Published October 17, 2026 04:04AM
The week ahead takes you inward and underneath. Amid four seemingly separate transits this week, there are shared themes of desire, awareness, depth, empowerment, honesty, release, and liberation. As Venus retrograde meets both Pluto and the Sun, Scorpio season and Mercury retrograde begin, you encounter more of who you are beneath the surface and beyond the familiar. Your weekly horoscope for October 18-24, 2026, informs you where to focus your attention.
Your Weekly Horoscope, October 18-24, 2026, Preview
October 19 or 20 | Venus retrograde square Pluto
October 23 | Sun enters Scorpio; Venus cazimi
October 24 | Mercury retrograde begins
Venus Square Pluto
As Venus continues her retrograde through the waters of Scorpio, she comes into a square aspect with Pluto in Aquarius on October 19 or 20, 2026, depending on where you are in the world.
These two cosmic bodies have been dancing around one another since mid September and will continue to do so until early December. This particular aspect, though, asks for a careful review of emotional structures surrounding desire, love, connection, and freedom.
This is a chance to rewrite spaces where fears are holding more weight than inner truths, patterns that are no longer needed are still speaking over true desires, and protective emotional mechanisms are inhibiting belonging and connection within ourselves, our relationships, and community.
There is liberation wanting to take place within this dance. One where fitting in no longer requires anything but the true expression of who we are. One where emotional patterns created for protection can be looked at honestly and the underlying needs can be tended and held. And one where our inner strength and self-trust can be remembered enough to live truthfully with the desires that can be heard within us right now.
Scorpio Season
October 23, 2026, brings a new astrological season as the Sun enters Scorpio, where it will journey until November 22, 2026. Wherever the Sun goes, so do we. As we explore the realm of Scorpio, we also explore ourselves from its vantage, observing reality through its perspective.
A Pluto-ruled water sign, Scorpio invites us into the innermost layers of ourselves and life. Here we are moving with feeling, emotion, intuition, and sensing. We are looking underneath the surface and longing to reach the truth beneath all movement. We are invited into profound honesty and asked to reject narratives that once satisfied our needs yet are no longer enough.
Only what is real can live within the realm of Scorpio. This is a season of focus, clarity around what truly matters, and desire for what we actually want in life.
Venus Cazimi
As Venus travels through her retrograde in Scorpio, she moves from being visible only in the evening to being apparant in the morning. At the midpoint of this transition, Venus meets the Sun in a cazimi, or a tight conjunction with the Sun named after an Arabic term meaning “in the heart,” on October 23, 2026.
As Venus retrograde enters the heart of the Sun, it’s as if we are cleansed by the Sun. A cazimi is a day of insight and release and is the culmination of emotional patterns surrounding self-worth. As such, issues related to connection, relating, desire, and fear are brought into awareness. Here we are offered a chance to make a conscious decision. As Venus continues into this next chapter of her journey into evening star, will these patterns continue with her?
We can continue to choose the same patterns once we are aware of them. Or we can choose differently with honesty and a new kind of intimacy with ourselves.
Mercury Retrograde
We become even more ensconced in retrograde season when Mercury, also in the sign of Scorpio, joins five other planets in a backward spin on October 24, 2026.
Mercury retrograde in Scorpio moves us through the unconscious realms of our mind, beliefs, perspectives, and ideas. Here in the depths of our underworld, we observe the unseen realities of life and self. What lies beneath the words we speak? What unknowingly shapes the thoughts we have? What stories exist beneath the perspectives we hold?
Consciousness, awareness, focus, and curiosity draw us into our inner world, exploring what has perhaps gone unnoticed and is asking to be reviewed or wanting to be rewritten. Scorpio knows awareness is power. With awareness comes space for conscious decisions as to what shapes our inner and outer reality. What patterns and perspectives are we giving permission to define us? Mercury retrograde lasts until November 13, 2026.
Your Weekly Horoscope, October 18-24, 2026
Entire worlds exist within each of us. Layers we know well. Realms we have yet to meet. The days ahead walk us through these worlds, opening doors and revealing more of us. It is a week that asks for honesty and reminds us that there is no part of us we need to hide from.
Scorpio enhances our capacity for depth, awareness, and heightened emotions. Who are you, beneath the layers you have come to know, express, and live with comfort? What layers of you have been longing to be a part of this? A part of you? Are there any doors within not yet opened that have been knocking, calling, asking to be seen with honesty? Journaling, movement that brings you inward, and conversations where it’s safe for anything to rise support your inner revelation. Read for your rising sign.
Explore the effects of the Moon, learn what your opposite sign means, and understand how astrology intersects with your everyday life through our astrology email newsletter.
Aries Rising
It’s an emotionally driven week that draws you into your underworld. Patterns put in place to protect your heart are ready for review and your desires ask for your honesty. Beneath the parts of you that are more familiar, what’s asking to be liberated? What old ideas of connection require release?
Taurus Rising
What was designed to keep your heart safe might be constricting it. This week is a mirror for the parts of you ready for truthful, honest, and meaningful connection. What spaces are asking you to step forward with courage?
Gemini Rising
The aspects in the days ahead bring you inward, into the knowing of your body and the way you interact with your life. As you look at the ways you think and live, consider what is harming you, even if subtly? What unhelpful beliefs of who you are, and what you deserve, shape the way you talk to yourself and move through your days?
Cancer Rising
This week brings voice to the layers of yourself that have been hidden, shamed, and cast beneath the surface. What has been unable to be expressed, lived, and celebrated? The message being shared is that all of you deserves to be lived and loved. Consider how much of your shame was never truly yours? What messaging and patterning keeps you hidden?
Leo Rising
It’s a time that wants you to experience the realm of belonging. You are safe to review and release old patterns and fears from your formative years. Watch how that allows you to better meet your current needs.
Virgo Rising
This week is walking you through the world of your mind, awareness, and thoughts from an alternate vantage. It’s your space to review perspectives and narratives—conscious and unconscious—that have been shaping your existence. Remain open to psychological insights, conscious decisions, and empowerment through awareness.
Libra Rising
Beyond your mind, what is your experience of safety? Of belonging and worthiness? This week invites you to explore wherever fear lives in your fascia and patterns shape your nervous system. You are ready to meet intimacy, love, belonging, embodiment, and safety in an entirely new way.
Scorpio Rising
We are in your realm and your depths. Emotional patterns surrounding expectation and identity, the direction of your life, and whatever was placed around you for protection are all speaking to you. What are they telling you? What are you ready to see?
Sagittarius Rising
There is movement from beneath the surface of conscious awareness. It’s as if your unconscious body and vaster aspects of you are transforming, releasing, reviewing, and rearranging. Not everything is quite ready to be seen yet, but it can perhaps be felt. They ask for surrender and trust. Quiet and solitude can help.
Capricorn Rising
It’s a week that speaks to any patterns of protection and fear surrounding your sense of belonging. Where has connection asked you to abandon parts of yourself? Where gas fitting in been understood as being something other than you? Autonomy and connection can co-exist. This week walks you there.
Aquarius Rising
Purpose, direction, meaning, and inner trust. This week invites you to review where your life is moving. It is a space to explore outside expectations or projections that have shaped your life. It is a chance to take back self-authority as the author of your life.
Pisces Rising
Your mind is moving through old perspectives and revealing undiscovered truths underneath. Inherited narratives and voices thought to be your own are slowly unravelling and inviting patience as you explore your own cosmologies, desires, questions, and beliefs. What does belonging feel like? What is the conversation you are having with your existence?