TAP Ep. 551 Transcript: October Astrology Forecast 2026

October 5, 2026

The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 551, titled:

October Astrology Forecast 2026

With Chris Brennan

Episode originally released on September 25, 2026

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2026/09/25/october-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 5th, 2026

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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 astrology of October 2026.

All right, so Austin’s taking the month off to recover from UAC he told me a few weeks ago, but he said he had a good time and a busy time because he did a full workshop and two talks and a bunch of other stuff. But it sounded like it went well. Myself, I’m recovering from a bout of covid that hit me really hard over the past few weeks, so I’m feeling kind of low energy today. And because I’ve been kind of out of commission, I haven’t been following the news as much as I usually do, so this time I’m gonna focus and jump straight into doing a forecast, and then I’ll try to weave some news and events into that a little bit as I go, but I’m primarily gonna focus today on just doing a deep dive, sort of a casual deep dive, into the astrological alignments and aspects for October to give you a breakdown of what the astrology is looking like over the next four weeks.

All right, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it. So let me share the planetary alignments calendar where this – for those watching the video version – the planetary alignments calendar, which shows where the planets will start at the beginning of the month and how far through different signs of the zodiac they’ll get by the end of the month. And then in terms of the overview, here is a diagram that shows the Venus retrograde, because this is really the biggest aspect of the month is the start of the Venus retrograde in Scorpio, which stations retrograde already in the first few days of the month.

And then for those watching the video version, here’s the planetary alignments calendar that shows all the major alignments and aspects and when they go exact that we’re gonna be talking about during the course of this episode. Yeah, but instead of reading them, I’ll just start going through them right here from the start.

All right, so overview statements – the main things happening in October is we get the first half, basically, of the Venus retrograde, because Venus stations retrograde in Scorpio at the beginning of the month. And then by late in the month we already get the Venus retrograde cazimi where Venus conjoins the Sun, which is the halfway point through its 40-day retrograde cycle. So we get the first half of the retrograde in October, and honestly the most tumultuous half. Not just because Venus is stationing retrograde, but also because it’s getting really tough aspects this month, especially around the time of its station from Mars overcoming it from Leo, from Pluto making a hard aspect from Aquarius, and yeah. Just a lot of different tricky things. So that’s gonna be our main focus to talk about today.

Other stuff happening this month in terms of big picture things is Mars moves into Leo. And this is important, because this is the sign that Mars will later retrograde back into later on because Mars is gonna station retrograde later this year in early Virgo, and then it’s gonna back up all the way into stationing direct in Leo. So as soon as Mars goes into Leo this month, that’s gonna be important, because that’s where it’s gonna spend a lot of time, and it will not fully get out of Leo until mid-May of next year. So when we think about that, not just as a mundane transit, but also as a personal transit where whatever whole sign house of your chart Leo coincides with, Mars is gonna be spending a huge amount of time there, and Venus also similarly is gonna be spending a lot of time in its retrograde signs of Scorpio and Libra. So that’s happening.

Additionally, Mars making all those hard aspects to Mercury, Venus, and Pluto is gonna be tricky. And finally, Mercury later in the month is gonna retrograde in the sign of Scorpio. So if we didn’t have enough sort of retrograde energy of looking back, retooling things, things from the past with Venus, we get that emphasized even more later in the month when Mercury goes retrograde in the same sign, and thus also in the same whole sign house in each of our birth charts. So this month is gonna be a lot of bringing things up from the past, a lot of reflection, a lot of retooling things, and a lot of rethinking whether we want to stick with certain things or whether we want to take a different path by the time those planets station direct in the future.

All right. So that’s the overview. Let me put up the actual chart, and let’s just jump into a sequential breakdown of the aspects this month, because there’s so many that it actually is one of those months where it’s really good to just show how it all evolves sequentially day by day.

All right. So here’s our chart and election for today. And we’re recording this on September 24th, just after two PM with Sag rising. But let’s move the chart forward to October 1st where we can see just days from now on September 27th and 28th is when Mars actually ingresses into Leo and starts that whole trip, like I said, that will last essentially on and off through mid-May of next year through that sign where eventually it’s gonna catch up to and conjoin Jupiter and the South Node, especially in mid-November.

So in terms of the first days of the month, though, let’s move it forward to October 1st. And here we can see the configurations that we start the month out are not soft configurations at all. Like, really the toughest part of this month I think is really in these configurations that happen in the first week, basically, right out of the bat where especially we see Mercury, which is at one degree of Scorpio on the first day of the month is applying to a square with Mars, which it completes already by October 2nd. So right off the bat, we get a Mercury-Mars square in the first couple of days of the month, which usually has a combative communicative energy where it can be associated with, like, getting into arguments or fights, using curse words, sometimes technology breaking or transportation technology breaking down in some ways, because Mercury is the planet of communication and short-distance travel, and Mars is the planet of cutting and separating and fiery things and splitting things apart. So that divisive energy, especially divisiveness when it comes to communication, is especially prominent right at the beginning of the month right off the bat.

And if that wasn’t enough, by the time we get to October 3rd, we have Venus slowing down and stationing retrograde in Scorpio at about eight degrees of Scorpio. And at the same time, we get this really tough configuration of Mars hitting three degrees of Leo and opposing Pluto. And this is a really tough aspect that we’ve seen manifest a lot, especially last year when we had that retrograde in the sign of Leo, and we had a retrograde in the sign of Leo and we had three Mars-Pluto oppositions. And I remember especially the second one that was all around New Year’s there was like, one of two terrorist attacks took place. The beginning of the LA wildfire, I think, started due to fireworks initially that were set off around the time of that exact opposition. So over the past several years with Mars-Pluto hard aspects and especially the opposition, we see themes of annihilation and brutality. Sometimes a really painful metamorphosis of something. But also in a constructive sense, sometimes it can be pushing the limits of something to its absolute extreme, and sometimes that can be pushing it past its breaking point like a rubber band that gets pulled and snapped. But other times, it can be about pushing your limits to go further than you ever have before.

So sometimes also, like around the first Mars-Pluto opposition a couple of years ago, we have themes about behind the scenes power plays, because Mars – well, Pluto especially has to do with themes of control and power and manipulation. So things happening behind the scenes that you don’t always see or aren’t necessarily visible can be happening in the background, especially things involving ulterior motives or somethings, like, the criminal underworld can sometimes be more prominent. There’s also themes of domination and battles for supremacy. What else? Like, extreme acts of violence, because Mars is the planet of war and separation and attacks. So sometimes you can see extreme versions of that. And all of that is like – that energy is peaking here on October 3rd. But what’s weird is just that it’s in that very tight T-square with Venus, which is stationing retrograde in Scorpio at the same time. Not to mention Mercury, which is bringing in those themes of, like, communication and travel and other things like that.

So let’s talk a little bit about the Venus retrograde, because this station is important and we’ve already been seeing a lot of build up to this Venus retrograde station over the course of the past month or so as Venus has been traveling through its shadow degrees not just in Libra but also in Scorpio. But it’s gonna hit a really intense point now that we’re actually in the retrograde itself.

So some keywords I wrote down just looking back at our past – because I did a bunch of episodes over the past few years about Venus retrograde, and I wanted to state some general significations and then some ones that are particular to Scorpio. So, you know, with any retrograde, but especially Venus, we get the re- factor. So it’s like, revisiting, revising things, returning, or sometimes going back and reclaiming the past for some reason after digging it up. And sometimes, you know, Venus retrogrades are really notable for relationship realignments, and sometimes that can be the standard or the cliche thing where because Venus slows down and then starts moving backwards in the order of signs, it has this backwards-looking orientation towards the past. And so sometimes in a relationship context, since Venus is traditionally the planet of love and relationship and marriage, this can be relationships from the past coming back into the present, either in a very strong way of literally the return of an ex-partner, or sometimes in a lighter sense of just revisiting the past and remembering why it was in the past in the first place before you eventually move forward again.

