The Flow State Herald: Edition 1, the Messenger (Gemini rising)
The Flow State Herald
10 to 17 October 2026 · Edition 1 · Vol. I · No. 1
The Messenger's edition, for Gemini rising
Read this first
- The week: A New Moon opens the week on Sat 10 Oct, Venus squares Mars that day, and Mars steadies against Saturn on Fri 16 Oct.
- For you: Your 5th house of play and romance gets the New Moon: a good week to make time for fun.
- Do this: On Sat 10 Oct, invite someone to a walk or a game.
- Dates: Sat 10 Oct and Fri 16 Oct.
Your birth chart is a castle: twelve rooms for twelve areas of life. Each week the planets open different doors, and this paper tells you which rooms are worth entering.
New to the rooms? They are explained on the castle page.
Album of the week
Viva! La Woman, Cibo Matto, 1996. About 50 minutes. Listen on Spotify. Source for the story.
Cibo Matto, roughly Italian for crazy food, was formed in New York in 1994 by Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori; Warner Bros. Records released this debut on 16 January 1996.
The Morning Post: your sky this week
You are the Messenger: this week the Libra New Moon opens your 5th house, the Garden and Ballroom, and Venus squares Mars between your 6th and 3rd houses.
What have you been meaning to say, and how can you say it kindly?
A new moon opens the Ballroom · Sat 10 Oct, 11:50 am ET
THE GARDEN AND BALLROOM · 5th house · play, romance, making things and being seen
A new moon is a small start, and this one falls in your house of play, pleasure and romance. There is no need to be productive this week. Send the invitation or compliment you have been saving.
- Sat 10 Oct: Invite someone to a walk or a game.
New ☽︎ Moon with the ☉︎ Sun in Libra, your 5th house, exact 11:50 am ET (15:50 UTC) Sat 10 Oct.
Venus and Mars clash over a draft · Sat 10 Oct, 5:31 pm ET
THE BATHHOUSE AND APOTHECARY · 6th house · daily routines, health and small remedies
THE LIBRARY · 3rd house · how you think, talk and learn, and the people close by
Venus squares Mars across your 6th and 3rd houses: daily routines slow you down while messages and talk speed up. You may correct someone and regret it. A sharp message is easier to send than to take back.
- Sat 10 Oct: Write the reply you want to send and save it as a draft.
♀︎ Venus retrograde in Scorpio (your 6th house) square ♂︎ Mars in Leo (your 3rd house), exact 5:31 pm ET (21:31 UTC) Sat 10 Oct.
Mars steadies against Saturn in the Courtyard · Fri 16 Oct, 4:32 am ET
THE LIBRARY · 3rd house
THE COURTYARD · 11th house · friends, groups and shared hopes
Mars trines Saturn across your 3rd and 11th houses: talk with friends and groups turns practical. Hear what the group needs before you say what you think.
♂︎ Mars in Leo (your 3rd house) trine ♄︎ Saturn retrograde in Aries (your 11th house), exact 4:32 am ET (08:32 UTC) Fri 16 Oct.
Send the invitation or compliment you have been saving.
Tarot
Look. A man in a red cloak holds a small globe between two wands, with castle walls behind him.
Ask yourself. He holds a small globe in his hand; what plan of yours is still unspoken?
Show the reading
Then read. Two of Wands, reversed, is a plan held in the hand, not yet launched. With the New Moon in your Ballroom, say the wish you have rehearsed privately.
Look. A woman in white and a flower crown holds an orange lion's jaws, an infinity sign near her head.
Ask yourself. She rests her hands on the lion; what would you ask before correcting someone?
Show the reading
Then read. Strength, reversed, is gentleness slipping while the lion's appetite sounds louder. With Venus squaring Mars, ask what the lion wants before you correct it, not after.
Look. A figure in a red-orange robe, bound with grey bands and blindfolded, stands among eight swords.
Ask yourself. The figure stands bound among swords; which story keeps your own message stuck?
Show the reading
Then read. Eight of Swords, reversed, is the blindfold slipping and the bindings loosening. With Mars in trine to Saturn, hear what stops the message: often a story, not a lock.
The thread. Say your plan aloud. Ask before you correct. Listen for the story.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909. Drawn at random from one shuffle.
Planet of the week
In your chart. Pluto is in your 9th house, the Observatory tower, the room for travel, study, beliefs and big questions.
This week. Pluto stops and turns direct in Aquarius on Thursday 15 October at 10:40 pm ET (02:40 UTC Friday), closing a retrograde that began in May. In Western astrology it is the planet of deep change, power, buried material and endings that clear the way.
Greek. Hades was the Greek god of the dead. In the Cratylus, a dialogue by the philosopher Plato, Socrates says people prefer to call him Plouton, 'giver of wealth', because the name Hades frightens them.
Egyptian. Osiris ruled the dead in Egyptian belief. When a person died, their heart was weighed against the feather of Maat, goddess of truth, in his presence, and he is often painted green.
Chinese and Korean Buddhist and Daoist. In this East Asian belief, the dead are judged by ten kings of hell, one after another, each in his own court.
Correspondences
Colour: black
Black is the colour modern sources give, with dark red for Scorpio, Pluto's modern partner. These colours were assigned by modern astrologers and carry no ancient authority.
