Tempus Fugit — Mercury Enters Virgo

Time flies, but it’s difficult to imagine anything flying faster than Mercury is right now. Tomorrow, it enters Virgo at 6:36 pm EDT nearly a full day behind the Sun. Traveling at almost two degrees a day, Mercury will achieve solar conjunction Saturday, and oppose Neptune Sunday, nearly a full day before the Sun does.

Astrology by Len Wallick

All told, that’s a lot to keep up with. Maybe you shouldn’t. Rather than racing around and breaking down, Mercury’s motion implies you may want to make the best, rather than most, use of your time.

Let’s break it down so you won’t have to break down yourself. After blowing through conjunctions to Regulus and Transpluto, Mercury speeds on to its next conjunction, with the Virgo Sun, Saturday afternoon at 4:56 pm EDT. If you stop to think about it (which you should), it will blow your mind.

Mercury’s solar meet-up Saturday will be what is called an exterior (or, “superior”) conjunction. That means the fastest planet will be on the other side of the Sun, about as far away from Earth as it ever gets. It also means we are approaching the halfway point between Mercury retrograde cycles.


You read that right. We are nearly half way between Mercury’s long sail back and forth through Cancer and a similar slog through Scorpio that begins a week after the Libra equinox. Betcha a cool bottle of water you still feel wet.

Now is when the truth hits home about a year when all three Mercury retrogrades are entirely through water signs. This is when you get a feel for what it’s like for the innermost planet to spend literally half the year doing laps in the pool. Now is when you might want to make a resolution to abstain from spinning your wheels and chasing your tail this weekend, so as to make the best use of your time.

Since Mercury manifests as your mind and its means of making itself known, the best use of your time this weekend would probably entail giving yourself time to think. If there is anything to astrology, time to think will be at a premium over the next month or so of Mercury’s movement through earthy Virgo and airy Libra. In spite of that, it’s a gift you can give yourself if you think now. The best gift would be to make time for thoughts about what you would prefer the rest of this year to look like. 

In addition to Mercury’s speed, there will be one other potential issue about making the best use of your time over the next four or five days: Neptune.

After its conjunction with the Sun, Mercury races ahead to oppose Neptune Sunday evening at 7:12 pm EDT. The Sun follows up with its own opposition to Neptune, Monday night at 9:43 pm EDT. If you combine Mercury’s emblem of mind with the solar symbol of consciousness as both pass through early Virgo in succession, their oppositions to Neptune in Pisces may look to be problematic, given Neptune’s reputation for fogging the mind and instilling unconsciousness. It does not have to be a problem, however.

Once again, it is a matter of time, and timing. In spite of its reputation for deception, delusion and other words beginning with a “d”, or ending in “ion”, Neptune is not all bad. As a matter of fact, a lot of good comes from Neptune’s expression in your life. A big part of handling Neptune’s big influence is to accord it its place.

It is often better if Neptune is allowed to run the first leg of a relay so that its creative characteristics can be passed on like a baton. Hence, it would be making good use of your time until next Tuesday by making time to think tomorrow and Saturday as a first step. Then, it would be appropriate to follow up on Sunday and Monday by allowing your thoughts to be imaginative, visualizing what you want to manifest in the weeks to come before the season changes once again.

There is plenty of work for your imagination. There are a lot of things to visualize. On some level, you know the ropes by now. Before Mercury plunges into watery Scorpio at the end of September, you have more than enough to do. For each of you it will be different, yet on some level in parallel with everybody else.

Thinking about your best place in the scheme of things, and where it connects to support everybody else is a good place to begin making the best use of your time going into next week. Time flies; please don’t waste it by trying to to keep up with everything in the days to come. Rather, catch up with yourself.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

23 thoughts on “Tempus Fugit — Mercury Enters Virgo”

  1. Len, thank you so very much, especially for this your paraphrase here below …without going into too much detail “I am telling you how truly” your words and offered thought really, finally helped me to unlock this personal aspect!

    “Please let Neptune shape the sand first and whatever you build on the shape (Saturn) will not dissolve.”

