The Flow State Herald: Edition 2, Aquarius the Astronomer
The Flow State Herald
17 to 24 October 2026 · Edition 2 · Vol. I · No. 2
The Astronomer's edition, for Aquarius rising
Read this first
- The week: Venus squares Pluto Tue 20 Oct, the Sun enters Scorpio Fri 23 Oct, Mercury turns retrograde Sat 24 Oct.
- For you: The Throne Room, your 10th house, is the busy room: the Sun, Venus and Mercury all end up there.
- Do this: Tue 20 Oct: Write what your work says about you and what you would like it to say, five lines each.
- Dates: Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC); Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC); Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC).
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 busy this week.
New to the rooms? They are explained on the castle page.
Album of the week
The Expanding Universe, Laurie Spiegel, 1980. 52 minutes. Listen on Spotify. Soundohm product page.
Spiegel made the music in the mid-1970s on GROOVE, a computer-controlled synthesizer system at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. The folk label Philo Records issued it on LP in 1980. Her piece Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds had already travelled into space on the Voyager Golden Record.
The Star Chart: your sky this week
You are the Astronomer, and this week's sky points at your work: Venus squares Pluto on Tue 20 Oct, then the Sun and Mercury both land in your 10th house.
Which part of your work could go differently if you recorded how it behaves before changing anything?
Venus squares Pluto · Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET
THE THRONE ROOM · 10th house · work, reputation and what you are known for
THE DRESSING ROOM · 1st house · how you present yourself and start things
Venus, retrograde in Scorpio, squares Pluto in Aquarius. That ties your 10th house, work and what you are known for, to your 1st, how you present yourself. What you want from your work and how you come across pull against each other, and the tension sits in plain view all week.
- Tue 20 Oct: Write two columns, what your work says about you and what you would like it to say. Keep each to five lines and compare them afterwards.
♀︎ Venus in Scorpio, retrograde, 10th house · square · ♇︎ Pluto in Aquarius, 1st house · exact Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC)
The Sun enters Scorpio · Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET
THE THRONE ROOM · 10th house
The Sun leaves Libra, your 9th house of beliefs and the big picture, and enters Scorpio, your 10th house of work. The spotlight moves from what you hold to be true to what you are doing in public, and your projects get looked at more closely.
- Thu 22 Oct: Build one small test of an idea you have only discussed, such as a one-page mock-up or a trial with a colleague, and put a start time on it.
☉︎ Sun enters Scorpio, 10th house (from Libra, 9th house) · Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC)
Mercury turns retrograde · Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET
THE THRONE ROOM · 10th house
Mercury, the planet of messages and plans, turns retrograde in Scorpio, your 10th house of work. It stays retrograde from here, so emails, schedules and agreements at work are easier to reread and reword than to finalise, and old work threads come back for a second look.
- Fri 23 Oct: Read back your last three work messages and mark anything vague. Send one short follow-up that states the date, the task and the person responsible.
☿︎ Mercury in Scorpio, stations retrograde, 10th house · exact Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC)
The spotlight moves from what you hold to be true to what you are doing in public, and your projects get looked at more closely.
Tarot
Look. Five figures in mixed colours of tunic swing long leafy staffs at each other across bare ground.
Ask yourself. Which of the five seems to be fighting, and which seems to be playing?
Show the reading
Then read. Five of Wands, upright. A scuffle with no referee: everyone swinging, nobody hurt. Tuesday's Venus and Pluto square sets what you want against how you see yourself, so let the better idea win.
Look. A crowned queen in a pale gown sits on a carved throne at the water's edge, holding an ornate cup.
Ask yourself. What do you think the queen sees in that cup that she studies so closely?
Show the reading
Then read. Queen of Cups, upright. She reads the room before she says anything. The Sun enters your 10th house on Friday, so watch how people at work react before you decide what to do.
Look. A young man in a red cap and green tunic holds up a single coin, standing in a flowered meadow.
Ask yourself. What does the young man see in the coin that holds his gaze?
