Hey everyone.
Welcome to your Cycles of Time weekly forecast for the week of October 21 to 27th: The Cauldron’s Gate Welcomes us to Scorpio Season.
This week’s highlights:
Tuesday, October 22: The sun at 29 degrees Libra makes an exact square to Pluto at 29 degrees Capricorn.
Tuesday, October 22: Scorpio Season Begins
Human Design/I’Ching:
Mon-Wed: Gate 50, the Gate of Values, aka the Cauldron (Libra/Scorpio Cusp)
Thurs-Sun: Gate 28, the Gate of The Game Player
This week’s themes:
Let the Cauldron be the melting pot that helps all the pieces self-organize into a harmonious brew
Social equilibrium requires meeting the need of both the individual and the group as a whole
Don’t love the player, love the game
Our Place in the Wheel of the Year
Medicine Wheel Direction:WEST (Water, Adulthood)
Wuxing Cycle Element: Metal
Pagan Season: Mabon
Zodiac Season: Libra » Scorpio (October 22-November 21)
Moon Phase: Waning
I Ching Hexagram/Human Design: Gate 50 (Mon-Wed), Gate 28 (Thurs-Sun)
50: Fire over Wind (“The Cauldron”) or the Gate of VALUES
28: Lake over Wind (“Test of Fate”) or the Gate of the GAME PLAYER
The 6 Human Design Gates of Scorpio Season
Here we are in Scorpio season already- the season of the witch, the underworld, of going deep, of reclaiming our power begins on Tuesday, October 22. Here are the 6 Human Design gates of Scorpio season, drawing in descriptors from the I’Ching and the Gene Keys as well. Read through and let the words wash over you- do they evoke any feelings or sensations for you?
Gate 50 (Libra/Scorpio cusp):
October 18-24, 2024 (26° 22’ Libra to 2°00’ Scorpio))
Human Design: The Gate of Values
I’Ching: Fire over Wind, or “The Cauldron”
Gene Keys: Gift of Equilibrium
Gate 28
October 24-30, 2024 (2°00’ to 07°37’ Scorpio)
Human Design: The Gate of The Game Player
I’Ching: Lake over Wind, or “Test of Fate”
Gene Keys: Gift of Totality
Gate 44
October 30- November 4, 2024 (07°37’ -13°15’ Scorpio)
Human Design: The Gate of Alertness
I’Ching: Heaven over Wind, or “Coming Together”
Gene Keys: Gift of Teamwork
Gate 1
November 4- 10, 2024 (13°15’- 18°52’ Scorpio)
Human Design: The Gate of Self-Expression
I’Ching: Heaven over Heaven, or “The Creative”
Gene Keys: Gift of Freshness
Gate 43
November 10-16, 2024 (18°52’ - 24°30’ Scorpio)
Human Design: The Gate of Insight
I’Ching: Lake over Heaven, or “Breaking Through”
Gene Keys: Gift of Insight
Gate 14
November 16-21, 2024 (24°30’ Scorpio- 00o07’30” Sagittarius)
Human Design: The Gate of Power Skills
I’Ching: Fire over Heaven, or “Plenty”
Gene Keys: Gift of Competence
As I read through these, I get a distinct sense of power- not in the sense of personal power, per se, but in the sense of holistic power, power that comes from within and from below, power that arises from working from our gut instincts and deepening our relationships with others.
Stay tuned for how it all unfolds!
I won’t go too deep into the nuances of Scorpio in this episode, as I’ll be sending out an article to subscribers of Cycles of Time on Substack that’s my monthly deep dive into the Zodiac season for the astrology collective Astrum Opus. In these monthlies, I unravel the correspondences of the sun sign in the human body as well as the human life cycle, and also record a guided meditation for the season. Please consider subscribing at Astrosomatics.substack.com to get these bonus articles in your inbox!
Scorpio, Pluto & Mars
Next week is the first full week of Scorpio season, as well as the celebration in the Wheel of the Year of the cross-quarter day Samhain (aka Halloween) AND a Scorpio New Moon, so you won’t have any shortage of Scorpio excitement ahead.
For now, let’s jump into the Human Design gates of the week: Gate 50, aka the Cauldron of Values and Gate 28: the Game Player.
On a personal note, my natal Pluto is in gate 50 (in the final degrees of Libra), and Pluto is also the modern-day ruler of Scorpio, so it feels like a prime season for feeling the lord of the underworld’s vibes in my core, and bringing them to you!