So a retrograde, though, can sometimes cause sort of things can get messed up at the beginning of it, and I think that’s gonna be especially prominent for this retrograde because it’s starting with that Mars-Pluto opposition. And so sometimes with Mars squaring Venus, you can have the severing of relationships or the severing of old alliances, for example. But then during the course of the retrograde, especially by the later part of it, we can get the forging of new or unexpected new relationships or alliances.

Venus retrogrades are especially associated with challenging consensus where sometimes there’s – this is something that my friend Nick Dagan Best talks about a lot and talked about in some of our early retrograde episodes – just that Venus has to do with societal rules and what’s considered the almost unwritten rules of polite society in some sense, and what happens when somebody breaks those rules and stands out or goes against the grain. And sometimes that can seem jarring or controversial at first or kind of like, spicy, but other times, by standing out and going against the grain, it can actually set a new trend and other people can eventually start to join in on that and imitate or follow that trend, even though at first for, let’s say, the majority of people it was something that looked kind of different or looked kind of weird. And that actually brings up a theme that came up really strongly in the Venus retrograde in Aries episode I did with Elly Higgins last year where we were talking about Venus retrograde in the context of that which is normative versus that which is non-normative, and how Venus retrogrades tend to be associated with non-normative things where people can push the boundaries regarding identity or gender or even traditional relationship structures during that time in ways that set a new precedent or stand out in some way.

There’s also really commonly periods of scandal and provocative things can take place. So public figures doing things that are considered wrong or rude or shocking or vulgar or things that sort of upset the established order. And sometimes that can be in that normative versus non-normative sense that I was talking about in terms of just, like, pushing societal boundaries and expectations. But other times, it can be in the sense of doing something wrong or doing something where there’s questions about morality and wrong versus right and having broken important social rules. So we’ll see a lot of that during this retrograde.

There’s also a retooling phase where sometimes, especially early in the retrograde, somebody can get something together and do a preliminary launch of something, but then the design is not quite right or there’s something about it that’s not finalized. And then during the course of this 40-day retrograde period, they’ll go back and retool it and redesign it and reframe it, and then by the time Venus stations direct in November and December, it will be launched with its final iteration that will actually look good and look compelling. So that’s gonna be especially the case with this retrograde in all sorts of different areas where with this retrograde, it’s gonna start off really rough in early October, but then things are gonna be smoothed out in a much more significant and positive way by the end of the retrograde when it stations direct in Libra in mid-November. You know, there’s some retrogrades where it starts off more pleasant if it’s like, configured with Jupiter, and then it ends on a more tumultuous note if it’s configured with malefics at the end. But this retrograde is really the reverse of that where it starts off very tumultuous and there’s a lot of dark stuff that will come up during the early phases of this retrograde, but then by the time Venus gets into Libra and gets into its home sign in November and stations direct at the same time that Mercury does around November 13th, there’s gonna be this real palpable sense of improvements having been made and that retooling phase having been constructive or successful in some way. But sometimes in order to get to a happy ending, you’ve got to go through a real dark night of the soul or reevaluation of what’s valuable and important to you.

So some of the themes I think we’ve talked about in the past couple of retrogrades about the ancient myth of Inanna’s descent into the underworld I think are gonna be much more vivid during the course of this retrograde. And sometimes you can see, yeah, this theme of a dark night of the soul where you have to go through this journey into the dark underworld, either internally and psychologically, or sometimes in a much more literal sense. But then you eventually emerge from the other side of that a little bit stronger, or at least with a clearer idea of where you want to be going in life. And sometimes we can see with public figures with that the notion of a temporary loss of prestige, losing face or public standing. But other times we also see in the other side of the retrograde once it stations direct a sort of surprise comeback or emerging from obscurity or defeat sometimes like Inanna with a new, more authentic persona. And I think that’s gonna be a really important theme for a lot of us during the course of this retrograde is running into some challenges but then trying to find what is authentic and what seems genuine in terms of our own choices and values and life directions, and how we want to move forward once we’ve had some of those things challenged and gone through this sort of like, internal dark night of the soul and then reemerged from that eventually like Venus does with a clearer idea of who we are and what we think is valuable and important in the world.

So those are some of the just like, standard Venus retrograde things that are gonna come up during the course of this. But with the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in particular, I spent a lot of – like, all of my energy basically researching that in history over the past month and outlined that in an episode that I released a couple of, what, like, a week ago. So I won’t reiterate all of that. But I did see some specific themes that I wanted to point out here and reiterate, because I think they’re gonna be really important. One of them was unearthing the underworld was a massive recurring theme that sometimes happened literally through, like, archaeological digs or people finding ancient caves or ancient Egyptian tombs or other things like that, so that sometimes the past was literally unearthed. But other times, it has to do with looking back and unearthing things about the past, especially in terms of what house Venus is currently going retrograde in your chart.

And I forgot to say that everybody should be thinking about it primarily in that context of what whole sign house is Scorpio and Libra in your chart, and what themes might you be revisiting in each of those houses? Because each of them will have something sort of like, separately that will come up, especially from the past, or that will be the subject of revision. But one of the things that I found during the last couple of retrogrades that came out really strongly is there’s often a connection or an overlap between the two whole sign houses that Venus will retrograde in in your birth chart. So whatever whole sign houses Scorpio and Libra are, think about how those two topics which are normally separate in your life might be connected in some way. Like, for example, if Venus is going retrograde in your 7th and 6th houses, there might be some connection between relationships and health, or let’s say relationships and work, for example, which are two of the significations of the 7th and the 6th houses. Or in other instances I saw a person have a Venus retrograde between the 5th and the 4th house, and they had an adult child move back in with them at the time, which connected the topics of children and home and living situation. But also it brought that past component into play by having, you know, a child literally who had spent their entire life at home and then they grew up and moved away, and then they came back into the life at that time during the course of the retrograde.

There’s gonna be similar connections, and that’s why I did the year ahead horoscopes for this year where I went through each of the rising signs and some delineations for how those houses might be connected in each person’s life. So people can check out those horoscopes for each rising sign on my YouTube channel for 2026 or on the podcast website for more ideas about how you might approach that based on your actual rising sign.

Other things that have to be mentioned… This Venus retrograde is a repetition from every eight years Venus goes retrograde in approximately the same two signs or the same sign of the zodiac, especially in Scorpio. And it’s been doing this retrograde in parts of Scorpio since about 1906. But in practical terms, for each of us, it means we want to think back to especially the last two or three repetitions to see if we can get any clues about what house topics tend to come up for us when Venus goes retrograde in this sector of our chart, especially the Scorpio sector that’s gonna be so much of the focus this month.

So for example, Venus is going retrograde in Scorpio and Libra here in October and November of 2026. So eight years earlier in 2018, Venus went retrograde in the same area in Scorpio in October and November of 2018. So you can think back to what you were doing back then and just, like, if those house topics associated with Scorpio were important to you at that time for some reason. You can also think back to October and November and that entire last few months of 2010 when Venus was retrograde in Scorpio back then. 2002 was the one before that, October and November especially. 1994, 1986, and so on and so forth. So you can take it back in eight-year increments basically as long as you’re alive.

For those of you that were born in the later part of any of those years around the time when Venus went retrograde in Scorpio, this retrograde in Scorpio will be particularly important for you if you were born near a Venus retrograde in Scorpio because then that means it’s a recurrence transit for you, and it’s activating something special in your chart, which could be positive, it could be challenging. It depends on how it’s set up in your actual birth chart.

