September's Forecast
all that lives in darkness, will come to light
Welcome, one and all!
To the first of many forecasts (I hope).
So I'm ashamed to say that I consume way too much astrology content while scrolling on my fyp, which ends up being a slurry of pop culture Freudian interpretations on how the full moon will affect each rising sign, what this Venus transit means for that situationship you really wish was a relationship, how can your midheaven manifest money in your life, yadda yadda blah blah, but being stared down by my lifelong collection of astrology books as I scroll, and scroll, and scroll, paired with my inate tendency to manically rabbit-hole incredible amounts of minute, seemingly benign information, I feel the urge to cut the fluff and get to the point.
If I'm honest, I need some consistency in my life, and this new post schedule about something delightfully untethered to physical reality just might get me there.
Each month, I’ll examine next month’s astrology forecast, making connections with the planetary transits as a larger whole and see how the aspects affect specific dynamics in the charts.
I believe nothing exists in a vacuum, that our birth charts are a snapshot of the primordial soup of the ever-changing tides of the collective scope of humanity (served with a slice of humble pie on a silver platter, might I add). I might take the charts of specific moments or highlight certain people involved in the moment and look deeper into how this all plays out, but for the most part, I’d like to focus on the general energies at play and how they may relate to our overall experience here within the collective.
Without further ado, let’s get into it.
The Bigger Picture
After the tumultuous transits of August, I thought I’d sit down and look at the future, gain some perspective on where to find grounding and growth at a time of hopeful chaos, as well as take a moment to respect the moving parts and systemic change it takes to get to the greater good.
And I do mean hopeful. There seems to be a palpable sense of optimism in this collective, and a feeling of intense underlying urgency to keep it moving. Thankfully, the start of September gives us a few major aspects that motivate us to move forward from whatever blockades or limitations held us back during Pluto’s initial retrograde transits through Capricorn.
The end of August left us with Mercury moving direct from retrograde in Leo, and high-tailing its way towards Virgo. Venus is in its home sign of Libra, just as Libra season is to kick off.
As my favorite TikToker says, let’s check the board:
September’s Forecast
The month kicks off with Mercury and the Moon’s conjunction in Leo, making a direct trine to Chiron in Aries. Leos don’t tend to sweep anything under the rug, and with Chiron’s influence, deeper issues may come up within ourselves and how we’ve interacted with the world up until now. The next phase of the planetary transits sets the stage for rebalance and rebirth for 2025, and for Pluto’s true passage through Aquarius to make its headway.
As the Sun in Leo moves well into Virgo season by the end of the month, a reflection occurs, in preparation for Libra’s rebalancing. In this journey, Virgo acts as our meticulous guide in finding where we need to tweak and discern how we’ve been going about our approach to the more personally impactful areas of our day-to-day lives.
This period encourages us to take a look back and ask ourselves, “how can I take responsibility in my life?”, or even, “what is my responsibility or duty here?”
You might even find yourself saying, “That’s not my problem, but thanks for the lesson.”
Saturn, as it makes its way backward through Pisces, will have us reevaluating our commitments and personal standards. Those of us with planets or angles around 19º of mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces), as well as natal placements near Capricorn and Aquarius (which Saturn rules), will find themselves creating structure within uncertainty, and will be called upon to rethink their relationship with obligations and duties. We may also be facing challenges that determine our connections to authority and self-discipline as a larger collective, and our place within the systemic engine of human effort that makes it all happen.
Week 1
On Sunday, September 1st, Pluto rx enters Capricorn for the final time in our lifetimes. Pluto moving back into Capricorn means there’s more work to be done, more of what we know to be true to be dismantled, and more in-depth personal exploration to be dealt with. We will not feel the full effects of Pluto moving into Aquarius until late 2025, when but in the meantime, the essence of Capricorn initiates a tying of loose ends and a further retrospection at what can be destroyed and restored anew.
Capricorn is known to be the worker of the wheel, plowing the land and foundation for which something can grow, manifesting beyond its bounds. There tends to be an air of frustration regarding this sign, and Pluto making its way backward once again can have us begrudgingly returning to what still hasn’t been resolved.
