Astrology Alchemy Podcast

Inanna at the Gate
There is an ancient story that belongs to this week.
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, descends into the underworld voluntarily. She dresses in her full regalia, everything that marks her power and identity, and descends through seven gates. At each gate she is asked to surrender something. She arrives at the bottom naked and bowed low before Ereshkigal, her dark sister, the Queen of the Great Below. The one who was sent underground so Inanna could reign above.
Ereshkigal is not evil. She is the grief that was never held. The rage that was never witnessed. The abandoned feminine who became the underworld because the upper world could not contain her.
Inanna descends not to conquer her dark sister. She descends to face her. To complete something in herself that cannot be completed in the light.
This is the myth of this week. And of the weeks immediately ahead. Because on October 19, Venus will literally disappear from the sky, descending into the sun's glare, invisible for ten days. The Relational Alchemist entering the underworld in the literal heavens above us.
This week we stand at the upper gates. We can feel the descent approaching.
A Note — Indigenous Peoples Day, Monday October 12:
A "national holiday" that was changed from celebrating Columbus, a colonial extractor. The original peoples of this land have been the Ereshkigal of this continent's dominant narrative, invisibilized, excluded, locked in the underworld of collective acknowledgment so the colonizer story could reign above. Indigenous Peoples Day is a small but genuine movement at the gate. A turning toward what has been sent below. The mythic field making itself visible through the calendar.
Key Cycles This Week:
Thursday, October 15: Sun in Libra sextiles Jupiter in Leo. Pluto turns direct at 3 degrees of Aquarius.
The Sun-Jupiter sextile is a genuine gift, warmth, beauty, generous connection before the descent deepens. Let it land. Let yourself be in genuine contact with others today.
Pluto turns direct after being retrograde since early May. The entire extraordinary summer happened with Pluto moving inward. Now the Transformer begins moving forward again — what has been composted in the collective depths through these months begins finding outward expression. As Venus approaches the underworld gate, Pluto begins its outward movement. The inner descent and the outer restructuring are two movements of the same alchemical process.
Friday, October 16: Mars in Leo trines Saturn in Aries.
The creative fire finds easy alignment with the Structurer. Grounded commitment. The structural holding that makes genuine descent possible without becoming dissolution. Inanna's story would not end in emergence if there were not those in the upper world who held the thread and ground. This trine is that thread.
What Is Approaching — The Gate:
On October 19, Venus disappears into the sun's glare. For ten days the Relational Alchemist is in the underworld, literally unseeable. She will conjunct the Sun at 0 degrees of Scorpio, the formal threshold between Evening Star and Morning Star, but will not be seen in that crossing. She emerges October 29 at her Heliacal rising, visible once more as a Morning Star. Bright. Transformed.
These ten days ask something specific. Attend to what has been excluded. What relational truth has been locked away? What self-worth pattern has been operating beneath the surface? What unfinished business around love, genuine belonging, or what has been sent below is asking for honest attention?
This week is the preparation. What are you bringing with you into the underworld?
Reflection Questions
As you stand at the upper gates of Inanna's descent, what are you still carrying that may need to be surrendered before you reach the bottom?
As Pluto turns direct, what has genuinely shifted in you through these extraordinary months that is ready to find more outward expression?
As Venus approaches her literal underworld descent on October 19, what unfinished relational business is asking for your honest attention in the ten days ahead?
Podcast poem: Tilicho Lake by David Whyte
Support the show
Go to Sheila's website for information for transformational resources: 
https://www.ontheedgesofchange.com

This episode was co-created with generative AI, engaged as a soul-aligned ally in service of transformation. At the edge where technology meets myth, I choose insight over noise, and alchemy over automation. Thank you for dreaming the future with me.