With Pluto just having gone direct in Capricorn and on the brink of entering Aquarius for the next 20 years, as well as being a ruler of Scorpio season, the lord Hades will be on the tip of a lot of astrologer’s tongues over the next few weeks and months, so pay attention to that!
nairy fstukh of softmoonrising recently write a fabulous take on Pluto in her essay “Pluto is Eros: A Lyric Essay on Merging with Creativity to Invoke Erotic Self-Transgression through the Natal Chart”:
Pluto is the primal force in your natal chart who collapses boundaries between your conditioned ego and your disowned desires, traits and values, hidden in the shadows where they’re only allowed to communicate with you through anxiety, envy and disgust.
Pluto transforms your hidden desires into catalysts for creation and destruction alike because the impulse is toward full expression of your dormant erotic potential through whatever routes are available. You can choose to meet this force through its destructive pull or, through erotic creativity.
Eros is commonly known as creative desire, while Pluto’s known as destructive darkness. The truth is, these two archetypes are one and the same. As Jung and Hillman remind us: The creating gods are the destroying gods.
And that, to me, is what Scorpio season is all about- recognizing that there is creative potential in destruction, and destructive potential in creation. The nights are getting longer and the plants are devoting their energy to their roots underground, and we humans are forced to reckon with the darkness. Whether we do so in fear or with curiosity for the fertile world that lies beneath is up to us…. hopefully the journey through the I’Ching’s ancient wisdom will give us some clues on how to align with the depths that we are about to enter in weeks to come.
Libra season brought us from the personal realm of the Zodiac, the light half of the wheel of the year, into the transpersonal realm of the Zodiac, the dark half of the year, and Scorpio season deepens us into it. With so much grief, rage, and pain affecting so many of us on the collective level, it can feel like a hard time to let some of the daylight and flower blossoms wither into the depths.
But if we look at Pluto, the underworld, death, and thus Scorpio, as entities of creative desire, rather than voids of destruction, we can enter this time of year with more compassion and curiosity.
Last Thursday thru Wednesday- Gate 50: The Gate of Values
Gate 50 is known in the I’Ching as The Cauldron, or “Cosmic Order”. In the Gene Keys: the Shadow = Corruption, Gift = Equilibrium , and Siddhi = Harmony.
Gate 50 is known as the gate of Values in HD, because it is about the way values are passed on through the generations. Repressed secrets and emotions between the parents often emerge through the life of the child, particularly in the first 7 years.
Parents with children under 7 years have an opportunity bring equilibrium into the family, and this can also apply to larger organizations like businesses. The cauldron of the 50th gift is the social values that are shared with a whole community, so the role of the 50th gift is to balance the ingredients in the pot. These people can bring harmony to a group without even thinking about it.
In the model of Heterarchy, the individual and the group’s needs must both be met- if an individual is not in balance, then the whole group cannot be either. Each individual must be trusted with the freedomto find balance within themselves so that they can contribute to the whole group. True equilibrium and teamwork is always a self-organizing phenomenon that never can be successfully implemented through external control.
The 50th siddhi is harmony. Equilibrium is a constant active process of balancing polarities- but eventually the slide from one side to another gets smaller and smaller.
The Libra-Scorpio cusp is a great visual here. Libra, the scales, are always balancing opposites, and at this last gate of Libra season, the sway between the two scales is getting slower and more minuscule. Scorpio represents intimacy and merging, the deep harmony of integration.
In Libra season, the leaves fall to the soil but have not yet broken down into bits to be integrated into the soil. In Scorpio season, the composting begins, and the assimilation of the living with the dead begins in earnest.
In the I’ ching, the cauldron is represented by fire over wind, the wind below feeding the fire above to boil the pot and create transformative goodness. The cauldron is the ‘melting pot’, the place where imbalances are destroyed and dissimilarities merged together. On the cusp of Libra and Scorpio, we are adding ingredients to the pot and beginning to stir them together, breaking them down. In Scorpio, we begin to add heat to transform the ingredients into something new, creating a transformative quantum leap.
The Chinese used a great rotund cauldron for cooking the sacrifice, called a Ting. We have a phrase “into the melting pot.” meaning to put our previous ideas into complete reconsideration, and this is the symbolism of the Ting, the sacrificial vessel; greatest good fortune because we are made anew; success because change is brought about when existing structure is sacrificed.
This week, I invite you to consider the fact that the cosmic order is not hierarchy- it is harmony- and it is up to each of us as individuals to do our part to reach our own internal balance, tapping into the larger cosmic order. At this point, we can connect to others as if we’re all instruments in a harmonic symphony.