There are still parts of our life that are completing their cycle and ending for further transformation, the effects of which we still won’t see until next year. Take this transit as a revisit and recitation of the themes of change we’ve felt since January of this year, 2024, when Pluto was going through it’s last few degrees of this sign.
The old world is ending, old ways of thinking are meeting their dead ends, and what rises from the ashes of our past selves will bring forward what collectively builds the future. What is being outgrown in our modern era, will become obvious to shed.
What is the not beautiful? Our own secret hunger to be loved is the not beautiful. Our misuse and disuse of love is the not beautiful. Our dereliction in loyalty and devotion is unlovely, our sense of soul-separateness is homely, our psychological warts, inadequacies, misunderstandings, and infantile fantasies are the not beautiful. Additionally, the Life/Death/Life nature, which births, destroys, incubates, and births again, is considered by our cultures the not beautiful.”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With Wolves, p.156
On the same day, Uranus will go retrograde at 27 degrees Taurus, and work its way backward through the sign of grit and determination. Taurus gets a bad rep for being stubborn, but it keeps working until the task is completed, and often ties up the hard work that needs to be done to reach our goals. The parts of the job we don’t favor, but make the whole run smooth are highlighted in this house, again bringing forward that Capricorn-esque, do it until it’s done right, mentality.
At 27 degrees, this aspect signals that Uranus’s rebellious nature will find its way through the more ingrained parts of our lives. What we thought to be stable may see radical change, not just a sudden moment, but as a massive, grinding overturn of our current processes.
Uranus, our radical actor, won’t reach its completion through Taurus until it goes direct again on January 30th, 2025, and enters Gemini. Its final retrograde through Taurus will occur September 6th, 2025, not going direct again until February 4th, 2026, at 27 degrees of Taurus once again, and finally leaving for good into Gemini the following April.
Taurus reminds us of the nitty-gritty parts of the engine, the bits and pieces that make everything run in the first place. Take Uranus’ movement through Taurus, with Pluto in Capricorn as a major influence, as the bureaucratic overthrow of once-trusted ways of work and living. This is a time in which people are shifting the way they relate to their environment, institutions, and what we once took for granted as being safe and secure. Pluto’s retrograde back into Capricorn only highlights how our centers of work and finance, politics and business, and all institutionalized ways of life, may be questioned and transformed in the upcoming decades, with the current immediate transit aspects as the catalysts.
Uranus will also strike a trine with Venus, home in its sign of well-balanced Libra, giving a sense of newfound freedom and excitement, especially in our relationships. This transit can bring us something unexpected, out of bounds from our usual routine, but stimulating to areas of ourselves left dormant.
For those of you interested in the love and war aspects, so to speak, if you’re not already in a relationship, this could be when you meet someone outside of your usual circle of friends, or experience a fast but fleeting connection with someone new. If you are in a relationship, a sign of renewal energy. If things are stale or silent, now would be the time to create a sense of change, and spontaneity, or to simply try another approach at something that has been a chokepoint in the past.
This is when the world can feel like chaos, spurring people to come together on once-sensitive topics, share their inner worlds, and shed a sense of fear against others’ desires for individualism and self-expression. How could you not prioritize conflict in a world of uncertainty?
American Labor Day occurs on Monday, the 2nd of this year, and highlights the themes of collective action and transformation. A New Moon in Virgo will be in exact conjunction with the Sun, and a near exact opposition to Saturn in Pisces.
Saturn’s conjunction with Neptune retrograde is boosted by Neptune having a positive aspect to Pluto rx in Capricorn and Uranus rx in Taurus, each in the final decan of their respective signs. Neptune sextile Uranus can reveal deeper dimensions and awaken consciousness in aspects and areas of our lives otherwise unseen.
Saturn rules the limits of our physical reality, while Neptune represents our more idealistic ambitions. Saturn asks us to think objectively, to think of what brings us structure and stability, while Neptune pulls at our inner fears and anxieties, reminding us of everything that could go wrong. Whatever creates cognitive dissonance between the two within our newfound selves, will be sure to show it’s true chaotic influence in our lives.
