I discuss the current retrograde dates (many retrogrades are ending soon), the solar and lunar eclipse dates in October 2023 and the Mercury retrograde over the holiday season this year.
I then discuss the societal level lessons for humanity that Pluto – which is finishing its transit of Capricorn (for the most part) – has been teaching us.
Astrological dates mentioned herein are calculated using the Eastern Daylight time zone.
This episode was recorded on September 30, 2023 and it was published on October 1, 2023 at 9:20am EDT.
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Episode transcript:
Greetings all.
Welcome to Aquarian Diary. I’m your host, John Irving. It is October 1, 2023.
The first 10 minutes or so of this episode are dedicated to near-term astrology, for the most part. After that I get more into the meaning or purpose of the transit of Pluto through Capricorn, which we are at the final stages of as I record this.
If you’re listening to this at a much later date, you may want to skip ahead to about the 10 minute 30 second mark.
I haven’t posted anything since September 6th. This last period of time has been very weird. And for a long time I thought it was just me. But then I did a few transit readings, or updates for people, recently. And in speaking to them, they shared that their experiences have been very similar lately. I’ve been kind of laying low waiting for things to shift.
We’ve had an awful lot of planets retrograde, including Saturn, transiting Pisces, and of course Pluto, which has been retrograde since May 1st, and is now back in Capricorn until January 20th of next year.
As I have commented on before, this period with Pluto around 29 degrees of Capricorn is a very karmic cycle. I did a whole episode on that which I would encourage you to check out.
If we look at what’s been happening in the world lately, for me it shows up so clearly.
Saturn retrograding in Pisces is also a karmic signature. A lot of people are dealing with the consequences of actions that have been occurring in recent history.
There’s a daily barrage of news and developments that are often really striking, and that I think will be a major theme, especially right up through January 20th.
So that explains why some of us really don’t want to stick our heads above the trenches. The sense is that we just have to get through this period as best we can, and in many ways, the skies will start to clear come January.
If you’re interested in specific details, I’ll be putting some dates on the screen.
We have a solar new moon eclipse at 21 degrees of Libra on October 14th and a lunar full moon eclipse at 5 degrees of Taurus on October 28th.
Eclipse energies show up, say, 3 months prior to the event and play out up to 6 months after.
If you have significant planets or points at 21 degrees of Libra or 5 degrees of Taurus, give or take a few degrees or in strong aspect to those degrees, these may be especially important for you.
Now many of those major retrogrades are going to be ending over the next few months.
Pluto goes direct on October 10th in Capricorn. It will enter Aquarius on January 20th.
Saturn turns direct on November 4th.
Neptune goes direct on December 6th.
Jupiter goes direct on December 30th.
Uranus won’t go direct until January 27th of next year.
Mercury will go retrograde again on December 13th and turns direct on January 1st. That’s a bit unfortunate because Mercury will be retrograde throughout the holiday season in many parts of the world.
Not only that, but Mercury will square Neptune in Pisces and conjunct Mars in Sagittarius on December 27th while retrograde, if not almost station retrograde, in other words, it’s going to sit there.
Avoid getting into heated arguments or debates, especially with religiously oriented people. One strategy could just be avoidance, but you’ll probably take heat for that anyway.
Make sure you have receipts. Things could get very confused and heated at the same time.
It’s quite something, especially because of the time of year, with traveling and family and all that stuff.
I don’t really mean to get into exhaustive detail here, but that’s one thing that really jumped out at me. It looks messy.
It’s funny, Apple just released its new iPhone, the iPhone 15, during Mercury retrograde. And they’re having quite a few technical problems with the phone. When it was announced, I thought, “Oh, this isn’t good.” Bad timing.
So if you want to avoid issues with holiday gift giving, for example, you might want to do your shopping before, say, November 25th. A bit of a stretch for a lot of people I know, but especially when it comes to tech items and gifts and travel, Mercury retrograde can introduce some issues. This retrograde will be occurring in the early degrees of Capricorn and late degrees of Sagittarius.
