Five Retrogrades... No Damn Syllabus?
Five retrogrades at once. Different subjects. Different parts of our lives.
Maybe it’s time to look at what’s already sitting in front of us.
A few days ago, Facebook thew one of those memories at me from September 29, 2013.
It was Billy Joel’s “Vienna,” along with a chunk of lyrics I had pulled from the song.
And I actually remember what was going on in my life then.
I was dealing with some challenging health concerns with my autoimmune disease.
What made me stop, though, was realizing I was doing the same damn thing with music thirteen years ago that I still do today.
A song would catch my attention and I’d pull out the part that connected with whatever I was going through or thinking about.
I wasn’t publicly doing my juju back then. I was just doing it.
And of all the lyrics I could have pulled from “Vienna,” I had picked the part about getting so far ahead of yourself that you forget what you need, having passion and pride but still not necessarily being satisfied, and having dreams without knowing if they’re all going to happen.
I tried to remember why I picked those particular lyrics. I couldn’t.
I remember what was happening in my life around that time. I remember the medical shit. But when I tried to put those lyrics back into the life I remember living in 2013, they didn’t fit as well as I expected them to.
My youngest adult daughter has been dealing with her own autoimmune issues and some wonky blood results.
Seeing that date immediately took me back to that period of my own life.
And somewhere in there, I remembered something I had completely forgotten.
Around 2013, they found a bit of a unicorn in some fairly ordinary bloodwork.
Holy crap...
I hadn’t thought about that in years.
I don’t know whether that old piece of my medical history has anything to do with what she’s dealing with.
Her body isn’t mine, and similar doesn’t mean the same.
But now it’s something her doctor can decide whether it’s worth looking at.
And that wasn’t the only thing I could see differently from where I was standing now.
That period of my life really changed me.
I had spent a lot of years picking things up, getting gut feelings, noticing things and then questioning myself when somebody else had another explanation.
Somewhere around all that medical shit, that is what started changing for me.
I started paying attention.
I started trusting what got my attention enough to at least go look.
There wasn't a name for what I was doing with music in 2013.
I didn’t know where any of it would eventually take me.
I do see it now.
Okay, Facebook memory...
I see you...
This got me thinking.
How much shit do we already have right in front of us that we aren’t actually seeing?
Or maybe did we did see it?
We’re just not standing in the same place when we look at it again.
We Do Not Have Two Fucking Moons
I was still scrolling when I saw one of those stupid posts claiming Earth had two moons.
We do not have two fucking moons...
But obviously that bullshit came from somewhere, so I went looking.
That’s how I ended up reading about a small asteroid called 2025 PN7.
It was discovered in 2025.
It orbits the Sun, not the Earth.
Its orbit is similar enough to ours that it appears to travel alongside us, which makes it a quasi-satellite.
And when astronomers went back through older images, they found it sitting there as far back as December 11, 2013.
Of course it fucking was...
That’s usually enough for me to slow down.
Yellow light...
Wait...
Pay attention...
Something had already handed me 2013 once.
Now something completely unrelated handed it to me again.
Meanwhile, I still had shit to do.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that I just wanted to make my second cup of coffee.
Except just about the time I was heading that way, my robot vacuum started making its way toward my bedroom.
Back track... a second.
Earlier that morning, my husband had woken up with one of his bad migraines.
I knew he wasn’t feeling well, but this is also a man who will push through damn near anything and keep working.
So, in my head, that’s where he was.
Downstairs in his office working.
I went into my bedroom, pushed the dog bed underneath the bed so the vacuum could get through, and turned on the light because I figured I’d make the bed while I was in there.
Holy shit...
My husband popped up from underneath the covers.
Scared the absolute shit out of me.
I turned the light back off, said sorry and shut the door so the vacuum couldn’t come in.
And the funny part was, I knew he’d had a migraine.
Him being in bed made perfect sense.
My routine had already filled in the blank for me.
Okay...
Can I make my coffee now?
I’ve been taking whatever coffee I don’t finish and turning it into basically my version of a frozen Frappuccino with a meal replacement and an extra scoop of greens.