Bigger picture: being in retrograde from July 2nd through December 7th this year, Neptune’s influence can feel like a wake-up call, a slap in the face, an unraveling of our sense of reality, a revealing of how what we may have missed or misconstrued. This time calls for an absolute fuck-ton of reflection (pull out your shadow work), reorientation to new circumstances, and finding a balance between our dreams, our worldviews, and reality.
This influence can often make things unclear, as it dissolves structure and create illusions in the grander scheme. Now is the time that one could come to a major self-discovery, or fall into a delulu wormhole. It’s easy at this time to forget about the things that bring us joy and comfort, or to be grateful for what we have already accomplished, and we can tend to see things as worse than they truly are. If we were to stay mindful of our natal aspects, Neptune, as the planet of illusions and delusions, making this positive aspect can reveal to us the areas of our lives in which transformation is needed, and maybe a slight rediscovering of self.
As it’s retrograde closely follows that of Saturn’s, Neptune can destroy our current senses of obligation and responsibility, and sets the stage for a resetting of personal boundaries and intuition.
As a larger collective, this can mean a redefining of authority and expectations of service to society.
Sextile Pluto, this can mean moving past things in our past life that no longer serve us, allowing means to let them pass out of existence and make way for newer, greater opportunities. This aspect calls larger forces at work that make unfavorable positions move past us.
Old ideologies or mentalities we’ve held onto in the past may seem archaic and self-destructive in our present situation. Both planets being in retrograde calls for a detox and development of our skills and relationships.
Digging deeper into the week, on Wednesday the 4th, Mars will enter Cancer, prying us to dig deeper within our subconscious on where our reactions to these events are really coming from, and as the planet of physical action, calls for our somatic release of trauma and loneliness of suffering.
This is a huge transit worth it’s own post, however, anything we’ve been keeping hidden or suppressed, from others or ourselves, will be difficult to keep under these circumstances. Mars exalted in Cancer can be uncomfortable, bring up what has been suppressed, and can result in lash-outs or unregulated thinking if we don’t directly address it. As Mars also sits in exile to its place of comfort, Capricorn, it will urge us to fall back on what is reliable and steady during states of upheavals or sudden change.
Maybe go back to the nostalgic, the familiar, what brings us known joy. I see another resurgence of analog collections amongst younger people in the next few years.
Take an audit at this time. In what areas can we gain focus? Learn something new? Try a new approach. Letting go of past systems and protocols will be most beneficial to you over the next year and half, as the larger transformative nature of these planets affects our worldviews and personal dynamics moving forward.
Mercury will square Uranus on Friday, which can mean a surprise announcement (such as it did on July 21st, when President Joe Biden announced his residence to Kamala Harris). However, this week’s energy could also mean the release or exposure of deceit or gossip. Those with strong Libra placements or ruling Mercuries will feel this the hardest in their personal lives.
Knowing this, Mars squaring Mercury in Libra and Neptune retrograding through Pisces may bring certain words bubbling up to the surface. Things left unsaid may come up, or maybe, things that should have never been said at all. Be mindful, stay demure.
Week 2
Libra has a reputation for being breakup season, or at least the time of the year most-rife with relationship trauma (think in the past the Me-Too movement, the revelation that wife guys aren’t so great, cheating scandals, major breakups, etc).
Virgo sets the energy for looking inward and precisely attuning to what needs to be fixed, perfected, or expunged in our daily lives, and tends to provide the support and clarification Libra needs to make a final decision.
Again, the revealing of what has been in the shadows, so to speak, will be underway this season, just in time to celebrate our harvests in the next with those who deserve it the most. Stay or go will eventually be the ultimatum if Virgo can’t find a way to work it out. Thinking back on the previous week’s energy and how it’s could relate to our immediate lives, this is the area where we could see things blossom, or crash fast.
