Kim Farley joins Alejo Lopez to chat about Scorpio Season and the month ahead. Includes a look at classic Scorpios RuPaul, Sylvia Plath and Goethe.
You’ll also hear about the new Moon, the full Moon eclipse, Mars-Jupiter, the Sun in Scorpio trine Saturn in Pisces, and Saturn going direct.
- Learn how to interpret eclipses in the webinar: Eclipse Essentials
- Expand your understanding of the Scorpio archetype in myth
Time Stamps for the topics covered in this episode:
0:00-18:04 Introduction to Scorpio Season
18:04-29:01 Classic Scorpio: RuPaul
29:01-37:09 Things to do in Scorpio Season
37:09- 1:07:37 Astrology of Scorpio Season
1:07:37- 1:14:00 Monthly Mantra & Wrap Up
Transcript for The Cosmic Eye — Scorpio Season Episode
Alejo Lopez: Hi, welcome to The Cosmic Eye, the Astrology University podcast. This is the episode for the Scorpio season. I am Alejo Lopez, your host, and today with me is Kim Farley. Kim is my friend, she’s an astrologer based in London, and she has been a consulting astrologer as well as a teacher and a lecturer for over 30 years. She’s also a poet, an excellent vegan cook, I will add, and now she’s the founder of Asteria Teaching School, which is also based in London. Hi Kim, welcome.
Kim Farley: Hello Alejo, what a treat this is. And thank you for inviting me for Scorpio season, my favorite sign.
Alejo: It’s so nice to have you here. Now, before we move into the season itself, I would like to mention as usual that if you like the podcast, the best thing you can do to support us is to share it, share it with your friends, share it with people who might be interested in it. And we would also love to hear your feedback or whatever thoughts or reflections or ideas you get maybe after listening to this. It means a lot to me. Sometimes you send me messages on Instagram, my Instagram is @liminalcosmos and it means a lot when you do that. You can also email Tony Howard if you have any suggestions, and the address for that is [email protected]. So now when I think of Scorpio, I think of the night and I think of the trees losing their leaves. And I think of this idea of renewing oneself and having to go deep and transform in oneself in the process. And I think of Halloween, of course, and I think of Tim Barton’s, one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, Tim Barton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. Which I actually still listening sometimes to the soundtrack, I shouldn’t be so proud of that. But anyway. Yeah, what do you think about when you think of scorpio?
Kim: Well, yes, all of the above. Plus, you know, of course, all souls, the day of the dead. And I’m a funeral celebrant as well as an astrologer. And that sort of connection to ancestors which is particularly strong at this time of year, the way that the veil is supposed to thin between the two worlds and that there is some kind of ability to move between. And of course the dying of vegetation, in the northern hemisphere anyway the way that the light is fading, the year is turning towards darkness. And the whole thing of bonfires and compost and and things dying back, but also fireworks. And the key Scorpio motifs of death and transformation. The mystery of it all. And that following on from Libra, and how that signs next door to each other so different. And how Libra can be so much about light and proportion and balance and color and how things seem and appearances and what’s on the surface. And I get all of that as a double Libran, but Scorpio’s like haha, what really counts is below and what you can’t see. Or what you can see only in the dark.
Alejo: Yeah, it’s true. I appreciate this idea of going into the darkness. And I think it’s a bit challenging, maybe I should speak for me and not for just us, but I do think in our culture we are a bit afraid of going to these dark hidden places. I mean, thinking of Carl Jung when he creates the concept of the shadow. And Freud thinking about the unconscious. Like this sense of pool of content of information that we have that we don’t know the end of it, and actually probably we can never reach to the end of it. And how scary it can be to go there.
Kim: Right. How much risk richness there is in the mystery, but yeah, how much you have to use courage to turn towards that side of things. Which reminds us doesn’t it of the Mars rulership, the Co-rulership of Mars and Pluto. It is not a passive thing. Underworld journey, any journey towards the darkness within, you know. And darkness has become so synonymous with what is bad. The idea of what is light is good and what is dark is bad, you know? How language kind of shapes our sense of things and how actually, the darkness of Scorpio is sacred darkness. It’s holy darkness. It’s rich and and it’s beautiful and it’s meaningful. It’s precious, and it’s valuable. And it’s not about what’s wrong with us. It’s not about what we need to get rid of.
Alejo: Yeah. And as a therapist that actually acknowledges that a lot, when I have patients that come for the first session, how brave they are. I always try to emphasize how brave they are to decide to start this process. And I guess it’s the same thing for me when I go to my own therapist. Sometimes I’m like, do I really want to go, do I really want to go today, do I really want to go there. And it takes, I guess, it takes courage. It takes willpower and determination to decide to go on that journey. But yes, as you say, there’s so much rich in there. And I was thinking, when we were preparing the notes, you were talking about the image of the compost.
Kim: Yes. The way that, ultimately, it is the vegetation that dies back that allows the future things to grow better with nutrients, with richness. I mean, that whole thing. You know, they talk about how dead things become coal and then coal, over a long period of time and compression, becomes a diamond. Diamond, isn’t that the Aries gemstone? Or the Mars gemstone? There’s something about time plus compression plus darkness plus dead stuff that equals something which is actually brilliant and precious in all sorts of ways.
Alejo: Yeah. And also I’m thinking in the ocean, well maybe that’s more Pisces image than Scorpio, but also in the depths of the ocean, how there’s this myth that there are hidden treasures that we don’t know, right? Because we haven’t been to the end.
Kim: I mean, it’s been said that people know less about the depths of the ocean than they do about some parts of space.
Alejo: Exactly. Very interesting. Very nice. And I also like the idea that you mentioned about death and rebirth. I think the Phoenix is one of the symbols we use for Scorpio, right?
Kim: And that whole caterpillar-butterfly thing. If a caterpillar can withstand that much change, why not us? And how metamorphosis and death and rebirth, a caterpillar can do it—turn into a butterfly—and here we are, arguably, with rather more faculties than a caterpillar. And yet, so often, as has been said, we refuse our own changes don’t we? It does take courage, as you say.
