OCTOBER FORECAST
the empty space
Very spaced out on a walk the other day, I spotted a truck bearing the words JUNK REMOVAL SERVICE. In my eclipse-y haze, I first read it as: EMOTIONAL JUNK SERVICE.
Laughing to myself, I thought, “That’s October.”
***
September made it clear that the empire is down bad. Hurricane Helene flooding ravaged the “climate haven” of Appalachia. Kamala declared her allegiance to fracking. Not-gone-but-already-forgotten Joe Biden insisted that we have “no more money” for disaster relief. All this while Israel dropped bombs funded by the U.S. Congress on Lebanon. Netanyahu bragged about his war crimes at the U.N. And Trump failed to work out a new stand up routine for the debate. Eric Adams was indicted for his luxury spending crimes. Diddy shared a jail cell at MDC with Sam Bankman-Fried. Celebs and non-celebs connected to abuse of power slowly dipped offline and out of the discourse.
The Emperor is nothing without the empire, and the empire is in collapse. The exit ramp is where we begin October.
***
Before I dive into the forecast, I also want to highlight a few organizations I’ve personally been paying attention to in these times of collective crisis <3
BeLoved Asheville for Hurricane Relief in North Carolina
Emergency Response Coalition for Lebanon
Jeyetna: addressing period poverty in Lebanon
***
As an astrologer, it’s frustrating to try to spin a story for a month when our calendar rarely lines up with the astrological cycles. Astrology isn’t screenwriting. Cycles are spirals. Not three act structures. October though is a perfect lunar month. It begins with a very potent new moon—a Solar Eclipse in Libra—on October 2, and ends with the moon back in Libra in its waning balsamic phase before a New Moon in Scorpio on November 1. This kind of gimme is rare.
If you’ll indulge me: I’ve been reading Cue The Sun! Emily Nussbaum’s delicious treatise on the invention of reality TV, and have been thinking a lot about how reality tv (like any ritual event) requires a shape, but that shape requires editing away the process. This hit me especially as I devoured the chapter on The Real World and noticed the dissonance between the meandering memories of the cast, the cultural context the show exists within, and the watchable snack of the finished product. I thought: do people want their horoscope to hit the same way an episode of The Bachelor does?
I think consumers of astrology often want cycles and transits to tie emotional, spiritual and financial plot lines up with a bow. This isn’t about the memes. Memes are mostly god-like. It’s about the Starbucks-ification of astrology. It’s about wanting a product one can buy on repeat. A satisfying catharsis on an episodic timeline. Sometimes astrology is just playing the same song over and over and over again. Horoscopes are entertaining, but the cycle itself is often difficult and boring. It’s six people sitting around in a house and talking about nothing. Most of the footage ends up on the cutting room floor. But it’s the process that reveals those moments of magic.
I’d like it if we were all a little more process-oriented.
***
October Vibes