October 2026: Stepping into Mysterious waters
Image | @peterbucks
Autumn comes in dark and heavy this month, especially by the last days of October. While autumn generally has the potential to for eerie notes and mysterious undertones, the amount of Scorpionic themes weaving into the tapestry of our lives is amplified this year.
Let’s look at the stories to unfold in October’s Libra and Scorpio Seasons.
Libra Season | Venus in Focus
The Warrior Goddess finds hidden cracks in the depths
We enter October in a season ruled by Venus. Our heroine planet has an approximately 19-month cycle where she moves from maiden, to mother, to crone. This Libra Season, we are at the end of one of these cycles — finding how we balance our autonomy with being present in the greater world.
Since late March 2025, our inner heroine has been on an Aries-seeded journey. We started as maidens who were wild but also bratty. The summer before this was literally called Brat Summer with Charli XCX's album Brat. We were on a Leo-themed journey back then, owning our inner diva. But when the Aries seed arrived in the spring of 2025, aspects of owning our brat cracked under Aries' pressure. A fight was amplified and we hadn't cultivated a voice that knew quite how to stand up to what was mounting.
Data from studies started to arrive confirming what was being felt. Younger males, especially those captured by the manosphere, were disenchanted by their regressive standing and feminist politics.
A counter-culture movement began to boom around tradwife idealization versus growing intersectionality and girl-boss culture.
Gen Z women showed up as the most progressive cohort we've ever seen.
In spring 2025, there was a shift from finding our voice and value in being able to be divas and have fun, to needing to arm ourselves for a fight for independence, organizing to bring order to what we stand for, and voicing boundaries and needs without flinching.
During the midpoint of the Aries journey we are ending — in January of this year — Venus and our heroine were under the Sun, in the underworld. This is where we have to step into our interior, our psyche, and find our fragmented and damaged parts. At the superior solar conjunction with Venus during this 40-day underworld passage, the Sun infuses Venus with earned, solid awareness. This time the awareness gained was through the Capricorn Sun.
A beautiful geometry happens with Venus. We went on a Capricorn-themed journey from early 2022 through the summer of 2023. We lived an embodied story through this sign. A few years later, Venus had a superior conjunction with the Sun from this sign we previously journeyed through. What we previously lived becomes fully integrated and develops into a solid awareness. This happens right when we need it during a different Venus journey’s underworld stage.
What happened on nearly this exact day of Venus in a superior solar conjunction during our current Aries journey was the peak of mobilizing efforts in Minnesota, with Nicole Goode shot and killed by ICE. The Sun is causal — it gives us symbols. Nicole’s life became a symbol for this Aries journey at its lowest point, but also at its strongest point of awareness from a previous Capricorn journey. When we are integral, taking responsibility for things in the world, and moving with structure and focus, our character cannot be assassinated, just like Nicole’s character stood as a symbol. This was the symbol we needed when we were in the trenches of an Aries-Venus journey, mobilizing and fighting for values being challenged in society.
As we end this current journey at the end of October, we will be instinctively bolder in our voice, capable of confronting values in society, and willing to take action with our voice and material. Our warrior goddess is coming into her own (no matter your gender). Take the Cornell Seven for example — there is no tiptoeing into this fight. Especially ending this journey with Venus in Scorpio, we've come out swinging: not just around the boys who did what they did, but around what a bystander needs to be accountable for, what institutions should be accountable for, actions of state prosecution, and Greek fraternity and sorority accountability.
We also end this journey during Libra Season, one of Venus' ruling seasons. This brings our heroine's agenda onto center stage and brings Venus' Libra side — the one that loves justice — into the spotlight. I'm personally tracking the status hearing on whether to retry Lindsay Clancy. Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, was finally able to voice today what was outside of the initial trial's apparatus — that he doesn't believe it was Lindsay who killed the children. He's coming out swinging for Lindsay, which means she's ready to fight with her authentic voice.
Come October 23rd, hours before Venus ends its rulership of the season, a new Venus journey will seed in the depths of Scorpio. While Aries is the solar warrior, Scorpio is also a warrior — but a lunar one. This time, a journey around autonomy, choice, voice, and value will be fought in the underbelly of life rather than on the streets.
Moving into the rest of autumn, our heroine will be moving once again from crone back to maiden. Something in our rose-colored glasses is going to crack and we will initially resist this loss of innocence. In August of 2027, that previous Leo-Venus journey — where we leaned into owning our inner Brat diva and playfulness — will come to our aid as integrated consciousness when we are in the underworld depths of a Scorpionic journey (sex, death, power, politics, ancient excavations, uprooting secrets, and psychological battles). A Leo-esque awareness of voice, choice, and value will find a way to give us a profound symbol right when we need it.
Scorpio Season | Mars in Focus
The Warrior & the Vulnerable Heart of Home
On October 23rd, we move into the heart of astrological autumn with Scorpio Season's eerie depths. Mars becomes the planet on center stage — in Scorpio's case, showing up as a lunar warrior: strategic, surgical, and hidden.