Alejo: Yeah, and I’m thinking this idea of the caterpillar, I’m also thinking in the zodiac. Scorpio is not the last sign. So it’s like, the universe is telling us death is not the end. This idea of there’s something else afterwards.
Kim: Good one. And because in Scorpio it is about death and rebirth, isn’t it? You know, like that fragment of lines from Goethe, who happen to have Scorpio rising, I checked it out. And not only does he have Scorpio rising, he’s got Saturn rising in Scorpio and Pluto rising in Scorpio. And Robert Bly, American poet and translator, gives this section of Goethe’s poem, Holy Longing, as “You are the butterfly, and you are gone. And so long as you haven’t experienced this, to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.” How that idea of going through some kind of crisis of transformation, some kind of death and rebirth, doesn’t have to be a literal thing. Allows us to inhabit our lives in a richer, in a deeper and more meaningful way than if we avoid it.
Alejo: Yeah, exactly. I would say it’s unavoidable. We go through these deaths during life. We cannot stop it, it’s part of the process.
Kim: Yeah, to be a human, you know, the only way out is through, isn’t it? But I guess some people embrace it. Embrace that kind of experience more fully or with more intention than other people. I mean, some people do run from it as fast as they can. It will catch up with them. You know, you can run but you can’t hide. But yeah, turning towards it and being willing to let it change us. I think those really valuable things.
Alejo: We see it a lot in consultations, right? When people have tried everything to escape it and now they don’t know how to make sense of what’s happening. So they come to the consultation. Some people come to the consultation openly embracing astrology, but some people come like, okay, you know, I’ve tried everything else so why not? Why shouldn’t I try?
Kim: Again back to Robert Bly. He talks about the long bag we drag behind us. And it relates to shadow issues, doesn’t it? You know, and that whole everything that is not allowed in us or is forbidden in some way, or censored or shut down in some way, or that we’ve come to associate as not okay from the earliest age, gets put into this long bag we’ve dragged behind us. And then when we’re middle aged, we’re too tired to hold that full bag around with us. And we’re at a kind of point of exhaustion. And we turn around and sit down and, as it were, go no further and then examine what we’ve been dragging behind us. What is in that bag. And how the idea of the first thing that we meet is anger, you know, how how could you ignore me? But very closely behind that is grief. The utter sadness of why have you left me here, ignored for so long? And how we can get really vividly in touch with our renewed creative potential when we are at midlife, which is a kind of crisis. What do you think?
Alejo: I completely agree. I like this idea. First, I like this idea that you mentioned about death and rebirth and the search for vitality in this darkness. Because Scorpio is the opposite to Taurus, so there is this kind of connection between nature dying and also nature thriving again. And I also like what you’re saying about being tired. Because Carl Jung, he said that when we deny the contents of our unconscious, we are putting so much energy into that and now we’re exhausted. Actually, one of the reasons we, according to him, one of the reasons people might be depressed is because they don’t have any energy because they’re containing so much. And this is trying to come to the surface.
Kim: Absolutely. What it takes to suppress everything or to confine everything, yeah absolutely. And I love the idea that the antidote to exhaustion can be understood as not rest and relaxation, but wholeheartedness. To turn towards something wholeheartedly with intention, with an openness. Yeah, to make that decision, I will. Even though we don’t know what will happen. So the antidote to exhaustion being wholeheartedness. And a revitalizing of ourselves when we do feel at our lowest ebb. Yeah, Scorpio understands a thing or two about that side. You know, feeling that you could not go any further, you could not try any harder, you cannot feel any worse, and then out of that comes the renewal doesn’t it? Or can somehow, magically.
Alejo: Yeah, I think it’s so interesting. I think it’s interesting this contrast between a water sign, which usually we would relate to something kind of that flows, something that is kind of more passive, perhaps. But actually, this is a water sign ruled by Mars. And actually, not only is this a water sign ruled by Mars, if we use the terms and the phases of the signs and all of that, Mars is the ruler of the water triplicity. So all of the water signs, in some way, are related to Mars. And you were mentioning this idea of this process being something that we do willingly. Okay, yeah, like we were saying, life may push you to do it, but we might still resist, right? It’s something that we must do willingly in order to find the treasure. So the sense of Mars ruling this sign, which is giving us the opportunity to go to the deepest aspect of ourself in order to find the treasure there. This diamond that you were talking about.
Kim: Yeah. And it reminds me that the notion that free will is doing gladly what you have to. What you must do. What you cannot avoid.
Alejo: Yeah. Because maybe with a Scorpio there is this sense of fated-ness, perhaps even more than with some other signs. Something that you can’t avoid. You can’t avoid this process.
Kim: Yes. And life will take you and shake you. The notion of the shark, we were talking about this before the recording, how a shark which is a kind of deadly seeming animal that people are rightly afraid of. And the myth, which is exaggerated actually, about how they can scent blood across however far in the ocean or how tiny specks of blood, you know. But yes, they do have these amazing faculties, sharks, and they can sense blood and motion in the water. But people are more afraid of sharks than perhaps they have any rational reason to. And that’s because if a shark wants to find something out, it’s only got two ways: bumping into you and take a bite. And I think people are more afraid of Scorpio than Scorpio necessarily deserves. I think there are parallels that are enjoyably thought about here. And yeah, curiosity. Scorpio is a sign that likes analysis, likes to investigate things, great detectives, unearthers. And they want to get to the root of something true. They want to dig down into the mystery and uncover and they can be very persistent, like all the fixed signs. And they can be quite laser focused, too. Scorpio can be like an x-ray that really sees through to the deeper layers. And I think sometimes people’s fear of the sign is about what it might on unearth. You know, because Scorpio will often say the thing or ask the thing that nobody else would dare to.
Alejo: Yeah, exactly. We are afraid of the dark. I think we have a culture that we emphasize the light because it makes us feel in control. Even though, I’m not so sure we are that much in control when we’re in the light, but it makes us feel we are in control.