The Relational Alchemist and the Truth-Teller
We are inside the Venus retrograde season now. The Relational Alchemist has crossed the threshold. This week the interior work begins in earnest, the Truth-teller joining the Relational Alchemist in the depths, the creative fire meeting the relational depth in direct tension, and a New Moon in Libra planting seeds of genuine balance in the middle of it all.
Key Cycles This Week:
Monday, October 5: Mercury conjuncts Venus retrograde in Scorpio.
The Truth-teller meets the Relational Alchemist in the depths. A rare inner communion between what has been thought but not spoken and what has been felt but not named. In conversation this conjunction can surface what has been quietly present in the relational field with unusual honesty and precision. In the inner world it can bring startling clarity about what the relational field has actually been carrying beneath the surface. Pay attention to what surfaces today — in conversation, in dream, in quiet knowing. The Truth-teller and the Relational Alchemist are in rare communion.
Tuesday, October 6: Mars in Leo sextiles Uranus in Gemini.
A breath of creative fire and mental liberation in a week of considerable interior depth. The instinctual creative force in easy flow with the Awakener — sudden creative impulse, unexpected breakthrough, the quickened mind finding expression in genuine action. A reminder that depth does not require the suspension of aliveness. The descent into what is genuine does not extinguish the creative fire. Let it move today.
Saturday, October 10: Venus retrograde in Scorpio squares Mars in Leo. New Moon at 17 degrees of Libra.
Two significant movements on the same day, one testing the interior work, one planting seeds for what genuine balance can become.
Venus square Mars brings the Relational Alchemist's probing depth into direct tension with the heart's desire to be genuinely seen and expressed. Where has the desire for genuine visibility been in conflict with what the relational field actually requires when the truth is fully known? This tension is not a problem to be resolved. It is the alchemical friction that genuine transformation requires.
The New Moon in Libra, Venus's home zodiac sign, arrives on the same day. With Venus retrograde in Scorpio, this lunation is being held by the Relational Alchemist from the depths. Even within the intensity of the retrograde work, the possibility of genuine balance and right relation is being seeded. What vision of genuinely reciprocal relationship do you want to plant today? Not what the retrograde has broken down, but what you want to grow in its place. Plant that vision. Even within the friction. Especially within the friction.
Larger Frame
This is how the retrograde works. Not as sustained darkness but as a spiraling movement between depth and surface, between what is being composted and what is being seeded. The New Moon in Libra at the center of this first full retrograde week is the Relational Alchemist's own promise, the descent is in service of beauty, the composting in service of genuine right relation.
Stay with the work. Trust the arc.
Reflection Questions
At Monday's Mercury-Venus conjunction, what has surfaced in the depths that the Truth-teller and the Relational Alchemist found together? What is worth carrying forward?
Where is the Venus-Mars friction most alive in your own relational field, and what is it pressing on that needs to be seen rather than resolved?
At the New Moon in Libra, what vision of genuine balance and right relation do you want to plant as the seed that will develop through this retrograde season?
Podcast poem: Always We Hope by Lao Tzu
Support the show
Go to Sheila's website for information for transformational resources: 
https://www.ontheedgesofchange.com

This episode was co-created with generative AI, engaged as a soul-aligned ally in service of transformation. At the edge where technology meets myth, I choose insight over noise, and alchemy over automation. Thank you for dreaming the future with me.

