Watch out for what you’re not watching out for

About two hours after today’s New Moon / total solar eclipse in Scorpio (which is around 5:08 pm EDT), Mercury in Sagittarius makes its second of three exact squares to Neptune in Pisces during its current retrograde process. Eric has covered the eclipse in great detail in yesterday’s Daily Astrology and separate Planet Waves FM broadcast, but Mercury-Neptune could use a little more attention — partly due to Mercury’s trickster tendencies while retrograde, and partly due to Neptune’s proclivity for denial and obfuscation. The message: watch out for what you’re not watching out for.

Simplified chart section showing retrograde Mercury (green glyph with horns) in Sagittarius square Neptune (blue trident) in Pisces. Also shown are the Sun and Moon in Scorpio, just past their conjunction and solar eclipse, and the North Node (orange horseshoe), also in Scorpio. The north and south lunar nodes indicate where eclipses will be happening.

It’s a classic-style riddle, nearly worthy of the sphinx. How can you watch out for what you’re not watching out for? Step one is to slow down enough that you can see and feel where the gaps are in your observations and awareness. In any situation where you’re on autopilot — especially where the emotional/sexual stakes may be high, or where you’re feeling tension — it might help to make a list of all the things you know, and another of all the things you know you don’t know.

In checking the two lists against each other, see if anything pops up as missing — or if anything gives you that slightly queasy feeling that can signal you’re brushing up against denial.

Retrograde Mercury square Neptune is classic denial astrology. Sex may be one of the primary things we tend to lapse into denial about, whether it’s denial of our own desires; denial of what our partner really wants (or what they may really be doing when we’re not around — and vice versa); or denial of the consequences of our actions (emotionally, socially, health-wise).

With this square happening concurrent with a New Moon / solar eclipse in Scorpio, those layers of emotional and sexual denial (and perhaps financial — are we really honest about the role money plays in our sexual exchanges?) are getting ripe for exploration. We haven’t had any solar eclipses in Scorpio since 1995, so these trees are extra laden with low-hanging fruit.

We’re already seeing Mercury-Neptune in the news: CIA director David Petraeus has just resigned amidst an FBI investigation to see whether his extra-marital affair with his official biographer, Paula Broadwell, put any classified security information in jeopardy; that does not seem to be the case in this instance.

Does anyone else find it amusing/curious that this news coincided with the release of the latest James Bond flick, Skyfall, in the U.S. this weekend? These things are never quite as slick and glamorous as they are in the movies, and affairs have been common since time immemorial, yet they’re still news. And most of the time, we still don’t see them coming in our own little non-Hollywood lives. But is that true? Are we really as in the dark as we tell ourselves we are?

Consider another bit of news with Scorpionic leanings. It was announced today that Brandon Lacy Campos, the openly queer and HIV-positive activist, artist, writer and poet, has died at the age of 35, cause of death unknown at this time. In a speech earlier this year at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Conference at Hampshire College, he said,

“Let me be clear: HIV isn’t over. It’s relevant to your work. It’s relevant to your lives. It is not just a disease that affects white gay men. It isn’t a disease that impacts only men of color on the down-low. In fact, it isn’t a disease that impacts only men. Women, and specifically women of color, and even more specifically African-American and Latina women, are the fastest-growing population of people living with HIV. And with 300,000 women living with HIV in the United States and women representing more than 50 percent of HIV cases around the world, you cannot in justice or in faith remove issues of HIV from reproductive justice.”

I do not include this quote to suggest that we all need to be paranoid about HIV the way we were in the early and mid 1990s — right around when the last Scorpio solar eclipses occurred. I mention it as an illustration of one of the many things we’re in denial about culturally that’s related to sex, and specifically to women’s sexual health. It’s one of the things most of us are not watching for — but I use it here as metaphor rather than as an explicit health warning.

I don’t think the message of Mercury-Neptune is to give in to paranoia. It’s not that we need to suspect the worst in our own motives and the motives and actions of others. Rather, it’s about staying sharp enough in our awareness and loose enough emotionally to recognize whatever presents itself for what it is, and to work honestly with it.

