The Flow State Herald: Edition 3, the Courtier (Libra rising)
The Flow State Herald
24 to 31 October 2026 · Edition 3 · Vol. I · No. 3
The Courtier's edition, for Libra rising
I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine.
Song of Solomon 6:3, King James Version. Text
Read this first
- The week: Venus returns to Libra Sun 25 Oct; the Full Moon and the Sun square Pluto follow on Mon 26 Oct.
- For you: THE DRESSING ROOM, 1st house: Venus is back in your sign, so try a look on first.
- Dates: Sun 25 Oct, 5:09 am ET; Mon 26 Oct, 12:11 am and 8:11 am ET.
New here? Your chart is a castle of twelve rooms, explained on the castle page.
Album of the week
Keyboard Fantasies, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, 1986. 39 minutes. Listen on Spotify. Wikipedia.
Glenn-Copeland recorded and self-released it on cassette in 1986 in Huntsville, Ontario, and it sold few copies. A Japanese record collector tracked it down in the 2010s, and it has been reissued since.
The Weighing Room: your sky this week
You are the Courtier, and on Sunday Venus, your own planet, backs into your sign.
Venus, which rules your chart, backs into Libra on Sunday, returning to your 1st house after weeks in your 2nd. Retrograde, it reopens questions about how you look, dress and come across. At 12:11 am on Monday the Full Moon in Taurus falls in your 8th house, opposite the Sun in your 2nd. A joint account, a loan or a debt comes to a head while your own earnings and spending are lit from the other side. On Monday morning the Sun in Scorpio squares Pluto in Aquarius, in your 5th house, setting what you earn and keep against what you spend on romance, pleasure and anything you make for love. Venus ends the week in Libra, still retrograde.
Is there one thing in your wardrobe, or in how you sign off emails, that you already know is due for replacing?
Sun 25 Oct
Venus backs into Libra, your sign · Sun 25 Oct, 5:09 am ET (09:09 UTC)
THE DRESSING ROOM · 1st house · how you present yourself and start things
Your 1st house covers appearance and how you start things, and Venus, retrograde, steps back into it on re-entering Libra. Libra is Venus's own sign, so the backward step revisits your personal style.
In the Dressing Room, a coat you retired, a haircut you meant to change or the way you sign off emails can all be reconsidered. Venus retrograde is traditionally a time for second thoughts about purchases, so if you buy something for the new look, keep the receipt.
♀︎ Venus (retrograde) in Libra, your 1st house
Mon 26 Oct
The Full Moon lights shared money · Mon 26 Oct, 12:11 am ET (04:11 UTC)
THE VAULT · 8th house · shared resources, debts, endings and what is hidden
THE TREASURY AND PANTRY · 2nd house · money, food, what you value
Opposition across your chart: the Full Moon in Taurus, in your 8th house, which covers shared money, debts and endings, faces the Sun in Scorpio, in your 2nd house of earnings and what you value.
In the Vault, a joint account, a loan or a split bill comes up for a final count, and in the Treasury your own pay and spending are the other side of that sum. Monday's Full Moon is when a balance, a repayment date or a shared bill is most likely to get noticed.
☽︎ Moon Full Moon in Taurus, your 8th house, opposite ☉︎ Sun in Scorpio, your 2nd house
Mon 26 Oct
The Sun squares Pluto over spending and play · Mon 26 Oct, 8:11 am ET (12:11 UTC)
THE TREASURY AND PANTRY · 2nd house
THE GARDEN AND BALLROOM · 5th house · play, romance, creativity and pleasure
Earnings and what you value belong to your 2nd house, where the Sun in Scorpio forms a square to Pluto in Aquarius, in your 5th house of romance, creativity and pleasure.
In the Treasury your spending plan meets the Garden and Ballroom, where dancing, dating and making things for love all cost something. A date, a hobby or a project gets priced on Monday morning, and one of them may be cut or finally funded.
☉︎ Sun in Scorpio, your 2nd house, square ♇︎ Pluto in Aquarius, your 5th house
A date, a hobby or a project gets priced on Monday morning, and one of them may be cut or finally funded.
Tarot
Cold judgment, misused authority, sharp words. The King of Swords is the card of judgment by reason alone: fair, exact, authoritative. Reversed, the judgment goes cold, or sharp enough to wound. With Venus back in your sign on Sunday, you are weighing how you come across, and the card warns against letting a clever answer stand in for a kind one.