Additionally, oh, actually, I have an example of that, actually, that just came up where that demonstrates all of those where there was a patron earlier today on my Patreon page, Muneca Fea, who pointed out that in 2010 in October 1st, 2010, the first Facebook movie came out. And that was just six days before Venus stationed retrograde in the sign of Scorpio. And now 16 years later, a sequel to the Facebook movie called The Social Reckoning is coming out on October 9th, 2026, and this is just gonna be six days after Venus has stationed retrograde in the sign of Scorpio again. So that’s an example of how sometimes when something happens in the past around the time of a Venus retrograde in Scorpio, when Venus again goes retrograde in Scorpio you can see a recurrence or a repetition or an echo of a similar theme happening in the future. And interestingly, what Muneca also pointed out is that the lead actor who’s playing Mark Zuckerberg in the sequel to this Facebook film is Jeremy Strong, and he was born in December of 1978 with Venus in Scorpio right after it had just finished going retrograde in Scorpio in that same sign. So that means it’s like, he’s playing the lead role in the – he was born just coming off of the retrograde in Scorpio, and he’s about to play this important lead role in this sequel to the Facebook film in 2026 as Venus is going retrograde in Scorpio again just like it was in his birth chart. So that’s an incredible just example of the type of thing I would look for and pay attention to, especially if you were born in any of those years around when Venus was going retrograde in Scorpio. So if you were born around that, just pay attention.

It’s coming up again in the news all over the place as well. Like, in the Venus retrograde episode, I noted how in the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1962, President John F. Kennedy officially launched a 30 million dollar fundraising campaign to finance the construction of what was gonna be a national cultural center, and that’s how it was being promoted at the time. And then after he was assassinated, they later named the center once it opened the Kennedy Center. And he did a whole, like, week of fundraising it during the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1962, and then the relevance is in the past few weeks, the Kennedy Center was closed during this Venus retrograde in Scorpio in the build-up to it due to, like, conflict over Trump trying to put his name on it, and a conflict with the board of the Kennedy Center. So I’m sure we’ll continue to see the unfoldment of that, but that’s another example of how Venus retrogrades always have this backwards-looking orientation. And when it goes retrograde, there’s things from the past that start coming back into the present. And sometimes that can be the literal things, like the relationship from the past that comes back to the present that you then have a decision whether or not to resume that relationship at that time, and some people do and some people don’t. But sometimes it’s much more literal about something from the past and an echo or reminder of the past coming back into the present.

Okay, other Venus retrograde in Scorpio themes that are really important right now… Okay, so I got the standard ones. High-stakes diplomacy – like, I saw a ton of extreme brinkmanship, stand-offs, and desperate treaties that came up in the past under those retrogrades. And we’re already seeing a bunch of that coming up at this time, and actually maybe this is a good time to mention just a few of the Venus retrograde stories that I have noticed coming up in just the past few days that there’s a few actually that I forgot to mention in the Venus retrograde episode. So I was gonna take this as an opportunity to mention some of those.

Okay, so here’s the first one was Greenland. We mentioned this earlier this year, because I actually noticed this at the beginning of 2026 and we were talking about it then, how we saw this was gonna be a repetition. But in 1946, during the Venus retrograde in Scorpio, the United States made a secret offer to buy Greenland from Denmark, which the Danish quickly rejected. So it was, like, a failed attempt to buy Greenland on the part of the United States.

So then in 1978, there was another Venus retrograde repetition, and the Danish parliament at that time during the course of that retrograde granted Greenland partial autonomy, and they ratified this on November 29th, 1978, and then this led to just a few weeks later in January a successful independence referendum in Greenland that happened in January of 1979. So there was this theme then that came up at that time about Greenland and having autonomy or having the topic of self autonomy being really the focus that connects that 1946 and 1978 time period. And then just a few days ago – so it’s September 24th right now, but on September 22nd, I saw a headline that a trilateral security agreement was just signed at the UN General Assembly in New York between the US, Denmark, and Greenland, and apparently the deal grants the US expanded military access, including giving it two new bases and establishing some sort of “golden dome missile defense system.” So somehow it’s the speculation in the article I was reading said something about it successfully keeping Greenland under Danish sovereignty, and it’s supposed to defuse the threat of a forceful annexation which was being threatened on the part of the US earlier this year, which would have torn apart NATO. But we’ll have to see during the course of this retrograde if, like, that’s it and that was the event, or if there’s, like, gonna be the unfolding of other subsequent events over the course of the next few months related to that. We’ll have to pay attention to that story, but it was a stunning example of a repetition that’s already happening and why it’s so important to pay attention to and do these historical studies. Because sometimes when you do, you can anticipate what themes or topics are gonna repeat when the same retrograde happens in the future.

So similarly, I was really annoyed that I forgot to mention this, but one of the major Venus retrograde things that happened in 1978 was the Iranian Revolution radically escalated following the September 8th, 1978, Black Friday massacre. And there started being these massive strikes that completely paralyzed Iran’s oil industry right as Venus was going retrograde in October and November of that year. And this acted as this really critical turning point basically that ultimately led to the collapse of the Shah’s government when the Shah fled just following that in January of 1979. So we had anticipated earlier this year when we talked about that that this Venus retrograde would be very important for Iran, and one of the events that I did talk about and I noted in the Venus retrograde episode in Scorpio is that in 1986, eight years later, the Iran-Contra scandal broke in the US where there was this expose that revealed that the Reagan administration was secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure hostages and in order to illegally fund some secretive stuff that they were doing in South America. So the scandal broke just two days before the Venus retrograde cazimi in Scorpio, and so that sets up a precedent for, like, secretive backroom dealing and agreements and stuff between the US and Iran, which was the case with that 1986 Venus retrograde. And then I noticed that just yesterday in 2026, as we’re just a week from Venus stationing retrograde now, on September 23rd the president of Iran came to the US and addressed the UN to assert that Iran was defending itself and would not surrender in response to the day before, Trump made a threat saying he would “annihilate” or he could annihilate the Islamic Republic of Iran.

So this was really unprecedented, and this was a first, and that’s one of the things I pay attention to during these is what kind of firsts are happening where this was the first time a foreign leader came to speak at the UN General Assembly on American soil while his country was actively at war with the US. And that’s a really strikingly symbolic Venus retrograde type event. And what’s interesting about it is my friend Nick Dagan Best pointed out to me that the president of Iran was born around the Venus retrograde in Scorpio of 1954. So he was born September 29th, 1954, with Venus at 19 degrees of Scorpio, just 25 days before it would station retrograde and then retrograde in Scorpio. So again, that’s another example of what I’m talking about – of people born near a Venus retrograde in Scorpio having really important events and turning points unfold during the course of subsequent Venus retrogrades in Scorpio.

So that was another one. And then one last repetition that I’m paying attention to that I mentioned all of the, like, precursors in the Venus retrograde episode, but this is one that I’m gonna be paying attention to closely, which is in 1954, amidst the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, the US and Taiwan signed their first legally binding mutual defense pact on December 2nd, 1954, just days after Venus stationed retrograde in Scorpio. And this paved the way for something called the Formosa Resolution in early 1955, which granted the US sweeping military authority to defend Taiwan against mainland China. So this is when the US, like, formalizes a sort of military alliance with Taiwan around the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1954. And then what’s fascinating about this that I found and talked about in the Venus retrograde Scorpio is then in 1978, Venus went retrograde in Scorpio and the Carter administration started doing these secret back channel talks with China, and at the end of that right around the time that Venus stationed direct in Scorpio conjunct Uranus, the US and China made this surprise announcement on December 15th, 1978, where they announced that they were establishing full diplomatic relations between the two countries, between the US and China. And at the same time, this resulted in the US officially severing the 1954 mutual defense treaty with Taiwan that it had signed under the previous Venus retrograde three cycles earlier, three eight-year cycles earlier. And so that set up this thing of, again, the relationship between the US, Taiwan, and China, where under one it was like, the US getting closer to Taiwan and acting in a way of protecting or forestalling an invasion from China. But then on another subsequent repetition, it was like, the US getting closer to China diplomatically and moving away from Taiwan. So I just woke up today and glanced at The Washington Post, and today on September 24th, it turns out that the president of China is in Washington, DC, for an official state visit at the Capitol with President Trump, and they’re having bilateral talks right now. And the news reports are saying that the primary objective or focus of the president of China was pressing the US on its Taiwan policy and arms sales basically to make new agreements, basically, with China and to push it away from its agreements with Taiwan. So you know, that’s likely to be another area that we should really pay attention to during the course of this Venus retrograde, just based on that past precedent of what’s happened in the past.