Kim: Yeah. Well, that whole false sense of security is the only kind there is. But how light can be blinding, you know? Exactly. How light can sear our eyes, and how darkness or a softening of the amount of light can enable us to see in a different way. That whole inner light and inner understanding. How often magical figures of insight in myth are blind, for example.
Alejo: Yeah, like Tiresias, right? Obviously this is a deep sign because I feel like we’re finding new layers and layers. But let’s move on to the next session, which is the classic Scorpio. We usually choose a Scorpio example. And when we were preparing, Kim said, you know this is my favorite sign, I can’t choose an example.
Kim: What do you want from me? There are so many: Bruce Lee, Marie Curie. I settled on RuPaul. RuPaul Charles, which is his full given name, and how fantastic his chart is. He’s got Sun and Moon and chart ruler in Scorpio in the fifth, along with Neptune. So he’s got Gemini rising and then Mercury and Scorpio next to Neptune and next to the Moon, and then Sun at the end of Scorpio square Uranus. And how he’s certainly always been a performer. But how the transformation that drag allows, actually enables you to access a deeper truth and a deeper self understanding. So he says, “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.” And how that leads us to think usefully about how we construct who we are in the world, how we all perform something in the world. We act out who we are. And what one sees on the outside doesn’t necessarily tell us a thing about what’s on the inside, and maybe changing or taking control of our own way of presenting ourselves can can allow access to something underneath or deeper. Certainly drag is capable of profound access to a deeper truth.
Alejo: Yeah, I really like it. I think I’ve shared this with you before, I really like this author, Judith Butler, who questions a little bit genders, the binary way of understanding genders, I would say. And she says, gender is performative. We are born, we are given a gender, and we are told how we’re supposed to perform based on that gender in order for society to recognize that we belong to that gender. And how sometimes that may be limiting because there are so many different expressions, there are so many different ways of being a man or a woman or whatever you identify with, right?
Kim: Of course, and how that changes through history or where you are culturally. I remember being a student, a sociology student, in my late teens and how we learned about a certain, I think they might have been tribes that Margaret Mead was researching and living amongst, and how it was the women in this particular group of people who went out and did the work of getting the food, in this case, fish. And the men of the tribe, to be a man in that tribe was to sit together chatting, weaving things into each other’s hair, and sitting and mending the nets and stuff. And as you say, gender is constructed, isn’t it? And it isn’t some kind of monolithic truth, it is a variant that is flexible and changeable, and artificial in many ways.
Alejo: Yeah. And like you were saying, I like this idea of RuPaul, we can take that to every area of our life, not just gender. Like in so many ways we’re performing. We’re choosing how to perform, and that says something about who we are.
Kim: Also, he is absolutely famous, you might know, for saying, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?” And then he follows that with, “Can I get an amen?” But yeah. I think Scorpio and the self sabotaging the self destructive capacity that is, you know, we’re often put in touch with the more negative side of Scorpio. But how they can be crueler to themselves or harder on themselves or more self loathing than they are about anything or anyone else. And how a true metamorphosis of a Scorpio nature is to come into one’s own power in a genuine way and understand how deep we go and how we can achieve our own self worth and our own self love. You know, we don’t have to keep punishing ourselves. That whole idea of, you do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles in the desert repenting, you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Alejo: And I wonder if this self sabotage, like you were saying, self destructive quality that we often link to Scorpio, it’s also about if you’re so connected, if you can so clearly see the hidden aspects of things, how hard it is to manage. Like most of us are escaping the dark. So maybe it looks like we don’t have any self destroying behavior, which I would question, but I would say okay, because we’re escaping from the dark, it looks like we don’t have. But people who dare to face, well, maybe it’s not so easy. So it’s a way of coping with that. And part of the process of accepting it, perhaps. Part of the process of healing and accepting the totality of who we are, requires this face of, you were talking about grief and anger when we discover these hidden aspects of ourselves. So it’s like, it’s not so easy to handle. And perhaps people who have a lot of Scorpio in their chart, from the beginning of their life they were in touch with that, so it must not be so easy to deal with it.
Kim: Yes. And that idea that we can only meet another person at the level to which we can meet ourselves. So if we are sufficiently, deeply in touch with ourselves, then we can perhaps be just as present and deeply in touch with somebody else. And yeah, I really kind of believe that. And it takes so much inner reflection, doesn’t it? And hard work, too. Yeah. It’s it’s not an easy route. But it is, I would say, much more rewarding than avoiding it. Yeah.
Alejo: Completely. Yeah. And I don’t remember if we said this today at some point, the idea of opening and being vulnerable, how it creates deeper connections. It doesn’t make you weaker, it makes you… Yeah. I really like this idea. Okay, let’s move to the next section because we are getting, obviously, you’re making me love Scorpio!
Kim: I just want to, for the podcast and everyone listening, I just want to say that when Alejo was in London not so long ago, I took him into my favorite museum, which, because I have three planets conjunct in Scorpio and Venus conjunct Pluto in my chart, I kind of couldn’t imagine anybody not adoring too.
Alejo: Very naively, I didn’t even check what the museum was about. I was like, yeah let’s go.
Kim: Kind of naively for me, I didn’t think that it might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Anyway, I still find it fascinating and adore it. It is in the Royal College of Surgeons, and there are lots and lots and lots of specimens and things in jars and dead things and diseased things and bones and fetuses, and I’m just there and it’s like a palace of treasure as far as I’m concerned. And Alejo was like starting to look a little bit unwell.
Alejo: I was Perspehone, I felt like Persephone taken to the underworld. The first room I was like, okay, this is interesting. And then I started to realize, okay, it’s gonna be the whole museum, it’s going to be looking at corpses and stuff in jars. And at some point, I had to say, Kim, is this all that we’re going to see today? Like is this what the Museum is about?
