ASTRO-ARCHETYPE OF THE WEEK // THE ICONOCLAST

August 23 - 29, 2026

Item [1]:

During the English Reformation, churches dealt with their painted saints one of two ways. Some were attacked directly — this panel has knife marks scratched deliberately across its surface, turning an ordinary devotional image into evidence. Others were handled more gently: churches limewashed over their wall paintings instead of destroying them. Centuries later, when restorers began stripping the old whitewash back, some of those covered saints were still there underneath, undamaged, exactly as they'd been painted.

Item [2]:

"Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."

— Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

Item [3]:

"The Realized One doesn't have the closed fist of a teacher when it comes to the teachings."

— The Buddha, Maha-parinibbana Sutta (Digha Nikaya 16)

An icon is a face built to be knelt before. The iconoclast doesn't break the face, they don't become a replacement icon. But they do break the kneeling. Don't make an icon of the one who taught you. Don't ask to be followed instead of understood. Follow where the iconography points.

This week: Sun conjunct Mercury in Virgo (cazimi), Sun square Uranus, Mercury square Uranus, Lunar eclipse in Pisces, Sun trine Chiron, Jupiter trine Saturn (fire signs), Venus opposite Saturn

When in light: sees clearly and says so plainly, and hands the room back to itself instead of collecting its devotion.

When in shadow: mistakes being followed for being right, and starts needing the audience more than the truth.

(Further afield: Dead Poets Society and Mona Lisa Smile tell the brighter, more heroic cut of this same archetype — worth a rewatch if any of this is landing.)

​Uncover something -->​

XOXO,

KPK

astrologer, book doula, artist