A Day In The Life – Mercury, Venus and the Sun

By Len Wallick

The Sun, retrograde Mercury and Venus take turns conjoining each other within the span of a single day next Tuesday. That makes it essentially a single event, a triple conjunction. As aspects go, it will be brief. That brevity places a premium on awareness and presence. In your experience, it will be an opportunity to be conscious of the difference between self-awareness and self-involvement.

Conjunctions take place when objects occupy the same place in the same sign. When that happens, their archetypes are merged. That merger further takes on the qualities of its space and time. It is a coming together. As a rule, any combination of planets spend a lot more time apart than together. Therefore, when they conjoin, it symbolizes a beginning. That is especially true for Mercury.

This triple conjunction will find Mercury halfway through its period of retrograde, when it appears to be moving backwards because it is actually passing us by. It will be positioned between the Earth and Sun. That is called an interior, or ‘inferior’ conjunction. It corresponds to the position of the New Moon. Thus it is for all intents and purposes, a ‘new’ Mercury, beginning a new 116-day cycle. The situation is not the same for Venus.

This triple conjunction finds Venus on the other side of the Sun, at its furthest distance from our planet. That is called an exterior, or ‘superior’ conjunction. It is halfway between being in the East before dawn and returning to visibility in the West after sunset and in the middle of its cycle between one horizon and the other. Venus is not ‘new’ in the same sense that Mercury is, rather it is renewed as the eastern and western parts of its journey reach a crossroads. Therefore, if we were positioned directly above the solar system, looking down, we would be able to thread an imaginary straight line from Earth through Mercury first, then through the Sun to Venus on the other side. That sort of thing does not happen very often.

From our point of view, the Sun is the pickle in the middle of this triple conjunction. Its archetype in astrology is so simple and basic that we take it for granted. Sol is light, it is day, it is consciousness. Without its gravity and energy there would be no solar system, no Earth, no life, no us. It is the source.

The archetype of Mercury in front of the Sun effectively places how we think and communicate in the foreground of our consciousness. This implies an imperative to engage the mind and express it. Given the apparent retrograde motion, our mental focus may be one of review. It is thus an auspicious time to look again and find new potential in old subject matter, perhaps something that was missed before. It would also be appropriate to be open to new insights from others who are likewise expressing the fruit of their own introspective contemplations.

The archetype of Venus behind the Sun is one of attracting as opposed to attractive. Consciousness is in the foreground and appearance is in the background. It is the difference between being the place where things come together and the agent that draws things together. The receptive is hidden but still functional. It is thus an auspicious time for attention instead of acquisition. It would be appropriate to focus on the source of creativity and get to know it well.

The Sabian symbol for the place where all of these planetary archetypes come together, at 23+ Leo, both affirms and reinforces their merger. It is the image of an ascetic who is focused on inner transformation at the expense of outer appearance. It is necessarily a temporary situation, a brief but intense merger of consciousness, thought and attention that, in the words of Dane Rudhyar, are “a means to reach an envisioned goal.”

The envisioned goal of Tuesday’s brief but intense triple conjunction is, ultimately, up to you. The planets are always moving. This will be one of those moments that can pass us by, just as we can easily step past the ragged and filthy ascetic as we busily involve ourselves in our own lives. For one day, the alignment of Mercury, Venus and the Sun will be before us in the same way. It will not be a matter of what we can see. Neither will it be a matter of our being seen. It will be a matter of insight regarding where we direct our attention, our consciousness, our aware and living being. If you can get hold of that, even for a day, it will be a whole new beginning.

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