On Sunday the 8th, the Sun will make its exact opposition to Saturn at 16 degrees, and will also make an exact square with Jupiter in Gemini on the 12th. These aspects carry the weight of what’s going on this month into the eclipse next week; the Sun’s energy in Virgo sheds light on what we’re refusing to directly look at, and Saturn may make issues so systemically unbearable or ridiculous you can’t help but to finally deal with them on the spot. Jupiter, ever the expander, will be there to broaden your horizons (and options) if/when shit hits the fan.
Mercury enters Virgo on Monday, the 9th, giving us the ability to communicate what needs to be directed in order to get shit done within this triad of ass-kicking aspects. Virgo and Taurus working together act as our perfectionist, aesthetically-minded project managers overseeing the scene before we enter our completion and renewal period.
If there were any astrological timing to clear out our closets and finish our to-do lists to make way for the next quarter, it would be this.
On Thursday, the 12th, that square between our Sun in Virgo with Jupiter in Gemini, gives us a false sense of confidence and hope for the future and may part the way for us to see the potential of our work and determination. It may define our end goals, but also, may bring about a massive wave of collective communication and public opinion. The tense lineup between Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto set the stage for change and big news on a larger worldview.
Week 3
We will continue to see Uranus’s effect in Taurus in how we rethink our relationships with money, our communities, and our greater work life, and these aspects with Mercury may see greater career changes on the horizon for those with Virgo, Taurus, and Libra ruling their charts.
Let’s take note of the concentration of Libra placements in this week’s chart:
If you haven’t already heard, the full moons this year have been kind of a big deal.
Eclipses. Think of these events as the hourglass of personal progression through the overall nodal change, which often reflects the era in our lives we experience these massive transitions of personal identity. Growth and revelation take time, and we can think of this change as the “over night” period we all wish we could move through regarding the shifts in our lives.
We find ourselves in a partial lunar eclipse at 25 degrees of Pisces on Wednesday, September 18th, the third eclipse of the year and marking a third of the way through our current Libra-Aries axis cycle. This happens when the Moon is conjunct with Neptune (at 25 degrees)
What does this mean? From the point we were in our lives around March 25th/April 8th, we are feeling the resetting of deeper change and disruption in our larger institutions and the reflective emotional cycles within our lives.
This eclipse season adds to the overarching concepts of death and rebirth on both a personal and collective level. Major rebalances are occurring to aid us in how we are to move forward for the next 10-20 years as Pluto makes its way through Aquarius. While we may have been prompted to look inward (hello again, shadow work), this eclipse season externalizes our innermost thoughts and desires, and prides us in how we can shift and reform our lives to suit the new world order, seeking Aquarian concepts such as humanitarianism and enlightening higher self.
Diving into a creative hobby, expressing oneself in a new way, taking on a new interest or rekindling the spark of an old one in a completely open, non-judgmental way, free of any and all expectation for it to turn out perfect (or profitable), may flourish during this full moon, and will carry the culmination of our learned experiences and skillsets as it grows. However, stifled energy can begin to fester into a deeper wound, with the potential to lash out unexpectedly come the next eclipse on October 2nd.
“Lunar eclipses tend to open the door for major changes in one’s life. These are usually changes that push one to the path they’re meant to be on, but things may have to fall apart to come back together, and the universe has been working its magic since that fateful November day.” - Jenna Peterson
I know what you’re thinking, this is all a bit grandiose, but August’s full moon, a super blue moon in Sagittarius, came at the same time as an exact T-square with a Mars and Jupiter conjunction in Gemini. I cannot stress enough the rarity of a full lunar cycle meeting an exact square in with any planet, and in Capricorn no less.
Aspects such as these tend to have far-reaching consequences, like a ripple effect within the collective, lying underneath the surface until a trigger event spurs it into action. Think of it as the underlying current in a relationship where things are swept under the rug; eventually, all that lingers in darkness, will all come to light.
Why do I say this now? On the same day as this eclipse, Mercury in Virgo meets an exact opposition to our Saturn rx in Pisces, testing our ability to precisely articulate our thoughts, feelings, and dreams.