Kim: I’m sorry. I mean, I still think it is a palace of wonder and marvel and you know. Surgery is a Mars thing, isn’t it? And that whole the cutting into the body to try and understand, you know. I think Scorpio can be like a scalpel that knows it has to go beneath the skin. Libra can be okay in a sense with what is skin deep. You know, it’s what is on the surface and Libra resonates to that. If you see what is beautiful on the outside then there is a relationship to what is beautiful on the inside. Beauty and truth going together and all of that is a Libra thing. But Scorpio says, yeah, you actually have to go beneath. You have to go down inside where there is no light and there is no pretty and there is no nice. And that’s where the real treasure is.
Alejo: Yeah, I didn’t survive for long. We went out and I went for a beer, I jumped into Pisces. I was like, okay, let’s go to Pisces now.
Kim: But for anyone else listening who fancies it, it’s the Hunterian Museum and it is extraordinary. I also am just remembering now a woman that I used to know with multiple planets in Scorpio. And clearly a relationship that she’d been having ended badly and she freely admitted to a group of people when we were talking astrology, how after the bitter end of this relationship she went to the butchers and she bought an animal heart which was still oozing blood out of its various valves. She packaged it up in a gift box with pretty paper and ribbon and she posted it to her ex-lover. Can you imagine? And I was rocking backwards and forwards with a huge grin on my face as she was talking about this. And some of the other people in the room were just backing away, you know, looking shocked and horrified.
Alejo: Yeah, people cannot see my face when I’m more like, pale and shocked and horrified. But I do think the Hunterian Museum is amazing, I just think that before you go, a little disclaimer of what you’re in for. Okay, so things to do in this season. And I would say, okay, if you’re in London, go to the Hunterian Museum and see how you feel. Yeah, I think it’s actually a great experience. Go to the Hunterian Museum if you’re in London and just see how you feel looking at the the essence in some way, like the secret, the hidden, something you don’t normally see about life. I think it could be a great idea. And then maybe we can take this metaphorically. This idea of being, not a physician, what do you say? A surgeon, with your life. Okay, so what aspects of my life do I need to cut the skin and go in to kind of see what’s there. And actually I would say, in traditional astrology doctors are ruled by Mars. And if we think about this idea of like, how we treat some some diseases, we actually take them out. If you have an organ that is too sick we take it out, right? So also this idea of perhaps going deep and trying to see, okay, what aspect of my life is asking to be changed? Is like screaming to be changed?
Kim: Yes, that whole process of what skins do we need to shed? You know, what is actually no longer useful for us? Or what is only serving to confine us. And if we want to grow, what do we need to let go of or what do we need to excise or what do we need to shed? Yeah. The composting of this part of year, as well. The way you know how the vegetation dies back and rots down and then serves as a bed of nutrition for the coming growth. We were talking before the recording about how it took me ages I can say, when I was first doing astrology some decades ago, to properly think about how, hang on a minute, it’s only in the northern hemisphere that it is autumn and winter. Now, of course, in the Southern Hemisphere, they are turning towards spring and summer. And I can only associate Scorpio really, in my mind, with the dying of autumn and moving into winter with the increase of the darkness with all of that. Brilliant composting time of year. But you were born as a Sun in Taurus, aren’t you? And you were born in the southern hemisphere.
Alejo: Yes. And I do feel I’m more Taurus and Scorpio, to be honest. I don’t feel like I’m a Scorpio. I do think that Taurus and Scorpio, I really see them so linked to each other. I do think this idea that vitality and death come together. And my experience is that when I had my birthday, we would go to nature, I would do a picnic quite often at one of my favorite buildings in Buenos Ares, it’s in the middle of a park. And we would go do a picnic there. And my feeling is that even in autumn, life is thriving. Because I have so many sensorial experiences. Because the smell of the earth is very strong, the colors in the trees are very strong. The skies, the sunsets in autumn are very, very strong. So I have this very sensual experience of autumn. And Taurus, I think, it relates to that with the vitality of the senses. So for me, I mean, of course, it’s a different sign. But I don’t know, it makes sense, I don’t know.
Kim: So interdependent, aren’t they, on the polarities. They’re so bound together.
Alejo: Yeah. And I once I asked Nick Campion about this and he was telling me, you know, the signs of the Zodiac came before the association of the Zodiacs with the seasons. This happened later because they were trying to make it more scientific. But he was like, okay, these are symbols in the sky, it doesn’t matter so much. I mean, we can use the season to think about them to help us understand them, I think to help us remember what they mean. But, I don’t know.
Kim: Also, I mean, the Taurus-Scorpio axis: sex and death. You know, what else is there, really? When you boil it down. And how each of us is alive because of some kind of process of sexual reproduction. And each of us being born, as R.D. Laing said, good ‘ol Mercury Scorpio in the eighth house for him, cause of death: birth. Or in an even more slightly cynical way, he said, life is a sexually transmitted disease, mortality rate 100%. You know, we all die. That is what it is to be alive, is to be capable of dying. Scorpio understands that. It enriches our life. If life went on forever, you know, death has meaning. Because it happened, because life isn’t forever, you know?
Alejo: Yeah. In Spanish we have the phrase, “From dust we become, to dust we will go.” It’s interesting because, a way of saying to have sex means, we would say a ‘trirar polvo’, which will translate to “ to throw dust.” And the idea is to link it to this to this to this phrase.
Kim: Yeah, I love that.
Alejo: And actually, I think it makes a lot of sense that we’re talking about this because one of the things I really like about you, Kim, is how you connect to the dead during this period. So I think that could also be something to do in this period to honor your ancestors. Not just your ancestors but the people that have passed through your life and are not there anymore.
Kim: Indeed. A friend of mine who’s an undertaker and a poet, and a kind of shaman magician. He talks about living ancestors as much as the classic ancestors, you know, people who’ve died and gone before us. So he’ll take a writer that he admires or loves and use them as a living ancestor, somebody to inform and enrich his experience and his life as a teacher. Any rituals that help us connect to the wonderful treasure trove of ancestry in all sorts of ways now, both living and dead. And of course, you know, Day of the Dead, All Souls. These Halloween, Samhain, the veil being thinner this time of year allowing a certain amount of migration backwards and forwards. How living people, you know, we’re all just, our death is already carried within us. And I think it’s Maeterlinck, don’t quote me, anyone listening to this who understands better, but I think it’s Maeterlinck who said, “The living are just the dead on holiday.” Yeah.