This week, persist in gathering the ingredients for your life’s cauldron. When there is breakdown and decay, know that it is essential for transformational alchemy to occur. When we align the right values in our life, we dont need to superimpose hierarchical order for success- we can simply stir them into the pot and let the magic happen.
Ultimately, Gate 50 calls for a recognition and alignment of our values. It’s an invitation to achieve social harmony by balancing individual desires with collective needs, a theme vibing perfectly with both Libra’s desire for balance and Scorpio’s transformative depths.
This week, I invite you to consider the fact that the cosmic order is not hierarchy. It is harmony. And it's up to each of us as individuals to do our part to reach our own internal balance, tapping into the larger cosmic order. At this point, we can connect to others as if we're all instruments in a harmonic symphony. This week, persist in gathering the ingredients for your life's cauldron. When there's breakdown and decay. Know that it is essential for transformation.
Thursday thru Sunday- Gate 28: The Gate of the Game Player
Thank you for listening. Gate 28, moving on. So, for the second half of the week, late Wednesday through Sunday, we move into the gate of the game player. And in the I Ching, this is known as Lake over Wind, which is described as “excess” or “test of fate”. And it is about embracing the darkness, I think you’re probably sensing a theme here.
When I first heard the title of this gate a while back, I remember thinking immediately, don't hate the player, hate the game. Because the gate of the game player, it's like, is it the player, or is it the game itself? And, you know, don't hate the player. Hate the game can be flipped to don't love the player, love the game.
The skate is about choosing to play the game, to trust in life, to live alongside any fears that come up, to remain committed and embrace both the pleasure and the pain, allowing the merging of light and dark to happen. We just went through the cauldron, where we put all of our final disparate parts into that and boiled them down into a soup. And now it's simmering. You know, we could choose to kick it off the flames and say, I don't want to. That's too deep. That's too much. That's too scary. Or we could continue to just keep adding more ingredients all the time and being focused on just adding and adding and adding, or as this gate would describe, the gate of the game player.
We could love the game and commit to the game and tend to the soup and embrace the totality of it, welcoming the game of life with all it brings, no matter how dramatic it might get. And so the gene keys has the shadow here of purposelessness and the gift of totality and the city of immortality. And so purposelessness is kind of like deciding to disengage from the depths as they come to us. So in the wheel of the year, inevitably there has to be a part where we are in entering the coldness, entering the darkness, and just the real fears that can come up from that time. Right after beautiful spring and summer lightness and kind of a golden fall. It's like this is the first time we're touching. Yeah, darkness in lots of forms, in archetypical and symbolic forms, as well as literally. And so, you know, as the plant life is composting and returning to the soil and recognizing that it's impossible to stay green and blooming and flowering forever, we are invited within this to embrace the totality of the experience of both light and dark, of all of it.
Or else we can start to feel a kind of lack of purpose, because we'll feel kind of paralysis in choosing to live a half life that doesn't include some of this, the darker elements of life, or the more uncomfortable or the more the unfamiliar things. And so, yeah, the 20th gate is really just encouraging us to play the game of life as we continue to face our fear of death. There's a quote that I have heard that is basically like, the amount of fullness of life is directly proportionate to how much we are able to face the fears that threaten our dreams. And, you know, many great myths speak of traveling to the underworld to face something down below so that you can again come back and reach true light. And only by doing so are we able to actually see the truth.
So if we program ourselves to avoid fears by subscribing to a single truth or dogma or kind of putting blinders on, we'll never reach the ender world and never touch that void and thus never attain our purpose. So that's why when you're living in that shadow level of purposelessness, it's because you haven't chosen to face death, face the darkness. And, you know, since our survival is not as at risk in many places in the moderna world as it used to be, kind of just across the board.
Our constant fear of death is often replaced by the fear of not finding our true purpose and not aligning with our dreams and passing along that purpose through time. So that's something that definitely resonates, is kind of, what is this fear that is haunting a lot of us all the time is kind of like, am I going to create what I'm here to do and contribute in the way that I'm meant to contribute?
So it's about going full bore into choosing to live a full life and take the risks so that you are not stuck in that kind of paralysis. I'm gonna go heavy with the metaphor of the cauldron, but just, yeah, take a sip of the soup. We don't know what it's gonna taste like. My daughter's reading this really funny little Halloween book called the Picky Little Witch right now, and it's about this little witch that her mom's making this, like, you know, potion in the cauldron that's, like, newt's eye and, like, knee of gnat and, you know, skin of rat and all of the things that witches put in their cauldron. And the picky little witch does not like this. She wants to go trick or treating and eat candy, but her mom thinks that Candy's gross because she's a witch and not a humanity, and she doesn't understand why her daughter likes it. And at the end of the day, the daughter drinks the soup, and it's this green, bubbling brew, and she loves it.