Easy...
Throw everything in with some ice.
Boom boom boom.
Done.
Except it was cold outside and I didn’t want a frozen anything.
I wanted my coffee hot.
Same basic ingredients.
How fucking complicated could this be?
I put the meal replacement and greens in a cup with a little coffee and stirred it.
Hmm. Wait...
Yeah, that’s not doing it.
I got out the immersion blender.
Okay. Blend this bitch up.
Better.
Except there was still crap in there that hadn’t blended, and I knew exactly what was going to happen if I poured that into my hot coffee.
One sip and instead of creamy goodness, I’d get sludge.
Nope.
So I grabbed a little strainer and another cup and started pouring it through.
Glub.
Glub.
Glub.
For fuck’s sake.
I grabbed a spoon and started pushing it through.
It was working, but now I’m standing there using another cup and adding more steps just to make a meal replacement with the coffee I hadn’t finished.
Why am I straining this into another cup?
I put the strainer directly over my hot coffee instead.
The stuff I wanted went through.
The crap I didn’t want stayed behind.
I scraped that shit out and threw it in the sink.
Finally...
My lunch replacement coffee.
The conditions had changed from a cold drink to a hot one, so the way I had normally done it wasn’t working like it had the last time.
And sometimes you have to strain some of the gunk out before you can really see what belongs and what doesn’t.
When I looked at everything that had gotten my attention that day, I started seeing the same thing from different directions.
Something from thirteen years ago that looked different when I saw it now.
My husband being exactly where the information I already had told me he could be, except I hadn’t actually looked.
The same stuff I normally put in a cold drink not working the same way when I made it hot.
So I checked another place I tend to look.
The astrology...
Astrology is one of the tools I picked up along the way because it kept showing up around the work I was already doing.
Psychic Medium.
About four years ago, people would start talking about planets and houses and transits and I had no idea what the hell they were talking about.
I knew Sun signs.
Kind of...
Sometimes I had to look those up too.
So, I started learning enough to understand the conversation.
Then I kept learning.
I don’t call myself an astrologer.
Astrology became another tool for me.
Another place I could check when something had already gotten my attention.
This time, I kept running into the same thing I’d been doing all damn day.
Review...
Five Retrogrades... No Damn Syllabus.
Right now, Pluto, Neptune, Saturn and Uranus are retrograde.
On October 3, Venus joins them.
Five retrogrades happening at the same time.
Venus will probably be the one you hear the most about for a minute because she’s the new one walking in.
Venus retrograde in Scorpio.
She begins the retrograde in Scorpio, then backs into Libra on October 25.
And this is where something else clicked for me.
I’ve written things before where I’ve said something like:
Find where Scorpio falls in your chart.
Then I’ll see a response that basically says:
I love this, but I’m a Capricorn.
That stuck with me...
Because years ago, I would have been just as lost.
Somewhere along the way I had learned enough that “find Scorpio in your chart” made perfect sense in my own head, and I forgot what it was like when it didn’t.
Yes, You Have Scorpio in Your Chart
So here’s the easiest picture I’ve found for my own brain.
Think of your birth chart kind of like a college schedule.
Knowing your Sun sign is like knowing one part of your schedule.
But all twelve zodiac signs are represented somewhere in your chart.
So if you’re a Capricorn, you still have Scorpio in there.
You have Aries.
Gemini.
Aquarius.
All of them.
And depending on your chart, you can have a whole lot going on in one sign.
Several planets or points might be sitting in there, giving you more to look at.
So, when I say find Scorpio, I’m giving you a place to start looking.
The planets bring different subjects.
The signs are the rooms those subjects are happening in.
And the houses help show what area of your life we’re looking at.
That’s the picture that made it click for me.
Now go back to Venus retrograde in Scorpio.
For the basic starting point,
Venus brings things like relationships, money, values, attraction, pleasure and desire.
How we relate, what we want and what something is worth to us.
There’s a lot more to Venus, but we don’t need the entire course catalog to get the basic idea.
Same with Scorpio.