Mars as our Hero archetype is in the last several months of a current 24-month journey seeded in Cancer. Home, security, protection, foundations, and depth are what our hero archetypes have been trying to conquer. Where are we safe? How do we create security? What is home? What am I protecting? What alliances make me safe? Who has the right to belong where? What resources make me safe? What does soul have to do with who and what I protect, or what foundations and boundaries I create?
Since January 2025 we've seen a lot of aggressive action around home and security. ICE and immigration policy are out to convince us of what certain groups project as "safe" when it comes to citizenship. Threatening to take over other countries is on the rise. People are questioning what financial maneuvering will bring more security, or what countries to live in to feel safe. Home and safety has been quite a journey — I'm even in the midst of applying for citizenship elsewhere as a backup plan.
In the last days of October, with this Hero's Journey center stage, things get more covert and investigative, and power struggles are sure to arise. Death tolls in wars will likely rise and financial maneuvering will be potent. Mars is in a very transformative stage of its journey — "Rescue from Without." This is a stage where we have to be more vulnerable, let our traumas, limitations, and fears be witnessed, and allow others to help us. The ring may be Frodo's burden, but he would never complete his assignment without allowing Sam to help him near the end when he's losing his center.
With Mars now in Leo, there is something about courage and heart coming up. We may need to show our hearts — when we least want to — around issues of security and home, in order to transmute a difficult situation. We may need to rise up and lead through the help of another, to pull security or boundaries together against powerful or mysterious situations and others. Can you ask for help when you need to take command of a situation you can't wrangle on your own? Can you transmute, through heartfelt vulnerability, the damage done where you've been cruel, egocentric, or willful around who deserves protection — or who deserves to protect themselves?
Mercury | the Power Informer Gains support
While we won't see it quite yet in October, early November brings another round of a Scorpio-themed Trickster Journey, like we had last autumn. This will be the last Scorpio journey around digging up information on powerful connections and networks for five or six years. Last autumn this brought rabbit holes and deep dives into Epstein and the like. We'll see if another round of revelations comes to light, or if Mercury is on to some new powerful webs to uproot. Either way, with Venus moving into a Scorpio-themed journey, we will now have the support for legal action versus simply gathering and disseminating information.
With Venus and Mercury stepping into Scorpionic depths in late October and early November, and Scorpio Season arriving, we are in for an autumn filled with dark and deep revelations. Are you ready?
On a side note, it's always good to be aware of Mercury's retrograde schedule — and we're coming into one right at the start of the month. It moves into shadow on the 4th, retrograde on the 25th, and direct on November 13th. While most astrologers advise halting new ideas, plans, scheduling, contracts, and purchases with moving parts during a retrograde, I've found that once the pre-shadow starts, these things can still come back to bite. Sometimes it can't be avoided, but whatever you need to schedule in the next couple of days — do it!
The results I often see when scheduling, planning, or coming up with new ideas during this period are that they have to be revised, delayed, they turn out a bit chaotic, or are altogether cancelled.
The Lunar Ebb and Flow of October
Full Moon Week (September 26–October 2): Deepen into your own core and your personal agenda, and find anchoring through being direct and assertive. It's time to manage yourself (and stop managing others) as a form of self-care.
Last Quarter Moon Week (October 3–9): Early in October, we fall under the waning spell of Libra’s last quarter moon week. Reflect on what you find balanced, harmonious, and fair. Seek feedback, perspective, and be willing to transform through what others mirror back to you in exchanges and negatioations.
New Moon Week (October 10–17): The new moon week initially brings pressures. This year, it could feel like pressure to break free of old relational patterns. Where do you need to try something new around fairness, equity, aesthetics, and peace? How is pressure asking you to step back and observe what is no longer balanced? Can you finish that thing you are cooperating in and immediately adapt to something new, unpredictable, and that might tip you off balance (initially)? After a couple of days of pressure, step back and detach from life to surrender to a more cosmic flow. This will help you to finally let go of some things you’ve struggled to bring harmony to in your life.
Libra New Moon (October 10th, 9:49 am MT)
Libra Lunar Cycle (scroll down to the Libra Moon & stop at the Virgo New Moon Journey to review how that aligned for you)
First Quarter Moon Week (October 18–24): This is the most assertive week of Libra Season. Start a new relationships, negotiations, design projects, and commitments. Paint a room in your house a more peaceful color, confront an issue with a partner that needs to be addressed, or find a new underdog to root for or help.
Scorpio Season (October 23-November 22): The Season of the Witch brings us into the heart of autumn with a thinned veil to the otherworld.
Full Moon Week (October 25–November 1): Deepen into your own voice, values, and pleasures. It’s time to find footing in this season of sharing and vulnerability by tending to what’s personally yours.
Taurus Full Moon (October 25th, 10:11 pm MT)
October Headline Transits
Other dates to watch
Oct 1, Mercury square Mars: fighting words
Oct 2, Mercury square Pluto: powerful diplomatic meetings
Oct 3, Mars oppose Pluto: the money and the muscle in a standoff
Oct 7, Mercury conjunction Venus: new agenda around fairness due to hidden information coming out
Oct 10, Venus square Mars: battle of the sexes
Oct 20, Venus square Pluto: diplomacy in power struggles
Oct 30, Mercury square Mars: strong arming an opponent