Alejo: We’re having a good time before the time comes. We’re trying to have a good time at least.
Kim: I’ll say. Yeah, I mean, longtime dead, too. Longtime dead. So dead in all its facets gives a richness to life.
Alejo: Yeah. Nice. So let’s go now to the key signatures of the of the month. We’re a little behind our timeframe, but I think Scorpio deserves it. I think it’s because it’s so deep. We cannot just jump into the key signatures. I think everything we spoke talks about how the season might feel and the opportunities that the season brings. And we’re looking at the chart of the Sun entering Scorpio, which happens at 5:21 on the 23rd of October 2023 if you’re in London. And Kim was very kind and she calculated it’s going to be 12:21 in New York and 9:21am Pacific time. And if you’re in Athens it’s going to be 7:21. But I’m not sure so many people listen to this in Athens. And the striking thing to me about this sun ingress is that the Sun will be trining Saturn. So Saturn is at zero degrees 37 minutes, and the Sun of course is going to be 00 of Scorpio. So he’s really picking up this Saturnian process that started not so long ago into Pisces.
Kim: Right. That idea of a kind of soulful restructuring, or ability to be with what is deep and mysterious and to hold it gently in the way that trines facilitate or motivate or allow. We can allow these deeper, more soulful and more mysterious processes to do their work on us in almost a joyful way, in that solar way.
Alejo: Yes, yes, exactly. And I like this idea of erasing, perhaps, the boundaries. Not erasing, but softening the boundaries between all of us. And we were talking about going deep is also about showing vulnerability, right? So this idea of, well, let’s see what happens if we stop being so defensive, if we kind of try to connect with each other from a more feeling place, let’s say.
Kim: Yes. And, you know, I think of Sun and Saturn in harmony with each other as being seriously authentic, or able to honor and take responsibility for a sense of wholeheartedness , or a sense of authenticity. Being real, I suppose, is my shorthand for it.
Alejo: Yeah, it reminds me of RuPaul. Like we were saying, like how we’re all in some ways, we’re all drags. And, actually also, the other thing I want to mention is that we are still in the eclipse season, because the Sun is… So the nodes are at 24 Libra-Aries axis, so the Sun is at zero degrees, so it’s still very close to the nodes. So we’re still in the eclipse season. And the eclipse is about the light being casted away. It’s about a period of darkness and perhaps an entombment. Like the idea of going down, being taken to the depths. So I think it’s a fantastic moment actually, because it’s like it’s emphasizing this process of this season of dealing with this darkness, the contents that we are not aware of, this richness, the diamonds that are waiting for us in there. And the sense of support with this Sun-Saturn in water signs, right?
Kim: Yes, yes. Love that. The ingress chart also has Mercury and Mars within orb of the Sun in early Scorpio. And, again, we’re sort of getting an echo of an underworld adventure and how we need our will, our willpower, our intention, to kind of take some kind of action to step into the unknown or the shadow, and therein awaits the potential for buried treasure, for richness, for things that we can’t find unless we go down or underneath. Yeah.
Alejo: Yeah, it reminds me of Joseph Campbell, which we both love, and The Hero’s Journey. And I think he said, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you’re longing for. Something like that.
Kim: That’s the one, yes. Multiple connections through so many different myths about what is buried being of richness and worth. How Pluto itself means riches. And how we often bury things that we want to protect because they are precious, or we dig up things, again, that are of value and worth. All the minerals and gemstones and all of that. The whole idea of things being compressed in the dark over time and all leading to something that is valuable and beautiful, such as a gemstone, such as a diamond. Diamond is just very, very, very old, very, very compressed dead stuff, isn’t it?
Alejo: Exactly, yes. Nice. So on the 23rd, as we were saying, the Sun goes into Scorpio. On the 24th, the Sun trines Saturn, so this trine gets perfected. And then on the 28th we have the eclipse. So we have the Sun at five degrees of Scorpio, the Moon obviously at five degrees of Taurus, the nodes is still at 24 degrees of Libra-Aries. So we have a full moon next to the nodes which means we have an eclipse. And of course, I would say this is going to be more impactful in your life, I always do this little disclaimer, if you have something at five degrees or six maybe or seven degrees of Taurus or Scorpio, this is going to be super impactful, probably.
Kim: Do you have anything at five of Scorpio-Taurus?
Alejo: No. I’m saved for a little bit. But I mean, of course, I do have a lot of things in Taurus, and actually in Scorpio also. So I do think also you can take sometimes the sign I think as it’s an eclipse season, and look at the houses that are involving the signs and perhaps it is not going to feel so clearly directed to one function of your psyche, like one planet, but I do think things are going to happen in the area where the eclipse season is occurring in your chart.
Kim: For sure. There’s a really tight Mars-Jupiter opposition as well, isn’t there, in the eclipse? Which is at 11 degrees, and there’s Mercury woven in, too. Yeah, what would you say about Mars-Jupiter, the potential for that opposition?
Alejo: The first thing that comes to my mind now that we’re talking about this is this idea of the diamond and the treasures. The idea of Jupiter bringing abundance. So if you go deep, you will find Jupiter, it will give you this abundance. But to be honest, when I was preparing this, I was thinking more about everything that’s happening in Israel right now and in Palestine. I mean, we’re recording this, of course, a few days before it’s going to be put out there, so we don’t know how events are going to develop by the time this goes out there. But it did remind me of this idea of the warrior, the ideological warrior, the war for religion, for beliefs, and how this opposition creates polarity. How I can see so clearly on Instagram how people take a position, either pro or against one side or the other. And with this idea of going to profound depths, I will say, these kinds of conflicts… I think we live in an era, again, we want to go to the light. We live in an era in which we want to have easy definitions of problems and clear cut solutions to problems. And I think these kinds of conflicts are so complex that we cannot reach a solution, we cannot solve the problem by being polarized and by denying the complexity of it. Like the Scorpionic aspect of it. Like we have to go deep to the roots of the problem in order to try to find the solution. And I think it’s so easy to believe in one thing and fight for that thing we believe and not to be open to see the other perspective.
