Re-thinking Fixed Signs – Mercury enters Scorpio

“But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity. Where past and future are gathered.”
— T. S . Eliot

Mercury enters the fixed water sign Scorpio on Thursday. It is a crucial step in a gradual shift now taking place in the sky. All it takes to understand the transition is a few basic pieces of information. A grasp of the fundamentals will give you an idea of how to interpret the evolving relationship between a handful of planets. Once you have a handle on how one planet is trending, you can correspond it to archetypes in your own life. After you recognize the epitomes and their patterns you can be aware of what your options are. That awareness will allow you to make some intelligent and conscious choices. In your life those choices will come down to discerning between stamina and stagnation.

The zodiac circle is like a pie cut into 12 equal pieces. Those pieces are the signs. Each sign has a unique identity. One of the things that determines the identity of a sign is usually called its quality. The quality of any given sign is determined by where the sun is in relation to the surface of the Earth.

When the Sun is directly over the equator, apparently on its way North, that’s the first day of Aries. Six months later, when the Sun over the equator again, apparently heading South, that’s the first day of Libra. The first day of either Aries or Libra is an equinox, a word derived from the equator and the fact that day and night are equal when the Sun is directly over the imaginary line that divides our planet into upper and lower hemispheres.

When the Sun is directly over another imaginary line, the Tropic of Cancer, it’s the first day of Cancer. Amazing how that works. The same is true when the Sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. Geography is actually tropical astrology, something you probably were not informed of in school.

Aries, Libra, Cancer and Capricorn have something else in common. The first day of each of those four signs is also the beginning of a new season here on Earth. That means they have the same quality. For the signs that correspond to a new season, that quality is called cardinal. Every cardinal sign is followed by a fixed sign and every fixed sign is succeeded by a mutable sign, then we start over again with a new season. As the Earth goes round and round, the Sun appears to go up and down, back and forth. Those cycles and patterns are the core of tropical astrology and are expressed by the cycles and patterns of sign quality.

Other planets go around the Sun just like Earth does. As they do so, their apparent motion takes them through the signs in the same order as the Sun, but not usually at the same time. How fast they move depends on the size of their orbit. Big orbit equals slow apparent motion. On the other hand, a smaller orbit makes a planet appear to move faster. Regardless of the differences in apparent speed all planets move from cardinal to fixed to mutable then start repeating the same pattern over and over again.

Each planet epitomizes of something in our lives. As planets move from one sign to another, it is as if they are changing costume. Right now, planets are accumulating in the fixed signs. That means a bunch of archetypes will soon be in the same quality of uniform. It would make good sense to think about the symbolic raiment that big parts of our lives will soon be wearing. Now is the perfect time.

The timing is good because the planet Mercury is the archetype of thinking and the communication of thought. The implication of Mercury changing signs is that something about our minds will be changing at about the same time. It is reasonable that we could make better use of our minds if we were aware and conscious of what changes were in the offing.

A fixed sign is so named because it is said to ‘fix’ the pattern of the new season that the immediately preceding cardinal sign started. Fix is a rather strong word, however, and we may want to prepare for Mercury’s ingress to Scorpio by thinking about how appropriate it is.

Think about it, when you say something is fixed, there is a sense of permanence about it. No season is permanent, however. Perhaps we should consider a synonym that better reflects the realities of pattern and cycle. Perhaps a word like ‘lasting’ or ‘enduring’, or maybe something from the modern vernacular like ‘trending’. That would go a long way towards making the clothing of fixed signs more appropriate for the weather and more comfortable to actually move in.

Looking at the quality of Scorpio and other fixed signs more realistically will expand our consciousness. That gives us a chance to work and be in harmony with what is going on instead of indulging a useless stereotype. If we see fixed signs as diligently carrying a new paradigm forward instead of stubbornly holding it in place, we can understand how it is that the weather and temperature associated with any season is more strongly expressed about a month after the season actually starts.

The same principal holds when a planet’s archetype wears the outfit of a fixed sign. Mercury moves into Scorpio on Thursday. Venus is already there. The Sun will follow in less than two weeks. The collection of planets in Scorpio will be wearing the same durable dungarees as Jupiter in Taurus, Mars in Leo and Neptune in Aquarius. Together, that formidable collection of planets will be working together over the next four weeks, encouraging us to act and grow. Wouldn’t you prefer to work with them rather than against them, and hence, yourself?

If it is your preference to avoid working against your own self interests, you can begin now by re-thinking what fixed signs mean in your life. Instead of an intransigent and unyielding suit, you can wear something suited to the work you are about to do. Instead of feeling stuck, you can, as Eliot phrased it, make the most of a time when past and future are gathered at a dynamic and elaborate still point from which we will emerge transformed, as agents of creative and necessary change.

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