Something else that’s come up lately has been in doing transit readings for people which is really helpful because I can help people become aware of how upcoming transits that they may not be aware of may affect them.
A lot of people are trying to make decisions and planning things now and it’s very helpful to know what kind of influences are going to be at play in the coming year or even further out.
And so when you do a transit reading for somebody it’s quite a bit different than a natal reading. The natal reading focuses more on your basic persona and wiring, you know, who you are, what you came here to do, what your basic strengths and weaknesses are. And a transit reading focuses more on what influences are at play in your world or life now or in the near future.
And it can be extremely helpful to have those insights. There have been occasions where people are considering making major changes or initiating new projects and things like that. And I can help offer a lot of insights into the timing of that. So that can be very valuable.
I’ve also been working with people who do spiritual practice and we’ve been combining their astrology with their spiritual practice because I have over many, many years of practice developed a lot of techniques that can help us clear certain types of blockages or focus in on how we can release things like karma and karmic relationships, karmic contracts, and overcome obstacles that are demonstrated in the natal chart.
I can basically tailor techniques that will work in collaboration with the astrology to help people really move forward, and there have been some examples that are highly effective, and that’s something I find very rewarding.
I often get guidance too for how to help people, what things to focus on. There was a really strong example of that just this week, actually. That requires some discipline and effort for people to take advantage of, but it can be extremely powerful. To bring to people’s awareness where some of their blockages or where shadow work needs to be done.
And that’s something I would like to focus on more, because it’s simply so beneficial and transformative.
The astrology is fantastic for giving us kind of a roadmap, and I’m getting really strong chills saying this, but the spiritual work itself is like the actual trip. The astrology gives us clues about where to go and then we need to do the work to get there. It’s absolutely fantastic. I can’t promote that highly enough.
And these techniques actually work. There’s someone I was working with this week who had almost instant results, the first stages of them at least, from just doing a practice once. It’s phenomenal.
And right now we’re in this very intense, karmic clearing cycle, so doing the shadow work is extremely potent and powerful right now. It has to happen so that we can move forward when the energies start shifting.
We’re sort of like in a new moon phase. Yes, the new moon is a great time to be setting intentions. But what you’re actually doing is planting seeds. It takes the seeds a while to germinate and to grow and develop into tangible results. It’s a process. We plant in the spring, but we don’t see the harvest until the summer usually.
So my sense is that we are going to be moving into a much more potent energy around going forward, really beginning early next year.
Again, see my videos on Pluto and Aquarius, because a lot of the stuff I have said in that episode, which I published over a year and a half ago, are being validated in reality.
And that leads me to the main point I really wanted to make today.
And that is this, that all of this craziness, all of the insanity, the breakdown of all of the social structures, political structures, economic systems, our relationship with nature, all of those things are really indicative of the systemic and endemic failures in our paradigm.
I have made this point countless times in past episodes, but it’s really evident right now, that even if we consider the really radical movements in the world that are frightening a lot of us, and justifiably so, and even if we consider the breakdown of the environment, which I have also talked a lot about here before, which is very scary actually right now, these are all telling us that our paradigm is flawed and that it needs systemic changes.
By systemic, I mean, from the ground up. We’re not talking about changes that are just like band-aid solutions. We need really deep and profound changes from the top to the bottom.
So all of the rage and resentment that we witness particularly on the political right, a lot of the irrational and destructive and nihilistic kind of behavior is symptomatic of how these people have been let down by our political and social and economic systems.
I’m not justifying their anger or rage, but I have stated this here before, that our economic system is severely flawed, and we’re not going to correct that until we fix the social and economic injustice that is inherent in our social and political systems. Period.
And when we look at it from that perspective, even people on the left are guilty for the current circumstances.