Kim: That whole hallmark that can be in any Mars-Jupiter exchange, a kind of righteous indignation, you know, moral anger, the principle of the thing and believing that we’re fighting for our own truth, which of course everybody feels they’re fighting for their own truth. And of course, not all truths dovetail harmoniously, do they?
Alejo: Yeah. I do feel very bad for everything that’s happening, and I understand that in some circumstances it’s harder to not be polarized. You know, for me to see is easier, perhaps, not to be polarized because I don’t have a direct connection to anyone living in this area. So I understand it’s not easy, but I do fear about this full moon and this is very tight Mars-Jupiter. Because we’ve seen it in the past, we’ve seen it in the past how to fight for what we believe in can sometimes be darker and not as easy or simple or correct as it might seem at the moment.
Kim: Right. So it’s a big one, isn’t it? The full moon on the 28th.
Alejo: And then, of course, we can take this to a personal level. So in our own personal lives, what are the beliefs that we hold on that make us become polarized? That makes us not being able to accept other truths, other perspectives, other realities, right? And again, how we might simplify conflict that we have based on our beliefs in order not to have to question those beliefs, perhaps, or again, going deeper to the root of why did I. Because in the end, Jupiter is telling us, okay, we all have Jupiter in a different place in our chart, so in the end Jupiter is telling us there’s not one truth, there are like 12 truths at least, because we have 12 signs. So there are 12 ways of believing in the world.
Kim: It’s that wisdom, yeah. The search for understanding, the search for meaning.
Alejo: Exactly.
Kim: With Mars-Jupiter, particularly Mars in Scorpio opposite Jupiter, the will to unearth meaning, which must involve a certain amount of investigation rather than a certainty that we are right before we have the answer, before we start. But it’s hard, isn’t it? Like you were saying earlier about a lot of people are still only comfortable with the binary idea of male-female in terms of gender, whereas it’s becoming more and more evident that humanity expresses itself on a spectrum of possibility around that and things are far less black and white than the two binary gender ideas suggests. It’s a complicated truth. It’s much easier to have a sort of insistent “this is my way or the highway.”
Alejo: Exactly. So I think it’s gonna be a powerful full moon, yes. But going back to the Sun-Saturn trine that the season started with, I would say, I don’t know, let’s be kind with ourselves and let’s become with others. You were talking about the idea of the good father, the supportive father, so I will say, okay, let’s be supportive fathers for other people.
Kim: I agree. Yeah, encouragement. And by the third of November, the Sun in Scorpio opposes Jupiter, and I always think of the word generosity in terms of Jupiter, at best. And how a principle of generosity would suggest that the more you give, the more you have. Rather than coming from a place of lack or there’s only so much and if I let go of any of it, I have less. Or if you take sunlight it takes away from me. It’s more like, give more and you have more. That’s what Sun-Jupiter says. And Sun-Saturn, like you said, the good father or the benevolent kind of authority. The sensitive, vulnerable and soulful inner authority, maybe.
Alejo: Yeah, I love it. And actually, this image of Jupiter in Taurus, it always makes me think of Mother Earth. This idea of the abundance of the earth. We mistreat her and she’s still giving us so much.
Kim: I know. And how there is clearly more than enough of everything for everyone if we could just be a bit better at sharing. And that whole, you know, if you’ve got more than you need, make a bigger table.
Alejo: Yeah. So it could be a good day also to think about that, to think how we relate to the idea of abundance and generosity. And also you were pointing to the idea that Venus is in Virgo opposing Neptune in Pisces.
Kim: Right. And again that suggests sensitivity, soulfulness, something lyrical. Something compassionate very directly, and very empathetic, very forgiving. Softened and idealistic. Like that heightened sense of unconditional love that can come through at best Venus-Neptune combination. Love without limits, without borders, without boundaries, without any kind of resistance.
Alejo: Yeah, this idea of the more you give, the more you have, yes.
Kim: Or as Khalil Gibran says, he describes the myrtle blossoms giving their scent to the air. This just sort of natural spilling, you know, it’s not a transactional profit and loss accounting. Just let it spill out in an organic way.
Alejo: Yeah. Beautiful. And on the next day, the 4th, Saturn goes direct. So Saturn has been retrograding. It started retrograding on the 18th of June at seven degrees of Pisces, and he goes direct at zero Pisces. So he didn’t go back into Aquarius, he’s still in Pisces and he’s going direct. So first of all, I would say reflect on what happened in your life between the 18th of June and now. Because, you know, I think, okay, this happens every year that Saturn goes retrograde and direct. It’s not something strange to happen, but it’s true that this is the first time it’s happened in Pisces for a long time. So I would say look at that area of your chart and see what kind of reviewing, reassessing, you had to do, restructuring you may feel you have to do in this area of your chart.
Kim: And the idea of spiritual discipline which is such a lovely Saturn in Pisces one. How we can perhaps focus again in our forward turning intentions around that. How giving time and commitment and effort and application to anything that is imaginative, anything that’s sensitive, anything that’s empathetic, anything that is mystical, spiritual, soulful, artistic, that’s very rewarding with Saturn in Pisces. It’s retraced it steps and now we get another go over. And obviously, yeah, the times that were in color so much, don’t they, in terms of our own sense of it. But what is is eternal, you know, in a sense of ‘undying’, in that Scorpio way, is how we make sense of it inside our own hearts and minds and souls. And how we always have the opportunity to reflect on our responses to things. Because we can’t change our circumstances, or at least we have a huge limit on the outer circumstances that we can directly change. But we can decide how we will respond to things. The responsibility. We talk about the burden or the weight or the responsibility of Saturn, but it’s an ability to respond, isn’t it? And with Saturn in Pisces, the ability to respond with kindness or with gentleness or with softness, with openness, is there in the symbol.