The Relational Alchemist Enters the Underworld
A brief note. These episodes are prerecorded during tiem away. I am not tracking current events in real time. Hold what I offer here alongside what you are actually living.
This week the Relational Alchemist enters the underworld. Venus stations retrograde at 8 degrees of Scorpio. 
This is not a gentle week. It is not meant to be. Genuine initiation rarely arrives gently.
Key Cycles This Week:
Monday, September 28: Sun in Libra trines Uranus in Gemini. 
A genuine breath before the descent. Clarity and unexpected connection. The relational mind finding a new angle on something that has felt fixed. Let the air element be generous today, carry as much clarity and openness as possible into what follows.
Tuesday, September 29: Mercury in Libra opposes Chiron in Aries. 
The Communicator in Libra seeks the right words for genuine relational encounter. Chiron in Aries holds the wound of the voice that has learned to be smaller than what is actually true. Their opposition asks: where has the search for relational harmony been suppressing what the self actually needs to say? Notice what you are not yet saying. It may be asking for its moment before the week is done.
Wednesday, September 30: Mercury enters Scorpio (remaining through December 6 due to retrograde motion). 
The diplomat becomes the truth-teller. Nearly ten weeks of the Communicator in the sign of hidden truth and what lives beneath the surface of what is spoken. Mercury entering Scorpio two days before Venus stations retrograde is the Communicator taking its place beside the Relational Alchemist at the gate of the underworld. They will descend together.
Friday, October 2: Mercury in Scorpio squares Mars in Leo and Pluto in Aquarius. Mars in Leo trines Neptune in Aries. 
All at 2 to 3 degrees of fixed signs, the pressure building to its concentration point. Mercury squaring both Mars and Pluto asks the truth-teller to find language for what lives at both the personal and collective level simultaneously.
Mars is the lower octave of Pluto, personal will and instinctual force at the immediate level, Pluto the transpersonal transformative power beneath it. When Mercury squares both, the shadow of dominator culture is concentrated in the fixed field — the rage, the violence, the aggression normalized across generations. Mercury in Scorpio names what others prefer to leave unnamed.
The elder's discernment matters here. There is a crucial difference between the destructive expression of shadow and its genuine alchemical transmutation. Rage metabolized through Plutonian awareness becomes fuel for genuine change. Rage vented without that awareness perpetuates the cycle it opposes.
Mars trine Neptune is the necessary counterpoint, creative fire finding easy flow with the imaginal field. Vision and genuine inspiration available alongside the shadow confrontation. Both are present today. Which one you feed matters.
Saturday, October 3: Venus stations retrograde at 8 degrees of Scorpio. Mars in Leo opposes Pluto in Aquarius.
The threshold day.
Mars opposing Pluto concentrates what Friday was building toward, the instinctual creative fire in direct confrontation with the Transformer at the collective level. Where genuine creative expression meets collective restructuring and must decide whether it serves the old dominator dynamic or the genuinely new.
And then Venus stations retrograde.
The Relational Alchemist pauses and turns inward. Everything Venus governs intensifies at the moment of the station — relationships, values, what we deem worthy of genuine care, what we are willing to acknowledge as the true cost of how we have been living and loving.
She does not descend because it is comfortable. She descends because genuine sovereignty requires facing what lives in the depths. What has been hidden. What the surface management of relationship has been protecting us from knowing about ourselves.
You might feel this as unusual heaviness or depth in the relational field. A sense that something is being asked that cannot be deferred any longer. Honor the threshold. Feel the weight of what is being crossed.
Sunday, October 4: Sun in Libra opposes Saturn in Aries. 
The day after the threshold, the reality principle arrives. Direct, unsentimental, honest about what is actually here. Saturn's gift at the opening of the Venus retrograde season is the honest assessment the interior journey requires, not the performed version of depth but the genuine ground from which real transformation becomes possible.
Larger Frame
The retrograde arc runs through November 14. Two more Venus-Pluto squares. Two more Venus-Chiron oppositions. Mercury joining the retrograde field October 24 through November 12. A sustained two-month season of relational alchemy, each contact bringing a different facet of what the Relational Alchemist is asking to be seen and transformed.
In the collective field, Venus retrograde in Scorpio asks what has been the true cost of how love, value, and resource have been organized under dominator culture. What genuinely needs to die in how the collective relates to the feminine, to the earth, to what is worthy of genuine care?
The descent serves the emergence. Trust that.
Reflection Questions
As Mercury in Scorpio squares Mars and Pluto, where is the truth-teller in you being asked to name what has been unsaid — and what is the difference between shadow's destructive expression and its genuine alchemical transmutation?
At Venus's retrograde station, what is present at the threshold that you have been deferring acknowledgment of — in your relational life, in what you value, in what you claim as worthy of genuine care?
As Sunday's Sun-Saturn opposition offers its honest assessment, what is the genuine ground from which you are entering this retrograde season?
Podcast poem: Trough by Judy Sorum Brown
Support the show
Go to Sheila's website for information for transformational resources: 
https://www.ontheedgesofchange.com

This episode was co-created with generative AI, engaged as a soul-aligned ally in service of transformation. At the edge where technology meets myth, I choose insight over noise, and alchemy over automation. Thank you for dreaming the future with me.

