The Flow State Herald: Edition 2, Leo the Sovereign
The Flow State Herald
17 to 24 October 2026 · Edition 2 · Vol. I · No. 2
The Sovereign's edition, for Leo rising
Read this first
- The week: Venus squares Pluto on Tue 20 Oct, Venus lines up with the Sun on Fri 23 Oct, and Mercury turns retrograde on Sat 24 Oct.
- For you: Your 4th house, the Bedchamber: Venus, the Sun and Mercury all pass through home and family.
- Do this: Tue 20 Oct: ask someone close one direct question about a shared arrangement, and hear the whole answer.
- Dates: Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC); Fri 23 Oct, 11:44 pm ET (Sat 24 Oct, 03:44 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
Nightclubbing, Grace Jones, 1981. Nine tracks. uDiscover Music.
Recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, and produced by Chris Blackwell and Alex Sadkin, with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare on rhythm. Island Records released it on 11 May 1981. It mixes covers, including Iggy Pop's title song and Bill Withers' Use Me, with three originals co-written by Jones.
The Court Circular: your sky this week
You are the Sovereign, and this week the court's business moves into the private rooms: home, family and one firm exchange with a partner.
Who in your household has earned thanks you have not given yet, and how will you make it specific?
Venus squares Pluto and tests a close bond · Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC)
THE BEDCHAMBER · 4th house · home, family and roots
THE GREAT HALL · 7th house · partners, close one-to-one relationships
Venus, retrograde in Scorpio, sits in your 4th house and squares Pluto in Aquarius in your 7th. The household meets the one-to-one partnership, and the terms of each come under pressure. Expect a blunt exchange about who gives what and who decides, with an old arrangement at the centre.
- Tue 20 Oct: Ask the person closest to you one direct question about an arrangement you share, then listen to the whole answer before replying or defending any part of it.
♀︎ Venus retrograde in Scorpio, 4th house; ♇︎ Pluto in Aquarius, 7th house; square, exact Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC)
Venus lines up with the Sun · Fri 23 Oct, 11:44 pm ET (Sat 24 Oct, 03:44 UTC)
THE BEDCHAMBER · 4th house
The Sun enters Scorpio on Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET, and by that late hour it lines up with retrograde Venus. Both light your 4th house, so the family table and the place you actually live are in plain view. Venus is going backwards, which makes this a review of who has been generous there and who has gone unthanked.
- Fri 23 Oct: Write a short note of thanks to one relative or housemate, name one specific thing they did, and leave it where they will find it.
♀︎ Venus retrograde in Scorpio, 4th house; ☉︎ Sun in Scorpio, 4th house; conjunction, exact Fri 23 Oct, 11:44 pm ET (Sat 24 Oct, 03:44 UTC)
Mercury turns retrograde · Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC)
THE BEDCHAMBER · 4th house
Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio in your 4th house and stays retrograde for the rest of the week. Messages, plans and paperwork about home and family slow down and come back for a second look. Mars and Jupiter, both in Leo in your 1st house, keep pushing forward, so announcing comes easier than finishing.
- Sat 24 Oct: Hand one household task or repair to someone you trust, with the details written on a single sheet, and ask them to read it back to you.
☿︎ Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio, 4th house, Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC)
Expect a blunt exchange about who gives what and who decides, with an old arrangement at the centre.
Tarot
Look. An angel with golden curls and dark red wings pours water between two cups, one foot in a pool.
Ask yourself. Which cup would you tip first, and where would the stream go?
Show the reading
Then read. Temperance, upright. Warmth and firmness mixed in the right amounts. Venus meets Pluto on Tuesday, so be patient and don't make a show of it.
Look. Upside down, a man in a red cap with folded arms sits above nine gold cups on a blue curtain.
Ask yourself. Whose contentment is on show here, and whose is still waiting to be noticed?
Show the reading
Then read. Nine of Cups, reversed. You got what you wanted and haven't enjoyed it yet. Venus lines up with the Sun in your 4th house late Friday, so let someone at home see you pleased.
