Mercury enters tropical Leo Thursday, shortly before 6:46 pm EDT (22:46 UT), indicating a potential for both insight and audacity. Insight works from the inside out to either empower or overwhelm. Audacity stimulates a similar response from the outside in. Your challenge will be to choose empowerment.
Behind the potentialities for both deeper understanding and bolder expression are the powerful objects Mercury will emblematically merge with upon ingress to Leo — Jupiter and the Sun.
The Sun dominates the solar system with its gravity, and your daytime sky with its light. The Sun also rules Leo. The Sun’s power while traversing Leo (as it is now) is thus symbolically enhanced.
That’s how any other objects moving through Leo with the Sun (as Jupiter is, and as Mercury is about to do) might implicitly be interpreted as being overwhelmed by the Sun.
Nevertheless, there’s another way of looking at the situation. You have a choice. You can choose to perceive the implicit as only the apparent.
As if to emphasize its apparent hegemony, the Sun’s dominance also extends into the explicit. Jupiter even now remains out of unaided sight in the solar glare after passing behind (conjoining) the Sun on July 24. Mere hours after Mercury enters Leo, it too will vanish into the Sun’s rays as its orbit eventually takes it behind (and into conjunction with) the Sun on Aug. 8.
Nevertheless, Mercury and Jupiter have not and will not actually disappear. Both are up there in the Sun’s company whether you can see them or not, and it’s empowering to know that.
Eventually you will be able to see Jupiter again, rising in the pre-dawn East before the second week of August has concluded. Mercury will next be visible in the West after sunset toward the end of August.
Until those reappearances, however, and during most of Mercury’s brief tenure in Leo (concluding Aug. 15), both Mercury and Jupiter will in essence be expressing through the Sun. Hence, you can choose to perceive the situation one of two ways. You can interpret Mercury and Jupiter as either being overwhelmed or empowered by the Sun.
Since the Sun represents (among other things) the light of consciousness that illuminates your waking life, you will be the primary means through which Mercury and Jupiter are expressed in the near future. That’s quite a responsibility. Nevertheless, simply being aware will be of immense help to you.
Versatile and multi-tasking Mercury, among other things, correlates with mind. Mind expressed through consciousness is inherently insightful because it is self-aware. Self-awareness sounds good on the whole, but it comes with inescapable consequences.
Living in self-awareness means doing without the buffers of denial and distraction, being fully conscious of your situation. It can be overwhelming to face up to the realities of your life. Living in the constant glare of mortality, cause and effect is a challenge, but also a potential source of power.
Insight into yourself as a mortal being can empower you to act while action is possible. By the same token, insight into cause and effect might also empower you to be more bold in your actions so as to maximize your intended effect. Of course, other people facing the same choices you are, but less boldly, might consider you audacious.
Being audacious may overwhelm some people. That’s a risk. On the other hand, you might also know the reward of being effective.
Empowering any choice you may make to be among the audaciously effective will be Jupiter. That’s because (among other things) Jupiter manifests in your life when you expand your capacity to take the world on and into yourself. Such an expansion, however, can only take place if you choose not to be overwhelmed by what is only apparent.
Mercury will conjoin with expansive Jupiter on Saturday. You won’t see them, but they will be there, behind appearances. Know that and be empowered.
What’s more, Mercury and Jupiter will be for all practical purposes conjunct the Sun. Indeed, the functional alignment (or conjunction) of Sun, Mercury and Jupiter will begin as soon as Mercury enters Leo and extend on past next week. During that time you will have a choice.
You may choose to allow the implicitly overwhelming events of the world to dominate your life.
Or you may choose to perceive the implicit as only apparent, knowing that other potentials exist unseen. Who knows? It could catch on. Someday, a new light on the horizon might emerge from behind the glare because you braved insight and risked audacity now.
Offered In Service
Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.
Looking for sign-specific insights into the current astrology? Try a Planet Waves premium membership! Planet Waves was built on Eric’s horoscopes, and our members swear by them as an essential tool for co-creating their lives. Sign up for a six-month membership and receive weekly and monthly horoscopes, plus more.