And the mom tries a bite of candy and also decides it's not so bad. So it's pretty cute little tale, picky little witch, and it's really about. Yeah, like, it spoke to me as I was reading it tonight during bedtime because it was about. About this gate, about the cauldron, and about the game player, both about, you know, let's just put it all in. This is the all in time of the world of life. And so, you know, Scorpio is ruled by Mars, representing action, and also by Pluto, representing the underworld. So by taking a sip of that soup and actively engaging with death and with the soil and with the unknown depths that lie beneath the surface, we can ultimately find our purpose in that. We can be alchemists, even.
And in the Gene keys, the siddhiis immortality. So it's like, through this, we can even achieve immortality by actively engaging with the depths. In my mind, immortality can be realized as we transmute the definition of what life means to include the dark and the past and the space beyond. Instead of saying that life only includes the light and the future and the tangible. So immortality means continuity through time, recognizing that life and death are not opposites, but are both contained within the larger cycle of life. So that's the totality piece there that the game player is concerned with in the later half of this week and beginning of next week. It's embracing the allness, all there is.
The Continuity of Totality with Dia de Muertos
And I get a little shimmer of excitement when I see. When I feel the, you know, this season. It just feels like there's a shiver down the spine of, like, we're really getting into it here. I went to a play last week at a theater in downtown Santa Fe called Sugar Skulls, and it's a touring play about dia de los muertos. Dia de muertos. And it was really beautiful because it's about how Dia de Muertos is not a scary holiday. And it was really. It was a kid's play, a lot of children in the audience, and it was talking.
It was about this little girl who's from Brooklyn, and she's like, all my friends celebrate Halloween. Why do we have to make an ofrenda and, like, celebrate this weird holiday where we give gifts and decorate the altar for our ancestors? So it was very, like this modern little girl whose mother was just frustrated with her about that. And so she meets the sugar skull from the ofrenda, and he takes her on this tour through the underworld to meet all of these different characters. And La Bruja is, like, the sad one. And then there's the beautiful, you know, singing skeleton. They all have their place. They all have something. Something that they're wanting to talk about and to share about the meaning of connecting to our ancestry and to our past and showing reverence for it and paying attention to where it is that we come from.
And a big message from that play was the fact that death is not scary, and death is not something that we need to fear. It's not horrific. It's just a part of life and a part that if we have a celebration and a time in the year to honor it, when the veil is thin, to honor those who have come before us and our future ancestors as well, then we are doing our part to participate in the game of life and the entire totality of that. So that's about all I have to say about it. You know, there's a lot of fear in the world right now. There's a lot of apathy. There's a lot of concern for nothing being right and not understanding how we can fit in to the larger picture. I think a lot of people are like, how can I keep doing my silly little exercises in my silly little job or my silly little creative projects when there's so much that's happening and so much that is in the process of destruction and it's just too much? Right? But I think that, as I was saying in the beginning of this episode, it's about recognizing that destruction and creation are similar types of forces.
And it really just depends on how we look at it. And that by adding to our cauldron, by stirring it, by staying engaged and facing the darkness, the purpose of our ancestors, the purpose of our future, stays alive. And it's really not about how that stew will turn out, but it's about the action of being committed to the fullness in the moment, of keeping it alive.
And that's what we are tasked to do during this time of year, is zoom out beyond ourselves a little bit as things start to merge and connect and think about. Think about the others in our life and think about the ones who have come before. So I know it's been an intense few weeks of looking into the well and the ancestors and facing the fear beast. And I hope that these episodes provide a little bit of vocabulary and a little bit of insight for feelings of discomfort that might be coming up around this time of year. I appreciate being able to talk to you all in this way because it helps me as well to process the fact that this is a just, it's one stage, it's one phase of this ongoing cycle, and we will keep moving through it.
And there's such beauty in each chapter of the wheel of the year and the cycles of our lives. We're rounding up on almost an hour here, so I will say goodbye and have a really beautiful week. Next week, we'll be back here talking about Samhain and more Scorpio goodness and that Scorpio new moon. So thank you, as always, for sharing this podcast and subscribing at astrosomatics.substack.com or wherever you listen to podcasts and sharing with me your thoughts!
Have a beautiful, beautiful bubbly cauldron week ahead. xo!
Alison
The Cauldron's Gate welcomes us to Scorpio Season