So in terms of other Venus retrograde in Scorpio themes, that’s why I was talking about high-stakes diplomacy being a major one of them. But sometimes there can also be, like, under the 1938 one, there was one – I didn’t know the best way to phrase this, but it was like a deal with the devil or like a deal with the enemy. And under that one, Britain signed an appeasement deal with Hitler basically trying to avert another world war, but it ended up just giving Hitler what he wanted and kind of kicking the can down the road, and then the world war started the following year anyways when Hitler invaded Poland. But this theme of highly secretive back channel negotiations and shadowy appeasements is a common one under this retrograde that we may see more of.

There was also a lot of themes of espionage and covert operations, and sometimes covert operations coming to the surface and becoming visible again. Sometimes this can also have to do with intelligence leaks. Assassinations were a really common one, like some pretty legendary, messy assassinations, as well as invisible blockades and economic warfare and economic blockades was a theme that I saw as well.

In the news, there’s often a lot of true crime stuff that comes up in the news. There can be sensationalized murders, things involving serial killers, and even the idea of psychological terror. I just found a funny one last night, actually, where it turns out that the first Halloween movie came out in 1978 during that Venus retrograde in Scorpio, and apparently – like, I didn’t know, but – apparently that established or helped to establish some of the common contemporary horror theme tropes of there being, like, the last girl or whatever it’s called where there was the idea in the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s where they kept having this recurring trope of, like, a woman character who survives the movie due to her virtue or something like that, because there had to be – there was rules which then got parodied in the 1996 horror movie Scream where they talked about, like, you can’t drink or you can’t have sex or other things like that, otherwise you did in the horror movie, and that there would be this one female protagonist who would survive the movie because of her virtues or what have you. And eventually under subsequent Venus retrogrades, those tropes got broken down or deconstructed or even inverted. But it was interesting to me seeing that that was like, a wildly successful slasher movie basically that came out under that Venus retrograde in Scorpio in 1978, and then set a sort of like, precedent or influence or artistic precedent in some way. And it kind of made sense also in terms of what I was talking about last month with Austin where I talked about Venus in Scorpio and Venus retrograde in Scorpio can be, like, finding beauty in things that most people don’t typically find beautiful. And this is actually a really good example of that, because it’s like, finding artistic beauty or appeal or satisfaction or what have you in a slasher movie or a murder mystery or something like that that normally, you know, you wouldn’t find appealing or that most people might not normally find appealing, but that genre finding its appeal among some people for different reasons.

So I thought that was a good example, and I’m sure there’s other really good examples like that that come up, as well as – it would be interesting to study themes in horror movies having different eras, probably broken up by Venus retrograde – that eight-year Venus retrograde cycle – but also sometimes the inversion of those tropes happening on subsequent repetitions. Like apparently on the 40-year anniversary of the first Halloween movie, apparently the lead protagonist who’s Jamie Lee Curtis like, really early in her career, 40 years later came back and reprised her role during a subsequent Venus retrograde in Scorpio, but this time as an older woman who was like, protecting her daughter or granddaughter or something like that. So there was this interesting inversion of some of the tropes.

Or I noticed that in 1986 around that Venus retrograde in Scorpio, you had the second Aliens movie. And so Ripley played this role not of like, a passive person who’s running away from a scary monster but instead a woman that was standing up to and fighting and battling the alien in the movie and trying to protect the young girl that played almost like, a daughter figure in that movie. So there’s a lot of themes there that seem really important artistically that are worth exploring in terms of this retrograde. And while there’s really challenging and sometimes dark underworldly themes that come up, especially with this one when Venus is stationing retrograde, there’s also some really interesting deeper artistic and psychological and cultural things that may be relevant as well.

Oh yeah, other Venus retrograde in Scorpio themes, just to quickly reiterate. Like, cultural reckonings, different societal confrontations with systemic abuse, assault, toxic relationships and themes like that can be incredibly prominent. And I think this one may be more so, because we’re gonna get Mars moving into a square with Venus, and we’ve seen over the past few years those hard aspects between Venus and Mars really bring to the surface some really toxic stuff with, like, all the Jeffrey Epstein stuff keeps coming up over and over again on Venus-Mars aspects. And even the Venus retrograde of 2018 was happening around the time of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and that ended up being the first election after the Me Too movement started a year earlier. So that 2018 midterm saw a massive wave of women in the US elected to office, partially due to some of the outrages of the previous year or the other systemic abuse things that were coming up at that time ushering in this profound shift and sort of cultural transformation and attempts to counteract injustices that were surfacing at that time and that were being dredged up from the underworld. And so that’s both a theme this month in terms of the Venus-Mars square, but also because Venus will be squaring Pluto at the same time.

All right. Other themes. There were some major civil rights struggles, racial justice, desegregation and stuff, especially earlier in the 20th century were coming up as really significant things. Massive power shifts politically. There can be wave elections. Sudden parliamentary takeovers were one of the things we saw in, like, the 1930 Venus retrograde with – was it ‘30? Yeah, ‘30 with Hitler taking power or basically taking control of the government at that time. Or eight years earlier in 1922, that was like, Mussolini taking full control with his Fascist party when his group marched on the capitol basically and the king just gave him power instead of fighting against it. So sometimes there can be – in those instances, at least – was like, the dismantling of democratic institutions. Other times, though, there have been major wave elections, for example, in the US which had pushed things in one direction or the other in terms of different parties taking over, especially because this Venus retrograde tends to coincide with midterm elections in between the presidential elections. So it becomes a referendum basically each time on how the president is doing, and in some instances, it swings one way or another. Like, 2018 it swung with a lot of Democrats getting elected two years into Trump’s term, whereas 2010, that was two years into Obama’s term, and that was when the Tea Party movement swung things with a bunch of Republicans getting elected. So we’ll be watching a lot of that unfold over the course of the next month or so in the US, but also a lot of, yeah, tricky stuff probably underworldly stuff happening behind the scenes when it comes to that as well with some of the Venus in Scorpio and Venus-Pluto squares and things like that.

Okay, I think those are all of the main Venus retrograde themes that I wanted to make sure that i, like, mentioned as major stuff. Let’s get back to looking at the actual chart and the actual day-by-day breakdown.

All right, so let’s see. So Mercury-Mars square exact October 1st. Mercury-Pluto October 1st as well. Mercury square Pluto, which just intensifies the Mercury-Mars square and the difficulty in – the communication that has conflict and a severing orientation, Mercury-Pluto intensifies that and gives it a underworldly or sometimes criminal orientation, or sometimes an orientation towards dredging things up from the past which then get sort of argued about basically. Like, we’ve seen a lot of Mercury-Pluto squares during investigations and exposes, especially in the news where something is dredged up about underworldly financial dealings or things like that. So Venus stations retrograde on October 2nd. The Mars-Pluto opposition goes exact on October 2nd. The next aspect after that is on October 4th, and it’s this Sun-Saturn opposition that goes exact on the 4th where the Sun hits 11 degrees of Libra, and it opposes Saturn at 11 degrees of Aries. So this is, like, again, it’s like, running into a wall. It’s like we’ve just had some of these really tense fiery Mars aspects, but then we have this tense aspect with Saturn that’s saying no to something. And usually an opposition will manifest externally through another person or through a one-on-one interaction with somebody where you run into a wall where somebody else or some person or some situation is telling you “no” for some reason. And you hit a barrier where you cannot proceed further. And sometimes that can feel really frustrating. It can feel like somebody’s throwing a cold bucket of water on your head. And the feelings of not being able to push through a boundary can be upsetting, although sometimes necessary. In other instance, it can be you having to play that role for somebody else of saying “no” to something or in some instances perhaps establishing your own boundaries, which could be relevant in terms of the Venus retrograde just happening a day or two before and different people having to put up boundaries when it comes to relationship or interpersonal issues and in terms of establishing what feels right versus what doesn’t feel right in a relationship context to them.