Alejo: Yeah. And the responsibility is also like the idea of commitment. The idea of commitment to what you do, what you decide. Like you know there is going to be something that is going to come out of that. So instead of seeing it as a burden, perhaps seeing it as a consequence and as a positive consequence. Like okay, you invest time and money in studying astrology, you become an astrologer.
Kim: What we were saying before we started recording about how free will can mean doing exactly that which you have to do.
Alejo: Yeah. Then on the 8th Venus enters Libra. So she’s probably very happy to go into Libra. And on the 10th, Mercury goes into Sagittarius.
Kim: There’s a shift then, isn’t there, in the the month?
Alejo: Yeah. What do you make out of this, these two dates?
Kim: I certainly think that Mercury entering Sagittarius, of course, again, is triggering or being triggered by the Saturn in Pisces. And I want to think about sagacity, is that the word? Being a sage. You know, being thought. Thoughtful with our words and ideas. And being seriously sensitive, which I think is a Saturn in Pisces thing, with how we express what we want to say and what we mean. Because of course, Mercury in the fire signs can get carried away, can’t it?
Alejo: I had a friend who has Mercury in Sagittarius and he’s always saying very honest things. And when people get offended, he’s always surprised. He was like, why was this person so surprised? I was just telling the truth.
Kim: That expression ‘can’t take him anywhere except back to apologize.’ I do think, because they’re both universal signs, or they’re two signs at the end of the zodiac, they can be, at best in a combination of Sagittarius and Pisces, something really quite heightened and quite universal in terms of the principles of understanding. They’re both Jupiter ruled signs. We have again, meaning and understanding and wisdom coming through.
Alejo: Yeah. And Mercury in Sagittarius is the meaningful word, right? The speech that has purpose, that has intention. It can be very powerful, I think. Yes.
Kim: And the whole sort of spiritual cowboy side of things or the kind of hippie thing, you know, when people laugh at hippies, but actually, what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Idealism.
Alejo: Nice. Then on the next day, Mars in Scorpio will oppose Uranus in Taurus. So it perfects the opposition. So it could be, perhaps, an explosive day also about trying to find your way doing what you want. I mean, it could also be encouraging to take a stand and defend what you believe in.
Kim: Something about freedom or breakthrough or, again, the truth. Sometimes Uranus gets a bit capital T with the truth, doesn’t it? Again, falling into black and white or right and wrong. But I think Mars-Uranus at best is given to experimenting. What is the possibility here? Yeah, it be very willful, very out of control or anarchic. But the spirit of freedom lives within it, definitely. And acting towards freedom.
Alejo: Yes. And then we get to the new noon on the 13th, which in London is happening at 9:27 and it has so many… Okay, it’s the Moon and Sun at 20 degrees of Scorpio opposing Uranus at 21 degrees of Taurus, and Mars is still there in Scorpio at 22 degrees.
Kim: That’s huge.
Alejo: So it’s quite charged, yes. And what interests me is, well, on this lunation Chiron is practically standing alone in Aries. So it interests me how all of this process that we’re doing about going deep and going within may expose a sense of, because Chiron is in Aries so I relate to this idea of feeling we don’t have the power, the power was given away, and perhaps it is connecting us to our sense of vulnerability, the sense of not being Almighty and all powerful.
Kim: Right. Yeah, getting rid of this sort of false heroic. That Chiron can be very good at putting us in touch with training up our inner hero, like Chiron trained to Greek hero. But also getting rid of the false face of bravado or whatever. And again, strength in vulnerability would seem to be a Chiron in Aries potential too, at its height, at its best.
Alejo: Yeah. And because of the opposition to Uranus, I’m thinking also this idea of becoming more authentic by accepting this vulnerability.
Kim: That honesty and directness. If we want other people to be truthful, then it stands to reason that we examine our own core for how much truth are we carrying? You know, or how truthful are we being? With Uranus we can often have illumination, can’t we? And of course, with Scorpio as we’ve been saying, so much seems to crystallize around darkness. And so we have this kind of lightning bolt illuminating.
Alejo: Yes. I was also thinking about when you were talking about the Mars opposition Uranus. I was also thinking Uranus is coming to the rescue saying like, okay, you went deep, but now you you have the insight or you see something, you understand something about who you really are. And I think it’s so nice that the new moon, which is a process that it’s beginning, it’s happening towards the end of the season. Like okay, if you do the process, something will emerge.
Kim: And how with a new moon we think of the metaphor of the seed or the symbol of the seed. You have to plant the seed in the darkness and leave it alone so that it can break open and grow. And how that process is one of trust, too. Because if you’re going to unearth it and crack it open, it won’t grow into anything. And a new moon is a beginning point or a seed point. And this would seem to be a beginning point or a seed moment in time which also carries something of illumination, something of awakening, something of liberation, something breakthrough, ideally.
Alejo: Yeah, I agree. Then on the 18th, the Sun-Mars conjunction perfects. So maybe the you will feel the drive, the will, the power, the vitality to kind of move forward, I guess. And then on the 22nd the Sun goes into Sagittarius and we will have a new episode to discuss that.
Kim: Who is doing Sagittarius? Do you know?
Alejo: I think it’s going to be Vanessa Montgomery, if I remember correctly. She’s a Sagittarius or Sagittarius rising or something, yes. And so when opportunity knocks, we usually list some dates that we think might be powerful. We have on the 6th, Venus is trining Pluto. So this idea of deeply connecting, deeply engaging with other people. This idea of gentle power. I mean, it could be also moment if you do creative work to focus on that. I think it might give you good insights. On the 7th we have Mercury trine Neptune. So again, this idea of the imagination being enhanced. Compassionate conversations you wrote here, very nice. Soulful intimations. So it’s a moment where our word might be connected with this spiritual quest or this kind of compassionate way of approaching others. So if you have like a sensitive thing to discuss with somebody maybe it’s a nice date to do it. And then on the 17th we have Sun on Mars both trining Neptune, and Venus sesquisquare Mars. I’m reading this right?