19 thoughts on “Watch out for what you’re not watching out for”

  1. Lunesoleil, that video is so sweet and poetic! I took the music out and watched only the images. With silence it’s even more poetic.
    Years ago with a friend we wrote and played a play that we called ‘Zoe or the moon in the oven’. It was about a woman (Zoe) who kidnapped the moon and brought her to her house – and all the consequences. it was also a pretext to tell stories and myths about the Moon. This video reminded me the fascination we had for the Big White one.
    Thank you!

  2. Amanda: Please don’t let one small error spoil your achievement. Heck, i missed it. It really is a beautiful piece, it is ennobling of astrology and well written.

  3. ugh:

    correction to an earlier comment of mine: Arachne is not actually in this eclipse pattern. Arachne is in early Scorpio, not late Scorpio. Eric had said it was opposite the eclipse yesterday, which would put it in late Taurus — but that was an error that a reader just caught.

    as Len noted, Sphinx is the object in late taurus, opposite the eclipse.

  4. ” Invert Everything… Between now and the Solstice, start playing the Opposite Game…”

    Misti, that’s interesting you should bring this up, thank you for sharing the insight. when, just this morning I was led to drive to work in a different route. While thinking and feeling in the movement at ease with -isn’ it good to go a different way.

    Amanda thank you too, your helpful words connects for me regarding our current climate and the imminent opportunity.

    “..it’s about staying sharp enough in our awareness and loose enough emotionally to recognize whatever presents itself for what it is, and to work honestly with it.

  5. mysti — thanks for the additional thoughts — helpful.

    len — thanks for the reminder — also helpful.

  6. mystes: Please accept my thanks as well for your “opposite game” suggestion, the timing is good. Once again you reveal just how deeply connected and perceptive you are.

    As regards to the speculation about a coup, please allow me to suggest in turn that we heed Amanda’s suggestion today and each make a list of what we know and what we don’t know. After all, it was apparently unfounded speculation that apparently led Ms. Broadwell to go over the top and initiate the hostile correspondence that brought on so much trouble for her. In the interest of full disclosure, i must admit that current and recent transits of Mars have aroused my concern regarding martial subjects. To date, however, that concern has remained in the realm of speculation. At times like now, it’s better if speculation is not given the same status as what we know.

  7. Yeah, Amanda, but I want to clarify: the thing about the ‘bardo’ or between is that it arises spontaneously as we focus on the thing-we-are-not(doing)-now. As a speaking-being-in-time you can’t really go and stay there. We are composed of a series of systoles and diastoles. Yes, you *can* visit the Between in meditative practice, or in the first moments after an orgasm, or immediately after a sneeze (seriously). But that gap is *fleeting* – and you must NOT try to hang on to it. Otherwise it gets glued to one side or another of the duality in which we are embedded.

    The bigger idea was to have it hanging around – because that is what consciously embracing the unfamiliar invokes. Hanging around like a friendly ghost.

    Capiche?

    BIG hugs,

    M

  8. as for the petraeus situation… eric did just remind me that arachne is right in the mix: it’s all a nice, sticky webby-web. i hadn’t heard the coup idea yet, but eric was suspecting holder might have been holding the case close to the vest to be sure romney did not launch to a surprise last-minute lead.

    oh, what tangled webs we weave, indeed.

  9. mysti — thanks for the heads-up on “the opposite game!” i have been feeling hints/nudges of switching my position on one personal facet lately; of course, this entails moving closer to an older belief/stance. but (again, of course) it’s not quite the same, because i am not quite the same as i was years ago.

    eek — so which way equals “opposite” now? i guess opposite is in contrast to the most recent stance….

    oh yeah….. checking out the “between” is the goal. 🙂 hhmmmm…..

