like and be liked: October transits with Alice Sparkly Kat
This month is about like. Who is like us? Who are we like? And what power do the words likeness or likeability hold over us? All the transits will ask us to consider our likeness and likeability as what is in conflict with how we directly experience life. Because of this, social media will seem a little negative this month and, if you've been considering a break, now is the best time to take one.
Beginning of the Month
New Moon conjunct Jupiter in Libra
We feel a general sense of appreciation for all life form at this time. This transit is really good at making us appreciate the potential for diversity in all life forms and will bring up questions of difference, similarity, and the problems rooted in both these words. Guardianship, especially, will come up and we will ask ourselves what is it in our lives that needs guardianship. For example, we may find that we relate to our race in a specific way at this time and wonder whether our relation to our race is in need of guardianship or if that is something that guards us.
Mars in Capricorn square Jupiter in Libra
This square is a conflict of everyday action and idealistic principles. We are made to feel that the things we choose or what we spend time in are unsatisfactory for a reason. Maybe we feel that our ideals are too impossible to be realized or that are spend too much time doing banal things. Both these feelings make us put in the effort to find out what our principles are at the current moment, not as abstract entities ungrounded in the everyday.
Venus in Scorpio trine Neptune in Pisces
The relationships we inhabit are defined as much by misunderstanding as they are by understandings. This transit asks us to put misunderstanding to use. Whatever happens under this transit, try to see it as an exercise. Maybe you get involved in a conversation in which you find yourself phrasing your gender identity in a way that you didn't expect yourself to in an effort to avoid misidentification. Maybe you find yourself in a room as the only white or POC person present and feel a sense of being misunderstood, that you're suddenly representative of opinions that you don't feel personally responsible for. By treating the situation as an exercise, we invest in a learning experience about the shared legacy of understanding and misunderstanding.
Middle of the Month
Mercury conjunct Jupiter in Libra square Mars conjunct Pluto in Capricorn
Sometime between the 11th and the 20th we become hungry for a reward system. The desire is for a social apparatus that is self-justifying. During the period, slogans, which are very useful for giving something meaning, become inflated and means of escapism. There might be a new social media campaign over an issue or a meme that is attached to a political sentiment. However well intentioned, the campaign or meme will be shared for the end of superficial popularity and will contribute to mediums of escapism from levels of experience. Rather than limiting ourselves to the displays of sympathy that trend through every power dynamic, we will need to focus on the limitations of our everyday to find opportunities for enacting empathy.
Full Moon conjunct Uranus in Aries
We'll actually find our everyday experience and evidences of empathy much more rewarding on a personal level than any systemic sociality. The desire to transform our ideas into social capital puts our own body in the strange position of waiting, watching, and whittling away. If you read anything during this time, don't post it on social media but read it out loud, standing, to yourself. Anything interesting really has to come from yourself at this time. Watch out for gravitating towards people who are similar to yourself or justify ready-made assumptions in your thinking. These assumptions will alienate you from your own experience.
End of Month
New Moon conjunct Mercury in Scorpio
By learning how to appreciate things on an experiential level, we opening ourselves up to what the limitation of ideas don't allow. The end of the month is a good time to socialize, especially through a shared experience. Go dancing and feel other bodies against yours, smoke some weed and watch a movie with friends, or invite people over to make some food together. No words may be needed because what is shared is beyond similarity or difference.
Venus conjunct Saturn in Sagittarius
This transit makes you want some kind of certification. It is different to our earlier appetites for reward because it is less about pleasure than definition. This certification is important because you want to know your own boundaries and how to work with them. If you've been entangled in a love affair and don't know what you call it, you might feel the need to have a discussion about labeling at this point. If you've been wearing more skirts and nail polish, maybe you decide to call yourself femme now for a while. However, certification, like reward, will carry negative consequences if we allow it to alienate ourselves from our actual existences.