The Flow State Herald: Edition 2, Pisces the Mystic
The Flow State Herald
17 to 24 October 2026 · Edition 2 · Vol. I · No. 2
The Mystic's edition, for Pisces rising
Read this first
- The week: Venus squares Pluto on Tue 20 Oct, the Sun enters Scorpio and meets Venus on Fri 23 Oct, and Mercury turns retrograde on Sat 24 Oct.
- For you: Your 9th house, the Observatory tower, is the busy room all week.
- Do this: Tue 20 Oct: Write one page about a belief you hold about love or worth, and one feeling not yet said aloud.
- Dates: Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET; Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am and 11:44 pm ET; Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET.
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
A Feather on the Breath of God, Gothic Voices and Christopher Page, 1982. Hyperion CDA66039. Source: Wikipedia.
Recorded on 14 September 1981 at St Jude's Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, and released by Hyperion in 1982. Hyperion's head, Ted Perry, decided to make it after hearing a BBC Radio 3 programme of Hildegard of Bingen's music put together by Christopher Page. Emma Kirkby sings, with Doreen Muskett on hurdy-gurdy and Robert White on bagpipes. It became one of the best-selling early music recordings.
The Tide Table: your sky this week
You are the Mystic: the week gathers in your Observatory tower, where Venus, the Sun and Mercury meet as Mercury turns back.
What is trying to come through while old beliefs get a second look in the tower?
Venus squares Pluto · Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET
THE OBSERVATORY TOWER · 9th house · travel, beliefs, higher learning and the big picture
THE SECRET GARDEN AND CHAPEL · 12th house · rest, dreams, solitude and what you keep out of sight
Venus, retrograde in Scorpio, squares Pluto in Aquarius, a fixed square that does not give way easily. It joins the Observatory tower, home of your beliefs and bigger questions, to the Secret Garden and Chapel, where unspoken feelings sit. Pluto is moving forward again. What you believe about love or worth meets what you have kept back, and both end up in one room.
- Tue 20 Oct: Write one page by hand about a belief you hold about love or worth, and one feeling you have not said aloud, then fold the page away unread.
♀︎ Venus retrograde in Scorpio, 9th house, square ♇︎ Pluto in Aquarius, 12th house · exact Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC)
Venus lines up with the Sun · Fri 23 Oct, 11:44 pm ET
THE OBSERVATORY TOWER · 9th house
The Sun moves from Libra into Scorpio at 5:38 am ET and enters your 9th house, the Observatory tower. Later that day Venus, retrograde in Scorpio, lines up with the Sun in the same room. Travel, study and faith are lit plainly, and Venus turned back means a second look at a plan or a creed you already chose.
- Fri 23 Oct: Walk somewhere you have not been, or take an unfamiliar route home, and bring along one question about what you actually believe.
☉︎ Sun enters Scorpio, 9th house · Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC); ♀︎ Venus retrograde, conjunct ☉︎ Sun in Scorpio · exact Fri 23 Oct, 11:44 pm ET (Sat 24 Oct, 03:44 UTC)
Mercury turns retrograde · Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET
THE OBSERVATORY TOWER · 9th house
Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio, inside your Observatory tower. Messages, courses, bookings and arguments about the big picture now go backwards for the rest of the week. A trip, a text or a belief may need a second reading before it can move on, and old contacts from far away may reappear.
- Sat 24 Oct: Before 11 am ET, phone someone who lives far away or who knew you long ago, and ask what you were sure of back then.
☿︎ Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio, 9th house · Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC)
The Sun moves from Libra into Scorpio at 5:38 am ET and enters your 9th house, the Observatory tower.
Tarot
Look. Three women in flowing gowns raise golden cups together, wearing flower wreaths, with fruit and a pumpkin at their feet.
Ask yourself. Which of the three would you stand beside, and what are you celebrating?
Show the reading
Then read. Three of Cups, upright. Three friends raising a glass. Venus under Pluto's pressure on Tuesday shows who actually makes you glad, and that company might get tested.
Look. A woman in white with flowers at her waist holds a lion's jaw under a yellow sky, shown upside down.