Kim: Yes, semi square Mars.
Alejo: So with this idea of Sun and Mars both being trine Neptune, I think there is again this possibility of action through compassion. Acceptance.
Kim: And the softening. Something being both soft and strong. You know, being deliberate and intentional in that solar Mars way. But also gentle or fluid with the Neptune.
Alejo: And then on the 28th, we have the Sun sextile Pluto. So you mentioned this Pluto is at the end of the Capricorn degrees, right. So there’s a moment for creative work, you were saying. The idea of working with a buried treasure.
Kim: Yes. And how we’re not going to get another… Actually, now I’m starting to doubt myself. Because before Pluto goes for good at all into Aquarius and stays there, maybe we are going to get another another final go of the very, very late degrees. Is it November next year that it once and for all goes into Aquarius without backing out again?
Alejo: I think so. I think it’s still gonna go a little bit. I’m not sure now.
Kim: But yeah, working with that creative cooperation that you get with a sextile, Sun-Pluto, working with the inner mechanics of things, working with the mystery of things and applying something useful. I always think of the hexagon or the beehive, you know, that kind of creative cooperation that you get with the sextile. Things can be brought together. But Sun and Pluto is saying turn positively towards these deeper questions and look for illumination in the darkness.
Alejo: Yeah, very nice. Okay, thank you. So to close, we usually come up with a key mantra or a phrase or something. And mine is going to be coming from your poem that you choose from Goethe, “You are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.” So I would say that, for myself, I would say, I am only a troubled guest on the dark earth. To accept this idea of dying and regrowing: I am only a troubled guest on the dark earth.
Kim: I didn’t come up with a mantra quite as as profound or beautiful as that. I was just sort of thinking, what would be my Scorpio mantra? And I wondered about several things. ‘I overcome.’ ‘I transcend.’ I think, ‘I choose to use my power creatively.’ That one. And I do not fear the depths.
Alejo: That one is powerful, yeah. So we always ask what you’re reading. So I’m not reading this book, I just read it. So I’ve just finished rereading, my brother brought my copy of Othello that I have in Argentina. He brought it this weekend. So I’ve just read Othello again, by Shakespeare. Which is actually very Scorpio, I think, in some ways.
Kim: Very on point. Yes.
Alejo: And I see you prepared a long list of books that you’re reading.
Kim: I’m sorry about that. I know. I’ve just finished reading a book called Bunny, which is like a horror sort of mystery set in a creative writing program, Master of Fine Arts writing program in American. It’s about this group of women who essentially are creative destructive. I don’t want to give away the plot, but very, very Scorpionic in all sorts of ways, and a kind of rabbit hole of intensity. And then for my birthday recently, a friend gave me an entire set of detective novels. So I’ve just finished the first one, and you know, enjoyably gruesome if you’ve got Mercury in Scorpio like I do. And I’m about to start the second one. I am reading a book about the inner work of age, which is a decision written by the same team who put out Meeting The Shadow, which I think is an amazing book. And yeah, I’m also reading the collective works of Joanne Beard who is my favorite writer.
Alejo: The question is, what are you not reading?
Kim: What am I not reading? Yeah. And I’m listening to an audio book at the same time by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, she wrote Women Who Run with the Wolves, and it’s called Seeing in the Dark.
Alejo: Oh awesome, very Scorpio. So thank you so much for coming here, Kim. How can people get in touch with you or what are your next projects or events?
Kim: Yeah, I mean, with Asteria we’ve got a teaching program that’s coming up. Some master classes and some mentoring, most of which is online. So with that we’ve got, I think the 4th of November is a very busy time for astrology all around, but we’re doing a masterclass on chart interpretation on November the fourth. I’m also starting, on Halloween I’m starting a mentoring group for chart interpretation. It’s probably no good for anyone in America, given that it’s 10:30 in the morning UK time. But it could work for somebody who’s on a more, you know, sympatric timeframe. And I’m doing forecasting mentoring too from the following day, which is three to five in the afternoon. You can find these things and information about the masterclasses at asteria-teaching.com.
Alejo: Nice. All right, thank you. And for the Astrology University, some of the next events are a set of workshops, a set of classes called the Practical Magic of the Inner Planets with Jessica Murray. That’s going to start on October 25th until November 19th. And I think it’s so important to get the inner planets properly, that’s why I chose this one for the podcast to mention it now. And the other one I am really interested in is also starting on October 25th, and it’s called Vocation, Mission and Calling with Brian Clark, who is a genius, and Tony Hayward who is a fantastic person.
Kim: I forgot to mention I’m doing a q&a on the for Astrology University on November the fifth.
That’s on the inner planets in relation to the outer planets, and aspects between the inner and outer planets.
Alejo: Oh, wow. Nice. And so if you want to get in touch with me, you know my Instagram is @liminalcosmos. I’m open to get consultations. Kim also you’re open to get consultations right?
Kim: That’s right.
Alejo: How can they contact you directly?
Kim: My email, I suppose is the main way. I don’t have a website other than the Asteria website, which is more dedicated to that teaching that I’m doing. But yeah, it’s [email protected]
Alejo: Great. If you want to get in touch with me for consultations, my Instagram is @liminalcosmos. I also take patients as a Jungian therapist. On the 28th of October I’m going to be teaching a workshop, a webinar, on how to use the houses, how to emphasize the role of the houses when we’re working with aspects. And on the fourth of November, another one on aspects, but this time how to stress the difference between the different types of aspects. And it’s all at the Faculty of Astrological Studies, so you can check the webpage there. All right. So, thank you so much, Kim. Thank you everyone for listening. We hope you have a great Scorpio season going into this dark world and connecting. Go to the Hunterian Museum. All right. Thank you, everyone.
Kim: Thanks, Alejo. Bye.
