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.
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?