Where We Are: Approaching Mercury’s Echo and the Full Moon

By Len Wallick

Now is a time to pay attention. It is not an easy time to do that. The dramatic and auspicious trials that arrived with Uranus on the Aries point are painful and frightening to be a part of. Make no mistake, we all are a part of those events, regardless of our physical location. To ignore or deny what is happening now devalues ourselves. To turn away from what others experience is to deprive ourselves. Thankfully, at this time we are blessed with astrology that is doing everything it can to awaken and direct our awareness of where we are, which is as one with each other.

Tomorrow the Moon moves on from Cancer to Leo. A fixed fire sign ruled by the Sun, it is a higher octave of Aries. Building on the assertive self-awareness of the spark of life in a container of its own, the imperative of the solar lion is to express its will and make its place. The Leo energy brings creative consciousness to the fore. It pays attention to where it is and how it actively relates to its environment.

When the Moon is in Leo, its creative imagination and personal emotional power amplify and broaden the radiant power of that sign. As Luna continues to wax larger, it also supports the Sun, its luminary partner. It carries the Sun’s growing light brighter and further into the night. This helps us pay attention and in doing so pushes back against dark feelings and fear. The Moon’s light will continue to grow as we move towards a Full Moon in Virgo this weekend.

At that time, the Moon will be near the point along its orbit where it is closest to Earth, also known as perigee. With that placement, it is like a light drawn close to help us better see. Luna will also, by definition, be opposed to the Sun. Sol, on its last day in Pisces, will therefore be somewhere near the location of the Moon’s furthest distance from our planet. This point in the Moon’s path is known as the apogee.

Let’s put that another way. The hypothetical point of the Moon’s closest approach, the perigee, is always opposed to its hypothetical point of furthest distance, the apogee. This Saturday, when Sol and Luna oppose (as they do only once a month) they will be where those hypothetical points are. The Moon will be conjunct the perigee. The Sun will be conjunct the apogee (also known by astrologers as Black Moon Lilith). That does not happen for every Full Moon. It is exceptional. In astrology, exceptional is auspicious — and it gets better.

At the same time the Full Moon will be in aspect to the points where it rises above and plunges below the path followed by the Earth around the Sun. That path is known as the ecliptic. The two places where Luna would intersect the ecliptic are the lunar nodes.

The nodes, eternally opposed, are currently in late Sagittarius and Gemini. Their axis will be at a right angle, or squared, to the axis of the Pisces Sun and the Virgo Moon. It is a grand cross in the mutable signs, and has some of the flavor of an eclipse because eclipses take place at or near the nodes. It is also as if all the hypothetical lunar polarities and potentials will be working at once to get a fix on where we are.

Another way of directing our awareness and focusing our attention is to repeat it. We all know the value of checking and double-checking. It is a way to regulate and catch ourselves when we suffer a lapse in attention. This is an especially important protocol when driven to distraction by information that, by its quality or quantity, threatens to overload our capacity to perceive, process and respond. Thankfully, astrology is about to provide us with a timely, if unlikely, event that we can turn to our advantage. For the second day in a row, we are directed to note the planet Mercury.

Following its mind-expanding Aries conjunction with Jupiter tomorrow, Mercury proceeds to enter the echo phase of its forthcoming retrograde this coming Thursday. Otherwise known as the shadow phase, the first echo is from the future. It represents the furthest point of a planet’s apparent backward motion after stationing retrograde. It also is the place from which a perspective of forward motion will start again.

The beginning of echo phase is also an early warning. In this case, Mercury will station retrograde on March 30. Our attention is further directed to where we are in the moment the echo begins, because we will be there again. When we are, we will have the opportunity to take another look and possibly see something we may have missed the first time.

Wait a minute, you may say, isn’t Mercury retrograde supposed to be a bad thing? Something to dread? An event to endure? Sure, if you continue to believe a recycled story. For certain if you have made up your mind that it will be that way. But it is not necessarily so if you ground yourself in the fundamentals and pay attention to now.

It is my proposal that we choose to see this next Mercury retrograde in a new way, befitting its placement in Aries, where the Sun itself begins anew. After all, if Sol can do it, so can we. And it can be useful. Between this Thursday and the end of this month, we will cover a lot of ground. This Sunday we will experience another Vernal Equinox on the day after the Full Moon, and our personal experience of light and dark will be as political equals. We will share not only the quantity but also the quality of a time such as our planet has never known. We will do it together and as one. And there will almost certainly be more to challenge us. It will simultaneously serve ourselves and each other well if we pay attention.

If the nature of events occasionally drives us to distraction, we need not regret. We have Mercury as a representation of mind and we have the knowledge that we will have a chance to perceive its retrograde with a different response. Not as an affliction but as an opportunity to pay attention to where we are more than once. As one with each other on this Earth, blessed as we bless ourselves.

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