Bodacious.
JannKinz
Len, your efforts are never small and they are always very useful! Thank you for all that you share with us every day. And I can’t tell you how much it helped to think outside the overwhelm. I was able to accomplish a lot this afternoon, and something I have been trying to finish up for a long time.
Jamie: You are most welcome.
P. Sophia: Your warmth is appreciated more than words can prudently express. Thank you!
Chief Niwots Son: May your path rise to lift you as your words lift us. Thank you!
Holly Coleman: Thank you (and welcome)! If boldness you lack, your discerning perception, and graceful expression more than makes up for it. “Team Whiskers” does have a nice ring to it.
Kelly: i envy you so much! Thank you for the honor of receiving word from Pelion! If you see any “centaur crossing” signs, please send a photo.
beth: It is likewise an honor to have been of some small but useful service to you.
I love it when we are encouraged to be audacious, I have frequently taken bold risks in my life with some being more successful than others. But, learning, progress and transformation have come from every fearless step forward into the unknown. Though sometimes mixed with naivety, adventure and life lessons are always the result. While others aren’t always receptive to the audacity, I feel that if they aren’t and it makes them uncomfortable, then they need a little push or prodding to wake them up to that particular awareness. Even if it means they hold some resentment against my actions. I’m not here to be popular, but to help move evolution forward towards allowing others to see their inherent creativity and power of their souls. None of this is ever easy.
I was starting to get bogged down with overwhelm and feeling like things aren’t really moving forward as the planets changed signs, so thanking you for pointing this out so eloquently. On Saturday as Mars squares Jupiter, the Sun is exactly conjunct my ascendent in Leo (which is the focus point of a yod that seems to be about self-expression), I’m not sure what bold move I’m going to make, but now you’ve got me thinking… with awareness.
Thank you Len
I am at the moment at Pelion, home to Chiron and the Centaurs. Driving through the lush coastal mountainous part of Greece, it does seem that centaurs inhabit this region – especially as the grape vine is cultivated almost everywhere.
My boss man Mercury is getting some fire juice! Love it. Boldness eh, not really my personality type. I am the quietest person you could meet. I think August will be a pretty karmic month. On the plus side, people will feel the warmth of the suns power through Leo. The challenge will to balance this beautiful, happy energy with Mr. Angry Pants (Mars). Mars will team up with Saturn in dark, dangerous and passionate Scorpio. It’s like watching Wrestlemania. On team water bug we have Mars and Saturn. On the other side of the ring, Team whiskers, include Sun, Jupiter, Mercury and Ms. Venus. Which side will you bet on?
Be: thanks for saying so.. and please accept here, another one for you mirroring this aspect and Len’s great work:
You are to me, in this community
Like the Sun that accentuates
“Dominant, while not domineering”
illuminates the value of others
shining out our beloved, the personal and social planets
Len- I choose all 3, Mercury is my Man and when he greets his sky companions in such intimate ways my energy can only follow.
Insight on the path I walk.
Audacious communication with fellow traveler’s.
Empowered action on everyone’s behalf.
Thank you!!
Len, just loving this! Big smile and warm light for you. : D
Rhonda: Thank you, And welcome! Thank you for extending the theme through our experience to deeper ramifications. Most of all thank you for finding merit and power in my risky choice of advocating audacity as a viable alternative to succumbing (as i nearly did to some sort of bug or toxin over the weekend) to overwhelm.
Jere: Thank you, great poet. It is with grateful relief that i accept your laughter. It is with an open heart that i empathize with how beauty and bitter sometimes coincide.
be: First off, please accept my apology for not having acknowledged your comment to my blog last Thursday because the illness i mentioned in my reply to Rhonda (above). Thank you for noting how Mars passed through a long conjunction with its goddess companions as it gained speed into Scorpio. Please accept my gratitude as well for the bringing the fire connection to our attention. Most of all, what a beautiful image of Chiron as a bridge between time and timeless – what a breath taking view!
woodstockartist: Thank you (and welcome). The path of which you speak is not easy, nor always chosen, nonetheless more and more of us find ourself there. Looking forward to you further sharing your informed guidance.