Can we truly express what’s going on within us, or relentlessly suppress our innermost desires by distracting ourselves in the mundane, the systems in our lives, create excuses of work or life in order to not truly look within ourselves? This transit tells us where our limits of performing normalcy really live.
seasonal changes are about intentionality and having an awareness of how nature slowly shifts around you. there’s a bit of romanticism involved as you integrate simple practices that focus on traditions and you’re able to find a deep appreciate for the things you already have. - Caitlyn (Milk Fed)
Autumn Equinox hits Sunday, the 22nd, and not a moment too soon. The celebration of Mabon, the time of year when daylight is equal to darkness in the Northern Hemisphere, is said to appreciate the balance of life. I love this collection of thoughts by Caitlyn over at Milk Fed, where she talks about our seasonal awareness of how nature shifts around us, and how we can find deep appreciation in the traditional correspondences of the season.
This can be a time where we vocalize and really narrow in on our goals, as well as reap what we have previously sewn. Perhaps sign a contract, receive a bill or check, or apply/hear back from a job. Piscean energy can be quite aloof, but this can become a time where we iron out the fine details of our plans.
Mercury will make its exact opposition to Saturn retrograding through Pisces, furthering our abilities to vocalize and reflect on our past, research our record of the events. Refreshing our recollection of events over the past few weeks will be helpful.
Week 4
On the 23rd, the Sun will enter Libra season, kicking off the true rebalancing and reorganizing of the pieces the planets have set to play.
Saturn makes an exact half-square to Pluto on the 25th, and this is really the crux of the energy at play this month. Saturn’s boundaries and foundations are going to be questioned and tested, and with the overall Capricornian energy of this formation, we can see this being a disturbance in our conventional procedures, maybe even in our financial systems, as this is giving the same combination we saw towards the end of 2008. A mixture of change, disruption, and deconstruction is afoot, but first, the falls of these areas in our society must take place.
Pluto will be in a grand trine the whole month with Uranus and Neptune, with the Sun and Mercury creating the pivot point for this change and disruption. The last time we saw this aspect between Pluto and Uranus was in the 1960s, an era of radical social change and technological invention. Many other astrologers have made this connection in accordance to the Uranus, Neptune, Pluto aspect cycle (please look into this post regarding the season of change from 1940 through 2040, it’s dense, but worth the read and full of statistical information regarding these major aspects).
This gives us a look at the innovations in communication we may see in 2026-2028, as it did in the 1970s, but in the meantime, Mercury’s opposition creates an illusory environment in which propaganda, misinformation, and misdirected emotions can muddy the waters of futuristic and progressive thinking. The light of the Sun can either catapult negative misgivings or shine a light on the deceit.
On a personal note, this speedy progression could also give us the confidence to speak on the subconscious mind, or motivation to step out of our comfort zones and break the limitations of Saturn. It may be revealed to us that the boundaries in our lives may or may not be self-imposed, and show us exactly how much power and autonomy we have over our own lives, if we just say the word.
Neptune’s retrograde into Pisces has us rethinking our goals and aspirations, and it has the transformative planetary support to do so. However, systemic upheaval is at the helm in the grander scheme. Go with the flow of change, move yourself in the right direction, or let the wave of this aspect knock the wind out from under you.
Overall Themes
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto really take the reins for setting the stage for overarching concepts of rediscovering our spirituality this season. These retrogrades also force us to slow down and reevaluate, to take both an objective view at the larger scope of our lives and cultures, and to look closely and decisively at what work needs to be done to make it happen.
Supported by the opposition from the Sun, illuminating what lies between us and our higher selves, Saturn’s fortune does not come without cost, and in this case, it may be long-term and karmic. Check where Saturn sits in your natal chart to see where and when certain lessons in life may be hitting you the hardest this season.
The mid-month eclipse sets us off for what we should expect come October 2nd, when both the sun and the moon become conjunct in Libra. The pieces have truly fallen for us to find and protect our own peace and balance, as well as for the world to find it’s reconfiguration.
Thank you, good luck and love to all of you~
x Zoe