Today Mercury stations direct in Leo at 1:40 am EDT. This officially begins the last phase of a long spell of inner planet retrogrades dating back to November of last year. We still have Mercury’s echo phase to work through before we’re in completely fresh territory for all three personal planets (Mercury, Venus and Mars), but at least as of today, they’re all in forward motion. Hallelujah.
On a personal level, this signals a time when we can begin moving plans and projects forward — though for a few days at least, it’s still best to move slowly and carefully. To paraphrase Eric’s metaphor from Monday, keep your headlights on at least through the weekend — and notice if someone has forgotten to turn on theirs.
It’s like what your mom always told you when you were still a young, novice driver and wanted to come home late on New Year’s Eve: you may be sober, but what about the drivers out there who aren’t?
In other words, how do we deal with personal crises when they spread to other individuals and through groups and entire communities? The degree of today’s Mercury station, which is at 2 Leo, has an apropos Sabian symbol given the news events that have marked the last few weeks. (The Sabians are a set of channeled symbols.) I’m going to begin with the keynote Dane Rudhyar gives it in An Astrological Mandala rather than the symbol proper: “The spreading power of individual crises through a collectivity.”
We’ve seen how this works — or doesn’t, depending on your perspective — with the two mass murders in the U.S. during this Mercury retrograde. With 12 dead in the Aurora, Colorado shooting a couple weeks ago and seven dead (including the gunman) in the shooting at the Sikh gurdwara (place of worship) in Wisconsin this weekend, we’re seeing personal crisis ripple out many ways. For some, this is a time of grief and numbness. For others, a call to arms to protect the misinterpreted right to bear arms. Yet others take this repeated pain and try to have a different conversation — one about protecting life, or about creating peace.
However you react, individual experience finds a way to spread out. How you view it, whether it’s your own experience, that of another, or something belonging to a seemingly ‘other’ collective, determines whether you are able to transmute its energy for the highest good or get sucked into further crisis. Either way, you are involved once you are aware.
Rudhyar’s symbol for this second degree of Leo is actually, “An epidemic of mumps.” I didn’t want to begin this post with a disease metaphor, but don’t want to pretend it does not exist, either. Rudhyar notes in his further explanation, “Now we deal with a process that affects the entire society; this obviously points out that the whole of mankind is potentially affected by, and thus, consciously or not, cannot help being involved in the critical situations faced by any individual or special group of people.”
To everyone who recoils in distaste every time the subject of gun control comes up on the heels of one of these senseless mass shootings I say, ‘We cannot help being involved. Do you want to be involved on the side of life, or of death?’
Rudhyar goes on to say that mumps, though a childhood disease, can also affect the testicles of adult men. He relates this association to Aries symbolizing the birth of the organism and Leo a rebirth on the level of consciousness and mind-based individuality. He describes this state as being a “would-be initiate, an infant in spirit.”
As Mercury turns around in this degree of the would-be initiate standing in the face of personal crises becoming collective, you have a choice. Leo is the sign of the Sun, the original life force for our planet. For the last three weeks we’ve been writing about how this retrograde would point us in the direction of what we value most. How can you bring what you’ve learned to bear on what is spreading through the collective? Surely personal crisis is not the only thing with spreading power. As Eric also mentioned Monday, today is a perfect moment for putting creative ideas into motion. Get to it.
Note — Eric’s horoscope Friday will cover Venus in Cancer and Mercury stationing direct. This will be in the subscriber edition.
Thank you Amanda 🙂 for the citation of Rudhyar humanistic astrologer with all astrologers should make example towards a better world and the good of all
Amanda: Thank you so very much for so eloquently walking us from awareness, to involvement to responsibility. A wonderful piece today. Bravo!
Also: Kudos to all those having made comments so far. Each one of you humble me and inspire me to find your level of enlightenment.
Apropos of this post, I am definitely bringing some creative ideas to the collective today in my professional life. Let’s hope it works out for the best.
“Astrodem” – the big picture – which I’m struggling with down to my very being – wow Pam – to learn from these lessons of life instead of wallow in them – may we all raise our awareness and consciousness for the awakening we are here for.
Thanks for sharing insight into the sabian symbol significance. Also @ pam, loved your insight as well.
Peace
reading astrodem’s comment on the ‘recent comments’ link and the thread below it – Claire de luna’s comment from June 11:
‘Astrodem has brought up a very important point–one that applies to every urgent issue confronting the planet today.
For the first time in history, capitalist cannibals have contrived ways to wreak environmental, economic, social and political catastrophes faster than we can organize and fight them one-by-one. Whether you’re talking about whale poaching or chemtrails, if you run each battle out to its logical conclusion, it becomes clear that they can outlast us in any arena, simply because they own all the arenas: finance, politics, courts, energy, food, water, military, transportation, even religion.
We cannot fight this thing in conventional ways. It’s bigger than all of us combined, and like the movie “War Games” … the only way to win is not to play.
I’ve pondered this situation as if the survival of the planet were my own personal responsibility, and the only solution that appears to have any chance of success is what Einstein exhorted us to do: transform our consciousness.
To solve all of our problems, we must reach higher than we ever have as a species. There are no historical equivalencies that come close to what we need to achieve at this critical hour, collectively, and soon–not the Renaissance, not the Enlightenment, not the New Age which, in truth, has not even broken its water yet.
Any organizing movement that stops short of a Global Enlightenment Event will fail to stop what the patriarchal hegemony is mounting, and conversely, any global domination effort by the so-called elite that meets a massive human enlightenment surge will be absorbed and transmuted.
I believe it’s just that simple. We either wake up as a species, or the human experiment will self-terminate.
Fortunately, the astrology and a whole slew of indigenous wisdom systems support a positive outcome to our collective drama –a deus ex machina of (literally) galactic proportions–and what could be a more perfect climax than a mass consciousness shift!
So, if you really want to make a difference in this endgame battle for planet Earth, put down your banners, stop petitioning a deaf Congress, and do whatever brings you closer to enlightenment. Pray. Meditate. Write. Develop a conscious relationship with your soul. Support outlets for intelligent inspiration like Planet Waves. Be quiet. Listen to the ocean. Get to know a child.
Whatever brings you closer to your awakened self … doing that is your most valuable gift to the world at this time. And as you well know, the world has never needed your gift more than it does right now. Please, be generous. It means everything.’
Not sure about this but could it be the other way round: that we are already ‘infected’ and need to deal with that. A sort of vestigialism that we need to step out of.
That at any rate is a pattern I am aware of socially – if x doesn’t raise the subject I needn’t be aware of it. What suits me must surely fit everyone else. Attraction/commitment to the technological and/or flashy rather than the wild spirit/organic.
These things may of course be coming to the surface briefly as they disintegrate in the light of day…
xxxp