A Week of Transitions in the dark
November 17 - 23, 2025
Lunar-Solar Atmosphere | Pressure of the Underworld
We start the week at the pressure point of Scorpio Season with the moon also moving into this sign on Monday and the new moon falling on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, depending on your time zone (Scorpio New Moon 28°, Nov 19th at 11:47 pm MT). There is a lot of planetary activity this week, which also happens to link into this new moon. I’ll try to section out the most important aspects in the section on transits, but just a broad look at this new moon will give you an idea. Mercury Rx is conjunct right before its cazimi, Saturn Rx/Neptune Rx/Ceres trine from Pisces and Aries, Uranus Rx is opposed in Taurus, and Jupiter Rx is trine from Cancer. I particularly notice the water energy being high as well as the retrograde energy—emotion and pressure, alchemy and foresight.
This new moon mingles with two other new synodic cycles, beyond the new lunar synodic cycle. Mercury and Uranus both conjunct Earth within a day of the new moon. There is a lot of wisdom we are sitting on at this moon, but also new cracks in old constructs. Old questions are answered as new ones emerge. There is strength in this new moon. The intentions we make in our Scorpio energy at this moon can bring some focused mastery our way over the next year. What do you want to model? When you imagine yourself sitting in your power, what does that look like? Make goals to step up to that version of yourself.
Thursday through Sunday, as the moon moves through Sagittarius and Capricorn, the pressure recedes and a more detached, friendly vibe arises, especially once we shift into Sagittarius Season on Friday, November 21 at 6:35 pm MT. We move from uprooting and investigating the dark underbelly and our own psyches to expansion and perspective. I’ll send an email out once Sagittarius Season Horoscopes go live on Friday morning! A horoscope orchestration I’ve worked hard on is starting to shape up nicely. I think I’m finally finding the right system of tensions and torques that give each sign its unique quality of motor and focus each season.
OUR MINDS MOVE FROM FIRE TO WATER | Mercury Rx Returns to Scorpio
Mercury Rx re-enters Scorpio on Tuesday (November 18th at 8:20 pm MT). A couple of days later, on Thursday the 20th, Mercury comes directly between the Earth and Sun, which kicks off a new 4-month Mercury Journey—the Trickser’s Journey. This is a great time to jump into journey work when a new thread starts, and you can experience from the beginning what themes in your life the journey seems to be threading. The Trickster’s Journey is one of working with the way our minds play tricks on us, poking holes in truths and falsity, creating a bit of chaos, and eventually, seeing through our projection and into the heart of our realness.
This mercury Journey brings a shift with it. Mercury takes approximately three journeys each year and triangulates its truths with journeys in one element. We’ve been in Fire sign journeys for more than a year, but this journey plunges us into the water element. Get ready for our minds to be a little less fire-oriented and a little more emotion-oriented: Mercury’s Journey of the Impactful Mind
Planetary Rulers of the Season | Mars hands the torch to Jupiter
Once we shift from Scorpio Season to Sagittarius Season, the planet on center stage also shifts—the archetype within us that becomes focal. In Scorpio Season, Mars took us through piercing investigations into power (in Scorpio until November 4th) and truth-seeking (in Sagittarius after that). Mars was also seeking a connection with its higher self, struggling with fixating on another that seemed to hold our unexpressed side, or blaming others for everything wrong in the world, rather than working on ourselves. It was outward-focused, collecting information and contending with choices that felt overly intellectualized. The stage Mars has been in, in its own Hero’s Journey, hasn’t been bad. It’s necessary to collect information, know what’s happening in the world, and see in others parts of ourselves we do and don’t like. Mars has been helping us to see through our distortions of self.
As we move to Sagittarius Season, the season itself is just one step on from Scorpio. The theme of the story has a natural progression, but the ruler of the season that is directing what we do with the season’s theme couldn’t be more different from what Mars has been doing in Scorpio Season. Jupiter steps center stage, our Pilgrim, Professor, and Philosopher. Directing Sagittarius's themes of truth, perspective, and exploring things foreign that broaden our horizons, Jupiter directs this into Cancer’s terrain of home, depth, and security. The seeker aspect of is exploring histories foreign to us, what home feels like to people different from us, and broadening our perspectives around what security and depth mean.
In its own synodic journey, it is at its tail end. Jupiter is at that moment when it’s had its big revelations, it’s been transformed, become a more seasoned and wise self, but suddenly is back home, changed. It’s a time when it is difficult to bridge worlds. Who you were when you left and who you are as you return. Finding the language to reconnect is difficult. Finding who you are now as a changed person, but back where you began, is a challenge. Jupiter started its current synodic journey in Gemini. This gives an undertone theme to Jupiter’s Professor archetype, a connection to information, community, and learning. Now in Cancer and at the end of its current journey, my sense is that our Professor side has learned a lot about asking deeper questions, holding more space and care for questions that open our imaginations rather than questions that concretely define things, and being alright with open-ended questions that fluctuate based on time, emotion, and care. But having new tools and wisdom might feel hard this season. There is something that needs blending to hold the old and the new with grace.
Maybe you find yourself back with a community that you were once close with, but had some detours and big experiences away from for the past year. It may feel like you are stepping into a time warp where everything is the same, but you are different. With Jupiter in Cancer, know that finding that bridge between the old and new is through caring. Maybe what appears to be unchanged about this community is not so. We’ve all been on this Jupiter Journey. We’ve all learned something about the questions we hold and the perspective we use to explore them. Open your imagination and circle back with care in how you exchange perspectives that have experienced transformations.
