a trustfall into the abyss

Welcome to November, star seeds.

As we move deeper into the dark half of the year, our march towards night will not be gentle.

The month begins with a Full Supermoon in Taurus on November 5. The moon is exalted in Taurus and on this day of days, Venus, the ruler of the moon, will be in her home sign of Libra.

However, the good times and glad rags are not here to stay as the next day Venus slinks out of the taffeta of Libra and into the fetish wear of Scorpio, where we trade the light-hearted for the obsessive, the casual for blood commitments.

On November 7, Uranus retrograde shifts into the final degrees of Taurus, where it has been instigating and upending themes related to the material world and the corporeal form for the past seven years.

This final countdown begs us to consider how our values have changed since 2018 and how the unexpected has bested our best-laid plans. Prepare for plot twists as the rebel planet readies itself for a new embarkation.

This month is trustfall into the abyss, if ever there was one.

On November 9, Mercury, our planet of the mind and the mouth, begins its retrograde in Sagittarius, joining warrior planet Mars in the sign of blithe optimism and philosophical musings.

In Sagittarius, Mercury is heady AF, and this retrograde may trigger existential dread, crises of faith and grand plans that fail to land. Sagittarius is also notorious for soapbox soliloquies, shooting off at the mouth and well-meaning but sometimes just mean commentary.

As ever with a retrograde, go in rather than lash out, take the high road over the low blow and listen more than you bicker.

On November 11, Jupiter, our planet of easy money and fast luck, goes retrograde in Cancer. In Cancer, the planet of expansion amplifies our emotional terrain, triggers, tender places and all.

This backspin through these backwaters is a summons to explore themes of security, attachment and care-taking. Are you pouring from the cracked lip of an empty cup? Is your kindness a form of control? Is your independence really just avoidance in drag?

Retrogrades always hinge on the prefix RE and in this season of backstrokes, what feels rough will ultimately deliver us into reinvention. The sun through the clouds, the light at the end of the hell mouth, etc.

On November 21 (November 20 on the west coast), we welcome the new moon in Scorpio.

Scorpio lords over the eighth house of sex, endings, and resources — that condominium of the unconscious where things are felt but not seen.

The new moon in Scorpio insists that you dig deeper, to see in and through the dark — and step closer to the kind of honesty and intimacy that terrifies you the most.

A trustfall into the abyss, if ever there was one.

On November 21, the sun enters Sagittarius, bringing a welcome splash of levity, from submarine to hot air balloon, unblinking eye contact to riotous laughter, villain to jester.

If Scorpio season is about power and control, Sagittarius season is about spontaneity and the kind of delight that can only be delivered when you burn the maps, loosen the reins and forgo the plan.

Adding to the sunshine daydreams, daddy Saturn stations direct in Saturn on November 27, and life begins to feel less like a lesson and more like a luau.

We’ll take it.

Blessedly, Mercury stations direct on November 29 and Venus crawls out of the cave of Scorpio and onto the trampoline of Sagittarius on November 30, a pair of transits that amount to a collective exhale and step forward.

To better understand how this month will affect your zodiac sign, find your horoscope below. Read for your sun and rising sign.

Surfs up and shadows are showing, Aries. The sun in Scorpio highlights your eighth house of sex, death, secrets, shame and other people’s resources.

William Faulkner writes:

“Man must have light. He must live in the fierce, full, constant glare of light, where all shadow will be defined and sharp and unique and personal: the shadow of his own singular rectitude or baseness. All human evils have to come out of obscurity and darkness, where there is nothing to dog man constantly with the shape of his own deformity.”

As you take your yearly walk through the underworld, I will remind you, Aries, that you are the light. You bear it and bring it, giving dimension to darkness, glare to the buried, and sunburn to shadows.

You are not only capable, but necessary.

Welcome to the season of the witch, Taurus!

The sun in Scorpio throws its weight behind your seventh house of trusted partnerships and legal binding.

The word trust derives from the Old Norse traust, meaning to make safe or sturdy. As you are a sign of fixed earth, I urge you to think about the relationships that make you feel safe in your body or like you have found a home that you want to return to.

Register how your physical form responds to the proximity of another person.

Make your cuts and commitments accordingly.

Hello, Gemini!