Metal: plutonium
Plutonium, first made in 1940 and 1941, was named after the planet, so this is a post-discovery link and not an old tradition.
Gems: spinel, garnet, obsidian, tourmaline
Red spinel, dark garnet, obsidian and black tourmaline are modern picks from gem sellers' lists, with no documented classical use.
Plants: pomegranate
The pomegranate is the myth's plant: in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hades gives Persephone seeds that bind her to the underworld for part of every year.
Foods: pomegranate, onions, mushrooms
Pomegranate is the myth food; onions, leeks and mushrooms appear in modern folk lists attached to Scorpio, Pluto's partner sign.
Part of the body: reproductive and eliminating organs
Modern lists give these to Scorpio, which Pluto co-rules, as a symbolic association and not a medical statement.
Altar suggestions
Ideas, not rules:
- A pomegranate
- A piece of black tourmaline
- A folded note
- A picture of Hermes
- Cypress or vetiver oil
- A black pen and a small bell
Vedic astrology: no Pluto
Classical Jyotish uses nine grahas, the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu, and has no Pluto at all.
The Treasure Drawer: the museum object
Look first. A page from a Persian manuscript: a woman in an orange top and patterned skirt stands between two rooms, one purple, one red, each with a bed. A green parrot sits in a red cage beside her, and lines of script frame the scene.
Context. A page from the Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot), from Akbar's Mughal court, about 1560. In its fifty-two tales a parrot keeps his master's wife Khujasta from going out to meet her lover.
Notice. Look at the parrot in its small red cage, the only one speaking, and at the woman who turns her whole body to listen.
Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: this folio; Cleveland Museum of Art: Tuti-Nama (Tales of a Parrot).
The deep dive
The news of Pluto travelled by photograph, telegram, newspaper and cable.
Clyde Tombaugh photographed the same patch of sky at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff on 23 and 29 January 1930, and on 18 February spotted a moving dot with a blink comparator, which flips between two photographs. The discovery was announced by telegram on 13 March 1930.
Then it went by newspaper. In Oxford, eleven-year-old Venetia Burney heard about it at breakfast from her grandfather, Falconer Madan, a former Bodleian librarian. Her idea was Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. Madan told Herbert Hall Turner, Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and Turner cabled colleagues at Lowell, who announced the name on 1 May 1930. Accounts disagree on the day of the breakfast, between 11 and 14 March.
Pluto was the one major Greco-Roman god not yet used for a heavenly body, and an underworld name suited a dim, remote object. Greek Plouton means the rich one, a gentler title for Hades.
In 2006 the International Astronomical Union voted that Pluto is a dwarf planet. New Horizons flew past on 14 July 2015 carrying the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter, built and run by students in Colorado.
Astrology's reading of Pluto as transformation arrived only after 1930.
To think about: Which message this week should travel more slowly?
Go further: Smithsonian Magazine: how Pluto got its name
Sources: APS News: Tombaugh and the discovery of Pluto; Smithsonian Magazine: how Pluto got its name; Scientific American: Pluto's namer outlives planet's status; Wikipedia: Pluto (mythology); LASP: Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter; The Met: Kingdom of Pluto, 1668.
Movement
Stretch your hands and shoulders and breathe slowly. When Venus squares Mars on Sat 10 Oct at 5:31 pm ET, go for a walk before you type a reply.
Look up. Saturn, brightest of the year, rises in the east at dusk and stays up until sunrise, and before dawn Mars and Jupiter shine in the eastern sky, Mars best in binoculars early in the week near the Beehive Cluster. Venus is too low and too near the Sun to see this week.
This week's calendar
- Sat 10 Oct: Hindu: The new moon of the ancestors (Mahalaya Amavasya). Source.
- Sun 11 Oct: Hindu: First day of Navratri. Source.
- Sun 11 and Mon 12 Oct: Jewish: New month of Cheshvan (Rosh Chodesh). Source.
- Mon 12 Oct: Civil, Canada and US: Canadian Thanksgiving; Indigenous Peoples' Day and Columbus Day in the US. Source.
- Wed 14 Oct: Eastern Christian: Pokrova, the veil of Mary. Source.
Hindu dates differ by region and tithi rules; Bengali Durga Puja reckoning puts some days a day later.
Eat & wear
Eat. Roast squash or sweet potato with pomegranate seeds and herbs. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, an ancient Greek poem, Hades gives Persephone pomegranate seeds.
Wear. Lemon yellow with pink and lilac: a yellow scarf with a flowered dress. Warm: add a soft cardigan. Cool: the dress alone.
A line to keep
A word is dead / When it is said, / Some say. / I say it just / Begins to live / That day.
Emily Dickinson, 'A word is dead' (written about 1872; Johnson no. 1212)
How this was made. The sky is calculated with the Swiss Ephemeris, tropical zodiac, whole-sign houses from the rising sign. Times are ET with UTC in brackets, for the window from Saturday 10 October 11:50 am ET (15:50 UTC) to Saturday 17 October 11:50 am ET. Tarot cards are drawn at random from one shuffle.
Pictures are public domain or CC0 from museum open access collections (cma:137890, met:700505, met:893668, cma:314432, cma:94028, cma:310353); the mother of pearl band is cropped from The Met object 40526.
The paper is for reflection and enjoyment and is not medical, financial or legal advice.