    I now comprehend Neptune is the unknown, best approach is ‘working with’, ‘releasing to’ its influences. Yes the point(s), degrees in question offer us the answer/key.

    “It is common for Neptune’s influence to be a confusing one in the first portion of the transit. The ultimate “lesson” of Neptune is to help connect us to the world of the intangible.”
    http://www.cafeastrology.com/neptunetransits.html

    With Neptune’s position transiting my natal Saturn degree now unlocked and noticed today on astro is also Trine MC. With some directed thought from opposition of Mercury’s influence -is help to us all …making imagination, self expression, play potential into tangibility.

    With the Sun in opposition although, we are vulnerable. Have awareness, perceptions can be deceived.

    @smailing: thank you for offering this beautiful and timely truth of our outer as inner landscape : ) “…if a world made of fog and dust collapsed, a star would be born, founding and grounding an entire new solar system.”

  2. Strawberrylaughter: Thank you dear friend for sharing the Horse Wisdom with me. I will attend to my handicapped buoyancy with compassion, while I witness my heart-straddling passion.

    Len: Thank you for your good wishes! I suspect the Autumn retrograde will be the weirdest of the 3 for me, with my natal Neptune swimming in Scorpionic waters.

    Monterey 67- if it set my congas on fire tonight during the Mercury combustion, will I become as famous as the young guitarist who torched his axe on-stage that fateful weekend?

  3. virgo_mind, I thought it was a Cancer Sun that nobody wanted to have. Well, they all have their failings as well as their blessings, and chances are we have – through many lifetimes – experienced them all. Are you open to Ceres ruling or co-ruling Virgo? Or what about Chiron? I would be interested in an example of Mercury being detrimental as ruler of Virgo if you would care to share with us. Always willing to expand my awareness!
    be

  4. virgo_mind: Thank you for your comment, and welcome to Planet Waves. Please, you misunderstand. The advice of this blog was for everybody, not just solar Virgo’s. We all have Virgo in our natal chart somewhere, the blog was directed to all readers. Further on, i have never once met anybody (astrologer or otherwise) who has a bias against solar Virgo’s. If you know somebody like that, please send them to me for a discussion, and i promise to help them see things differently. Also, please get a one-month trial subscription today so you can read Eric’s un-biased piece on Virgo’s. Offered in service.

    Hazel1: Thank you. It gives me joy to know my service clicks (and will be useful) for you.

    Smalling: That is just beautiful – thank you!

    Chief Niwots Son: Good luck to your band. Please give the water retrograde of Mercury another chance with the Scorpio chapter (showing everywhere in October and November), for a musician it just may have something rather dynamic to offer. Look at what it did for the musicians of 1967. It could do the same for you. See you backstage at Monterey.

    Diva Carla: Thank you for the beautiful image of berry picking and for the link. i just know for sure you will make the best use of your time.

    beleclaire: You are very welcome. It seems like your plan is a good one. Please let the energetic signature of Mars help you to reconsider the Mercury retrograde when it comes to Scorpio. It just might take you to where you want to go.

    Strawberry: Thank you for your beautiful quote (and always for your beautiful thoughts).

    be: You are most welcome. 291 Alice is indeed an asteroid for our time.

  5. @Smailing: thank you so very much for the beautiful reminder of what this is all about.

    Chief Niwots Son, I was thinking of your note this morning as I revisited a favorite novelist’s words evoking the pain and passion inspired when “things are out of joint.”

    “I knew the horses as I knew my family. … When I was separated from them I felt wrong in the world. When I was separated from them I took no comfort in the sound of the creek. I felt chilled without the heat of them. In the short lulls between rides I leaned against the corrals, watching them roil like some captured pod of smallish whales, multicolored, snorting at their handicapped buoyancy. When I stepped in among them they would turn to me, roll their eyes until the whites showed, flick their ears. They were used to the sight and sound of me. I was the boy who straddled their hearts.” ~Mark Spragg, Where Rivers Change Direction

    May you find, in your own handicapped buoyancy this fall, the space to lean against the rails and witness the passion that straddles your own heart.

