The Descent of Venus

October 2026

A month to remember what you desired before the world taught you what to desire

October arrives with a strange wind

It is not winter yet, but something has already begun to withdraw. The light changes its angle, the days grow shorter, and nature seems to understand perfectly a gesture that we humans still struggle enormously with:

letting go of what has completed its cycle

And October's sky seems to tell exactly the same story

If I had to choose one planet as the protagonist of this month, I would choose Venus

The mistress of desire, love, relationships, pleasure, money and, above all, value

Venus begins October in Scorpio and moves retrograde through one of the deepest territories of the zodiac before returning to Libra towards the end of the month

So October is not simply asking:

What do you want?

The question is far more uncomfortable:

Are you still sure you want what you thought you wanted?

Venus retrograde in Scorpio: when desire moves beneath the surface

Scorpio has little interest in what remains on the surface

It doesn't care about the relationship that looks perfect on paper, the job that seems wonderful from the outside, the socially acceptable desire or the version of ourselves we have learned to present to others

Scorpio wants to know what lies underneath

And here Venus must travel through territories we usually prefer to keep separate from our romantic idea of love:

power, control, dependency, jealousy, sexuality, shared money, fear of abandonment, possession and vulnerability

When Venus retrogrades, however, her gaze changes direction

What we normally seek outside is brought back within

Old relationships may return to our minds, but reducing a Venus retrograde to the classic “your ex will come back” would be almost ridiculous

A person may return

But above all, a version of ourselves may return

The woman you were before choosing that relationship

The desire you abandoned

A talent you stopped valuing

A way of loving that no longer belongs to you

An old wound around being chosen

Or a question you thought you had already answered

Venus retrograde does not necessarily return the past so that we can live there again

Sometimes she simply places it in front of us so that we can finally look at it with different eyes

10 October — New Moon in Libra

And here comes one of the most interesting contradictions of the month

On 10 October we have a New Moon in Libra

A New Moon speaks of beginnings, seeds and new cycles

But Libra belongs to Venus

And Venus is walking backwards

It is almost like planting something new while simultaneously being asked to dig up old roots

Libra speaks of relationships, reciprocity, agreements, beauty, balance and justice

But balance does not mean dividing everything perfectly in half

A relationship can look beautifully balanced from the outside while one person is constantly abandoning themselves to keep it together

And so this New Moon asks:

How much of what I call harmony is actually harmony, and how much is fear of conflict?

Not every peace is peaceful

Some are simply very beautifully decorated silences

Pluto turns direct: what has been seen cannot be unseen

Halfway through the month, something changes

Pluto turns direct in Aquarius

Pluto doesn't describe what happens on Tuesday afternoon

Its movements are slow, subterranean and transformative

It speaks of power, symbolic death, regeneration, control and structures that must decompose before something genuinely new can emerge

In Aquarius, Pluto is opening an enormous conversation around society, technology, networks, belonging and the relationship between the individual and the system

As Pluto begins moving forward again, what we have been observing internally starts asking for movement

Not necessarily speed

Direction

And this happens while Venus continues questioning what we value

Venus asks:

How much is it worth to you?

Pluto adds:

And how much power have you given it?

A relationshipa jobmoneya rolean imagethe need for recognitioneven a wound

We can assign so much value to something that we eventually allow it to govern our lives

October may show us exactly where we are doing this

The heart of October: Venus meets the Sun

Then we reach what I consider the symbolic heart of the month

During her retrograde journey, Venus reaches her inferior conjunction with the Sun in Scorpio, often called the Venus Star Point in contemporary astrology

Imagine this as the deepest point of the descent

Astrologically, it is a beautiful image of the rebirth of desire

Not simply:

What do I love?

But:

What remains of my desire when I remove everything I desired in order to be loved, approved of, chosen or recognised?

Scorpio becomes an alchemical laboratory

We bring something inside

We allow it to burn

And then we discover what survives

Perhaps a relationship

Perhaps not

Perhaps a vocation

A different relationship with the body

Money

Pleasure

Or simply the right to desire without constantly having to explain why

Venus may not be changing what we love

She may be changing the place from which we love

Mercury retrograde in Scorpio: returning to the rooms of unspoken words

And just as this process reaches its deepest point, Mercury also changes direction

Mercury retrograde in Scorpio makes me think of something far more interesting than malfunctioning computers, missed trains or messages sent to the wrong person

That's the meme version of Mercury retrograde

Scorpio takes Mercury underground

Conversations return

Questions

Secrets

Forgotten information

Something somebody said months ago suddenly acquires a completely different meaning

We may need to talk again about something we believed was finished

Or perhaps we finally understand why we couldn't talk about it in the first place

Mercury retrograde doesn't necessarily mean silence

Perhaps it simply asks us to stop rushing towards conclusions

Reread

Listen again

Rephrase

And ask whether what we are saying truly corresponds to what we feel

25 October — Venus returns to Libra

After descending into Scorpio's waters, Venus retrograde returns to Libra

It feels almost like returning to a previous room

Except we are no longer the person who first entered it

Libra speaks again about relationship

But after Scorpio, the question can no longer simply be:

How can we be happy together?

It becomes:

Can I be with you without abandoning myself?

Compromise and sacrifice are not synonyms

Love and fusion are not synonyms

Peace and silence are not synonyms

Perhaps one of the great Venusian lessons of this autumn is learning the difference

26 October — Full Moon in Taurus: the body answers

And immediately afterwards comes the Full Moon in Taurus

Venus again

Because Taurus, too, is ruled by her

This is why Venus becomes the red thread running through the whole month

We begin with Venus retrograde

We experience a New Moon in Libra, one of her signs

We travel through the depths of Scorpio

Venus returns to Libra

And then a Full Moon illuminates Taurus, her other domicile

October seems built around one word:

value

But Taurus takes the question out of the psyche and puts it into the body

Scorpio asks what you desire in the depths

Taurus asks:

And how is your body living all of this?

Are you sleeping?

Breathing?

Eating with presence?

Do you feel safe?

Do you have space?

Do you have time?

Can your nervous system actually inhabit the life you have built?

Because we can tell ourselves almost any story

The body eventually sends the invoice

October is not a month for rushing

Despite everything happening in the sky, October doesn't feel like a month asking for speed

It asks for depth

Venus retrograde

Mercury retrograde

Pluto slowly moving forward

Two lunations ruled by Venus

Relationship

Desire

Power

Value

Body

October places these five words on the table and asks whether they still belong together

Because we can love something that isn't good for us

We can desire something that doesn't nourish us

We can remain loyal to something that no longer represents us

And we can call something safety when it is actually fear of change

Perhaps this is why October doesn't arrive with a door thrown open towards the future

It arrives carrying a lantern

It takes us by the hand and walks us backwards

Into old rooms

Old relationships

Old promises

Old versions of ourselves

Not necessarily so that we can live there again

But so that we can retrieve what we left behind

And perhaps by the end of this journey we won't have all the answers

But we may finally have the right question:

If you no longer had to earn love, approval, safety or belonging… what would you truly desire?