MTD

October 2025

9 Year / 1 Month

The astrology of October? It’s a story of forfeiture, really. There’s no other way to sugar coat it. But it is also the story of gain.

We’re citizens of now, whether we want to be or not and the quality of now is rife with notions of the provisional…what will stay? What will go? Life is changing by design or unintentional consequences, our internal maps can’t reconfigure quickly enough..we’re working off of old paradigms and ideas, pictures of what used to look like. Will life ever return to we remember in instagrams and photo books? Do we want it to? This is our Bardo moment (moments), requiring us to learn to live with the transitory nature of modern society.

“Time is an impartial player…the greatest lesson I’ve learned so far (is) in holding cognitive dissonance: (in holding) the presence of both death and vibrant aliveness.” – Dani Shapiro/ in the preface to Traveling in the Bardo; The Art of Living in an Impermanent World

This is the quality of a Nine, the cup, our cup pouring out its water, as we watch, while the source our next drink is unknown. We act, we wish, we hope, but the One energies of October give us precious few hints at what’s to come other than “different” or the mundanely prosaic “new”. Breathtaking in its totality and intensity, walking through October isn’t about balance, it’s about awareness. It’s the knowledge that what we’re living through is changing us, and we are meant to be different because of that change.

Humans, lumbering through each age bracket, often balk at change, like small children we hold tightly to the familiarity and security of our maps, our common touchstones.  In our heads we draw pretty representational pictures of our realities, that aren’t true to form but the are comforting— a lifeline between lives, the old ones and the ones to come.

“…every mythology tells descent stories: Persephone, Inanna, Orpheus. The underworld is not a detour; it is the path. It’s how you transform from maiden to queen, from fractured to whole, from powerless to sovereign. -From Tea and & Rosemary

In the breach we are restless. In the breach we are blind. We cannot see around the corner…but these times? They are heavy with courage and determination. (That’s October’s Full Moon in Aries). We don’t know where we are going, only that we must GO.

“Matter has a strong pull at all levels towards dissolution, then re-forming somewhere else as something else…as multiverse, cosmos, star, solar system, planet, individual life forms.”- Anne Whitaker, Writing from the 12th House

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time” – André Gide, translated by Anne Whitaker

Journal Prompts for October:

• Where in your life are you in need of a strong dose of courage?
• Energetically both 9 and 1 correspond with the element Fire and vibe with this month’s Full Moon in Aries. Where are you fired up? Where are you inspired? What sector of your life are you motivated to change?
• Both 9 and 1 can be emotional and dramatic. How can you approach such circumstances with wisdom and resolve?

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