  6. By golly Len, that’s it! Alice trines the newly arrived Sun in Virgo and it’s down the rabbit hole again. Thank you for that missing link my friend.
    be

  7. thank you Len for this great detailed and penetrating Virgo piece ( and the previous one too )
    All the action is on my Virgo Mars so I am going to spend this time thinking and writing about what I truly want/desire and will work for in the next phase of life. ( I am not sure I know )

    I am with you Chief on the Merc retros. WIth Merc in Libra and lots of Air too, it feels..and it feels soggy but on the upside it has been a great time to clear out a lot of old emotional pain still lurking in the emotional body…which all the Air can easily ignore in drier times…

  8. Yesterday when the sun crossed into Virgo, I was picking blackberries at their peak, and wondering what time this happened in 1934, the day my mother was born. Turns out my Virgo mom was a Leo, with one of those pesky Aquarian moons we talked about earlier this week. Rain over night brought fall a little closer. This morning, I am taking Len’s advice to P. Sofia, and writing down my vision for the rest of the year. I know what it is, but I haven’t recorded it yet.

    If you’ve got a minute for a short flight, Tempis Fugit by my friend Mary Anne Driscoll.
    http://bit.ly/TempisFugitMAD

    Now, Time Flies, and I have a vision to embody. See you later.

  9. Len- thanks for noting all these important timings. I am particularly happy about the Sun/Mercury conjunction on Saturday, my band has a fun gig that night and the energetic alignment will be a positive influence on our music.

    On another note these Mercury retrogrades in Water signs have been hard to handle. My Mercury lives in Gemini on my midheaven, he’s been feeling waterlogged this year, and the news that we are swiftly moving towards the next one this Fall does not excite me. I feel like my world has barely gotten functional since the last submersion. /ugh

  10. @strawberrylaughter: if a world made of fog and dust collapsed, a star would be born, founding and grounding an entire new solar system. that´s how it always was in outer space. and will be in inner space, too, if we open up to this as-above-so-below-connection personally. and it´s virgo who knows best how to connect the head with the heart and the hand, in beautiful perfection.

  11. It’s interesting you’d say that, Len. I was able to catch the sun for about 15 minutes around its shift into Virgo tonight; just to take in the energy of that sign shift. I can’t say I have words for how it felt, but that wasn’t really the point. And as it turns out, maybe it was good practice for my date with the equinox. As ever, I thank you.

  12. Len,

    I’ve wondered what Neptune does exactly in a person’s chart, and your idea of letting it be the first in the relay race really clicks for me. I never thought of Neptune as a “get up and go” kind of guy, more of a “how deep is that stuff anyway” kind of guy, so it’s interesting to think of it as a leader. I would never have thought of it leading off the mental race that way, always thought of it as dragging things down (but I have natal mercury in Saggitarius so I hate to have to slow down for anything).

  13. Dear Sir:

    I quite don’t understand how you could tell a Virgo to think more, when that is precisely what Virgos do- think and over-think.

    I’m fairly convinced that many astrologers have a major bias toward the sign.
    There are actual people who want a different sign because it has been depicted as the dip-s*** sign of the zodiac!

    And about Mercury… it’s questionable whether it should be or will continue being the signs ruler. In Virgo, it seems to do more harm than good.

  14. P. Sophia: Thank you for your questions. First off and straight up – this is not an an occasion for fear. Please take time out to think and the rest will fall into place. Think about what you want the rest of the year to look like and let the vision guide your actions. Please let Neptune shape the sand first and whatever you build on the shape (Saturn) will not dissolve. Please do not fight or fear Saturn, just accord its place. Creativity is 90% perspiration for sure, but let the inspiration come first, then the perspiration will not be wasted. Please let me know if that does not work for you.

    Craig: You are most welcome.

    aword: Thank you again for sharing how your natal chart dovetails with the transits once again. You are amazing.

