The Flow State Herald: Edition 2, Sagittarius the Adventurer
The Flow State Herald
17 to 24 October 2026 · Edition 2 · Vol. I · No. 2
The Adventurer's edition, for Sagittarius 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, 3:12 am ET.
- For you: The Secret Garden and Chapel, your 12th house, hosts the Sun, Venus and Mercury, so rest and private thinking come first.
- Do this: Tue 20 Oct: Write down the one thing you have been meaning to say, then decide who reads it.
- Dates: Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am; Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am and 11:44 pm 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
Pirates Choice, Orchestra Baobab, 1982. First released in 1989. Listen on Spotify. Source.
Orchestra Baobab, the Dakar band, recorded this material in 1982. The British label World Circuit released it in 1989 as Pirates Choice, a nod to the bootleg copies that had already travelled.
The Road Atlas: your sky this week
You are the Adventurer, and this week the map runs inward: Venus lines up with the Sun and Mercury turns retrograde, all of it in Scorpio.
Where next, if the week's real journey is the one you take in your head?
Venus squares Pluto · Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC)
THE SECRET GARDEN AND CHAPEL · 12th house · rest, dreams, solitude and what you keep out of sight
THE LIBRARY · 3rd house · learning, siblings, short trips and everyday messages
Venus in Scorpio sits in your 12th house, where private feelings live, and Pluto in Aquarius sits in your 3rd, where everyday messages and short trips live. Their square sets a feeling kept to yourself against the week's words and errands. With Pluto moving forward again, the strain gathers pace rather than easing.
- Tue 20 Oct: Write down the one thing you have been meaning to say, in a note, a draft message or a page of a travel journal, then decide who, if anyone, should read it.
♀︎ Venus in Scorpio, 12th house, square ♇︎ Pluto in Aquarius, 3rd house · Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC) · Venus retrograde
Venus lines up with the Sun · Fri 23 Oct, 11:44 pm ET (Sat 24 Oct, 03:44 UTC)
THE SECRET GARDEN AND CHAPEL · 12th house
Earlier that day, at 5:38 am ET, the Sun entered Scorpio and your 12th house. Now Venus, retrograde in Scorpio, lines up with it there. What you love, enjoy and value is lit from inside the room of rest and solitude, so old attachments and wishes you haven't said out loud show up more clearly than new ones.
- Fri 23 Oct: Take a walk somewhere you have never been, or a familiar route in the other direction, and bring back one small thing, a leaf, a ticket or a photograph.
☉︎ Sun enters Scorpio · Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC) · ♀︎ Venus retrograde in Scorpio, 12th house, conjunct ☉︎ Sun · 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 SECRET GARDEN AND CHAPEL · 12th house
Mercury, the planet of messages and plans, turns retrograde in Scorpio and your 12th house, so thinking and talking turn inward. Old drafts, unsent letters and half-made travel plans come back to hand. For the rest of the week, check bookings and details twice and expect private thoughts to arrive before clear speech.
- Sat 24 Oct, 9 am ET: Phone someone who has already made a journey you are considering, a friend, a relative or a guide, and ask what they wish they had packed.
☿︎ Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio, 12th house · Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC)
Mercury, the planet of messages and plans, turns retrograde in Scorpio and your 12th house, so thinking and talking turn inward.
Tarot
Look. Upside down, an old man in a patterned robe sits under an arch beside white dogs and ten gold coins.
Ask yourself. Which of the ten coins would you carry on a long road?
Show the reading
Then read. Ten of Pentacles, reversed. Home, family and lasting security feel unsettled or delayed. Venus squares Pluto on Tuesday, putting a private value against an everyday conversation, and neither gives way.
Look. A dark figure faces seven cups in clouds holding a face, a snake, jewels, a wreath and a dragon.
Ask yourself. Which cup would you reach for first, and which would you leave alone?
Show the reading
Then read. Seven of Cups, upright. Too many tempting options and a daydream running ahead of the decision. Venus lines up with the Sun in your 12th house late Friday, when every wish looks equally real.
Look. Upside down, a blindfolded woman in white holds two crossed swords beside still water with a crescent moon.
Ask yourself. What might the blindfold be hiding, and what would you see without it?
Show the reading
Then read. Two of Swords, reversed. The stalemate loosens and the choice you put off comes back into view, a bit muddled. Mercury turns retrograde in your 12th house on Saturday, which suits private thinking.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909.
Planet of the week
In your chart. Mercury, the planet of messages and plans, is in Scorpio and your 12th house, the Secret Garden and Chapel. In ordinary life that means private thinking: notes to yourself, sleep, long walks and things worked out alone before anyone hears them.
This week. Mercury is direct in Scorpio until Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC), when it turns retrograde and appears to move backwards against the stars.
Hindu. Mercury is Budha in Hindu tradition, born to Tara, wife of Brihaspati, teacher of the gods, and to Soma, the Moon god, who had carried her away. A war followed until Brahma intervened and Tara named Soma as the father; the child was called Budha, "the wise". (Tara)
Norse. English Wednesday is Woden's day, a translation of the 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 flies it back to the gods as an eagle. (Mead of poetry)
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)
The Trunk of Curiosities: the museum object
Look first. A palm-sized cushion of orange-brown clay is covered edge to edge in tight, slanting rows of wedge-shaped marks, with a few chips along the corners and a red catalogue number inked at the top left.
Context. Merchants from the city of Assur wrote tablets like this in their trading colony, probably at Kültepe in Anatolia, about 1900 BCE. This one is a caravan account.
Notice. Look at how the rows of signs fill the whole face and reach the edges, with no blank margin left for anything else.
The deep dive
A Greek manuscript reached Florence around 1460 under a name that made it seem older than Plato, and in 1614 a close reading of its Greek took that age away.
The book travelled. Accounts name a monk, Leonardo da Pistoia, as the courier and Macedonia as the place he found fourteen treatises, though sources differ on the route. Cosimo de' Medici had Marsilio Ficino translate them into Latin at once, ahead of his Plato. The translation dates to 1463.
The author was given as Hermes Trismegistus, "Hermes the Thrice-Greatest", a name that joins the Greek god Hermes to the Egyptian god of writing, Thoth. Ficino took him for an Egyptian priest older than Plato, so the book travelled as a source of Plato himself. That dating was wrong.
In 1614 Isaac Casaubon, a Swiss-born scholar, read the Greek itself and argued from its style and content that the texts belong to the first centuries CE. Modern scholars say roughly 100 to 300 CE. Frances Yates called his redating a blow to Hermetic natural theology. How far Casaubon alone ended the old belief is interpretation: Jan Assmann and others note it lingered.
To think about: What would you check first before carrying a book across a sea?
Go further: Ficino and the Hermetic tradition
Sources: Encyclopedia.com, Hermeticism; Bryn Mawr Classical Review; First Things, Egyptomania.
This week's calendar
- Sat 17 Oct: Jewish: Shabbat Noach is the Sabbath for reading the Torah portion on Noah: the flood, the ark and the rainbow covenant. Source.
- Mon 19 Oct: Hindu: Maha Navami, the ninth day of Navratri, when tools and instruments are honoured in Ayudha Puja. Source.
- Tue 20 Oct: Hindu: Dussehra (Vijayadashami), the tenth day, ends Navratri; in many places effigies of Ravana are burned. Source.
- Fri 23 Oct: Chinese: Shuangjiang, Frost's Descent, opens at 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC) and closes out the autumn solar terms. Source.
A line to keep
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1879
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.