Those of us who are in positions of comfort, wealth, better education, better living situations, better childhood experiences, those of us who are more aware politically and socially, we have a duty to protect the most vulnerable people in our society, strong chills here. I have said that before as well.
But those of us who are privileged, and that even includes on the global stage, those of us who are privileged, there is more of an onus on us to be responsible for not only ourselves, but for our brothers and sisters and for the planet and its biosphere.
And so because there’s more of an onus on us, we have to step up and defend the rights of all people, regardless of their education level, their social status, their economic status, or whatever.
And until we do that, we are going to continue to see the breakdown of social and political structures.
Yes, there are some people who try and capitalize on these kinds of social inequalities or economic inequalities, or who try and amplify division for their own gain. They are a crass opportunists. That’s to be expected, but we need fundamental changes.
Using the United States, for example, the manufacturing and industrial heartland was basically hollowed out by corporate interests wanted to offshore manufacturing to foreign jurisdictions where labor was dramatically less expensive and workers didn’t have protection or rights. And that was just opportunism.
But the consequences were you ended up with millions of people who were disenfranchised and who felt like they had been let down abandoned or thrown to the wolves by the political, elite, and in many ways they were.
So it’s not surprising that these people are upset. And this applies in countries around the world. This doesn’t just apply to the United States.
As I have said before, when I was a child, my father worked nine to five Monday to Friday, didn’t work evenings, didn’t work weekends, there were four children and a stay-at-home mother and we lived very well on one income. That isn’t even remotely conceivable anymore, unless you’re rich.
People need to feel that their children’s lives have a chance of being better than theirs, and that is not true for millions and millions of people. Young people today can’t even afford to start families. They’re putting it off. Not only that, they are very concerned about the future environmentally and what prospects the future holds for their potential children.
This is a complete failure on the part of older generations. We have let these people down, and we need to own that and take responsibility for it and do something really traumatic about it. This is the most important thing really socially.
We have been sitting here in awe watching all the craziness and all the insanity since the former guy got elected and going like how can people be so irrational. Well, it’s because they’re angry. They’ve been let down. They’ve been abandoned. That is why. It is really, really simple.
The vast wealth disparity, the plutocrats, the oligarchs, the billionaires, our economic system is fundamentally broken. And the consequence is going to be authoritarianism, if not fascism, if we don’t address this.
And that includes the cost of living, the cost of housing, people are getting increasingly stressed, an unprecedented amount of people are living on the streets, and relying on food banks, this is a travesty.
It’s not just the people in those circumstances now, it’s the people who are afraid that they They may be one paycheck away from being in those circumstances. Millions and millions of people. And if we want to avoid the worst case outcomes, we have to address that period.
I came across something back in early September. Actually, it was September 9th.
Typically I start my day by checking the news media for all the major stories, and there’s a whole slew of publications I read or scan every day. And this day, for some reason, I checked USA Today. It’s not a publication I check all that often. However, just by chance, I check USA Today.
And here’s an article which I’ll link in the description and show on the screen. This completely blew my mind. It’s one of the most shocking things I’ve read in a very long time. And I was also really surprised that I didn’t already know this.
It is this that 130 million Americans read below a sixth grade level. That represents more than half the US adult population, according to the Department of Education. I believe I had to read this three times to make sure I was reading it accurately because it was so shocking.
In fact, and I’m not making this up, I was basically ready to publish this episode and I thought I better check to make sure that that USA Today article is actually accurate. I did, and I found that the statistics were fact-checked by Snopes affirmatively. They verify the statistics.
Now I’m a Canadian and I couldn’t find a direct comparison, but I did find a statistic that 93% of Canadians have completed high school. So obviously, they have a much higher literacy rate than this percentage of Americans who only have a grade 6 reading level.
So I read this and I’m like, “Well, it’s no wonder so many Americans fall for disinformation, conspiracy theories are completely out of touch with reality in a lot of ways because As they lack the knowledge, the critical thinking skills, or ability to do research, etc. That explains something I’ve been trying to understand for years.
