An Intensely Transformationally Oriented October

The Astrology of October features Mercury, Chiron, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto. Mercury has its final retrograde period of the year beginning on the 21st, and the lunations of this quarter highlight the forming Uranus-Pluto square as well as Chiron. The October 4th New Moon forms a T-square with Uranus and Pluto, and is also accompanied by an exact inconjunct between Saturn and Uranus, while Neptune is highlighted at the time of the October 18th Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse. With all these outer planet activations over this three-month period, we are heading for another strong dose of the evolutionary mandate that has been stirring within all of us over recent years, in this turbulent decade. The situation that we are in, both individually and collectively, is dire but not impossible. It might be time for each of us to step up to the plate and take a good swing at what we need to do, in order that we make the best of what we are now facing and make an important move toward forward motion into our next evolutionary stage.

This late fall period is punctuated by the next installment of Uranus in perfect square with Pluto, taking place on November 1st, the fourth of seven exact hits in this decade. All through these ending months of 2013 the energy will be strongly felt. Saturn is also an important part of the picture this month, aspecting both Uranus and also Pluto. This was a powerful archetypal factor during the height of the revolutionary sixties, when Saturn opposed Uranus and Pluto simultaneously with their conjunction. This Saturn pass is a bit more esoteric, being an inconjunct aspect to Uranus and a sextile to Pluto, but it still symbolizes that things are stirring up. Revolution – in addition to spiritual evolution – is definitely in the air.

What this means for each of us individually is that there must be a corresponding revolutionary movement in our own individual lives as well, to break away from whatever is stagnant and calcified into an unliving form. As Dylan famously put it back in the heady days of the sixties, "everybody not being born is busy dying." These words ring true even more so for us now. It is an individual matter; we, each one of us, knows at some level of our being exactly what we need to do; we only need to face up to the task with courage and determination, and with the realization that we no longer have any real choice but to get on with it.

Mercury is retrograde from October 21st to November 10th and does not escape from its retrograde shadow until November 27th. This particular retrograde period of Mercury is made more difficult by the fact that Mercury, throughout its backward and then forward progress, is involved with Saturn and with the North Node of the Moon. Mercury conjuncts Saturn three times in the course of this entire period, the final time in line with the Last Quarter Moon of November 25th. We can expect to see even more starkly the usual symptoms of the Mercury Retrograde period, in missed communications and mechanical breakdown, and we do well to recognize that the best use of this time is that we put our minds to a meditative reflection on where we are going, and why.

Chiron is also highlighted in these October skies, remaining in close aspect to Uranus and Pluto, and also to Saturn in the first half of the month. Chiron indicates where we have been wounded in the past and might yet heal, and is therefore one of the primary factors in transforming dysfunction into graceful functioning. As we continue to grow in our understanding of ourselves at these deeper levels, acceptance is the most important key, since once we forgive ourselves and our early caregivers we are better able to forgive others also.