Scorpio New Moon, Samhain, the Ancestors and a Spooky Election

An astrological survey of our moment in time.

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Melissa at Pere Lachaise, Day of the Dead 2006. Photo by Eric Francis - Book of Blue, Paris

Dear Friend and Reader:

We are in a rich moment. Tonight is Halloween (properly called Samhain, which is pronounced sah-wen). In various Old Religion calendars, today is the last day of the year; Friday is the first day of the new year; and overnight is “the night between the worlds,” which belongs to neither year.

Friday morning, we experience the New Moon in Scorpio. 

This suspension of normal time overnight from the 31st to the 1st is related to the notion that we are in the time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is the thinnest: that is Scorpio. 

For centuries and across cultures, this part of the season is about acknowledging the ancestors. Hence we have Day of the Dead, All Souls Day, All Saints Day and ghosts and goblins adorning people’s front yards.

Dinner for a hobgoblin. Photo by Eric Francis.

Honoring the Inner Tradition

The inner tradition here worth honoring: visiting the graves of relatives, or any graves, really; honoring those who have left us the past year; and standing up for the dead — which means speaking for them. You can also speak to them, thank them, offer forgiveness, pay their debts, and in other ways do your best to resolve unfinished business.

Are they really dead? I guess we’ll find out, or not.

My description of a meal for a hobgoblin gives a good idea for offerings if you visit a cemetery: tobacco, some spongy fruit like eggplant or squash; some alcohol; and maybe a biscuit. If you’ve never done this, it’s fun. The graves don’t have to be people you know.

This time of year (at least where the season is turning to winter) it’s easy to feel the planet we live on is a kind of pass-through zone for souls…or something. Tap in just a little and you can feel that movement.

Photos of Fae by Eric Francis / Book of Blue, New York.

The Grand Water Trine Plus Pluto

There’s plenty of interesting astrology leading into Friday’s New Moon in Scorpio, including a late-degree grand trine/kite pattern that I described in a special podcast Thursday morning. This aspect is downright clairvoyant: a water trine of Mercury, Mars and Neptune; with Mars and Pluto in an opposition.

The confrontation of Mars opposing Pluto at least is having some of its energy siphoned off into the other water planets. Whatever it’s about, it could be worse.

That opposition is really the heart of the matter. Due to the forthcoming Mars retrograde, it will happen three times: with Mars and Pluto in late Cancer and Capricorn on Monday; then with Mars retrograde in Leo, and Pluto in Aquarius on Jan. 3; and then with Mars and Pluto direct on April 26. 

This is all part of the sendoff party for Pluto entering Aquarius till 2044. There is always something interesting that happens just as Pluto changes signs. The last thing that happens to Pluto while it’s in Capricorn is that it takes this opposition from Mars (both planets are associated with Scorpio, and Mars has dignity in Capricorn — it’s all very resonant).

In the midst of this pattern, there is a T-square: Mars square Juno and Juno square Pluto. This is super tight over the weekend, and it’s a commentary on the futility of resentment (a Juno thing). Resentment is the root cause of guilt. It’s guilt turned on itself. If you have not resolved your guilt about something, you may tend to project it outward as resentment toward another person (who may have nothing to do with your problem).

Ange in the Catacombs of Paris. Photo by Eric Francis - Book of Blue, Paris

Jupiter Conjunct Altjira: The Dreamtime

While we are here in the time of thin veils, the ancestors and the night between the worlds, something fun is happening in Gemini: a conjunction between Jupiter and Altjira. This is a small planet in the Kuiper Belt (in an orbit just past Pluto) discovered in 2001. It orbits the Sun in 294 years (it is therefore a “classical Kuiper object” or “cubewano”).

Altjira is named for the creator god of the Arrant people of Terra Australis, who dreamed the Earth into existence. In astrology, Altjira is the portal into the dreamtime — which is an actual place, not merely thoughts bubbling up from the chaotic ‘unconscious’ that we experience.

In Australia, it is understood that ancestors shaped the land and still live in it: in the caves, and jagged rocks, in Uluru (Ayers Rock, a giant rock formation and Unesco World Heritage Site), in rivers and mountains, and even desert spaces. The land is alive with everyone who has lived there. (We shun this and think of it as haunted. That is a misunderstanding.) 

Those not in-body can still speak to living people through dreaming, and we can learn from them. These connections impart a sense of the timeless and the sacred. This whole view departs from how we live in the Western world, which is to bury the dead and either pretend they never existed, or be perpetually hung up about unresolved business.

Jupiter is conjunct Altjira, and is magnifying its presence, and reminding astrologers who know about it to consider its meaning.

Photo by Eric Francis / Book of Blue, New York

And a Spooky Election

Tuesday’s election drama has many people on edge. That we are facing two very bad choices suggests something else is going on. The candidates do not represent people or political parties; they are owned by hedge funds.

This is not your usual “lesser of two evils” type of U.S. election. It’s hard to figure out who is worse. Both candidates have such serious problems, I dread the notion of either being president. It’s not about what they do but rather what they are willing to go along with.

For example, both were directly involved in the lockdown of society, medical genocide and then a mass-injection program that according to the CDC has killed or injured more than a million people. Check the data for yourself. More people reported sickness and death from the “covid” vaccine than from all other vaccine products the past 30 years combined.

The mRNA gene therapy injection falsely called a “vaccine” was rolled out on Trump’s watch and fully implemented during the Biden-Harris administration. To this day, Harris is requiring all of her campaign staff and all DNC staff to be multiply injected — she must be the last place on Earth that has this requirement.

People are worried about the potential for fascism; I am telling you we already went there four years ago when society was shut down for a virus that nobody can produce a sample of, that’s existence is established by a “test” based entirely on artificial intelligence. The “covid test” was the ultimate deep fake.

Fae at Old Tongore. Photo by Eric Francis - Book of Blue, New York.

The Silence Masks Deeper Rage

Note the utter silence around these issues with profound personal impact. Who is standing up for those whose deaths were hastened by complying with the order to inject this mystery substance?

Part of the disembodiment problem of the digital environment involves swimming in free-floating rage. We see expressions of this, such as the lunatic fringe rally held at Madison Square Garden over the weekend, or the student protests of last spring (which mostly demonstrated rage on the part of the government; the students were pretty calm because they know better who they are). 

The energy and pace of events is going to ramp up very quickly in the spring, as Chiron and Eris form their rare conjunction in Aries (a mass awakening), and planets make their way from Pisces into Aries. 

I propose we are going to see social unrest like nothing we’ve ever witnessed before. This arrives and the surfacing of the personal crisis that many people have been thrust into by overexposure to digital technology and 24x7 lies and garbage food delivered right to their bodies.

For now, most people are holding their breaths, waiting to see what happens Tuesday — if we even find out.

Please check your email for the announcement of a live edition of Planet Waves TV where I’ll be talking about election returns and astrology. That’s 8 pm ET on Zoom, Facebook and YouTube. Details forthcoming!

With love,

Your faithful astrologer,