All right, so that’s happening on the 4th with the Sun-Saturn opposition. A couple days later, we get one of probably our best aspects of the month. There’s very few, actually, really good aspects this month, I have to say. It’s one of the most tricky and tough months of the year. But we do on the 6th get a nice retrograde conjunction where Mercury’s still moving direct and it hits eight degrees of Scorpio, and Venus which is now moving backwards conjoins Mercury at eight degrees of Scorpio. So this is, like, a positive communication or a positive email or message from somebody that’s coming up from the past because Mercury’s the planet of communication especially, and Venus is the planet of relationships and love and social connections and friendship and things like that. So there’s some sort of positive communication, but because Venus is retrograde, it has a backwards-looking orientation. So for some people, this may be, yeah, like getting a message from somebody you haven’t heard from in a long time, or having some sort of pleasant trip down memory lane. And obviously that’s coming on the tail end of some challenging aspects, but one of the things that I like about this is that, like, Mars is two degrees separating from that opposition with Pluto at this point, and the Sun is two degrees separating from the opposition with Saturn. So it’s almost like there’s a temporary feeling of relief once some of those difficult aspects from the first days of October start to separate, and you have this feeling of exhaling after a period of intense tension. And then there’s some sort of positive or reassuring communication perhaps between different parties that have had a falling out or have had tensions up to that point. So it’s very brief, because it happens pretty quickly over the course of October 6th. But it is one of my favorite or most positive aspects of this month.

Oh, yeah, right. So that leads us right into one of two or three other positive aspects this month, which is that on the 7th of October, Mars reaches five degrees of Leo, and it forms an exact sextile with the planet Uranus. So this can be really good for something like taking new and innovative action of having an unexpected – taking an unexpected action that works out for the best. So previously, we’ve talked about how the Mars-Uranus conjunction in July, for example, can be really – especially all of those hard aspects with Mars and Uranus – can be unexpected accident or things that come out of the woodwork or out of the blue that are tumultuous or challenging or severing in some sense. But this is like the waxing sextile of the Mars-Uranus relationship and cycle, I should say, so there’s something about innovations and taking innovative actions that work out in a mildly positive way. Because it’s just a sextile, so it’s not anything huge to write home about in the same way that the conjunction or even a trine would be, but it’s just something mildly positive about moving forward in a decisive way, but thinking outside of the box and doing things a little bit differently. And I like how that goes along with the Mercury-Venus conjunction the previous day in terms of having a lightly positive communication. So there’s something about a forward-looking orientation of the Mars sextile Uranus, and a backwards-looking orientation of Mercury conjunct Venus, which is retrograde.

All right, so those are our two most positive aspects of the month, and for some reason they happen right next to each other on October 6th and 7th. But after that, we move to October 10th, and we get to our first lunation of the month. And this lunation is a New Moon that takes place in the sign of Libra at 17 degrees of that sign. And the problem, though, is that this lunation coincides with Venus, which has retrograded back to seven degrees of Scorpio and is still moving very slowly, moves into an exact square with Mars, which has reached seven degrees of Leo on that exact same day. So we get a Venus-Mars square while Venus is retrograde in Scorpio, and we get a New Moon lunation that is, like, ruled by that tricky or problematic Venus which is retrograde. It’s in the sign of its exile, which is the sign opposite to its domicile. So it’s, like, furthest from Taurus that it can possibly get. So in that sense, it’s away from home and it’s working with a set of significations associated with Mars that are contrary to or different from its own, which can leave it struggling a little bit sometimes to act in a way that’s effective in terms of itself. And then it’s getting overcome by this square from Mars in Leo, which is bringing this really tense dynamic where, like I said earlier, we’ve seen a lot of themes involving conflict between genders that come up when it comes to Mars-Venus hard aspects. We’ve seen themes related to, like, sex and sexuality where sometimes there’s been sex scandals and things like that that have come up on hard aspects between Mars and Venus, especially some of those conjunctions over the past few years because they kept replicating the very close Mars-Venus conjunction in Jeffrey Epstein’s birth chart. Yeah. So scandals, interpersonal conflicts involving gender or sex or sexuality seem heightened and we’ll probably see some sort of news themes surrounding that, especially around that New Moon. And it kind of imprints that New Moon cycle over the next two weeks especially in the build-up to the Full Moon with that energy, which is just kind of like a not great, not super pleasant energy to stamp on this month with that lunation.

In a positive sense, sometimes Venus-Mars aspects with Venus retrograde can be an interpersonal conflict in a relationship or in a friendship where there is a severing or a separation or like a dark night of the soul, but sometimes that can be necessary in order to eventually find something that’s not just more true to yourself, but eventually to get to a better place within either the context of that relationship or in other instances if a relationship ended at this time due to some sort of conflict or separation, it can be necessary in order to open the door to a better or other relationship later on once Venus stations direct a month or two later.

All right. One positive thing I’ll say about this lunation is once the Moon conjoins the Sun, it does apply to a sextile with Jupiter. So even though the Venus-Mars aspect is the primary signature for this lunation, there’s at least some glimmer of growth orientation that’s coming off of the lunation in the future just because of the application to that benefic.

All right, moving forward, we do a little time jump five days to October 15th. And here Pluto slows down. Pluto has retrograded back to the early part of three degrees of Aquarius, and then Pluto stations direct in Aquarius at this time. So this is really important for a few different reasons. One of the reasons is just this is gonna be the final pass for those of you that have any placements in the early degrees of the fixed signs, Pluto’s gonna come back for one last hard aspect, basically, to that placement of anything that’s in the first degrees of the fixed signs and may dredge up or act as the final entry in a series of challenging and transformative experiences that have been happening over the past few years since Pluto first moved into Aquarius. And it’s coming back for one final revisiting of those themes. But then it’ll station direct and move on, and it’ll never get back this early in Aquarius again. I think in the future, it’ll just retrograde back to, like, five or something like that. So that’s one positive thing.

It will probably emphasize and bring to light some pretty intense themes having to do with artificial intelligence, because as soon as Pluto went into Aquarius, that was not long after, like, ChatGPT had just launched months earlier and we got the whole sudden AI craze came out of nowhere over the course of the past several years. And that very much coincided with Pluto in Aquarius, and every time we have a Pluto station in Aquarius, there’s been some important turning point when it comes to artificial intelligence. And I just released an episode earlier today with Thea Anderson where she pointed out that the Mars-Uranus conjunction in early July had coincided with the first AI swarm attack where a bunch of AI agents got together and started communicating, and then attacked and took down a website and just went completely off the rails. And that’s the reason why there’s been so many discussions over the past month since reports basically of this incident came to light starting around the eclipse in Pisces at the end of August. And then all of a sudden, that’s why everybody’s been talking about regulation of AI and the need to put in better rules and to slow down the development of some of these technologies, because some of these things are starting to get out of hand and go in a direction that’s unexpectedly disruptive or destructive and that may get worse, basically. So I would recommend everybody check that out, because we had a really good discussion about that that I just released today that was a good example. Because we knew that there were some external things that were obvious – like, the war between Iran and the US, the temporary not truce, but whatever it was that was lasting for a few weeks after the Venus-Mars conjunction suddenly fell apart. And all of a sudden, the US and Iran started shooting at each other again in early July on that Mars-Uranus conjunction. So there was obviously some external things that were happening on that Mars-Uranus conjunction, but then it turned out that there was a secret, behind the scenes thing that was really important in terms of world history where there was a first. In this instance, the first autonomous AI swarm attack took place on this Mars-Uranus conjunction behind the scenes as well. And it really reminded me of how in World War II, if you’d been attempting to track some of those Mars-Uranus conjunctions, a lot of that stuff was happening behind the scenes with scientists that were working on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. And then it was only in the later phases of that where eventually on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in 1945 they used the atomic bomb in war for the first time when the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed on that Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. So unfortunately, we may be seeing the sort of development of something similar when it comes to that, and it may be that AI and the militarization of AI as well as the potential destructive power, when it’s left unchecked or unregulated, and you have autonomous agents working together independently and sometimes collectively to do destructive things, could be the signature that we see develop over the course of the next six or seven years as we get the next three of those Mars-Uranus conjunctions which this was only the first initial preview of.

