The Flow State Herald: Edition 3, the Messenger (Gemini rising)
The Flow State Herald
24 to 31 October 2026 · Edition 3 · Vol. I · No. 3
The Messenger's edition, for Gemini rising
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2, scene 2
Read this first
- The week: Venus returns to Libra Sun 25 Oct, the Taurus Full Moon follows Mon 26 Oct, Mercury squares Mars Fri 30 Oct.
- For you: THE SECRET GARDEN AND CHAPEL, 12th house: the Full Moon sets sleep against routine.
- Dates: Sun 25 Oct, 5:09 am ET; Mon 26 Oct, 12:11 am ET; Fri 30 Oct, 1:20 pm ET
New here? Your chart is a castle of twelve rooms, explained on the castle page.
Album of the week
Big Science, Laurie Anderson, 1982. 38 minutes. Listen on Spotify. Wikipedia: O Superman.
Anderson's single 'O Superman' came out in 1981 on a small New York label, 110 Records, and reached No. 2 in Britain after BBC DJ John Peel played it. Warner Bros. then signed her, and Big Science, released in April 1982, was the first album of that deal.
The Morning Post: your sky this week
You are the Messenger: Venus returns to your 5th house on Sunday, and by Friday your replies are where Mercury and Mars collide.
Venus, retrograde, backs out of Scorpio and into Libra on Sunday at 5:09 am ET, leaving your 6th house of routines for your 5th house of pleasure, romance and creative work. The Sun is still in Scorpio, in your 6th, and Mercury is retrograde there too, so daily habits are crowded and slow to move. On Monday at 12:11 am ET the Full Moon in Taurus lands in your 12th house of rest and solitude, opposite the Sun in your 6th: sleep faces off against schedule. On Friday at 1:20 pm ET Mercury, retrograde in Scorpio, squares Mars in Leo, in your 3rd house of everyday messages, which makes a sharp reply to a text or a sibling easy to send and hard to take back.
Which part of your daily routine would you drop first if sleep had to win?
Sun 25 Oct
Venus (retrograde) backs into Libra · Sun 25 Oct, 5:09 am ET (09:09 UTC)
THE GARDEN AND BALLROOM · 5th house · play, romance, creativity and pleasure
Play, romance, creativity and pleasure all belong to your 5th house, and retrograde Venus steps back into it from Scorpio, crossing into Libra. Moving backward, she revisits earlier work and attachments there, so old projects and old flames resurface.
In the Garden and Ballroom, things you started and dropped come back round: a half-planned party, a hobby kit at the back of a cupboard, a person you stopped texting. Sunday is when you notice which of them still interests you.
♀︎ Venus (retrograde) in Libra, your 5th house
Mon 26 Oct
The Full Moon in Taurus opposes the Sun · Mon 26 Oct, 12:11 am ET (04:11 UTC)
THE SECRET GARDEN AND CHAPEL · 12th house · rest, dreams, solitude and what you keep out of sight
THE BATHHOUSE AND APOTHECARY · 6th house · daily routines, health and small remedies
An opposition across the 12th and 6th houses. The Full Moon in Taurus occupies the 12th, which covers rest, dreams and solitude, while the Sun in Scorpio holds the 6th, the house of daily routines and health.
In the Secret Garden and Chapel the question is how much sleep you get; in the Bathhouse and Apothecary it is what the daily routine takes out of it. Count the hours for a few days before changing anything.
☽︎ Moon (full) in Taurus, your 12th house, opposite ☉︎ Sun in Scorpio, your 6th house
Fri 30 Oct
Mercury squares Mars · Fri 30 Oct, 1:20 pm ET (17:20 UTC)
THE BATHHOUSE AND APOTHECARY · 6th house
THE LIBRARY · 3rd house · learning, siblings, short trips and everyday messages
Friction between Mercury and Mars drives this one. Retrograde Mercury in Scorpio sits in your 6th house of daily routines; Mars in Leo sits in your 3rd house of learning, siblings, short trips and messages. A square.
In the Bathhouse and Apothecary, retrograde Mercury is still sorting out appointments and errands that were meant to be settled. In the Library, Mars wants every reply sent at once. The collision is most likely in a group chat or a sibling's text.
☿︎ Mercury (retrograde) in Scorpio, your 6th house, square ♂︎ Mars in Leo, your 3rd house
Count the hours for a few days before changing anything.
