Mercury, Mars, Saturn: Of Initiative and Discipline

Yesterday I looked at the Virgo Full Moon as a process of integrating the mental and materializing energy of Virgo and the intuitive/creative energy of Pisces. Much of astrology is about the integration of opposites (or seeming opposites). As I described yesterday, the Full Moon came with a focused aspect structure involving a T-square to Jupiter, plus a few minor planets to make it interesting.

Today, let’s consider two ideas: retrograde Mercury conjunct Mars in Pisces; and the Sun trine Saturn. These aspects are focused all through the week, though with a peak over the next 48 hours or so.

Mercury is retrograde, as you know. Today it’s making its second conjunction to Mars for this retrograde cycle, and the only one with Mercury actually retrograde. Mercury-Mars is a hot mind. In Pisces, it’s a lusty, creative hot mind. With Mercury retrograde, it has an introspective quality. If you’re a creative person, the thing you want is to be turned on by is your own thoughts. That quality of being turned on is what is going to carry you forward and make what you’re doing fun.

One message of Mercury-Mars is to think before you leap. Develop the ability to stay turned on — and not leap. Maintain your inner focus. Keep your cool, especially if the situation involves a disagreement, argument, or encountering someone else’s defensiveness projected onto you. It might or might not. Be aware that some will be especially sensitive Tuesday into Wednesday, as the Moon is still in Virgo, opposing this conjunction.

It really would be smarter to say nothing. Use the mental/intellectual stamina of Mercury and Mars to fuel creativity and ideas about what you want to make, rather than letting it fuel debates over bullshit. Debates now are likely a real waste of time and can do some significant damage if they run out of control.

Meanwhile, make sure you think your plans through carefully before acting on them. Mercury-Mars is about fast thinking, especially in a conjunction. Take the time to think things through more than once and, apropos of Pisces, more than one way.

Now as for the strength of this aspect — it really seems to be about going within and making contact with what motivates you. This is an occasion to set your priorities, use the rest of the retrograde to get your house in order, and then get ready to take actual steps as the station direct happens in mid-March. By motivate, I mean make contact with your initiative.

Not everyone can be driven by an idea. But many people can be motivated by one. You will know that you’re really being motivated by something when you feel it change you, and as you feel your thoughts and thought process evolve. Initiative is not a single moment — it’s a sustained experience, something that drives and motivates you through a whole experience.

Discipline is an essential part of any sustained creative process — and we have Saturn available for that. Saturn is in Scorpio, taking a trine from the Sun. This is the gentle guiding of creative energy into the direction you want it to go.

The roots of this are emotional, based on the water signs. Ease yourself into discipline a little more every day, rather than pushing yourself there all at once or through some sudden reform. Think of discipline as a process of teaching yourself how to do something, how to focus on something. This takes time and patience — that’s a message from Saturn.

The idea is to get the feeling of movement, exploration and progress into your emotional body, so that it becomes part of you and you are part of it. You can create a kind of dependency in a way similar to yoga; you don’t just plunge into yoga one day, you teach your body to do it gradually.

Saturn’s message is to work with time rather than against it. Where Saturn is present, your values about time are always worth considering carefully. We often take this aspect of life for granted, rapidly filling up the appointment book as fast as possible. What if you made a focused effort to put as few things into the book or iCal as possible, leaving as much of your time free as you can, in honor of giving yourself space to do what you want, rather than what you ‘compel yourself’ to do? That is how I would describe the trine.