Lizzy: You are very welcome.
marymack: What you share here is always worthwhile and no trouble at all. Yes, as “be” noted, you are not alone in Saturn’s unique challenge to your nativity. Rather what you feel is in some way shared like a village is – not always equally, and not ever the same, but enough to identify with those with whom you share a community. Thank you so very much!
Thank you Len.
Oh, god … Len! Again with the extraordinary writing of a potentially challenging aspect. Part of me wants to sit back and bask in the beauty while another wants IN on the audacity!! Please forgive me if I fail to share much worth the trouble … but I have to say that I was so sure you were going to go for the Saturn in Scorpio aspect when all the sun’s illumination and glare prove too much. While I’ve been a bit of a whiner about Saturn sitting ontop my Moon/Saturn aspect for all this time (arg!) I can feel the benefit of its anchorage in deep dark unconscious during such times as these. All hail Saturn! … OK, that may be over-doing it a bit, but … regardless, it takes a village 🙂
Bless ya’ll for your words and wisdom. It carries me, with gratitude.
mm.
Thank you, dear Len, for another wonderful piece.
To be audacious, to be aware rather than be over whelmed. thank you Len…I think we all need to find our chosen path and other potentials, who knows???
Oh, I choose the Empowerment of the Sun Len! In fact, we are all in a Fire Empowered period. When I think back to Mars (fire) transiting over the asteroid Vesta (who tends the fire) and dwarf planet Ceres.. . . In Ceres myth she had the power to burn away the mortal attributes of baby Demophoon, by exposing him to fire, leaving him godly immortal. But, alas, fear took over Demophoon’s mother. . .
. . .Now Mars squares Jupiter and Sun in fiery Leo, followed soon by Mercury, who will begin new cycles with Sun and Jupiter; doesn’t this mean Mars is challenging us, and doesn’t that mean we all have that same opportunity? To burn away (through the consciousness of spirit fire) all those lesser attributes we humans are burdened with, which would certainly lighten the load we bear in our trek forward and upward.
The fear of being overwhelmed by reality – by being swept away from all the stability that Saturn provides us – has probably never been stronger in our lives. There has been this struggle between Saturn (stability) and Uranus (freedom) upending our world. A struggle for balance (Mars rules the signs of Saturn & Uranus and Libra symbolizes balance). Also empowering is the realization that Chiron trines Saturn, and Chiron provides a bridge to cross between Saturn’s security over to Uranus’ openness to all vistas. Time is ruled by Saturn and is a tool to prevent us from seeing everything at once. Uranus removes the constraints of Time and provides understanding as to how things (people, places, events) are connected. By providing a bridge, Chiron allows us to cross back and forth between stability and freedom, to find our own balance.
P. Sophia, when speaking of the Venus opposite Pluto aspect, says “To feel powerful but not overpowering, feel in control but not controlling”. Green-Star-gazer notes the dissolving of decorum and politeness within our society. Aren’t these indications of – what was once considered – audacity, on the rise? Thank you once more Len for your unique understanding of the messages provided us via the planets movements and their meanings. You are way ahead of us.
be
Bitter, but beautiful laghter, Len. I Love you, friend.
Jere
…”During that time you will have a choice.
You may choose to allow the implicitly overwhelming events of the world to dominate your life.
Or you may choose to perceive the implicit as only apparent, knowing that other potentials exist unseen. Who knows? It could catch on. Someday, a new light on the horizon might emerge from behind the glare because you braved insight and risked audacity now.”
…wow — these words feel right on to me right now…and with them the importance of being present and aware each moment or risk being caught up in the old patterns…love having the conscious choice …love the choice of empowered insight rather than overwhelm..the choice to be.using what we have been learning up until now…reassuring ourselves and those around us that we have been through this before and that now we have so many more skills and choices of perception to view its layers with … …also the word audacity…I feel the power in this word …and I have not thought of it that way before…it is now among my possible choices of ways of being …Thank you