Strings attached, uneven giving, debt. The Six of Pentacles is the card of giving and receiving, with the balance carefully weighed. Reversed, the scales tip and the gift comes with strings or goes one way only. The Full Moon on Monday lights what you offer and what it costs the other side to accept.
New beginnings, the leap, innocence. The Fool is the card of the first step: a new beginning taken without a plan, trust in what is ahead. Upright, it is a leap worth taking. When the Sun squares Pluto on Monday, the thing to decide is the one you keep over-weighing.
Cards: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, 1909.
Planet of the week
Venus is retrograde all week and moves back into Libra on Sunday.
In Book 8 of the Odyssey, the blind singer Demodocus performs a song at the Phaeacian court for the guest Odysseus. Helios, the sun, has seen Aphrodite with Ares, the war god, and told her husband Hephaestus, the smith. Hephaestus forges a net too fine to see, hangs it over the marriage bed and pretends to leave for Lemnos. When the lovers lie down, the net falls and holds them. He calls the gods to look: the gods come and laugh, and the goddesses stay home. Poseidon talks Hephaestus into letting them go by promising to pay Ares's fine, and Aphrodite goes to Paphos. Read it in Johnston's translation.
Babylonian scribes recorded the first and last appearances of Venus, each with an omen, in Tablet 63 of the series Enuma Anu Enlil, known as the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa.
Museum object
A brisé fan has no fabric or paper leaf. Its ivory sticks are pierced, painted and linked by a ribbon, so the fan is the sticks themselves, opened out like a lace screen. This one has a scalloped gilt border along the top and three oval reserves: a woman holding a small bird against turquoise at left, a woman with two other figures before a church spire at centre, and a third woman at right.
The Met's record dates it to the late 18th century and lists pierced, painted and gilded ivory, jasperware, enameled metal and glass. It measures about 25 by 42 centimetres and came to the museum in 1965 as a gift of Mrs. William Randolph Hearst. The record names no maker or place.
Brisé is French for broken, and describes the construction: a row of separate pieces held together at one end. Look for the small pink dots and green leaves painted along the sticks, and the blue plaque set into the right-hand guard.
The long read
In 1507, on the Hill of the Star near Tenochtitlan, priests watched the Pleiades cross the meridian, the line running overhead from north to south, and lit a new fire. It was the last New Fire ceremony the sources record. The earlier ones fell in 1351, 1403 and 1455, according to World History Encyclopedia. The next, due in 1559, never happened: Tenochtitlan fell to the Spanish in 1521.
Why every 52 years? The Mexica ran two calendars at once, a 260-day ritual count and a 365-day solar count, and a given pairing of days from both repeats only after 18,980 days. That is 52 solar years or 73 rounds of the ritual count: 365 times 52 and 260 times 73 both make 18,980. The Mexica called the span a bundle of years, and the ceremony Toxiuhmolpilia, the Binding of the Years, as Wikipedia's article explains.
What happened is better documented than why. Every fire in the valley was put out, hearths were swept, old goods thrown away and bundles of 52 reeds tied. People waited on rooftops. On the hill, priests watched Tianquiztli, the Pleiades, whose name is usually glossed as marketplace. Accounts say a fire was kindled on the chest of a sacrificed captive, and runners then carried burning torches to the temple of Huitzilopochtli on the Templo Mayor and on to every hearth, as the Museo del Fuego Nuevo describes.
Sahagún's Florentine Codex, whose Book 7 is titled The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Years, records the dread that the sun would not rise again and that the Tzitzimime, star-demons, would come down and devour people.
That the ceremony kept two clocks in step, one set by the sky and one by ritual, is a modern reading of the arithmetic.
Go further: Museo del Fuego Nuevo, Mexico City
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 set kheer out under the full moon, eat it next morning and light lamps for Lakshmi (Mon 26 Oct in India). Source.
- Mon 26 Oct: Buddhist: Pavarana Day: Monks close the rains retreat by inviting each other to name faults, and laypeople offer robes. Source.
- Mon 26 Oct: Hindu: Valmiki Jayanti: Devotees honour the sage credited with the Ramayana with recitations, processions and charity. Source.
- Wed 28 Oct: Hindu: Karwa Chauth: Married women fast from sunrise until they see the moon (Thu 29 Oct in India). Source.
Take this with you
Which two counts in your own week run on different clocks, and when do they next line up?
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.