So I mention that as a digression only because we’re gonna get that Pluto station here in October on October 15th. And the close connection of that to Pluto in Aquarius will probably see some important turning point when it comes to the development of AI that’s been in process over the course of the past several years.

The other reason why Pluto stationing is important is because it coincides with another really tricky transit this month, which is Venus retrogrades back to three degrees of Scorpio by October 19th where it forms an exact square with Pluto shortly after Pluto has stationed. So Venus-Pluto hard aspects can be really tricky. They can dredge up dark or underworldly things, especially from the past when it comes to Venus being retrograde. Themes of control and manipulation in relationships can sometimes become even more prominent, which can be unpleasant to deal with. Like, being in a situation in a relationship or even in a friendship or an alliance where somebody’s not quite being straight with you, but they have ulterior motives but are sometimes trying to exert power or control through means that are not immediately apparent can sometimes be the theme of challenging Venus-Pluto aspects. And this is one of the reasons why the first half of this Venus retrograde is really much more tricky than the second half, just because we’re dealing with not just Venus going retrograde in Scorpio, which already has this darker or more somewhat underworldly aspect. But the Venus-Pluto stuff adds this additional feeling of control and power and manipulation and themes like that that can be hard to navigate and to deal with. And yeah. So that aspect goes exact on the 19th.

A couple days before that, though, a few days before that on October 16th as a nice alternative, we get one of our most positive aspects of the month, which is this Mars-Saturn trine where Mars hits 10 degrees of Leo and it trines Saturn at 10 degrees of Aries. And this can be very helpful in terms of – I talked about earlier in the month we get the Mars-Uranus sextile, which is, like, innovative activities and finding new ways forward where the Mars-Saturn trine is more like taking deliberate, slow, purposeful steps in order to move ahead into the future with a clear plan. And I really like this aspect, because it’s so distinct from some of the hard aspects between Mars and Saturn that we’ve had this year, which is like, you know, hitting a wall with something where you just can’t proceed further, or we’ve used the analogy of pressing the gas and the brakes in a car and just coming to a stop and feeling that you can’t move forward. Whereas a Mars-Saturn trine is more like the necessary functioning of alternating between the gas and the brakes if you’re trying to get somewhere really fast around town, but you’re doing so in the most efficient and effective manner possible. And that’s the main image that I have for this Mars-Saturn trine is knowing exactly when to accelerate and move forward quickly, versus knowing exactly when the stop and slow down, and finding a perfect balance between those two impulses which are extreme impulses of “go” versus “stop.” Or, like, taking action – which is Mars – versus knowing when to take inaction, when to hold back on doing anything. And sometimes when you find the perfect balance between those two, which Mars and Saturn can find in a trine, you get this incredible motion of control and the exercise of control in an effective manner. Sort of like a person who in martial arts has memorized through practice and through repetition over and over again certain moves and certain stances and different things like that so often that it becomes like second nature. And that’s why this is one of my favorite aspects of the month, just because of the balance between those two tendencies between the Leo and Aries sectors of our charts and the houses that those coincide with, even though there’s so much about the Scorpio sector of our chart that is just kind of like a mess this month with the Venus retrograde.

Okay, so after this, after October 19th when Venus squares Pluto while it’s retrograde, we start to move into a different phase in the month over the course of the next week where on October 23rd, the Sun ingresses into Scorpio and we begin Scorpio season. And the same day on October 23rd, we get the cazimi or the conjunction between the Sun and Venus at zero degrees of Scorpio. And this is really good, actually, and really important for a couple different reasons. So the main reason is just that the retrograde cazimi of Venus marks the exact halfway point between the Venus retrograde cycle and the 20 days in the first part versus the 20 days in the second part. So usually at this point in the middle of the cycle, whatever problems or relationship difficulties or things from the past that were dredged up that were often problematic from the first part of the Venus retrograde, some of those things start to head towards some kind of resolution or having some moment of clarity where there’s a glimpse of what the ultimate outcome would or should be that will eventually happen once Venus stations direct about 20 days later. And while things are not fully resolved by any means at this point or really at all, you start to get that moment of clarity where the option or the possibility of some resolution or knowing what it is that you have to do can sometimes start to become clear. So I really like this cazimi for that reason.

It’s also notable Venus cazimis have been happening for a while now over the course of the past century in Scorpio, but this is going to be the last time that Venus makes the cazimi in Scorpio in this retrograde cycle. And eight years from now when the Venus retrograde repeats, this cazimi will instead shift over and take place in Libra where it’ll start happening in Libra for a century forward. So that’s also interesting to think about in terms of there’s some broader mundane implications about how the Venus retrograde – this particular Venus retrograde has been happening in Scorpio, and the point of resolution has been happening in Scorpio for many decades now. But then from this point forward into the future, that will shift to Libra. And in many people’s birth charts, then, that’s also gonna put the shift from the Scorpio house in your chart during this eight-year retrograde cycle to the point of resolution starting to happen in the Libra house in your chart eight years from now and then eight years after that and eight years after that. So that’s really, like, thinking pretty far into the future, but it’s an interesting thing to think about just in terms of mundane astrology and how there will be this kind of shift in this Venus retrograde cycle from Scorpio into Libra from this point forward.

So the thing that is not so good about this cazimi is the very next day on October 24th, Mercury slows down and stations retrograde in Scorpio at 20 degrees of Scorpio. So it’s, like, if the Venus retrograde which has been happening all month at this point in Scorpio wasn’t enough already in terms of dredging up the past, bringing relationships and friendships and situations and alliances from the past back into the present, now we get a Mercury retrograde in Scorpio which is going to emphasize some of those themes further, especially when it comes to communications and technology. And we’ll start getting some of the standard Mercury retrograde things, which is like, you know, technological snafus or technology breaking down. Miscommunication. Challenges coming up when it comes to travel through planes and cars and things like that. But also revising things and going through that process of sometimes doing something once and thinking it’s done, but then having something get messed up and having to go back and do it over again one or two more times. So those are major themes with the Mercury retrograde. But also Mercury retrogrades are also oriented towards the past, so again, this brings up some similar themes with Venus in terms of bringing people or themes from the past back into the present. And sometimes that can be, like, a positive trip down memory lane, or it can bring up things from the past that can be good to think about or to revisit. But one of the problems, as we’ll see, is that Mars by this point is at 14-15 degrees of Leo, so it’s coming up on a square with Mercury. And that kind of implies that some of the things that are brought up from the past or the communications and the people that come back from the past in the present can be bringing more tense periods of communication or conflict with them rather than simply, like, pleasant ones.

