stand at the shore of a great subterranean ocean, whether it is a natural cavern or a product of human artifice, I cannot say. There is a waterfall overhead that pours sewage endlessly into this vast sea. In its putrid roar and patter, I hear the laughter of children playing in the dark, and the sounds of couples fighting at midnight. The smell of this place has rid me of the desire to ever eat again, but the site is strangely beautiful. Everything is lit gently by phosphorus and fungi that grow on nearly every surface, including me. My friend, I have begun to glow in the most disconcerting way. 

You might wonder how I came to be here. The answer – hubris. I sought to know where the goddess went and what she did when she vanished from human sight. To look upon a goddess who desires to go unseen is indeed a transgression, and my current imprisonment is, no doubt, my just punishment for violating her divine privacy. Let me recount my journey of curiosity and error. 

I watched Venus drop low and then disappear in the west, and I followed, needing to know where she went to hide. I walked west through the night forest until I came upon an old manhole beneath an apple tree and obscured by vicious blackberry brambles. Nonetheless, I saw traces of the seal of the elder Aphrodite upon it, and so I pried it open. When within, found corroded copper rungs leading down. I followed that narrow shaft, and as I clambered, what few stars were overhead soon disappeared. In the darkness, I could feel the old rungs grow unwholesomely moist and slippery, but I persisted, foolishly. The rotted things eventually betrayed me, pulling loose from the wall. I scrambled and clawed for a hold, but to no avail. Down I plunged. 

Since then, I have wandered these tunnels, waded Catonian streams, seen and felt the very strangest of things. I strolled through the gallery of betrayal, drank from the spring of false hope, and bore witness to the miracle of trust reborn. I chatted with patrons of the vomitorium of regret and conversed with time travelers addicted to teenage heartbreak. I scanned the shelves at the library of the disappointed, and there read an intriguing text on the alchemy of tears. 

After all this, I came to be here at what I think is the bottom – the glowing beach of this great and terrible ocean into which the sewage falls. I do not know how far it extends, but I do know that I hear ominous rumblings coming from far beyond the shore. I have a growing fear that at any moment, a terrible, changed Aphrodite will emerge from its depths and whisper something that will break my heart forever. This may be my end, though I have not abandoned the small hope that as Venus rises again, I too might emerge from this labyrinth. 

And so perhaps in vain, I spend my time on this inverted beach, toiling on the second edition of my book and preparing for the November 13th intake of new students into my Fundamentals of Astrology program. I know my priestess consort Kaitlin is preparing a new Venusian offering, crafted and consecrated when the Lady was at the height of her power. Perhaps with it, she will persuade the goddess to grant me release, or at least reduce my sentence. I can only hope. 

Dearest Christopher, if I am permitted to rise again, I am eager to share with you the souvenirs I have collected and sketches I have made. Oh, my friend, I have such sights to show you! 

With love and terror, 

Austin.” 

So needless to say, Austin is doing quite well, it sounds like, and he will be back again next month when we do the forecast for December. And we’re also starting to get ready for the year ahead forecast for 2027. 

So I think that’s it for this episode, so thank you all for watching or listening. And I’ll see you again next time. 

[END CREDITS]

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