The Sun enters Scorpio II — 10° – 19° Scorpio — on Wednesday, 2 November 2022 at 6:59 am EDT. Austin Coppock named this decan “The Alchemical Apparatus for Double Distillation”, but I usually call it the Double Distiller in consultations. The ancient Greeks assigned it to Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis — she was a Titaness who loved Zeus, and bore his children after a long period of wandering and torment that Hera instigated. She finally gave birth to the twins on the wandering island of Delos, now associated with a small island near Mykonos in the Aegean Sea. Like Aries II, the Sun administers this decan on Mars’s behalf… and with the warrior planet inconjunct and retrograde in Gemini, the Sun can do very much what he thinks is in the world’s best interests.

With the Sun below the horizon and Mars inconjunct, Venus goes from being in detriment in Scorpio to being in charge as Triplicity ruler… I often characterize Venus in Scorpio as “the woman in the red dress and high heels in the men’s locker room” — she has to cop an attitude to anyone who finds her there. At the moment, though, she’s in charge. Each sign has triplicity rulers, who act like vice-regents or magistrates when the Big Chief is away. As a result, Venus is in the locker room in her sexiest red dress, not as a timid wretch looking for a clean bathroom stall, but as the known and lawful representative of the Team Owner — right now, she can do as she likes, even if no one likes her.

This puts the Sun in an awkward position. In his own decan, he outshines her — the top player on the team, he has no reason to fear her. But queer little Mercury stands in his shadow, and he’s set up to eclipse the Moon on November 8 — can the big guy protect his girl, and his sidekick, from Venus’s actions in the next few days? Time will tell.

The ancients viewed this season of the year as the time of Leto — a minor goddess of childhood education in her own right, but more genuinely recognized as the progenitor of Apollo and Artemis, the Mother of the Sun and Moon. In myth, Leto was pregnant with the twins, but Hera had viciously chased her from land to land, and had forced the other gods and spirits to take an oath that they would not let Leto’s children be born in any of their territories. Only lonely and isolated Delos, a wandering island in the Aegean Sea, had no god… and so so when Leto came there, she was able to give birth. Thereafter, Poseidon fixed its position with adamantine chains, and it became one of the holiest places in the Mediterranean, so holy that mortals were not permitted to be born there.

The Lunar Eclipse on November 8 (chart not shown): Some of that mythology is being reenacted in this eclipse cycle. Venus is the temporary regent of Scorpio, and the actual sovereign of Taurus — the mother who is finally in charge. Sun and Moon come int position in their own decans, and “find their place” in the circuit of the stars. Let’s note that this Lunar Eclipse on November 8 (visible to most of North America, all of the Pacific, Australia, as well as parts of east Asia and Europe) will be taking place on the axis defined by the Sun and Moon in their decans — Scorpio’s Alchemical Apparatus for Double Distillation, and Taurus’s Lingam-Yoni. It’s a highly suggestive and sexualized eclipse cycle, with a ‘run time’ of five hours 54 minutes, taking place in a fixed sign: suggesting an enduring situation persisting for nearly six months until April 2023. Uranus in Taurus and Mercury in Scorpio bring unexpected magic and circular reasoning to a surprising and challenging era for us all, as the wandering luminaries temporarily are overshadowed by their beautiful mother Venus, terrible as a raging Mommy-Dearest in a red evening gown.

Planetary Placements

As already mentioned, we’re looking at a Night chart, raising the profile of the Sun slightly, and diminishing all the other planets except Mars.

The Fixed Signs are in the Angular Houses lending a steady intensity to the next ten days. The Sun, Mercury, Venus, are all in the first house in Scorpio, bringing a queer and feminist interpretation to our conceptions of sex, sexuality, gender, and interpersonal relationships. The middle decan of Scorpio promises that some of our own urgencies, obsessions and kinks around these subjects will be veiled in forms that look a lot like moral or ethical concerns — the biological desires hidden behind a false righteousness. Saturn in the fourth house’s Aquarius is largely square to this in the last degrees of Aquarius’s middle decan Heaven and Earth — proposing an idealistic “family friendly” framework of living that requires us all to ignore practical concerns and genuine reality: a triumphant parade of high falutin’ ideals is still just a bunch of people in costume… or drag. Uranus in Taurus in the seventh house in the Lingam-Yoni is opting for a more explicit, more autonomous, more real expression of the sexual self, and none of us are going to be comfortable with someone’s view of “how it’s gonna be from here on out.” The Moon, also in Aquarius in the decan called the Knot, has some special dignity here, assisting Mars in the ongoing unraveling of responsibilities and traditional ties. People well bound together in love will find the Moon’s presence in her 26th Mansion joyful and mutually refreshing, but some may discover that their family life is a painful prison that destroys happiness.

The Mutable Signs are in the Succedent Houses, promising a mix of outside forces acting on us, and numerous occasions to which we are called upon to react. Events that we get to initiate may be few and far between; we’re more likely to respond to changing circumstances than to be able to make our own events come into being. Neptune and Jupiter occupy the last decan of Pisces, The Cup of Blood, signifying a fair bit of recrimination and finger-pointing around passion-exciting issues; and argument for argument’s sake. Both are retrograde, suggesting that the conversations held in playful fun now may become more solid and more real later this year. However nothing much may come of anything. Mars in the third decan of Gemini The Executioner’s Sword, slices through ordinary duties with must-do/mission-critical projects with harrowing deadlines and intellectual implications that haven’t been fully thought through.

Of real objects in the sky, only Pluto in Capricorn’s third decan The Throne has any place in the Cardinal Signs, which are currently the Cadent Houses. The lord of the underworld brings a certain stridency and urgency to bear on familial issues, and demands structural changes in how we please ourselves in an era of possibly resurgent COVID. The Lot of Fortune in Cancer’s second decan, The Walled Garden, urges us to practice arts and skills against our gender norms, but without making a big deal about it or drawing too much attention to it. Train yourself in celebration and joy, make merry, and dance, and sing together — but not too loudly, not with too many, and not too publicly. Not yet.

Horoscopes by Rising Sign

Decan I of any sign (usually covering the 21st of the month to the first of the following month) is free to all visitors; Decan II is only available to Patreon and Ko-Fi.com subscribers; and Decan III is available to Patreon, Ko-Fi, and MailChimp subscribers.

Scorpio:

Sagittarius:

Capricorn:

Aquarius:

Pisces:

Aries:

Taurus:

Gemini:

Cancer:

Leo:

Virgo:

Libra:

Colophon

I have a Patreon account for those who want to support this column as it continues its third year. Those funds support artists, artisans and thinkers that I regard as contributing to the well-being of the world. You can also buy me a Ko-fi in $3 increments; any column I write after receiving a Ko-Fi donation will be open to the public).  You can also schedule an appointment with me using Accuity Scheduling, for a natal or solar return consultation.

If you want to read some of my astrologically-oriented poetry, the largest collection is called A Full Volume of Splendor and Starlight, available through my Etsy shop, and containing poems and hymns to the planets, constellations, decan deities, and Moon Mansion angels. While not astrological, Festae contains hymns to some of the older Roman gods and spirits from the calendar created by Numa Pompilius, the second ancient King of Rome.

I use iPhemeris for my charting software, and screenshot it to make charts. I want to thank the team that develops iPhemeris for the addition of Terms and Decans to their charts. I also use Hugh Tran‘s Physis typeface to craft logos for this blog, as well.

I use Christopher Warnock‘s The Mansions of the Moon as the basis of my Moon placement delineations, and Austin Coppock‘s 36 Faces for much of my planetary delineations. Neither gentleman endorses me.