Scorpio likes to get underneath what’s sitting on the surface.
Trust.
Attachment.
Intimacy.
The deeper stuff.
There’s a lot more sitting in that Classroom too...
And beginning October 3, that Venus Class goes into review in Scorpio.
Where is Scorpio in your chart?
That gives you somewhere to kind of start.
And you might have more than one thing happening there.
That’s okay.
Find the room first.
The interesting part is Venus isn’t walking into an empty college.
Four other midterms are already happening.
Pluto is retrograde in Aquarius.
Saturn and Neptune are both retrograde in Aries, with different subjects on their desks.
Uranus is retrograde in Gemini.
Then Venus joins them in Scorpio.
Five midterms.
Different subjects, rooms and areas of our lives.
And they aren’t all following the same schedule either.
Each of those retrogrades began at a different time and each will end at a different time.
We don’t need everybody’s entire semester schedule to understand the basic concept.
All i can say is that's a lot of subject material under review.
Unfortunately, the universe does not schedule all the midterms for the same week and send us a fact-by-fact syllabus.
Some of these have been going on for months.
Venus is just the newest one.
So take the college thing one step further.
Retrograde is the review and the midterm.
Eventually the planet turns direct.
I think ok ... Pencils down...
Then there’s still a period afterward astrologers call the post-shadow.
What does that even mean?
How I see it is... this is when I am getting that particular midterm back.
Now you can see how and what you did.
Maybe there’s a big red X next to something and you look at it and go:
Oh shit...
Yep...
I see where I fucked that up.
Change the answer...
But you might look at the red X and think:
Nope...
I’m sticking with my answer.
Okay then...
Show your work.
What did you see?
What information did you actually have?
Did you really look at what was there?
Or did something else fill in the blank for you?
Does it look the same from where you’re standing now?
You might start explaining your answer and realize exactly where you went sideways.
Or you might go through the whole damn thing and still stand by your answer.
Review doesn’t automatically mean you were wrong.
Sometimes you just look again and keep it.
Hell, this is college. why not?
If you think you have a valid point, go talk to the professor. (The Universe)
Explain how you got to your answer.
They might show you exactly where you went wrong.
You might realize it halfway through explaining it yourself.
Or you might be able to convince the professor that your answer has a valid point too.
It’s your life!
You’re the one who has to decide what makes sense once you’ve looked at the whole damn thing.
And I think this is probably why I make visual pictures like this college example in my head in the first place.
It’s the same basic way I’ve been teaching people to work with any cards.
Look at the card before you grab the book.
What catches your eye?
What do you see?
What does it bring up for you?
Then go learn the rest.
Somebody else’s way of understanding something can give you a place to start.
It doesn’t have to become the way you understand it forever and ever.
That’s pretty much what happened to me with astrology too.
I learned enough to follow the conversation.
I found ways to make it make sense in my own head.
Crazy or not!
Which takes me right back to “Vienna.”
I still don’t know exactly why I chose those particular lyrics thirteen years ago.
But I know what happened when I saw them again.
I looked.
It took me back through my own medical history and into what’s happening with my youngest daughter right now.
Something I hadn’t thought about in years suddenly had a reason to come back to me.
My husband reminded me how easily routine can fill in a blank even when new information is sitting right there in front of you.
And that damn coffee reminded me that when the conditions change,
sometimes the way we’ve always done something doesn’t work anymore.
Sometimes we have to do it differently and strain some of the crap out to see what still belongs.
And from October 3 until Pluto turns direct on October 15,
we’ve got five different midterms happening on five different schedules.
Review...
Look again...
Some things still work...
Other things need another look...
And you might have things that you can put down the damn sink...
Garbage disposal or not...
Either I’m keeping this one... or I aint dealing with that shit or maybe you will!
We still have the free will to look at something and say:
Nope... or Yup...
Figure out what you’re carrying forward and what you’re leaving back in the classroom.
Hopefully I’ve given you enough to go wander through your own stuff.
YOU decide what comes with YOU and what gets left behind.
Kristi Wandering Gypsy
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