The sun in Scorpio highlights your sixth house of daily rituals and the breathing temple of the body. As this is also the season of death and remembrance that guides us into the dark half of the year, it is time to take stock of the memories stored in the body.

Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”

I hope these next weeks will find you sinking into sensation and clawing your way up and away from anything that would hold you hostage.

Hello, Cancer!

The sun in Scorpio hits your fifth house of pleasure and play.

“Play is how we learn to be human, how we learn who we are, how we learn to fail, communicate, love, fight, rebel, desire, build and survive,” Cas Holman, author of the upcoming book “Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity,” recently told The Post.

“At its best, play is life-affirming, soul-sustaining and mind-expanding. A life devoid of play is detrimental to our psychological, emotional and physical health.”

And yet, by age nine, most of us abandon unstructured play in favor of the unholy grind of productivity.

But you can raise a fist of resistance by choosing to do one single thing every day that has no payoff save for joy. Dance, scream, paint.

Repeat after me: pleasure over productivity.

Ahoy, Leo!

The sun in the fixed swamp of Scorpio activates your fourth house of ancestry, the ties that bind, and the roots that cling.

Thomas Wolfe maintained that you can never go home again. Depending on how you squint at your past, this fact can feel lonesome or liberating.

I encourage you to lean into the latter and hold fast to the knowledge that regeneration bests return every time.

Hello, Virgo!

Fellow Virgo and acclaimed composer Arvo Pärt makes music so rich it borders on revulsion.

P.J. Harvey claims she loves, but can only listen to, Pärt’s “Tabula Rasa” once a year, as the experience is absolutely consuming for her.

Full of pregnant pauses and piercing strings, she has a point.

As a bit of homework as we enter the dark half of the year, I encourage you to find or bring to life something rapturous — something you love — and a way to love it that both separates and sanctifies.

Hello, Libra!

The sun in Scorpio activates your second house of wealth and worth.

If you’ve been overextending or spending, prepare to make budget cuts of the literal and emotional variety. The word “invest” comes from the Latin “investire,” meaning “to clothe in, cover, surround.”

If price is what you pay and value is what you get, seek to surround yourself with those who tax you lightly and repay you in comfort and cover.

Happy return of the sun to you, Scorpio!

The sun in your sign shines a light on your first house of the self.

In a recent interview, Guillermo Del Toro recalled his friend David Cronenberg telling him, “the only way to stay alive as a director is to try something that is different and that scares you into being someone else.”

I believe this wisdom applies not just to creative pursuits but to the construct of character.

As a birthday present to yourself, and with Mars moving into your second house of wealth and worth, the time is nigh to sacrifice yourself into an unexpected incarnation.

Ahoy, Sagittarius! The sun in Scorpio shines a light on your twelfth house of the subconscious mind, dreams, nightmares, hidden enemies and self-sabotage.

In discussing his adaptation of a novel by Japanese firebrand Yukio Mishima, Leon Ingulsrud describes the former’s work as “profoundly upsetting in a way that wakes me up.”

As you move through the underbelly of your subconscious, I hope you will keep your eyes fixed on what upsets you and, in holding that gaze, see something for the first time.

Hello, Capricorn!

The sun in Scorpio hits your eleventh house of community and collaboration.

I was recently reading about the late, great Capricorn choreographer Gerald Arpino, who, when watching dancers rehearse, would direct them to “give me the zah!,” zah being his invented word for a sacred combination of exuberance, connectedness, and commitment.

I hope you, like Arpino, will find a language, real or invented, that can communicate what you want and need from those around you. I hope too that in the pitch of asking, you hear the echo of acquiescence.

Hello, Aquarius!

In a recent interview, the writer Arundhati Roy described the relationship she had with her activist, feminist mother, which oscillated between abuse and inspiration.

Of her mother, Roy said, “There was a part of her that hammered me, but then it also created me.”

As the sun in Scorpio activates your tenth house of legacy, parental figures, and mentorship, I hope that you will investigate the ways you have been made and unmade by your elders and how, regardless of that influence, you can ever and always forge yourself anew.

Ahoy, Pisces!

The sun in Scorpio raises the sails on your ninth house of travel and the great unknown, the open mind, and the open road.

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth,” she shares the following epigraph written by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”

I hope these words will strike a chord and loosen a tether for you. It’s never too late to pull up stakes and find fresh dirt for your roots to hold.

---

Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. To book a reading, visit her website.