angstoic.com Astrologer, Ang Stoic
As the month of September draws to a close, we are somehow better-equipped with the necessary discretionary skills and acumen to make fairer judgements in the weeks ahead. This October will be a critical month. Important decisions must be made, especially concerning the purpose and value of those who are significant in our lives. Their relative influence in the way we think and the direction we choose to take affects our overall well-being and our ability to make better choices. After all, it is the choices we make that reveal what we truly are, regardless of our skills and abilities.
With the Sun now traversing into the progressed degrees of Libra, our conscious awareness is vividly exteriorised onto the world around us. We are purposely on the lookout, not merely for those who mean well for us, but for those who wish us harm. However, what becomes vividly translucent this month is that our social world is but a mere reflection of our inner selves.
As humans, our interdependence on others is vital to our sense of being. As we learn to adapt to those around us, we gradually atone and attenuate our interests in such a way that we are giving and receiving the level of love and appreciation that we feel we deserve. The consciousness about what we need to work on is the key and we rely on feedback for improvement, constantly. How we judge this, without ego is crucial to the development of peace and joy in our lives. Within each of us lies the duality of good and bad, light and dark, beauty and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. Through our relationship with others, this dichotomy is given a sense of perspective, a reference point to our innate identity. In energetic terms, others form a relative ballast ie., someone to keep us in our place, remind us of where we stand in the scheme of things.
An energetic equation is happening in Libra. Through the hither-and-tither of the social engagement, we become somehow mindful of the relativity of our being and the unique perplexities of our interpersonal projections.
The Cardinal Melee
Those following the stars may be aware of the profoundly conflicting planetary transits coming up in October 2020. These are particularly accentuated in this month’s two lunations, tipped over the edge around the Friday 16th New Moon Supermoon.
Planets in cardinal signs are principally concerned with the present and insist on initiating their own activities. This can produce an especially tense atmosphere for all cardinals, particularly Libra, who does like to lead by seeking the cooperation of others rather than trying to go it alone. Capricorn’s attitude of extreme cynicism, fear, inhibition, chastisement, censure, etc., as indicated by the prevailing Jupiter/Saturn/Pluto stellium, makes cooperation and agreeableness very difficult. Similarly, the Libra Sun is opposed by the highly smitten, selfishly reactionary Chiron, Mars/Eris in Aries.
Of course, we will make every effort to see these energies and bring them into balance. However, we also see the full consequences of what happens when we let dark, self-centred and ambitious forces run amok. These unchecked energies not only reflect back to us the fragile nature of our truth and sincerity in relationships, they also threaten to put the whole of society and the balance of nature at risk.
The Sun in Libra is essentially at his weakest. Against the dignified Mars/Eris and Saturn/Pluto, it tends not to bring out the best but the most ruthless elements of our nature as we struggle to ameliorate the gross imbalances and defend ourselves against the seemingly relentless callousness of pernicious forces trying to seize total control.
Gateway to the Reconstruction.
Of course, the auspicious events of October (and November) are only the precursor to the great social revolt and reconstruction of 2021, where squares between the patriarchal forces, Uranus vs Saturn and Jupiter, dominate throughout the entirety of next year. Yes, in greek mythology Uranus (Ouranos) was the father of Saturn (Kronos), who in turn fathered Jupiter (Zeus). Interestingly, each son castrated and banished his father in order to claim control of the dominion. These are the age-old issues of the patriarchy that still remain unhealed and underfoot today.
Anyway, the tension building from decisions we make over this next month will spill into the coming months (and years). If you’re the conservative kind, one who opposes change, then whatever you depend upon for comfort, security and normality are likely to be ripped away from you, possibly abruptly, even violently.
If you buy into radical innovations and technologies, drastic and progressive new ways, then your lack of patience, immaturity, inexperience and incapacity to attend to the more practical consideration of your ‘experiments’ will also likely lead to sudden ruin and disgrace.
2020 has just been an incubation period for all this.
In performative terms, 2021 is a year where authoritarianism of the most obscene, absurd kind is likely to erupt, threatening to divide the inhabitants of ‘middle earth’ amongst one another. Disagreements will not be easily tolerated. Egotism and hypocrisy reach epidemic proportions.
