Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge,
And now I cloy me with beholding it.

Queen Margaret in Shakespeare’s Richard 3 (4.4.61-2)

New Moon in Libra, October 6, 2021, around 7 AM. Mercury currently retrograde, Mars, Moon, and Sun, all in Libra. What that might mean?

Libra

Revenge? I learned from a Scorpio, the best at revenge. Revenge is best served cold, with a side of “I told you so,” and “See? I was right!” Spike the ball in the end zone? I’m not sure if that metaphor still applies, but yeah, victory dance? Victory lap? Here’s the other part of that trick, as learned from the Scorpio: wait for it. Happy Libra birthday, yes, Mercury is retrograde in Libra, and other astrological portents. Now, moving ahead? Revenge? Revenge is best served really cold, with a simple follow-up, “How’s that working for you now?” In order to insure that the dish is cold? Wait for it. Now? With Mr. Mercury doing his thing? Might not be the time to take action, dear Libra.

Scorpio

It’s been suggested, can’t say that I find fault with the reasoning and logic, but it was a Scorpio buddy who sent me the annotation. “Nobody can carry grudge like a Scorpio. Maybe the dead do, but a Scorpio is almost the same.”

“The only ones who can match a Scorpio grudge are the dead. Even then, it’s an even toss-up as to who carries it longer.” Now look: sometimes? A grudge is fuel to get to a goal. That grudge, that perceived hurt can serve as motivation. But sometimes, nursing an old hurt just taps into a deeper well of pain, angst, and bad poetry. With Mars, Mercury, and so forth? You can enjoy the notion of revenge for a single 24-hour period during the next 7 days. After that? Must move on.

Sagittarius

There are bad Mercury Retrogrades, and there are OK synodic mercurial periods. Sometimes, it feels like one isn’t as rough as another. I have this one little friend, and each time Mr. Mercury goes Retrograde? She tells me how this is the worst one, ever! This is the thick of it, even now. And there’s some inherent symbolism that can’t be avoided. It’s about digging deep into the Sagittarius psyche, and finally hugging at least one of the demons. Didn’t say we have to make peace with them all, but at least one needs to be befriended by our Sagittarius selves. Plan on making peace with one demon from our past. Doesn’t have to be a big deal, sometimes time, distance, and relative misfortune helps us put some of the past into a better place. It’s matter of Sagittarius perspective, and taking that long, over-view look at what was happening, what is happening, and which demons we might want to hug. Or maybe just one. Or maybe, just make some peace with a single element from our past. Crap crops up? Put it in that special place.

“Oh yeah, well, sorry about that.”

Doesn’t have to be difficult.

Capricorn

Where I’ve lived, now for a while, I have a jungle-like backyard. It didn’t get this way from careful tending. No, it got this way from careful neglect. Benign avoidance of work. No maintenance. The opposite of working hard? Hardly working? Or no work whatsoever? That’s the secret. Ignore it. The results are amazing, as there’s no lawn to mow, no plants to water, and not much energy is required to keep it all-natural. I just let it go. The bonus, as a side-benefit, really, is that birds love the place. I don’t put out birdseed. I don’t do anything to feed the birds; it’s nature doing her own thing. The lack of any other kind of pest control, other than the raccoon issue, the lack of any chemicals, pesticides, or other potentially damaging elements means it’s safe for those birds. I don’t even have a hummingbird feeder, yet the flowers, a firecracker bush I couldn’t kill, the little Gemini-like birds swoop and feed in the summer. Here’s the secret to my success, and what I want Capricorn to embrace as a secret to successfully negotiating the weeks ahead: benign neglect. Avoidance. Don’t do anything, especially not now. Let Nature take Her course. Stay out of the way. If you interfere? Might not work out as well.

“Do nothing and avoid conflict.”

Aquarius

One old bass trick, I never did get because it makes zero sense to me, but this one trick? When the water is “stained,” like muddy water, or water that’s been stirred up by rain, weather, or traffic? The muddy water requires a dark color bait. In my rational mind, most Aquarius are rational thinkers, I would think a bait with light colors, bright and flashy, maybe sparkles, that would be the best — most likely to succeed in catching fish. There’s a decades old image of me with a big bass, along the shore of the old trailer park, and the bait was clearly a “glow in the dark worm.” That one fish went against the odds, as it was summer, and the torpid lake’s water was muddy, filmed over with a thin patina of algae. That image is decades old. Every other image of me with fish, in that condition? Dark bait. There’s a black, not really plastic, but not-not plastic, biodegradable, environmentally friendly kind of bait that comes in a number of popular colors. A straight black bait works best when things are so murky.

You would think, I still do, that a brightly colored bait would work best when everything is so muddied. Murky waters with low-to-no visibility? Aquarius conditions that are like muddied waters?

What works best might be counterintuitive, but results count. Stealth, a little wiggle action, perhaps the scent that bass crave? Something like that works better than being all flashy and gaudy. Old bass fishing trick, but if it works?

Pisces

While I normally suggest that this is a time fraught with peril and danger, due to the ongoing mercurial crisis, there’s a fine sense that something might be different in Pisces, which, I suspect, is the case. Yes, usual Mercury is Retrograde caveats apply, but there’s a point of clarity, a point where, in your own mind, in the heart of the Pisces hearts, in a private moment? There’s a special kind of clarity wherein the pathway to destiny is right there, in front of you, clear, and easy to reach. Cleanly laid out, anyway, maybe not “easy,” but that term can misinterpreted a number of ways. There’s a pathway to progress, a route out of the sticks and into the Pisces future, a good way, but no one else can see it at this time. Keep that moment of clarity to yourself, just for now — consider it a gift of the Mercury in Reotrgrade.

