31 OCTOBER 2025
HALLOWEEN & FULL MOON
Happy Halloween! This is also the Celtic festival of Samhain, first celebrated over 2,000 years ago. This festival marks the end of the harvest and the start of winter, thus it’s the Celtic New Year.
Halloween is All Hallows Eve, followed by All Hallows Day 1 November and All Souls Day 2 November. This is the time of year when it’s said that the veil between our earthly world and the spirit world is at its thinnest, so spirits can communicate and briefly cross over into the world of the living. Our emotions are with those who have passed.
It’s no coincidence that this festival falls in the Scorpio time of year – the witchy sign of life/death/rebirth, magic, mystery and power. We’ll have the New Moon in this sign in a couple of weeks’ time (Sun & Moon in same sign) and the Full Moon this coming week (Sun & Moon in opposite signs) –
- 5 November Full Moon 13 Taurus
- 20 November New Moon 28 Scorpio
We have a special relationship with the Moon even if we don’t consciously realise it. We can’t look at the Sun but we can gaze at the Moon, watch her changing shape every night and feel and see the beauty of the Full Moon. Here in Nidri the Full Moon rises above the mountains on the mainland as seen from the beach and the moonlight on the sea is one of my favourite moments in the month.
For Halloween, how many of us as children can remember drawing pictures of witches on broomsticks flying across the night sky, against the backdrop of a huge Full Moon? We learn from the very beginning that Full Moons are also loaded with the symbolism of magic and witches, so today and this weekend be your own witch. Do visualisations, do spells, tap into anything other worldly and follow your deepest instincts.
This week’s Full Moon urges us to delve a bit deeper into the mysteries of life (Scorpio) while defining what “security” really means for us and where our “attachments” (Taurus) may be holding us back from living a fuller and richer life. How does the balance feel in your own life?
- Taurus – the material world, safety and security, sustenance and the senses – enjoying what we can see, touch, taste, feel and hear
- Scorpio – the invisible world, risk taking, deep and primeval instincts, connecting with the magical and spiritual, learning that there’s more to life than the obvious
Yesterday I got the phone call from the police station to say that my 10 year resident’s permit card was ready for collection. So that was a special moment of earthy security as, quite simply, it means that I have no risk of being deported. That might sound a bit dramatic but when you don’t live in your country of origin, and then something like Brexit happens and expat officialdom goes crazy, it makes you nervous.
You suddenly realise that the home (Moon) you’ve been taking for granted for years is only happening because the powers that be say it can. There’s a lot of insecurity around me as fellow expats face the daunting task of reapplying as the five year permits that so many of us got in the spring of 2021 are not renewable. You have to start again to get the ten year permit and the requirements are extensive.
Having my permit (Taurus) means that I can now get on with my witchy work (Scorpio) for the next ten years, if I make it that far!
My heart-breaking news is that my special rescue cat Barty, the biggest personality of all of the cats, is terminally ill. I took an emergency vet appointment yesterday when the penny dropped that he really wasn’t eating properly and starting to lose weight. Worse fears confirmed with the blood tests, chronic anemia and kidney failure. He’s home, on meds, and it’s a case of monitoring him closely.
This Full Moon in Taurus (fixed earth) I’ll have to ask the gardener to dig (yet another) resting place in the garden. Barty will join the many others under the olive tree at the back of the garden. Devastated.
Where will this Full Moon fall in your own chart? Find 13 degrees of Taurus and this will tell you which Houses are being picked out.
13 Taurus falls in my 6th House of health and small animals, and therefore opposite my 12th House which is where we locate confinement for health reasons and rescue work. So I’m also fund raising this month to keep body (Taurus) and soul (Scorpio) together as I handle huge bills for the daily feeding costs of about 35 cats, the vets bills – Barty being the latest, yesterday alone was 200 and ongoing – plus the remaining three female cats in the colony who are booked in for sterilising, which is 100 per cat plus the cost of paying the professional trapper.