Show the reading
Then read. Page of Pentacles, upright. A student looking hard at one coin. Mercury turns retrograde in your 10th house on Saturday, which is a good excuse to recheck the details before anyone else does.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909.
Planet of the week
In your chart. Mercury is in your 10th house, the Throne Room, the room of work and reputation. In ordinary life that means emails, pitches, contracts and what colleagues say about you get the retrograde treatment.
This week. Mercury, direct in Scorpio until then, turns retrograde on Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC).
Hindu. In Hindu tradition the planet Mercury is Budha, born to Tara, wife of Brihaspati, the gods' teacher, and fathered by Soma, the Moon god. Soma abducted Tara and a war followed until Brahma intervened; Tara then named Soma as the father, and the boy became Budha, "the wise" (WisdomLib).
Norse. English Wednesday is Woden's day, a translation of Latin dies Mercurii, because Roman writers matched Mercury with Odin. In Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, Odin wins the mead of poetry from the giant Suttungr and carries it back to the gods as an eagle (Wiktionary).
Chinese. Mercury is Chenxing, the planet of Water. Water belongs to the north and to the Black Tortoise, a tortoise wound with a snake that guards the northern sky (Four Symbols).
The Strange Instrument Case: the museum object
Look first. A round brass instrument hangs from a ring at the top of a curved, shaped bracket. Engraved scrollwork runs around its edge, a pierced plate with fine cut-out shapes covers the face, and a pin holds everything together at the centre.
Context. Muhammad Zaman al-Munajjim al-Asturlabi made it in Iran in 1654 to 1655 (1065 AH). An astrolabe is a hand-held model of the sky, used to tell the time and find the positions of stars.
Notice. Look at the pierced plate over the face. Its pointed tips mark bright stars, and the gaps between them let the plate below show through.
The deep dive
Why did Renaissance scholars think a set of Greek texts was older than Plato, and how did one reader's close look at the Greek change that?
Around 1460 an incomplete Greek Corpus Hermeticum manuscript arrived in Florence. Cosimo de' Medici told Marsilio Ficino to translate it before continuing with Plato; the Latin text is dated 1463. From then on it circulated as copies, each repeating the same attribution.
The attribution was to Hermes Trismegistus, "Hermes the Thrice-Greatest", the Greek god Hermes merged with the Egyptian god Thoth. Ficino took him for a wise Egyptian priest, older than Plato and a source for him. That belief rested on a misdating.
In 1614 Isaac Casaubon, a Swiss-born philologist, read the Greek itself. Its style and content, he argued, belonged to the first centuries CE, and modern scholars date the texts to roughly 100 to 300 CE.
Frances Yates described the redating as damaging to Hermetic natural theology. Jan Assmann and others point out that belief in an older origin persisted, so historians still debate how far one argument shifted readers' minds.
To think about: Which detail in a document would you test before trusting its age?
Go further: Isaac Casaubon in the Ficino encyclopedia
Sources: Encyclopedia.com, Hermeticism; Britannica, Hermes Trismegistus; Bryn Mawr Classical Review; First Things, Egyptomania.
This week's calendar
- Sat 17 Oct: Jewish: Shabbat Noach is the Sabbath when the Torah portion about Noah, the flood and the ark is read. Source.
- Mon 19 Oct: Hindu: Maha Navami, the ninth day of Navratri, is the day for Ayudha Puja, when tools and instruments are honoured. Source.
- Tue 20 Oct: Hindu: Dussehra, also called Vijayadashami, is the tenth day and ends Navratri; in many places effigies of Ravana are burned. Source.
- Fri 23 Oct: Chinese: Frost's Descent (Shuangjiang) closes autumn's run of solar terms and starts at 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC). Source.
A line to keep
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained.”
Psalm 8:3, King James Version
How this was made
Times are Eastern (ET), with UTC in brackets. The sky is calculated with the Swiss Ephemeris. Pictures come from museum open access collections and are credited in each caption. For reflection and enjoyment, not medical, financial or legal advice.
