How do we keep the lights on? (October, the month ahead)

by Daníel Colón

Oct 01, 2026

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●  Astrologically Speaking · The Month Ahead · October 2026

A scorpion whose open claws hold the two sides of a balance scale, a small lamp burning on its back, on a navy night field

How do we keep the lights on?

Hola, amor. The daylight is getting shorter. We’re heading back into a darkness of some sort, and I’m not going to pretend I know what you’re carrying into it. Many of us are carrying many different things into October. But I keep asking the same question. How do we keep the lights on? How do we keep the lights on as prices rise, as the lawsuit against seven Cornell fraternity members keeps revealing how distorted the power between the masculine and the feminine still is, as Venus turns retrograde in Scorpio on October 3 and we are forced to look at the shadow of our humanity? How do we restore any sense of justice, balance, peace and love in a time that keeps getting more intense? How do we find hope in the dark? October lives between two signs, Libra and Scorpio, and there’s a story there I can’t stop thinking about. For the ancient Greeks, the stars we call Libra were the Scorpion’s claws. Around the 3rd century BC, the astrologer Manetho wrote that the claws got a new name, the Balance, “because it stretches out on both sides like the sides of a balance.”

The scales used to be the scorpion’s claws. What we see as separate is part of the same body.

And you know what a claw does when it feels threatened. It clenches. When somebody we love shows us something about ourselves, when the feedback lands, our immediate response is to clench and defend. That’s the claw. But a claw that opens, stretched out on both sides, becomes a scale. Now it can weigh. Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio on October 24, and the truth that comes through the people we love most is rising to the surface. It’s hard to see ourselves through the eyes of others, especially when what they see is closer to what we’ve been ignoring in ourselves. Sometimes that feedback is EXACTLY the medicine we need to become the people this revolutionary moment needs. It takes bravery to reveal what we conceal. We’re scared of being abandoned, misunderstood, found out.

But ignoring the weight doesn’t make the weight disappear.It just increases the strain.

Shared weight is what this month is reaching toward. Dissolve the ego enough to lean in and listen to someone else’s pain, without rushing to fix it, because we have the capacity to hold what’s too intense for them to hold alone. Then take it bigger. Advocate for the most vulnerable. If you have the privilege to lift a voice, use it. Most people just want to be seen and understood, and with Mars moving through Leo, everything is getting more visible. We’ve done a lot of witnessing of what we don’t want. MeToo. Kavanaugh. Epstein. You name it. The critical mass is forming. Our fed-upness is forming. And on October 15, Pluto, the planet of what lives underground, turns direct in Aquarius, the sign of the people. So October is asking us to sit in what’s uncomfortable with one another, and to find harmony inside that discomfort. To honor the truth in all its achiness. To thread flower crowns for these bones, and then give a proper burial to the values that are clearly ending. We get to choose our people now. We get to choose our cause, and where our energy and our time go.

Six paper cards of moons, sun and planets strung on a red line, with arrows dipping down into a dark underground of roots where a star and a seed rest

The month at a glance Saturday, October 3 Venus stations retrograde at 8° Scorpio 12:15 AM Pacific / 3:15 AM Eastern Same morning, Mars in Leo opposes Pluto at 3° Aquarius. Love, money and what we value go under review until November 13. And the month opens with a standoff between the self that wants to shine and the collective that wants its turn. Saturday, October 10 New Moon in Libra, 17° 8:50 AM Pacific / 11:50 AM Eastern That afternoon, retrograde Venus squares Mars. Plant the seed anyway. This one stays underground until Venus turns direct on November 13. Thursday, October 15 Pluto stations direct at 3° Aquarius 7:40 PM Pacific / 10:40 PM Eastern Pluto has moved backward since May 6. Whatever this retrograde dug up about power and the people starts moving forward again. Friday, October 23 The Sun enters Scorpio About 3 AM Pacific / 6 AM Eastern That evening the Sun meets retrograde Venus at the very top of Scorpio. Venus vanishes as the evening star and gets ready to rise as the morning star, right on the seam where the claws became the scales. Two days later she backs over that line into Libra. Saturday, October 24 Mercury stations retrograde at 20° Scorpio 12:13 AM Pacific / 3:13 AM Eastern Direct on November 13, the same day as Venus. Now the mind goes down with her. Conversations you thought were finished come back around. Sunday, October 25 Venus backs into Libra Full Moon in Taurus, 2° Venus: about 2 AM Pacific / 5 AM Eastern Full Moon: 9:12 PM Pacific / 12:12 AM Eastern on the 26th The Full Moon and the Sun square Pluto at 3° Aquarius, all within a degree. What we own, and who holds the power over it, comes up to the surface.

