Last week what was already cracked came down. On Saturday Venus passed in front of the Sun and dropped out of sight, and that same morning Mercury stood still and began to move backwards. On Sunday Venus slipped back into the sign of the scales, and in Europe the clocks went back an hour. This week nothing falls. What changes is the light: after the fall comes the night when you have to walk without seeing the road clearly.

Before dawn on Monday the Moon comes full in Taurus, the sign where she is most at ease, facing the Sun in Scorpio. On the same Monday the Sun meets the slowest and most distant planet of all at a tense angle, and what last week brought into view will not be covered up again. From then on the Moon wanes. Each night she rises later and with less light, and by Sunday night she is only half. The whole week is a descent from full light to half light.

Mercury keeps moving backwards through Scorpio, faster every day, and on Wednesday he enters the Sun’s glare and can no longer be seen. Mercury is the planet of roads and messages, the one who shows the way, and this week he is hidden. On Friday, still inside the Sun’s light, he meets Mars at a tense angle; Mars stands in Leo beside Jupiter and draws closer to him every day. It is the day when a word spoken in the dark most easily turns into a quarrel, and a suspicion most easily looks like a certainty. Whatever you hear on Friday deserves a second hearing on Saturday, calmly. This retreat of Mercury has a piece of its own, with every date along the way.

Venus, also moving backwards, keeps retreating through the sign of the scales, which is her own home, and she is still buried in the Sun’s light. She is no longer the evening star and not yet the morning star. Only early next week does she begin to leave the glare, and in the days after she shows herself again low in the east before daybreak. At this turn from October to November, in many places, it is the time to remember the dead and to light a candle for them. It is the oldest night of the year for being afraid of the dark, and this week the sky has little light to give: the Moon waning, Mercury hidden, Venus not yet risen.

There are nights when the road can be seen only a few steps ahead, and the rest is mist. On those nights there is no use running, nor standing still to wait for day. What helps is walking slowly, feeling the ground before each step, like someone who knows the way with the body before knowing it with the eyes. At night the imagination works harder: a stump looks like an animal, a snapping twig sounds like a footstep, and almost always it is nothing. It has a shadow, and the shadow has two faces. One is the fear that sees enemies in every shadow, and on Friday it can turn a misheard sentence into a war. The other is looking into the water and believing the moon is right there, within reach, and trusting the lovely reflection because it is less work than making the crossing. One runs from what is not there, the other runs after it.

On the world’s stage the same pattern appears. There is a great vote decided by a hair, and the side that lost says the count is not true and asks for all of it to be thrown out. There are streets in many cities full of young people angry at the cost of living and of having a home, and in one of them soldiers are sent to guard the squares. There is an attack said not to be coming now, without anyone saying it is not coming, while messengers go back and forth between the two shores. There are missiles fired across a border, and an airport that closes and opens again the next day. These days almost everything is seen in dim light, and each of us sees in the shadows what we already carried inside. None of this compels anyone to anything, because the stars incline, they do not compel. So here is the question of the week: when the road can be seen only a few steps ahead, what am I taking for the truth just because I am afraid, or just because it is beautiful?