Journey With the Moon | Remember Who You Are
While moon phases help us tap into the ebb and flow of the solar season, the Moon—outside its ties to the Sun—has its own reflective cycle about recognition. To tap more deeply into memory, feeling, and intuition—how we anchor an embodied knowing of the zodiac into us—head over to the end of the current lunar journey and the start of the new one: The Memoirist’s Journey
Until Wednesday Night: The Libra New Moon Journey of Mirroring and Partnership
Starting Wednesday night: Scorpio New Moon Journey of Transformation Through Creation
* This is a great time to jump into journey work, at the start of a new cycle!
Headline Transits
Mercury Rx opposed Uranus Rx, November 19th (4:45 am MT)
When Mercury retrograde slips back into Scorpio, the mind reaches toward what feels familiar—depth, intimacy, the hidden chambers of power. But as Uranus rises opposite in Taurus, it holds up a mirror that doesn’t behave like a mirror at all. In The Matrix, after Neo takes the red pill, he touches a mirror that begins to liquefy and consume him. This reflection reveals a truth that shatters his reality and forces him to question everything he thought he knew.
This opposition works the same way. A reflection arrives—sudden, destabilizing, impossible to ignore. Something about your self-worth, your values, or what you cling to in concrete terms begins to melt and re-form in strange new shapes. And when that shape shifts, the bonds you share, the power dynamics you’re entangled in, and the resources you exchange can no longer stay the same.
It’s a moment of radical awakening: the realization that your inner reality and outer reality don’t quite match. Something needs to shift. And the mirror insists you follow it to the other side.
Uranus Rx in Taurus sextile Neptune Rx in Pisces, Thrusday, November 20th (7:33 am MT)
This sextile will occur again midway through 2026, but by then Uranus will have entered Gemini and Neptune will have shifted into Aries—making that future alignment far more catalytic. Still, this moment is potent as the year winds down.
The relationship between these two planets speaks to innovative tools for dreams, fantasy, and illusion—technology that bends reality, expands imagination, or dissolves the boundary between the material world and the dream world. Think of advancements in film, immersive art, virtual landscapes, or collective myth-making.
There is a sense here of a threshold being crossed, as though a hand from the other side of a veil is pulling us upward—inviting us to step beyond our limited beliefs and into a more empowered, imaginative expression of ourselves.
On a personal level, this may simply be discovering a practical, material tool (Uranus in Taurus) that allows you to share your dreams (Neptune in Pisces): a new camera, software, an artistic medium, or a technique that unlocks imagery or inspiration you’ve felt but couldn’t yet express.
A perfect illustration is the dream-sharing device in Inception. It’s a tactile, technological object—grounded and physical, very Taurus-Uranus—yet it opens portals into layered dreamscapes shaped by imagination and emotion, pure Neptune in Pisces. Through this tool, characters explore subconscious worlds, confront beliefs, and reshape reality from the inside out.
This sextile carries a similar tone: a material innovation that opens a door into the dream realm—something small and practical with the potential to alter how you imagine, create, or spiritually perceive your world.
Sun opposed Uranus, Friday, November 21st (5:22 am MT)
When an outer planet stands opposite the Sun, it is also conjunct the Earth. I prefer to mark planetary journeys from this Earth conjunction point—it’s where the influence becomes embodied, unlike the Sun conjunction, which I read as more archetypal or causal.
So two things happen here: a new Uranus–Earth journey begins, even if it’s not one I map formally on my site, since Uranus operates on a collective rather than personal scale. This cycle has to do with collective consciousness, technological progress, and liberation.
In Taurus, this annual Uranian journey has emphasized body autonomy, sexuality, income innovation, ecological technology, and the liberation of nature-based values. And even though Uranus enters Gemini in the spring, the seed planted at this opposition means we have one final year of Uranus-in-Taurus themes at the embodied level.
As for the solar opposition, it highlights tension around our inner Innovator Archetype. It can feel like our freedom to choose, to invent, or to reinvent ourselves is under the pressure of larger Scorpionic structures—political forces, economic systems, or hidden power dynamics. Yet this very tension helps ignite the new embodied Uranus journey: the friction that makes liberation necessary rather than optional.
We are in the final sprint of a story that began in 2018. Hang in there. The last crack in the old structure is often the loudest.
This transit echoes the myth of Prometheus—or its many modern retellings, like in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, where the pursuit of knowledge pushes against the boundaries set by powerful, secretive forces. Prometheus defies Zeus by bringing fire (technology, enlightenment, autonomy) to humanity, fully aware of the consequences.
Likewise, the Sun–Uranus opposition highlights that moment when the desire to liberate, innovate, or claim one’s autonomy clashes with an entrenched authority. It’s the spark of rebellion that ultimately shapes a new era—one last act of defiance before a long-held pattern finally breaks open.
Neptune trine Sun and Mercury, generally through the week (and the moon on Wednesday/Thursday)
A gentle wash of dream, art, and intuition permeates the week. Neptune’s trines create ease—sometimes so much ease that we drift past the opportunity without noticing it. But if you choose to lean in, even briefly, you may find yourself tapping into a well of compassion, spirituality, mysticism, or creative flow that nourishes you far beyond these few days. Inspiration gathered now can quietly sustain you for weeks.
This week carries the feeling of the moment in The Secret Garden when Mary first begins to sense the hidden life behind the locked door—something soft, mysterious, and calling. Nothing is forced; the magic reveals itself only because she notices it and follows the thread. Neptune’s trine works the same way. The door to the imaginal world is cracked open—step through, and the garden expands.