  10. Has anyone else heard that the Petraeus mess is a cover-up for an attempted coup? I have heard this from several sources (some more credible than others) and if you watch these pieces fly into the media with that lens, it becomes more plausible. I am too little of an astrologer to track that notion in the charts, but someone else might see a thread to pull.

    Well, here’s one: In mythology, Phaeton lost control of Zeus’s (his father’s) horses of the Sun (military movement) and his recklessness burned the skin of Ethiopians black. Black president, burnt skin, loss of control over major power. Hmmm…
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  11. Amanda! this question of ‘auto-pilot’ and the potential jolt of Nep/Merc… it dovetails nicely with the waking-message I got yesterday morning. Which boiled down to this: Invert Everything… Between now and the Solstice, start playing the Opposite Game, walk where you usually drive, sing where you [usually] whisper, shower where you bathe, nudge where you [usually] shove… I was given to understand that there is no point in trying to ‘moralize’ behavior right now, the only “good” is in the transition from tendency to the unfamiliar.

    You get the picture. And when the ‘new’ starts to feel even faintly routine, switch it again. The idea is not to simply unsettle our habituated minds, but to get our behaviors to stay somewhere near the ‘between’ – hypnogogic, bardo, REM, colossum, whatever we want to call it.

    This Eclipse is a chance to initiate this de-patterning, and the Solstice will deliver the Gift. But we have to have our hands free to catch it. Next six weeks is a study in opening our hands. Not *stay* open, but openING.

    Under and in…

    M

  12. len — thanks for pointing out the placement of asteroid sphinx! that was pure serendipity; i had not noticed it was opposite the eclipse!

    and “watch for what you’re not watching out for” was eric’s suggestion — though that got me thinking, “wait — how the heck does one actually do that?”

    bkoehler — thank you for the extra detail on petraeus’ chart. it is fascinating, isn’t it?

  13. Beautifully written, Amanda! Much to consider. (And thanks to Len for expressing what I was thinking so much more eloquently than I ever could!) Lovely!

  14. Amanda: Thank you so very much for demonstrating the art in astrology today. Your invocation of a sphinx, and a question worthy of its legend, demonstrates that you have intentionally and gracefully touched on the sublime, given that the asteroid named Sphinx opposes today’s Scorpio Solar eclipse from the lunar exaltation. That is one fine detail woven into and characteristic of this very fine piece. Thank you so much for that exquisite touch touch.

  15. Speaking of Petraeus, there is a remarkable tie-in to the Venus-Occult-Sun chart last May to his birth chart. Petraeus’ natal Sun at 15+ Scorpio is conjunct the Venus chart’s Osiris (torn to pieces) retrograde. His natal Jupiter and Nessus conjunction in Taurus (which opposes his Sun) is the same degree location where the Venus chart’s Phaethon (reckless) conjunct Vesta (invested in. .) are. The Venus chart’s opposition speaks of something invested in gets reckless and could get torn to pieces. However, Osiris (and Petraeus’ Sun) in Scorpio suggests that he will rise again.

    Petraeus’ natal chart also has an aspect between Phaethon and Vesta which also includes Hebe (service); Vesta and Hebe at 21+ Scorpio oppose Phaethon at 21+ Taurus, retrograde. Today the eclipse is at 21+ Scorpio. I would think that Petraeus’ Vesta-Hebe refers to his career (invested in service), while his affair would be represented by Phaethon (reckless). The eclipse represents something hidden for now.

    The Venus-Occult-Sun chart also has Icarus (flying too high) at 20+ Aquarius which squares Petraeus’ natal Phaethon opposite Vesta/Hebe, as well as the solar eclipse today. Also of interest, Petraeus’ natal Deucalion (spared from the flood) at 0 Virgo 14, opposes today’s Neptune in Pisces and squares today’s Mercury retro in Sagittarius. I guess you can’t keep a good Scorpio down. . . for long anyway.
    be

  16. “How can you watch out for what you’re not watching out for? Step one is to slow down enough that you can see and feel where the gaps are in your observations and awareness.”

    Thank you for this golden nugget, Amanda.

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