    Strawberry: Thank you once again as well for sharing your rapid spiritual evolution. To resolve the illusory separation of space and time, make a date to watch the sunset on the Libra equinox and tell yourself that the Sun is setting in precisely the same place (exact West) for everybody on Earth over the course of that day (and the day before, and the day after). Then think about how the world would be different if everybody “got” that. Then work to help everybody “get” that.

    be: Thank you for bringing the world’s events and some very pertinent additional astrology into this space. i would suppose that Mercury’s rush into the anaretic degrees may have incited the glitch (asteroid 291 Alice on the Capricorn cardinal point probably added to the weirdness). The connective principles of both Ceres and Vesta may also have been triggered to correlate to some sort of disconnection. And Hybris? Well, somebody had it coming (and probably going too).

  15. Do you suppose Mercury played a part in the stock market freeze up today Len? At 11:45 AM the NASDAQ trading came to a halt for three hours. Once again, it was blamed on a glitch; in other words nobody knows what caused it.

    Maybe I’m just spinning my wheels but Mercury at 27 Leo was conjunct Ceres at 27 Leo and they opposed the U.S. Sibly Moon who was conjunct the Full Moon Tuesday night. Mercury and Ceres were in a grand trine with the GC (source of universal directives) in Sagittarius and Orpheus (irresistible music) at 27 Aries, but I am not clear if there is any meaning to it other than a reminder of how dependent we all are on electronic data. Perhaps Ceres’ experience of loss is somehow related if there is any meaning to be found, but not being a trader I would not know that feeling from this event.

    There was also Vesta (investments) opposite the Moon which might be a clue; she DID square the U.S. Sibly Vesta at 19 Taurus in Tuesday’s FM chart, and Mercury was about to conjunct Hybris at 28 Leo, but I suspect it is probably tied to the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto T-square if anything. Maybe when Mercury conjuncts the Sun at 1 Virgo something will come to light. Transiting Atlantis will soon square the U.S. North Node in Scorpio and if anything is to be gleaned of today’s event we could know by then.

    Thanks for the heads up on Mercury’s arrival date in Scorpio too Len. That should be just enough time to clear the water out of my ears!
    be

  16. This sounds like the perfect weekend to get back to some back-burnered ideas around creative metaphysics, especially as Mars and Venus are both pretty heavily charged for me right now. I “get” in my head that time and space and separation are illusion; I really would like to get that into my body. I can feel where the resistance is sitting, & it’s only the fear that my entire world will collapse if I cease to believe in it…so how can I lose? 😉

    I base my life on the unfixedness of matter–that things are fluid, and connected, & can change. But on some level, I’m still afraid to live it. It’s time to bring these two sides of me together. And it seems like a whole lotta Neptune can be just the nudge I’ve been waiting for. This feels very exciting.

  17. Thanks, Len. Already on that train. More than glad for the astro-interpretation to help keep me on the tracks. The half-way mark between retro-mercs is also natal half-way (opposition for both Sun and Merc). But in ode to Sandy Denny “I do not count the time”. Like the birds, I just imagine – and trust – where I am heading.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oBMDcLf6WA

  18. Hi Len,

    Thank you for the heads up! Already entering into this influence I believe, cause over the last few days my mind has been in a rehashing of the past with feelings of some sadness, anxiety, sense of loss, but with a releasing towards (I hope) a realignment to where I want to go from here.

    In addition to your call out aspect, ‘don’t breakdown’ is Neptune transit positioned there exact conjunct my natal Saturn, 4 15 Pisces, so will be picking up on the Sun’s and Mercury’s opposition to conjunction (Is there a more appropriate astrological term for this?). Adding this personal longterm aspect to the mix from the perspective and aim of growth from illusion, there has been stress and overcoming of fear I have been up against, but on the other side this same aspect offers so much potential of interchange and new development to gain.

    Hopefully adding this weekends Sun and Mercury in opposition will offer a greater understanding, self confidence and not to exasperate what’s already there?? Is this true or do i need to read be extra cautious here? Can you offer me any additional advice from your experience of how this type of personal aspect will further impact. i want to be ready to aide in my current perspective and visualization work this week.

    As always your message is very well taken. And so appreciated : ) …from me to you.

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