How can a country as powerful and rich as the United States have half its population with this level of education? It’s almost incomprehensible.
Half the population is functionally illiterate. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid. It just means they’re uneducated.
You can’t have a functioning democracy with millions of people who are basically illiterate.
The first thing that America should be doing is educating its populace. Not only would that help preserve, for example, democracy, it would benefit the country economically in ways that would be incalculable.
It is just baffling how this situation can even exist. But this illustrates my point about how we have not taken care of and let down people who are the basis of our society, of our economies. It affects our healthcare system. It affects everything.
This is a systemic failure of epic proportions. It’s completely baffling to me. But that makes my point.
Countless hours have gone into trying to understand why America has been experiencing what it’s been experiencing since and before the former guy was elected. And the answer is right there. It’s that simple.
My main point was simply that what we have been experiencing, all the tumult, all the craziness that trends towards extremism and autocracy and fascism can all be explained by how we have failed our people.
And it’s true with the environment as well. It’s the same situation, basically.
So we need to get real. And that means making changes and changing our priorities.
We are to be our brothers keeper. Those of us who are privileged, whether it’s intellectually, financially, economically, by virtue of where you grew up, your power, your influence, your authority, whatever it is.
We need to get real and stop being narcissistic. And I’m not saying that the people who are listening to this are like that. You probably aren’t. That’s probably why you’re listening to me because you’re not like that.
But this is the message we need to get to our leaders, those in positions of power and authority that we need to make radical reforms that benefit everyone in our society and everyone on the planet.
And we need to start with the most vulnerable people. That would be the people on the streets, the people who are homeless, the people with mental health issues, the people that need health care.
We triage. We start with the most vulnerable, the most at risk, and we work our way up.
That is my major insight from this period of time that has been so crazy. The world will continue to get more and more crazy until we fix this.
This fits in perfectly with the themes of Pluto transiting Capricorn, which I have talked about a lot. Pluto is showing us how the structures of our societies, our institutions, banking, finance, political systems are failing people. It’s so clear.
But to distill it down to its essence, it is what I have just been talking about. It’s about how we abuse the most vulnerable members of our society and the price now that we’re paying for that gross negligence. The relationship is very, very clear.
Our security, our stability, democracy itself is in peril because these systems are fundamentally flawed and corrupt and they need to be transformed… Pluto.
See my episode on Pluto transiting Aquarius or Pluto at 29 degrees of Capricorn.
Also, I will add that I personally feel that if people aren’t complaining about this, they are tacitly endorsing it.
This clarity that I have, these insights, are a result of all of the recent retrogrades we’ve been experiencing. So we see the benefit of this perspective from something that many people fear. Retrogrades in their natal chart, retrogrades by transit.
This is how we gain wisdom and insights. And I’m grateful for that.
I have a tremendous amount of clarity on things that had puzzled me for a very long time and I hope that’s That’s true in your case as well.
So that’s what I wanted to share.
I still have a 20% discount on readings going on for a while longer, I’m extending that a little bit. I had some technical problems with my website which wasn’t working for a few days so people couldn’t get through to me.
I’ll put links in the episode description to any related content and if you’re interested in a reading with me I’ll put a link to that as well.
Any sincere thanks to everyone who supports me, especially my YouTube members. Thank you very much.
Take care all the best and I’ll talk to you again soon.
Bye for now.
End transcript.
Other episodes of mine referenced herein:
Pluto in Aquarius – Dawn of Global Consciousness
Pluto at 29° Capricorn – A Karmic Reckoning
Prepare for Major Systemic Changes
Our Paradigm is Literally Untenable and Hardly Anyone will Admit it
Other articles and resources referenced (in order of appearance):
1 in 5 Americans have low-literacy skills: These charts explain reading levels in the US
Do More Than Half of Americans Read Below 6th-Grade Level?
Search for “Aquarian Diary” in your podcast app to find the podcast version of this channel.
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