Those who find themselves in leadership positions (everywhere) become either the most idolised or detested human beings in our known history. These demagogues come into power because they are supported by those whose advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority; whose ideas about social dominance; whose prejudices; whose tendency to form like-minded mobs, and whose sense of being deprived of something to which they believe they are entitled somehow makes them absolutely ‘right’. What becomes left in the ensuing scuffle is beyond recognition, at least in social terms.
Uranus in Taurus is known to produce periods of unparalleled economic turmoil – sudden, dramatic ups and downs that wreak havoc with people’s sense of security and stability. As in the 20th century (1935-42), the more tense transits to Uranus agitated collective neuroses all over the world, especially over economic depressions which had wiped out peoples’ savings and jobs almost overnight, diminishing their self-worth and leaving them hopeless. It was a period when communist/socialist ideologies, which espouse a more equitable distribution of wealth and power, gave rise to movements which profoundly transformed existing economic and strategic power structures, overturning powerful sovereignties and reorganising the fate of entire nations. Needless to say, the last time Uranus was in Taurus produced Adolf Hitler and WWII. Today, we are at least blessed with the gift of hindsight.
With the world’s population now nearly four times that of the 1920’s, we are likely to endure an unprecedented period of economic crises and social upheavals as we struggle to regain balance. Changes to your own financial situation, your material stability and values; your entire sense of self-worth and inner need for stability become profoundly affected. Your personal earning capacity and attitudes toward money fluctuate so greatly that life undergoes a series of dramatic twists and fortune reversals.
Through the crises, 2021 will produce a tsunami of thinkers who decry capitalism, seeking to overturn the very basis of the existing economic establishment, freeing up the world’s resources and dispersing them more evenly among all people.
Dealing with the Present
How all this happens, of course, is a matter for our weekly ‘bus’ discussions. Essentially, enough distress and public uproar at the seeming inequities, abuses and incompetence of governing bodies (and cashed-up corporations) who hypocritically refuse to play along with their ‘rules’ or pay taxes will create a groundswell of dissent, which sooner or later finds the means to change financial policies and force institutions to play along with a more open and equanimous set of rules of engagement.
“Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung…We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play — and by “we” I mean society — in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.”
-Malcom Gladwell, Outliers
All this shake-up is necessary. Brace yourselves. Somewhere within, we need to get over our hidden (shadow) selves. We need to think less selfishly when we endeavour how to best pursue our extraordinarily unique aims and ambitions in order to support ourselves and those we love.
Mercury in his Retrograde Shadow
October will forcibly expose an inordinate amount of darkness out of us. It will also help us see just how much stubbornness and toxic thinking is going on, both within and between us. Mercury, already in his retrograde shadow, has entered Scorpio – home of the acerbic, fanatical mind. Among several other dynamic tizzies this month, Mercury will station directly opposite Uranus for much of October.
Ugly, violent scenes and ‘accidents’ are not out of the question for those who inadvertently get too caught up around at the ideological extremes (left or right), seemingly disengaged from their centre. By now it’s possible to know how to keep those ‘fanatics’ at a manageable distance without diametrically opposing or becoming one of them.
This is a good time to mind our poise and our composure. The Libra Sun calls for greater tact and diplomacy in how to move forward. If you slip and lose your cool, you stand to fall, disgracefully.
Among the innumerable socio-political and environmental crises that we may see festering out there, known and unknown, it is important to remember that the real ‘epidemic’ going on around us is merely a reflection of severely complex phenomena, tinged with many variables. All this is merely a projection of what is going on within, and unless we dare to employ our inner Sherlock/Jung/Fauci, we may fail to come up with any workable solutions – only unresolved pits of anger and rage. This can be dangerous.
Essentially, we must learn that the degree to which we are affected by the exterior world and the people in it is a proportional manifestation of the energy that we are putting out there. Where attention goes, energy flows – so check out where you’re pointing that thing.
Those beings who can choose to come to light, merely observe, silently; still-fully, without the pull to become engaged in this unholy development of putrid judgement and discordance; who can exercise loving wisdom and respectful adaptability to the whole evolution of every species, composing themselves responsively from moment to moment, will survive not only to flourish but, through finding one another, hold a sacred space for what wondrous things may come upon this plane, after the fall…
Blessings, and may you have an amazing month xx
Thank you so much Ang ?
Thank you from a Libra sun, cap moon (25!!) with mercury in scorpio. Doing the day. Learning assertion to mitigate aggression. Ouch, ouch ouch!