Mercury has turned retrograde in Scorpio

Mercury has turned retrograde in Scorpio, and thinking runs back over ground it has just covered. In Scorpio the mind fixes on what is hidden or unresolved and loses some of the distance that usually lets it judge coolly. Around the turn, messages can slip, plans can need correcting, and matters thought closed can come back, sometimes with a disclosure attached. The same slowing suits rereading, rechecking and asking the question that was skipped.

The Moon has moved into Aries and is within a degree of Saturn, applying. Saturn, retrograde, stands in what the old tradition calls its fall. For about a day, quick reactions meet a brake, and the mood can feel steady or held back.

The heaviest structure is a T-square with Pluto in Aquarius at its apex. At one end are the Sun and Venus in Scorpio, the pair just past their conjunction, within a degree; at the other is Chiron in Aries. Taken as one figure, it sets what we love and want against an old hurt around standing up for oneself, and the strain of both runs into Pluto, which presses for change and for a reckoning with power. Its Pluto–Chiron leg is easing and leaves orb after 30 October. If a talk about what you want slides into who controls whom, or an old injury makes every request feel like a test, the figure is running unchecked.

Neptune in Aries sextiles Pluto within a degree, easing, and Uranus in Gemini trines it, tightening, giving its pressure outlets in ideals put into practice and fresh thinking. Chiron sextiles the North Node in Aquarius within a degree, linking the hurt to unfinished work of repair. The practice is to aim the force at one specific end that serves more than oneself. Astrocábala reads Chiron's healing as easing in others a pain one knows from within.

Uranus in Gemini is within a degree of a quincunx to Black Moon Lilith in Capricorn, tightening. The quincunx is modern practice's aspect, one the classical tradition does not count. It joins a restless urge to break pattern with an unmet wish for control and solid results; if a nervous impatience sets in, small adjustments answer it better than forcing a decision.

Ahead of the Full Moon in Taurus, the gibbous phase of the half-month opened by the New Moon in Libra asks for refining, and Mercury's turn supplies the method.