A new moon and a full moon on a red field, joined by a dashed line, with a circle of seven lit candles between them

Gather with us Our lunar workshops are live on Zoom at 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern, and every replay lives in The Collective. Thursday, October 8 New Moon in Libra 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern The New Moon in Libra arrives Saturday, October 10, at 17° Libra, a week after its ruler Venus turned retrograde in Scorpio. Whatever we plant here stays underground until Venus turns direct on November 13, so come ready to get honest about what balance actually looks like for you. Thursday, October 22 Full Moon in Taurus 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern Taurus full moons are about what you actually have and whether you trust it. This one peaks Sunday, October 25, at 2° Taurus, in a tight square with Pluto in Aquarius. Come ready to look at what you’re sitting on, who holds the power over it, and what it would mean to actually use it. Next up New Moon in Scorpio · Thursday, November 5. The New Moon itself arrives Sunday, November 8.

Not in The Collective yet?Membership is $11.99 a month and holds every workshop, replay, Personalized Horoscope and Extra Credit session, plus your copy of Astro Weather 2027.
Join The Collective
Button acting weird? Use this link: colormecrazy.world/the-collective

Extra Credit For Collective members. Same Zoom room, replays in the library. Sunday, October 4 Story Medicine with Phlaurel 1 PM Pacific / 4 PM Eastern · 90 minutes A bonus workshop with guest facilitator Phlaurel. So many of us live inside an inherited story about conquest and two sides fighting until one wins. Phlaurel’s frame for the day: this is a story of how Earth heals. Bring a journal and your whole weird self. Phlaurel will share ways to support their work during the session, so come ready to show them some love. Monday, October 12 The Parking Lot 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern · 90 minutes Bring the question you’ve been carrying. Submit it ahead or ask live. Monday, October 26 Book Club · Hope in the Dark I 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern We begin Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, a book about the dark of not knowing what comes next, and why that uncertainty is where hope lives. Read the foreword through chapter 7, or come ready to listen.

A seed sprouting in dark soil beside a fern and a mushroom on a green field, an arrow crossing a torn seam to a water drop, a curling wave and a small scorpion on a stone

Last call for Earth + Water
ElementalEnrollment closes Wednesday, October 7 at 11:59 PM Pacific. Orientation is live that same day at 4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern.
Six weeks, October 7 through November 13, Revolutionary Astrology in your own chart.
Elemental Earth · Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn
A seed has everything to do with possibility. It also needs somewhere to grow. We study what we value and what we make time for, then take the work into our lives.
Elemental Water · Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces
You can want to hold on and let go at the same time. We explore what we need, what we are protecting and what we may be ready to release. And we study Scorpio while Venus and Mercury are both retrograde there.
One element is $199, both together are $349. Collective members and Elemental alumni save $50, and your private link is in Member Benefits.
Elemental Earth →    Elemental Water →

A torn calendar page with moons, an eclipse, a planet and a comet in its squares, one square circled in red, a sun with an open eye rising behind it

Astro Weather 2027 The whole year, in your calendar. Every eclipse, retrograde and moon of 2027, in the calendar you already check, with the read right there when you open the event. The big moves carry a question to journal with and a practice for the week. Pay what you can, from $2.99. $9 is suggested, and every amount gets the same calendar. In The Collective? It’s already in your library. Get the calendar → colormecrazy.world/astro-weather

Get the calendar → colormecrazy.world/astro-weather

P.S. This is the first of a monthly letter: the astrology, the gatherings and what’s opening, all in one place at the top of each month. Hit reply and tell me what you want it to carry.

Color Me Crazy · Astrology for liberation

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Astrologically Speaking

A newsletter for the seekers, rebels, and visionaries who dare to see the world differently. Revolutionary Astrologer, Daníel Colón, dives deep into the cosmos. Helping you alchemize the chaos into soul-level empowerment!

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