The sky of October 23 presents a rare stellium in Scorpio: Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Mars. All under the rulership of Mars itself, domiciled in this nocturnal sign. And also a grand trine between the three signs of Water.
I. Descriptive
The Sun, today newly emerged from its yearly fall in Libra, becomes peregrine in Scorpio, where it finds itself in an element contrary to its fiery nature. The Moon, in its monthly fall, is moving towards Sagittarius, briefly crossing the heart of the stellium, meeting Mars and Mercury, dissolving in the domain of poisonous water. Mercury, likewise in Scorpio, is without essential dignity but marked by its recent conjunction with Mars, an aspect that radicalises thought and speech. And Mars, ruler of the sign and of the nocturnal triplicity of Water, is in its domicile and in the bound of Jupiter, reinforcing a combative but devotional nature.
The rest of the chart maintains the aquatic emphasis: Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, a lunar sign, and so rules Saturn and Neptune, both retrograde in Pisces, where the North Node is also present. It confirms a nearly perfect grand trine in Water, connecting Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio in an unbroken current of emotion and psychic power.
This grand trine connects slow and personal planets, a fluid harmony between imagination, spiritual structure, emotional expansion, and instinctive intensity. Only the Sun, at the first degree of Scorpio, is not yet integrated into the figure. It is the initiate at the temple gate, the one who has just entered the waters but has not yet been absorbed by them.
Outside the element of Water, there remains only Venus domiciled in Libra (cardinal Air), Uranus retrograde in Gemini (mutable Air), and Pluto in Aquarius (fixed Air). There is no planet in Fire or Earth, which makes this a sky of full dissolution, where the principles of combustion (Fire) and coagulation (Earth) have been suspended.
II. Symbolic
The absolute dominion of Water today amounts to a reversal of the creative elements. Fire (Shin) and Earth (the second He in the Tetragrammaton) are absent; the cosmos acts through Mem (Water) and Aleph (Air), with the former in predominance.
Scorpio, the sign of fixed water, represents living matter that decays in order to be reborn; it is the womb of the underworld, the alchemical nigredo related to the eight house of zodiacal wheel – the inactive one. With the luminaries Sun and Moon today under martial rule, both solar consciousness and lunar unconsciousness submit to the destructive-creative principle of the nocturnal malefic Mars. This is the archetype of regenerative sacrifice, where light descends into water to purify itself through Scorpionic venom. Mars in Scorpio becomes the surgeon of the invisible, the one who cuts away the corrupt tissue of the soul.
The peregrine Sun in Scorpio is Tifereth immersed in the Kabbalistic world of Briah, the sphere of Spirit in process of recreation. The Moon in fall suggests the dissolution of the usual forms of feeling, the descent of imagination to its obscure matrix. The current submerged Mercury is the psychopomp of the depths, mediator of subterranean voices. And, with Jupiter exalted in Cancer and Saturn-Neptune retrograde in Pisces, the psychic world expands to its liquid frontiers. This is a time of reintegration of the waters, when Heaven seems to remind the soul of its matricial origin.
III. Operative
This sky demands immersion, purgation and silence. The absence of Fire and Earth indicates that acting and building are secondary; the essential thing is to feel and to dissolve. Everything maintained by solar vanity or mercurial calculation will be carried away by the strong watery current. Those born under skies such as today’s – so saturated with the element of Water – may never be content with the surface.
The movement is downward: from intellect to instinct, to emotion. Dignified Mars teaches that there is strength in vulnerability: cutting the superfluous, exposing the wounds, allowing the venom of the soul to drain until only the pure bone remains. Processes of healing, inner alchemy, confession, and even the works of translation or symbolic creativity all become cathartic acts under this regime of fixed waters. Whoever tries today to defend themselves through dryness, logic will be swept away. The only path is to breathe under such a watery cosmos.
Κύριε ελέησον