You’ll find my PayPal address at the end of this newsletter for anything you’d like to contribute, trust me I can do a lot of loaves and fishes with every Euro!
SUMMER SCHOOL 2026
When you follow horoscopes you’ll find that those born on a Full Moon – in any sign – are often very witchy. That includes my colleague Elisabeth Brooke who was born at the exact moment of the Aries Sun opposite Moon Libra, author of many books including A Woman’s Book of Shadows in which she explores witchcraft and the magical practices of contemporary women.
Elisabeth will be returning for next year’s Greek Island Summer School for a magical week of Your Horoscope: Unlock the Astrology of Body, Mind & Spirit, which culminates on the Taurus New Moon.
Read the full course description here, along with the FAQs about Lefkada, how to get here and how the week is set up –
https://elisabethbrooke.com/courses-and-workshops/
The four courses on offer for next year are as follows and we’re already taking bookings, 10 places on each week as usual.
Just reply to this newsletter if you’d like to put your name down, especially for Sally’s beginners week which is already nearly full:
- 11 May – Your Horoscope: Unlock the Astrology of Mind, Body & Spirit – with Elisabeth Brooke
- 3 June – How to Understand Any Horoscope – with me, Intermediate, not suitable for beginners
- 2 September – Tarot, Cards on the Table – with me, suitable for all levels
- 16 September – Discovering Astrology – with Sally Kirkman, for beginners/refreshers
BERNIE SIEGEL
https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Bernie_Siegel
Author of many books and now 93, Bernie Siegel writes on the relationship between the patient and the healing process. He’s especially known for his best-selling book Love, Medicine and Miracles. He’s a Libran born on a Full Moon, so Moon in Aries who is in turn exactly conjunct innovative and new age Uranus.
He also has Venus conjunct Neptune, less than a degree apart in Virgo (health) in the 9th House (the higher mind). There’s the mystical thread, the knowing that physical health is so much more than a white coat profession.
I always say the same about astrology, you can gather all your information about a horoscope and pick it apart at a technical level, but there’s always something magical going on when you start to convert all that info into meaning. My Summer School course next June will be covering all of this.
On my shelves I have a copy of another Bernie Siegel title, Peace, Love and Healing in which he writes about how he closes his workshops with an exercise in which he’d ask his participants to write down all the things they’d want to do if they’d just been told they had six weeks left to live. Having then gone through their lists he would ask, “So why are you waiting until you’ve only got six weeks left?”
Great question to ponder on this Halloween.
NEXT WEEK’S BLOG
It’s not just the Full Moon that’s picking out the coming week as an important one. Here’s the lowdown on the daily activity, that I’ll be writing about in the blog, about 3k words and always mailed out on Monday afternoons.
From the list below we can see wrapped around the Full Moon that we have Venus and Mars the love planets both changing sign and coming together by minor aspect over next weekend, Uranus also changing sign by sliding back into Taurus and, just for good measure, Mercury turning retrograde in the early degrees of Sagittarius. Fasten your seatbelt –
Monday 3 November
- Venus 25 Libra quincunx Saturn 25 Pisces 11.58
Tuesday 4 November
- Mars 29 Scorpio trine Neptune 29 Pisces 04.01
- Mars ingress Sagittarius 13.02
- Mars 0 Sagittarius opposite Uranus 0 Gemini 17.31
Wednesday 5 November
- Full Moon 13 Taurus 13.20
Thursday 6 November
- Mars 1 Sagittarius sextile Pluto 1 Aquarius 15.07
- Venus 29 Libra quincunx Neptune 29 Pisces 16.38
- Venus ingress Scorpio 22.41
- Venus 0 Scorpio quincunx Uranus 0 Gemini 23.32
Saturday 8 November
- Uranus returns to Taurus 02.09
- Venus 1 Scorpio square Pluto 1 Aquarius 03.42
Sunday 9 November
- Mercury turns retrograde 06 Sagittarius 19.03
Monday 10 November
- Venus 4 Scorpio semi-sextile Mars 4 Sagittarius 04.21
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With thanks, Joanna