Look. A caped man in a red cap holds a globe and a staff on a wall above sea and fields.
Ask yourself. What would you hand over if you could see the coast from here?
Show the reading
Then read. Two of Wands, upright. Planning from a high view. Mercury turns retrograde on Saturday, so hand off part of the work and recheck the plan before you start.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909.
Planet of the week
In your chart. Mercury is in Scorpio in your 4th house, the Bedchamber. In ordinary life that means calls, messages, paperwork and plans about home and family.
This week. Mercury is direct in Scorpio until it turns retrograde on Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC), and it stays retrograde for the rest of the week.
Hindu. In Hindu tradition the planet Mercury is Budha the son of Soma, the Moon god, and Tara the wife of Brihaspati, teacher of the gods. Soma carried Tara off, a war between gods and demons followed until Brahma stepped in, and Tara admitted the boy was Soma's; he was named Budha, "the wise".
Norse. Roman writers matched Mercury with Odin, so the English Wednesday is Woden's day, a translation of the Latin dies Mercurii. In Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, Odin takes the giant Suttungr's mead of poetry and flies it back to the gods as an eagle.
Chinese. In Chinese star lore Mercury is Chenxing, the planet of Water which belongs to the north and to the Black Tortoise, a tortoise wound with a snake that guards the northern sky.
The Vitrine: the museum object
Look first. A small gold lion stands on a thin oval base ringed with loops. Its mouth is wide, its brow is ridged and its tail curls up over its back. Triangular cut-outs open its hip and legs, so light passes through the body.
Context. An Asante-Akan artist made it in gold in the 19th century, and it measures about five centimetres long. Lions served as a royal emblem in Akan art, a subject the Met's own journal studied in 1981.
Notice. Look at the open triangle in the hip, and at the ridged lines drawn along the back and flank.
The deep dive
A banker's order to a scholar in 1460s Florence made a book of doubtful age into a pillar of Renaissance thought, and a close reading of its Greek overturned that in 1614.
A Greek manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum, incomplete, arrived in Florence around 1460. Cosimo de' Medici, whose family led the city, told Marsilio Ficino to put it into Latin straight away, even before his Plato translations. The Latin is dated 1463.
Ficino held that the author, Hermes Trismegistus, "Hermes the Thrice-Greatest", was a wise Egyptian priest older than Plato and a source for him. The name fuses the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. The belief rested on a misdating.
In 1614 Isaac Casaubon, a Swiss-born scholar, read the Greek closely. Its style and ideas, he argued, belonged to the first centuries CE, not to ancient Egypt. Modern scholars date the texts roughly 100 to 300 CE.
Interpretation differs on the damage. Frances Yates called the redating a blow to Hermetic natural theology, while Jan Assmann and others note that belief in an older origin carried on afterwards.
The medal here shows Cosimo in profile, the patron whose request set the order of the translations: Hermes first, Plato second.
To think about: Who gets to decide how old a book really is?
Go further: Isaac Casaubon, in the Ficino encyclopedia
Sources: Encyclopedia.com, Hermeticism; Bryn Mawr Classical Review; First Things, Egyptomania; Britannica, Hermes Trismegistus.
This week's calendar
- Sat 17 Oct: Jewish: Shabbat Noach marks the Sabbath on which the Torah portion Noach is read: Noah, the flood, the ark and the rainbow covenant. Source.
- Mon 19 Oct: Hindu: Maha Navami falls on the ninth day of Navratri and is the day of Ayudha Puja, honouring tools and instruments. Source.
- Tue 20 Oct: Hindu: Dussehra, or Vijayadashami, the tenth day, ends the nine days of Navratri; in many places effigies of Ravana are burned. Source.
- Fri 23 Oct: Chinese: Autumn's last solar term, Frost's Descent, arrives at 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC), when the Sun also enters Scorpio. Source.
A line to keep
Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Romans 12:15, 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.
