The Flow State Herald: Edition 2, Scorpio the Alchemist
The Flow State Herald
17 to 24 October 2026 · Edition 2 · Vol. I · No. 2
The Alchemist's edition, for Scorpio rising
Read this first
- The week: Venus squares Pluto on Tue 20 Oct, the Sun enters Scorpio on Fri 23 Oct, and Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio on Sat 24 Oct.
- For you: The Dressing Room, 1st house: the Sun, Venus and Mercury all gather in Scorpio.
- Do this: Tue 20 Oct: if a family comment stings, wait until the next day to reply.
- Dates: Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET; Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am 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
Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, Dead Can Dance, 1987. Eight tracks. Listen on Spotify. Source.
Recorded in April and May 1987 at Woodbine studio in Warwickshire and released by the label 4AD on 27 July 1987. Brendan Perry sings the first half and Lisa Gerrard the second. The cover photograph was taken at a family grave in Père-Lachaise cemetery, Paris.
The Laboratory Log: your sky this week
You are the Alchemist, and three planets meet in your sign this week: Venus, already retrograde there, then the Sun, then Mercury as it turns retrograde.
Which part of how you introduce yourself feels out of date?
Venus squares Pluto · Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC)
THE DRESSING ROOM · 1st house · how you present yourself and start things
THE BEDCHAMBER · 4th house · home, family and roots
Venus, retrograde in Scorpio, sits in your 1st house and squares Pluto in Aquarius in your 4th house. Venus is in your 1st house and Pluto in your 4th, so Tuesday's square sets how you come across against what your family expects of you. With Venus retrograde, expect old arguments rather than new ones.
- Tue 20 Oct: If a family comment stings, wait until the next day to reply.
♀︎ Venus in Scorpio, 1st house, square ♇︎ Pluto in Aquarius, 4th house · Tue 20 Oct, 2:56 am ET (06:56 UTC)
The Sun enters Scorpio · Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC)
THE DRESSING ROOM · 1st house
The Sun spends the week in Libra, your 12th house of rest, dreams and solitude, and leaves it at 5:38 am ET to enter Scorpio, your 1st house. People see you more clearly from Friday, after a week spent mostly out of sight.
- Fri 23 Oct: Walk a route you have never taken, wearing the clothes you reach for when you want to be seen, and note who looks back at you.
☉︎ Sun enters Scorpio, 1st house · Fri 23 Oct, 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC)
Mercury turns retrograde · Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC)
THE DRESSING ROOM · 1st house
Mercury, the planet of messages, speech and short trips, turns retrograde in Scorpio, your 1st house. In ordinary life that means second thoughts about how you describe yourself, and old introductions or first impressions coming back for another look before anything new begins, so reread before you send.
- Sat 24 Oct: Reread the short bio or introduction you use most often, and mark in pencil the one sentence that no longer sounds like you.
☿︎ Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio, 1st house · Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC)
People see you more clearly from Friday, after a week spent mostly out of sight.
Tarot
Look. An orange wheel marked with letters turns in blue clouds, winged figures holding books at the corners, a sphinx above.
Ask yourself. Which way is the wheel turning, and which figure on it looks most like you?
Show the reading
Then read. Wheel of Fortune, upright. Cycles turning, and what was fixed starts to move. Venus presses on Pluto on Tuesday and old ties change shape. It happens whether or not you steer.
Look. A crowned figure in armour stands in a chariot under stars, a black sphinx and a white one below.
Ask yourself. Which of the two sphinxes looks more willing to follow where you point?
Show the reading
Then read. The Chariot, upright. Two opposed forces driven in one direction. The Sun enters your sign on Friday, so you get to pick the direction.
Look. An upside-down old man in a grey cloak holds a glowing lantern and a long staff, with snow above him.
Ask yourself. What would you see by this lantern if you turned it toward yourself?
Show the reading
Then read. The Hermit, reversed. The search for answers is blocked, or just lonely. Mercury turns retrograde in your sign on Saturday, so rereading beats waiting for insight.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909.
Planet of the week
In your chart. Mercury is in Scorpio in your 1st house, the Dressing Room, so it governs how you talk about yourself: introductions, messages, first impressions and the small errands of an ordinary day.
This week. Mercury is direct in Scorpio until it turns retrograde on Sat 24 Oct, 3:12 am ET (07:12 UTC). From then it appears to travel backward through the sky, and messages, plans and agreements tend to be revisited.
Hindu. In Hindu myth, Budha (Mercury) is the son of the Moon god Soma and Tara, wife of the gods' teacher Brihaspati. Soma carried Tara off, war followed until Brahma stepped in, and the boy was named Budha, "the wise". Source
Norse. English Wednesday means "Woden's day", a translation of the Latin "Mercury's day", because Roman writers matched Mercury with Odin. In Snorri's Prose Edda, Odin gets the mead of poetry from the giant Suttungr and carries it to the gods as an eagle. Source
Chinese. In Chinese star lore Mercury is Chenxing, the planet of Water. Water belongs to the north and to the Black Tortoise, a tortoise wound with a snake. Source
The Locked Cabinet: the museum object
Look first. Two small ivory figures, a woman in a veil and a man in a flowered cap, stand close with their hands clasped, rising from a ring of carved leaves. A gilded metal mount sits above and a green emerald hangs below on a short chain.
Context. Made in northern France or the southern Netherlands around 1500 to 1525 as the end bead of a rosary, a string of prayer beads. The record names no maker.
Notice. Look at the two faces, calm and almost smiling. The Met's record joins a skull to this pair of lovers on the same bead, as a reminder of death.
The deep dive
A book credited to a secret Egyptian teacher fooled Renaissance scholars for about a century and a half, until one man read its Greek closely.
Around 1460 a manuscript with part of the Greek Corpus Hermeticum reached Florence. Cosimo de' Medici set Marsilio Ficino to translate it into Latin straight away, before the Plato work he had been given; the Latin is dated 1463.
The author was named as Hermes Trismegistus, "Hermes the Thrice-Greatest", a figure made by merging the Greek god Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth. Ficino held that he was 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, argued from the Greek style and content that the texts were not ancient Egyptian but belonged to the first centuries CE. Scholars today place their writing between about 100 and 300 CE. Frances Yates called this a blow to Hermetic natural theology, yet Jan Assmann and others note that belief in an older origin continued.
Interpretation: the texts present themselves as teaching passed in private from master to pupil, which gave the claim of great age its weight. Casaubon's evidence was open to anyone who read Greek.
To think about: Which claims about your own past rest on a date nobody checked?
Go further: Egyptomania, on Hermes Trismegistus and Egypt in the Western imagination
Sources: Encyclopedia.com, Hermeticism; Bryn Mawr Classical Review; First Things, Egyptomania.
This week's calendar
- Sat 17 Oct: Jewish: Shabbat Noach, the Sabbath when the Torah portion Noach is read: Noah, the flood, the ark and the rainbow covenant. Source.
- Mon 19 Oct: Hindu: Ayudha Puja falls on Maha Navami, the ninth day of Navratri, with tools and instruments honoured. Source.
- Tue 20 Oct: Hindu: Dussehra (Vijayadashami), the tenth day, ends the nine days of Navratri; in many places effigies of Ravana are burned. Source.
- Fri 23 Oct: Chinese: Shuangjiang, Frost's Descent, closes the autumn solar terms and begins at 5:38 am ET (09:38 UTC). Source.
A line to keep
Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, scene 2 (Ariel's song).
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.