Ask yourself. Does the lion look calm or restless to you in this upside-down picture?
Show the reading
Then read. Strength, reversed. Your usual steadiness is low and the confidence may not show. Venus meets the Sun late Friday, so a show of confidence can fade and the private kind of courage is what's left.
Look. A figure in a red cloak, staff in hand, walks away from eight stacked cups beneath a moon.
Ask yourself. What would you carry with you if you walked away from the cups?
Show the reading
Then read. Eight of Cups, upright. Walking away from something half finished. Mercury turns retrograde in your 9th house on Saturday, so a second look is worth more than pushing on.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909.
Planet of the week
In your chart. Mercury is in Scorpio in your 9th house, the Observatory tower. In ordinary life that is where messages, study and plans about travel, teaching and belief collect.
This week. Mercury moves forward through Scorpio until Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC), when it turns retrograde and stays that way for the rest of the week.
Hindu. Hindu tradition makes Budha, the planet Mercury, the child of the Moon god Soma and of Tara, who was married to Brihaspati, the gods' teacher. Soma abducted Tara and gods and demons went to war until Brahma intervened; Tara then named Soma as the father, and the boy was called Budha, "the wise" (Tara).
Norse. The English Wednesday comes from Old English Wodnesdaeg, "Woden's day", a translation of Latin dies Mercurii, because Roman writers matched Mercury with Odin (Wiktionary). In Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, Odin gets the mead of poetry from the giant Suttungr and carries 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 (Water, wuxing).
The Shell Cabinet: the museum object
Look first. A pearly spiral shell lies on its side, held by gilded silver straps. A monster's head with open jaws rises from one end, and a small figure with an outstretched arm stands on a ball above it. The shell rests on a stem and a round foot.
Context. Cornelis Jansz van der Burch made it in Delft in 1607. Nautilus shells came to the Netherlands from Indonesia, and Dutch silversmiths mounted them as luxury cups for wealthy collectors.
Notice. Look at the shell's curve behind the monster's head: the museum says this sea monster motif marks the early Delft cups.
The deep dive
This page follows how Greek texts under the name of Hermes the Thrice-Greatest were taken for the oldest wisdom in the world, and how one close reading of their Greek in 1614 said otherwise.
Around 1460 a manuscript holding part of the Greek Corpus Hermeticum reached Florence. Cosimo de' Medici asked Marsilio Ficino to translate it into Latin before he touched Plato; that version is dated 1463. Ficino took the author, Hermes Trismegistus, for a wise Egyptian priest older than Plato and a source for him.
Hermes Trismegistus began as a merger of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, who both presided over writing. The merger happened in Hellenistic Egypt, where the Greek texts were written. For Ficino, devotion and scholarship ran together: a book older than the Greeks could sit beside scripture.
In 1614 Isaac Casaubon, a Swiss-born scholar of Greek, read the texts as Greek. Their style and content, he argued, belonged to the first centuries CE, not to ancient Egypt. Scholars now place them between about 100 and 300 CE.
Frances Yates saw the redating as a blow to Hermetic natural theology. Jan Assmann and others note that belief in an older origin went on after 1614.
To think about: What do you keep believing after the evidence moves?
Go further: Egyptomania, First Things
Sources: Hermes Trismegistus, Wikipedia; Trismegistus (Hermes), Ficino Source Library; Egyptomania, First Things.
This week's calendar
- Sat 17 Oct: Jewish: Shabbat Noach, the Sabbath when the Torah portion about Noah, the flood and the ark is read. Source.
- Mon 19 Oct: Hindu: Maha Navami, ninth day of Navratri, is the day of Ayudha Puja, when tools and instruments are honoured. Source.
- Tue 20 Oct: Hindu: Dussehra, the tenth day, ends the nine days of Navratri, and in many places effigies of Ravana are burned. Source.
- Fri 23 Oct: Chinese: Frost's Descent (Shuangjiang) opens at 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC) as the final solar term of autumn. Source.
A line to keep
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.
Psalm 107:23, 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.