Aries

One of the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn? How not to exacerbate a given set of conditions. Say, there’s a small problem. If I leave it alone, that small problem will eventually rectify itself, and the situation, or situations will be fixed. All better, in time. Leave it alone, and it gets better. Time is on my side. or, for Aries? Time is on your side. The absolutely hardest, most difficult piece of information?

“Leave it alone.”

No amount of fiddling, trying to fix, attending to, working on, or any other expression, no amount of Aries interference is going to help this situation. One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn? I am gratefully passing this on to you, but pay close attention, “Leave it alone.” It’s easy to see that any Aries assitance at this time, any push, pull, pushback, jerking the chain, anything at all? Just makes this worse, not better. Leave it alone, just for now.

Taurus

This is not a new observation, and says more about me, than it does about the current conditions in Taurus. The expression was, “Think outside the box.”

“Kramer? Do you even know where the box is?”

Therein is my own problem, I’ve been so far outside of whatever “normal” is that I wouldn’t recognize “normal” if it bit me in the butt.

“Ouch! Do I know you?”

Three items to consider, Venus, about to leave Scorpio, opposite from Taurus, Uranus, backwards in Taurus, and that recurrent Mercury theme (retrograde noise). In the last few days, an unusual, different, or just plain weird solution to an old problem has cropped up. Popped up? Presented itself? One of those, and that solution works, but it a different from what you’re fine Taurus self is used to. Give it a try, take it for a spin, put it on, and see what fits. Might be a solution. Might not, but you won’t know if you don’t try. “I just didn’t see that coming!” Like I said, “Outside of the box.”

“Did you see that box Kramer was talking about?”

Gemini

There’s a begrudging respect one has to have for this guy: his ex-wife manages his dating app profile. I kind of get it, on a purely rational level, she knows him better than he knows himself, she will, or won’t, lie about his foibles, strengths, and weird friends, like me, and she claims it is to protect her kids. She wants to make sure he doesn’t get hooked up with any kind of serial-killer-psycho-stalker-guano-loco woman. The downside? Yeah, not all the women are near as pretty as his ex-wife. The upside? He had an active social life as soon as the ink was dry on the divorce; she saw to that. I always encourage — especially women — to get a referral from an ex, just so one knows what the future might hold. In that way, letting his ex-wife manage his dating app profile, almost seems smart. I think it cedes too much control in one’s own life to an ex, but that might be me. As a Gemini, just how much control over your own life do you want to give away, now that Mr. Mercury, well, you know the rest.

Cancer

At one point, I was appointed the coffee guy for coastal fishing trips. “Kramer knows coffee, so he has to bring the good stuff.” One fishing buddy from Louisiana brings crawfish boil (use it with bait shrimp in the evenings). Another provides the boat. One buddy packs a case of beer or more. We all have various roles we fulfill. I bring coffee for the those “oh dark thirty” roll-outs. Most the fishing camps don’t have a coffee grinder, so all I do, last big grocery store before the hinterlands? I’ll pick up some light roast, and some dark roast. I found, it’s an old, old trick, but the combination of the two? Light and dark roast? The dark has the aroma, the flavor, the essence of coffee, but it appears to be “too strong” for some of my buddies. The lighter roast mitigates that sense. Old trick from the days long gone, but the trick works. Half French Roast, half “Summer Blend,” or whatever is a light roast. Made a reputation for myself like this. What this means for Cancer, the ubiquitous Moon Children? Half light, half dark, half good, half bad, combine a couple of extreme items to arrive at a happy middle point. No one has to know it’s a silly trick, like I used to do with coffee. Or crawfish boil and bait shrimp.

Leo

A few years back there was a science paper about how our own Solar System might contain a tiny Black Hole. Like, you know, no bigger than a breadbox. How big is breadbox, anyway? The suggestion was a number of scientific anomalies could easily be explained if there was just teeny-tiny Black Hole out past Jupiter. Not so large as to eat the whole Solar System, just big enough to bend some local time, and add an unseemly curve to the fabric of the space-time continuum, like, right around the neighborhood of that Black Hole. The article scrolled off the feeds, and I never saw it again, nor was there much reference afterwards. Means there might not really be a black hole in our neighborhood, or maybe, it got eaten up by more pressing news. I thought it was a peer-reviewed piece, but most astrophysicists think very little my trade, save for a few I know, and that’s where hard science, fuzzy mathematics, sub-atomic theories, and mystical crap all start to look the same. Fact: Mercury is in apparent retrograde motion. The rest is subject to interpretation, but I’d suggest a local Black Hole ate the current data.

Virgo

The astrological portents, the way the stars line up? Seriously, these aren’t stars, they are planets, much more profound impact on personal lives, and anyway? The line up? Or misaligned planets? There’s a period of long-term, Virgo-centric, mind games along the with the negative thought pattern, “If only I had done this instead of that…” Regrets? Regrets most profound, and they all tend to skew into the realm of myth and hypothesis, and most of these were highly improbable. Besides, at the time, you didn’t do that, or you did make that decision, and then, it all turned out so much different. The mental processes running at the moment are doing their dead level best to dredge up every mistaken step along the way for Virgo. Mostly this is a function of that Mercury thing, you know, Retrograde Mercury. But until the very end of this horoscope? Imagine that trigger point just after the New Moon? Until we get there? There’s a reason that old, haunting memories come back up, and learning to deal with them, in an appropriate manner? That’s the goal for the next few days.