The Balance Point Before the Ignition
A brief note. These episodes are prerecorded during a wilderness retreat. I am not tracking current events in real time. Hold what I offer here alongside what you are actually living.
We are at the balance point. The autumn equinox arrives Tuesday, Mabon in the Celtic tradition, the second harvest, the moment of equal light and dark before the turning toward the inward season. And yet this week ignites.
By Sunday the planetary lineup in fire and air is complete. Sun and Mercury in Libra. Jupiter and Mars in Leo. Uranus in Gemini. Saturn, Chiron and Neptune in Aries. Pluto in Aquarius. Every planet and heavenly body except Venus in Scorpio (and the Moon in her changeable flow)  in fire or air simultaneously. The elemental grammar of the current civilizational moment fully expressed through the planetary field.
Key Cycles This Week:
Monday, September 21: Mercury in Libra sextiles Jupiter in Leo. 
A warm generous opening. Relational intelligence and creative meaning-making in easy flow. Conversations that open rather than close. A fitting note before the equinox threshold arrives.
Tuesday, September 22: Sun enters Libra. Autumn Equinox. Mabon. 
The second harvest. What has genuinely ripened through this extraordinary summer that is ready to be gathered and held with gratitude? Not the surface understanding but the deeper fruit, the shift in how you see yourself, your place in the larger web, what you are willing to claim as genuinely yours.
The equinox this year asks what genuine balance means in a time of civilizational imbalance. Not false equivalence. Not performed equanimity. The elder's balance — holding the full weight of what is difficult and what is beautiful simultaneously without collapsing into either. That is Libra's deepest gift for the coming month.
The Fire-Air Ignition — Chiron as the Shamanic One: 
Chiron in Aries completes this week's elemental ignition with a dimension the other planets cannot reach. Chiron is not only the Wounded Healer. Chiron is the Shamanic One — the one who has learned to move between worlds, between the visible and the invisible, between the human and the ancestral field. The shaman does not heal by fixing. They heal by shapeshifting, entering the invisible dimensions of what is wounded, metabolizing in the spirit dimensions what cannot be metabolized in the ordinary world alone. The wound was the initiation into the capacity to move between worlds.
Chiron in Aries freshly returned to complete its work carries that full shamanic dimension into the fire field. The broken places in the self being visited by the one who knows how to bring back what was lost. In a field blazing with fire and air, Chiron in Aries is the shamanic anchor, the reminder that genuine transformation is a crossing between worlds, not only a psychological process.
Saturday, September 26: Full Moon at 3 degrees of Aries conjunct Neptune, sextile Pluto, trine Uranus. 
The second time this summer a luminary has activated all three great transpersonal cycles simultaneously. This time at a culmination point in Aries conjunct Neptune, the initiatory impulse and the imaginal dissolution both illuminated at once. The new identity emerging and the old identity dissolving, both visible in the full light of the Moon.
The sextile to Pluto and trine to Uranus bring the full three-transpersonal cycle field into this illumination. The civilizational imagination being lit up at the most personal level available. Pay careful attention to what you see at this Full Moon around identity and vision, what is genuinely becoming as distinct from what has been performed or survived into existence.
Sunday, September 27: Mars in Cancer squares Chiron in Aries. Mars enters Leo. 
A farewell and an ignition on the same day. Mars in Cancer's final significant contact, a reckoning between what it has been carrying through the ancestral and protective field and the wound of identity Chiron in Aries is completing. A naming of what has been carried before the fire of Leo ignites.
Then Mars enters Leo, joining Jupiter. The Action-Taker and the Expander in the sign of the heart. The instinctual body crossing from tending what is vulnerable to expressing what is genuinely alive. With the North Node in Aquarius, Mars in Leo asks: what are you offering, and whom does it genuinely serve? Not the creative fire that burns for its own recognition but the fire that warms others and illuminates what needs to be seen.
Larger Frame
We cross the equinox balance point with fire in hand. The interior alchemy of autumn, Venus retrograde deepening and Mercury retrograde coming, will be navigated with a fully ignited fire-air field, a shamanic anchor in Chiron in Aries, and a Full Moon illuminating all three great cycles in the territory of new identity and new vision.
What are you carrying into the descent? 
What has been harvested that belongs to the journey ahead?
Reflection Questions
At the equinox, Mabon's second harvest, what has genuinely ripened in you through this extraordinary summer that is ready to be gathered with gratitude?
The Full Moon in Aries conjunct Neptune illuminates both the new identity emerging and the old dissolving simultaneously. What do you see in that double illumination?
As Mars crosses from Cancer's protective waters into Leo's creative fire, what has the instinctual body been tending that is now ready to be expressed in genuine service?
Podcast poem: For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in its Human Feet by Joy Harjo 
I'm offering you my do-it-yourself course Chiron: the Wisdom in the Wound. as a gift to you at no charge. You can explore the Chiron course on the Astrology page of my website: ontheedgesofchange.com/astrology. When you go to purchase the Chiron course, to get the course at no charge, use this coupon at checkout: CHIRON
Support the show
Go to Sheila's website for information for transformational resources: 
https://www.ontheedgesofchange.com

This episode was co-created with generative AI, engaged as a soul-aligned ally in service of transformation. At the edge where technology meets myth, I choose insight over noise, and alchemy over automation. Thank you for dreaming the future with me.