So Mercury stations retrograde; Mercury’s retrograde for the next three weeks. Venus retrogrades back into Libra the following day, so by October 25th, Venus is back in Libra. And it’s now revisiting the Libra sectors of our charts where, you know, so much of the focus of October is really on the Scorpio sector and whatever whole sign house that is in our chart, whether it’s friends if it’s the 11th house, whether it’s relationships in the 7th house. But now Venus returns back to Libra, which it had departed from weeks ago, and for some people… Like, Venus first went into Libra, I think, August 4th or 5th, and that began the unfolding of a sequence of events back then which for some people you thought was finished or was, like, a one-and-done type of deal. But then what we find here from October 25th forward is there was something that we started or some sequence of events that began to unfold during that time which turns out that we have to revisit and becomes part of a larger unfolding of a sequence of events that plays out through the rest of 2026 essentially. And this date on October 25th is the point where Venus will reactivate the Libra house of our chart and bring some of those significations into the focus over the course of the next few weeks.

All right, so that’s that. That brings us to our second lunation of the month, which is on October 26th is a Full Moon in the sign of Taurus. I was hoping for a better lunation, but it’s like, I was looking at the closest aspect that this lunation makes, and it goes exact at two and three degrees of Taurus, and unfortunately that is pretty exactly square Pluto at three degrees of Aquarius. So the first lunation in the month was that New Moon in Libra ruled by Venus, which was square Mars, and now our second lunation of the month is a Full Moon ruled by Venus, which has just retrograded back into Libra, but the lunation itself is applying to a square with Pluto. So some of those themes of manipulation and control and intensity and transformation and sometimes going into the underworld and having an experience sometimes metaphorically of something needing to die during that time and having that intense sort of transformative experience can peak at this time. And it may be connected with events that started back around the time of the New Moon two weeks earlier. Those things sort of come to a culmination at this time and it’s tied in with basically Venus – because Venus is still coming off of the cazimi, so that symbolically Venus is at the lowest point of the underworld cycle. But it’s now started to shift to the other side of it where it’s headed towards eventually reemerging from the underworld, but Venus is still in the underworld at this time. And so to me, this few day period is kind of like the middle point of the Inanna descent into the underworld story where Inanna is sort of stuck in the underworld and trapped there in some way, but is starting to – and is at her lowest point – but she’s also starting to hatch a plot to get out and to make her way from out of the underworld in order to reclaim her throne and in terms of reemerge eventually renewed on the other side. So this kind of becomes that turning point, not just after the cazimi between Venus and the Sun itself, but also especially after this lunation where things come to a culmination. But it’s a tense culmination square Pluto, square one of the gods of the underworld, essentially.

Okay. So that brings us to our final major aspect of the month, but unfortunately, this retrograde Mercury is moving backwards in later October. And unfortunately, it retrogrades back into a square with Mars, which goes exact October 30th. And let me see if I can animate the chart and get Mercury back to – yeah, it takes place at late 17 degrees of Scorpio with Mercury at about 17°58’ – Mercury’s retrograded back to 17°58’ Scorpio, and Mars, which is direct in motion, hits 17°58’ Leo on that day. So we get, you know, Mercury which is retrograde and was already dealing with some of the standard themes of, like, technological breakdown, miscommunications, travel snafus and things coming back from the past or forcing you to revise and redo and revisit things, you run into this period of tense conflict or verbal conflict and a breakdown of communication at this time. And especially because Mars is the planet that has to do with war and conflict and severing and separation, it can be, like, miscommunications or travel snafus that lead to a major conflict or a crash or a butting of heads that leads to a severing and separation. So to me, this is very similar to when Venus slowed down and stationed retrograde and it was squaring Mars and Pluto, and so some of those themes of conflict and separation were much more pronounced in the first part of the Venus retrograde. We kind of get something similar here between Mercury and Mars with Mars hitting Mercury and afflicting or maltreating it at this point in late October, still very early in the Mercury retrograde cycle because Mercury has only stationed retrograde six days earlier at this point. So we’re still seeing the early phases of the three-week Mercury retrograde cycle start to unfold and emerge at this time. And unfortunately, part of the way that they’re emerging is through this conflict signature with Mars.

So obviously, of course, let’s frame that in, let’s say, a more constructive fashion, something going back and revisiting the past or dredging things up from the past can sometimes lead to a necessary conflict, and sometimes you have to have it out with somebody about things that happened in the past. And sometimes that can be a necessary process in order to move forward into the future. So that’s, you know, a more constructive spin on it in terms of the necessity of some of the difficult transits that we’re gonna be experiencing throughout the course of October. But in terms of starting new things or electional astrology this month, it’s very difficult energy to navigate around. And actually that just reminded me and I was supposed to mention our electional chart for the month.

And this was – when we did our year ahead elections like a year ago, Leisa and I researched all the elections for 2026, and the most difficult month, which should be clear why not, to pick good electional charts for was October of 2026, because there’s just so many retrogrades and hard aspects to work around. It’s really tricky.

So the chart I’m gonna highlight this month is not necessarily an amazing electional chart, because frankly, if you have the option to do or start a major thing this month versus doing or starting a major thing another month, I would recommend just waiting and doing it a different month. Like, November, for example, once Venus and Mercury station direct. But if you don’t have a choice and you need to do something this month, then the main thing that I recommend is just trying to mitigate Mars, because Mars is the primary planet this month that is giving us the most problems with all of those hard aspects to the Scorpio planets. And the best way that you can mitigate Mars, especially in this context, is to make it a night chart, because then Mars is of the sect in favor, and its more challenging conflict orientation and severing qualities get muted or get turned to a much more constructive fashion that way.

So we found a bunch of different electional charts of trying to do that this month that were mainly night charts, but the one I’m gonna highlight to just give you an example of how you could mitigate Mars is on October 15th, 2026, at about 1:35 AM. So 1:35 in the morning. It’s the middle of the night, but that’s kind of what you gotta do in order to mitigate Mars and make it a night chart. And when you do that, you end up with a chart with Leo rising. And one of the features about this chart is it makes the Venus in Scorpio angular in the 4th whole sign house. So we have that positive Venus in an angular sign. It also puts Jupiter in the first house, which is not super benefic because it’s a night chart and Jupiter’s not the most positive in night charts. It also puts Mars in the first house, but because it’s a night chart that is acceptable. And it really helps to tone down and mitigate the square between Mars and the two Scorpio planets, which are Mercury and Venus. The other reason I highlight this chart is because while there’s some elections later in the month that have a more well-placed Sun, because that’s one of the downsides of this chart is the Sun is the ruler of the Ascendant in the 3rd house and it’s in Libra, which is the sign of its fall. And you can get some better elections later in the month where the Sun is in Scorpio in a mutual reception with Mars. But the downside is if you wait until later in the month, then you’re like, right in the middle of the Mercury retrograde, whereas this is still nine days before Mercury goes retrograde, which is not ideal, but it’s a slight improvement over Mercury actually stationing retrograde or getting a close degree-based square from Mars.

So yeah, this is the election for the month. The other thing this election has is the Moon in Sagittarius in the 5th whole sign house applying to a trine with Jupiter with reception, which is good. Mars also has reception with Mercury and Venus, which is helpful for taking the edge off of that square, especially in a night chart. There is a focus on 3rd house activities of communication, travel, local activities involving neighbors, siblings, or relatives. It’s not super effective, and there is some challenge coming from Saturn in the 9th whole sign house in a night chart, so this chart would not be good for, like, long-distance travel, starting a new educational routine like starting a class or something, or really for interacting with foreign cultures or places, which kind of encapsulates travel but could be applied in other circumstances as well.

So yeah. That’s an example of a chart that you could use this month if you really needed to start something. Again, it’s not the most amazing electional stuff, but this month is one of those months as an electional astrologer where you figure out how to eke out acceptable charts that could be used if you have no other choice. And to do that, you basically just have to maximize every possible minor mitigation that you can, and this is an example of that.