Tarot
Intuition, illusion, uncertainty. The Moon is the card of intuition under poor light: instinct, mood and things that are not what they first look like. Upright, it asks for patience with what is unclear. What needs saying by Sunday is the vague worry you have been circling, put plainly to one person.
Easing indecision, truth, release. The Two of Swords is the card of the standoff, a decision held off because both sides feel equally risky. Reversed, the deadlock starts to break and the truth comes out. The Full Moon on Monday lights the question you have been avoiding, and asking it is what ends the stalemate.
Resisting change, clinging, slow transformation. Death is the card of necessary endings and transformation, never a literal one. Reversed, the ending is resisted and drags on, with the change held at arm's length. With Mercury squaring Mars on Friday, listen for what someone is not saying, because the change you are holding off is in it.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909.
Planet of the week
Venus is retrograde all week and crosses from Scorpio back into Libra on Sunday.
In December 1610 Galileo sent a scrambled Latin sentence to the Tuscan ambassador in Prague, to be passed on to Kepler: 'Haec immatura a me iam frustra leguntur oy.' It let him stake a claim to a discovery without giving it away. Kepler's attempt to unscramble it was wrong. On 1 January 1611 Galileo sent the answer: 'Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum', the mother of love imitates the shapes of Cynthia, meaning the Moon. Through his telescope Venus showed phases like the Moon's. In the Ptolemaic scheme Venus stays on the near side of the Sun and never appears fully lit, so a full set of phases contradicted it. Source: Wikipedia, Phases of Venus.
Maya astronomers followed Venus's 584-day cycle in the Dresden Codex, a book from the 11th or 12th century (source).
Museum object
Rows of wedge-shaped signs fill the face of this baked clay tablet from edge to edge, with almost no margin. Each wedge is the mark of a reed stylus pressed into wet clay. One way to read the cramped lines is that the writer wanted the whole message on a single tablet.
The Met's record calls it a private letter from the Old Assyrian trading colony and dates it to about the 20th to 19th century BCE. The colonies were settlements of merchants from the city of Assur in Anatolia, in modern Turkey, and the best known is Kültepe, ancient Kanesh.
Kültepe has produced many thousands of tablets, most of them business records and letters between traders and their families, and many were sealed inside clay envelopes.
The long read
In 1507, the last time the Mexica held the New Fire ceremony, every fire in the Valley of Mexico was put out. Household goods were discarded, houses were swept, and people waited, some of them on rooftops. On the hill Huixachtlan, now Cerro de la Estrella in Mexico City, priests watched for the Pleiades, which the Mexica called Tianquiztli, 'the marketplace', to cross the meridian high in the sky. Certain: the ceremony, the hill and the date are well documented (World History Encyclopedia, Mexico City's Museo del Fuego Nuevo).
How did one flame reach every hearth around a lake? The accounts describe a relay. Once the fire was kindled on the hill, runners lit pine torches from it and carried it down to the temples, with the Huitzilopochtli shrine on the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan the best known, and from there to every hearth in the city and the neighbouring towns. Accounts differ on the first stop and on the details of the kindling, so the exact route is not settled.
The reason is on record too. The ceremony came once every 52 years, when the 260-day ritual count and the 365-day year returned to the same starting point; 52 times 365 and 73 times 260 both come to 18,980 days. Book 7 of Sahagún's Florentine Codex, titled 'The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Years', records the fear behind it: that the sun would not rise again and the Tzitzimime, star demons, would come down (University of Utah Press).
Interpretation, not record: because the flame was passed from hand to hand, every household in the basin was lit from the same hilltop fire, a message delivered by foot to the whole region. The sources do not describe it that way; it is one way to read a relay of torch-bearers.
Go further: Mexicolore: the New Fire ceremony
This week's calendar
- Sat 24 Oct: Jewish: Shabbat Lech-Lecha: Congregations read of Abram told to leave his country for a land he will be shown (Genesis 12:1 to 17:27). Source.
- Sun 25 Oct: Hindu: Sharad Purnima: Families leave kheer out under the full moon, eat it the next morning and light lamps for Lakshmi; many calendars give Mon 26 Oct. Source.
- Mon 26 Oct: Buddhist: Pavarana Day: Monks end the rains retreat by inviting one another to point out faults, and laypeople offer robes and light lamps. Source.
- Wed 28 Oct: Hindu: Karwa Chauth: Married women eat a pre-dawn meal, then fast until they see the moon; in India the day is Thu 29 Oct. Source.
Take this with you
Which message have you been meaning to send, and who is it for?
Border: Box decorated with flowers and clouds, Korea, 18th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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.