Fire and Air, Vision and Mind
A brief note. These episodes are prerecorded during a road trip and wilderness journey. I am not tracking current events in real time. Hold what I offer here alongside what you are actually living.
Two significant threads weave through this week, one vast and civilizational, one intimate and alchemical. And they are speaking the same language.
At the civilizational level, Neptune in Aries sextiles Pluto in Aquarius exactly, the second of eight contacts in a sub-series running mid-July 2026 through late February 2032. The elemental grammar of the current civilizational moment — fire and air, vision and mind, the imaginal and the collective intelligence — in living generative conversation.
At the intimate level, Venus in Scorpio squares Pluto for the first time in the current retrograde cycle, the Relational Alchemist in direct confrontation with the Transformer. The first of three such squares through December. The macro and the micro asking for the same essential movement: genuine transformation rather than the management of surfaces.
Key Cycles This Week:
Monday, September 14: Sun in Virgo sextiles Mars in Cancer. 
A grounding opening. Precise attention and embodied knowing in easy alignment. A reminder that vast civilizational movements and deep relational alchemy both need to be lived in the body, in the specific, in the actual texture of daily life. What needs your most devoted grounded feeling-based attention right now?
Tuesday, September 15: Venus in Scorpio squares Pluto in Aquarius. Neptune in Aries retrograde sextiles Pluto in Aquarius retrograde. 
Two major contacts holding the full arc of the week.
Venus square Pluto surfaces what has been hidden in the relational field with an intensity that cannot be managed or bypassed. Power dynamics. The places where love has become entangled with control. The relational patterns operating beneath conscious awareness. This is the first of three Venus-Pluto squares through mid-December. Today is initial confrontation, the hidden dynamic being made visible. In the collective field, the distorted relationship between love, value, and power is unusually visible. The first square names it. The retrograde cycle ahead asks for its genuine transformation.
Neptune in Aries sextiling Pluto in Aquarius is the specific window (2026 to 2032) when the elemental grammar of the civilizational moment is expressed directly in the relationship between the two outermost planets. Neptune in Aries dissolving old identity at the civilizational level. Pluto in Aquarius restructuring collective power at the root. Their sextile the generative conversation between vision and transformation. With both planets retrograde, this conversation is interior — working underground, in the cultural unconscious, in the slow metabolizing that precedes genuine new form. We are not observers of this moment. We are living cells within it.
Thursday, September 17: Chiron reenters Aries, remaining until mid-April 2027.
Chiron returns to finish what was not yet fully metabolized, the wounds of identity, agency, and the right to take up space. It does not return empty-handed. The Taurus awareness of scarcity and embodied worthiness travels with it, informing the deeper Aries review. What would it mean to act and assert from genuine embodied sufficiency rather than survival-level scarcity? This chapter is completing before the long Taurus work begins.
Friday, September 18: Mercury in Libra opposes Saturn in Aries. 
The desire for relational harmony in communication meets the honest reality of what the moment is actually asking to be said. Between the diplomatic and the direct. Between words that preserve comfort and words that serve genuine truth. What needs to be said clearly this week that you have been finding careful words around? Saturn in Aries will not accept the careful words indefinitely.
Larger Frame
The elemental grammar of the current civilizational moment is fire and air. Vision and mind. The imaginal and the collective intelligence in generative conversation across a six-year window.
Woven through that civilizational conversation, the Venus retrograde cycle asking the same essential questions at the personal level. What is genuinely worth keeping in how we love and value? What hidden dynamic in the relational field is ready to be named and alchemized?
The macro and the micro are speaking the same language this week. Transformation rather than management of surfaces. At every level.
Reflection Questions
As Venus squares Pluto for the first time, what hidden dynamic in your relational field around power, worth, or genuine value is being made visible in a way that cannot be unseen?
Neptune sextiling Pluto carries the elemental grammar of fire and air across a six-year civilizational window. Where in your own life are you being asked to bring genuine vision into service of genuine collective transformation?
As Chiron returns to Aries to complete its work, what wound around identity or the right to take up space is asking for its honest final chapter?
Podcast poem: A Warrior Has No Safety Net by Kristin George
The themes of this week, the capacity to navigate the edges of genuine civilizational change, are exactly what the Air elemental spiral holds in my ecosystem.
The Navigate the Edge taster workshop replay is available now as a free resource. It's an experiential introduction to the perspective, pattern recognition, and visionary edge-walking of the Air spiral.
You can find it at ontheedgesofchange.com/home  under the section called "Ways to Begin." 
Support the show
Go to Sheila's website for information for transformational resources: 
https://www.ontheedgesofchange.com

This episode was co-created with generative AI, engaged as a soul-aligned ally in service of transformation. At the edge where technology meets myth, I choose insight over noise, and alchemy over automation. Thank you for dreaming the future with me.