All right, so if you’re looking for other dates or charts this month, then you can check out the Electional Astrology Podcast which Leisa Schaim and I just released for October where I think we had, like, 10 other alternate charts if you need to do things during different parts of the month and how you can kind of work around things in order to get the best outcomes possible. So you can check that out through my page on Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.

In the live chat, KA asks, “Does Mars affect your elections as poorly if you’re natally a night chart?” No. I mean, it is better; like, Mars is gonna be better for you if you’re natally born with a night chart. But it’s also important still to mitigate it, because Mars will be better for you as a transit if you were born with a night chart, so you won’t tend to have Mars transits be the worst. But nonetheless, when you’re doing an important electional chart, it means you’re creating a new base chart for whatever you’re starting at that time. So you’re sort of picking – you get to pick whether Mars or Saturn will be the most challenging planet in that chart for the future life of whatever evolves or develops relative to what you start at that time. So it’s really about choosing, yeah, whether Mars and Saturn is gonna be the most difficult thing. And most of this month, because Mars is so central, you really want to try to mitigate Mars if you can, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s really tough doing day chart elections this month, because then Mars is, like, fully malefic, and it’s at its most divisive in terms of its severing and separating and conflict orientation significations.

All right, so that kind of brings us to the end of the month where that Mercury-Mars square is unfortunately like, the last major thing that we’re left with. So that takes us into November, and I did want to mention in order to not leave this forecast on a complete downer some of the positive – one of the positive things to look forward to in November, which is – so it’s like, we end the month with Mercury still pretty early on, still like a week into its retrograde in Scorpio. Venus is now in Libra getting towards the end of her retrograde. And one of the things that’s really cool about November is in mid-November, Venus and Mercury station direct on, like, the exact same day around November 13th and November 14th. We get Mercury stationing direct at five degrees of Scorpio, and we get Venus stationing direct at 22 degrees of Libra, which is just extraordinary to have both of those planets that have completely different retrograde cycles – like, Venus is 40 days and 40 nights retrograde cycle, and Mercury is like a three-week retrograde cycle. But to have them, which both started their retrogrades on completely different days, as we’ve seen – Venus at the beginning of the month and Mercury later in the month – but they both station direct on the same day in mid-November. So there’s gonna be some sort of feeling of all of the themes and the scenarios and the circumstances and the problems, frankly, that were kicked up by the Venus and Mercury retrogrades during the course of October first starting with Venus at the beginning of October and then with Mercury in Scorpio later in October start to reach some sort of positive resolution around this date and virtually around the same time in the middle of November. And that gives us something to look forward to and a sort of timeframe to keep in mind and to think about as a sort of light at the end of the tunnel, especially if some of these Venus or Mercury retrograde things bring up challenging events for you, either in terms of your personal life or in terms of mundane events. And just to know what the potential timeframe is for when some of those themes and some of the unfolding of that series of circumstances will eventually resolve itself, or where sometimes proactively where you’ll be able to bring some resolution and some end to those subjects in order to complete whatever it was that you had to do by revisiting the past, especially in the Scorpio sector of your chart, but also to a lesser extent in the Libra sector of your birth chart and whatever whole sign house that was that you’ll have completed that backwards-looking orientation towards the past at that point. And from this date forward from mid-November forward, you’ll be able to start setting a course for the future in order to leave some of those things behind. That your deep journey through the underworld, just like the myth of Inanna and her descent through the underworld and getting stuck there for a period of time, eventually Venus reemerges stronger and reemerges better in some sense, especially stationing direct here in Libra in her home sign. And similarly, each of us, after going through this dark night of the soul either internally and metaphorically, or in some instances externally and more literally, will eventually reach some state of peace and start moving forward again by mid-November.

So that does kind of coincide with some tricky transits that we’ll talk about in mid-November, which is, like, that Mars-South Node-Jupiter conjunction in Leo, which is kind of tricky. Especially Mars-South Node conjunctions I’ve seen come up a few times before in American history as being really not great. Like the 1929 Wall Street crash I talked about in the Libra rising birth chart of the US episode, how that happened in the second house of the birth chart potentially and it coincided with a major financial crash. Or September 11th was, like, a Mars-South Node conjunction that happened in Capricorn in the 4th house of the Libra rising chart. And that’s, like, you know, attack in the US’s homeland and the destruction of the Twin Towers and everything else. So there’s certainly some, like, chaotic problematic stuff happening, and that will happen in the 11th house of the Libra rising chart, which is the house of friends and groups and allies especially. So there’s the potential for some problematic stuff there.

But in a more personal natal context in terms of us trying to personalize some of these things outside of mundane astrology, I do look forward to these two planets stationing direct in mid-November and there being some light at the end of the tunnel there. And in my study of the Venus retrograde cycle, I kept seeing how each of the Venus retrogrades in Scorpio, the early phases of the Venus retrograde would kick up a series of really difficult events, and sometimes things happening behind the scenes in secret or that were being hidden for some reason. But then by the end of the Venus retrograde, once it stations direct, that series of events would eventually come to some resolution. And some of the things that were happening behind the scenes would eventually emerge into public view, just like those two planets – Venus and Mercury – when they station direct, they will be emerging into public view over the eastern horizon just before sunrise each day by mid-November because they’ll both be morning stars and at the peak of their morning star phase when they station direct. So there’s this real sense of, like, those planets emerging into visibility and both bringing some sort of completion and resolution to events that started at the beginning of the retrograde, but also bringing to light things that may have been happening behind the scenes or weren’t evident in our lives, but suddenly we have a sense of greater clarity about what that entire journey was about for us and what it meant for our life and how we can incorporate that into our lives moving forward.

All right, my friends. I think that’s the last thing I wanted to mention when it comes to this forecast this month. There’s a lot of challenging aspects, difficult things, things coming back from the past. But I wanted to leave you with that to look forward to about November and those planets stationing direct, just to know that there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. But that’s pretty much my breakdown for the astrology of October and in terms of the sequence of events and how things will unfold this month, so I hope that’s given you some insight into that, and yeah – forewarned is forearmed, which is always the point of what we do here and hopefully the way that some of this is helpful in tangible ways.

All right. I think that’s it. I am wrecked. Like, that took longer than I was expecting, even just to do the sequence. So that’s why I didn’t even attempt to try to do a news section on top of that, because that’s a whole separate episode and just, like, folded a little bit of news stuff into this. But yeah, thank you, everyone. Thanks everyone for joining me today in the live chat; thanks to all the patrons that joined me for this recording, and I appreciate all of your comments and support and everything else this month. Yeah, that was actually kind of fast; I can’t believe it was, like, an hour and a half, hour 47 will be the final run time for this. But that was a good first experiment.

You know, I don’t think – I’ve never done a forecast episode before, and it’s funny. It’s like, this Venus retrograde was important for me because in 2010 I did – I took over a podcast called Traditional Astrology Radio from a friend on my birthday on November 1st, 2010, right in the middle I think of the Venus retrograde when Venus was around the cazimi maybe, but it was in the middle of the Venus retrograde in Scorpio in my 10th house. And it felt important at the time, and I was conscious of that feeling important. But I couldn’t have known how significant of a retrograde that was for me in my 10th house, because that would be, like, the precursor to I did two years of that podcast, and then I started The Astrology Podcast under a Venus retrograde in Gemini in 2012. And then the rest is history at this point. So it’s interesting then doing this one as my first solo forecast episode shortly before Venus stations retrograde again there in Scorpio in my 10th house.

So thanks everybody. I’m gonna go rest and take it easy and recover for a little bit. I am gonna release some other episodes – like, a Secret Astrology Podcast talking a little bit about some Venus retrograde in Scorpio events that I forgot – not that I forgot – that couldn’t get to in the two-and-a-half hours in the other episode. So look forward to that, because I got some other good stuff. But otherwise, I think that’s it for this forecast. So thanks everyone for watching or listening. Good luck in October. And I’ll see you again next time.

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