You got to move, child, you got to move.
— Mississippi Fred McDowell
Jupiter commenced apparent reverse (or “retrograde”) motion through Cancer just after midnight EDT. Mercury resumes direct motion Sunday afternoon, ending a Scorpio retrograde period of nearly three weeks. Other planets, major and minor, will soon contribute — through either changes of direction or sign — to what feels like the sort of adjustments you would make after assuming a new place or position.
One way or the other, in one sense or another, you probably have assumed a new place or position since the Scorpio solar eclipse last Sunday. It comes with the territory. Now, it’s a matter of adjustment, and how to make it.
Indications are you would probably be better off feeling, rather than thinking, your way through adjustments for the next week or so.
That’s because Mercury’s slowdown to direct station is holding it in an unusually long (for Mercury) water trine aspect with Neptune, and Neptune itself is in a prolonged pause before stationing direct next Wednesday.
Neptune’s trine from Mercury connects two of the most complex planetary energies through the auspices of symbolic water. Mercury was mythology’s jack of all trades: messenger one minute, mediator the next, and much more — from medic to murderer.
Tangibly, the element Mercury is a unique, useful, yet toxic paradox: liquid metal. Mercury is also the planet closest to the Sun, which makes it both emblematically swift and inherently influential in astrology. Also, for astrologers, all of Mercury’s mercurial qualities go exponential whenever it slows down just before and after changing direction — a period known as the “Mercury storm.”
Neptune is new compared to Mercury, with a much slower apparent motion, but no less influential. Human consciousness evolved with the planet Mercury in plain sight. By comparison, the planet Neptune spent centuries leading astronomers on a merry chase, repeatedly being sighted and not identified or continuously being postulated but not found. For astrologers, it’s like food in a big city: everywhere and nowhere at once.
A precise, prolonged, seamless and flowing trine connection through elemental water is slippery business anyway. Make that connection from Mercury to Neptune with both nearly stationary, and you have implied a period when necessary adjustments will reliably elude your intellectual grasp. Fortunately, Jupiter is sympathetic with its timing, already moving as if to meet you half way.
Jupiter’s deeper advancement into Cancer precludes it from being in precise aspect to either Mercury or Neptune at their direct stations. Nevertheless, there is water and a relatively concurrent adjustment of apparent direction in common. Given Jupiter’s expansive, inclusive nature, that amounts to something.
What it amounts to is an encouragement for you to be more open to what a period of adjustments, undertaken intuitively, could lead to. It could lead to you learning how to trust yourself better. It’s probably nothing new. It’s almost certain you have been here before. The only thing different now is the level of achievement you are being called to and the fact that it is apparently happening to everybody at once — as represented by the fact that it’s happening to so many planets at once.
It first happened long ago, when you trusted yourself both to balance and move on two feet. Some years later, and more within memory, it happened again on the two wheels of a bicycle. It was not an intellectual achievement. It had to do with abandoning grasp, both literally and figuratively. As a matter of fact, if you look back on your life, there have probably been other adjustments that amount to the same thing — trusting the feeling that the best way to deal with the situation is not to deal with the situation.
This is about going with the flow in its highest sense. Not because it’s the path of least resistance. Not because you feel coerced or under pressure. Rather, because you feel called and now, perhaps for the first time in human history, we are all being called at the same time.
It starts with feeling the need. it happens through feeling your way. It concludes with a feeling of having become something more, capable of being and going where you have never been before. You are not alone in this. You are in the most expansive and inclusive of company, but you really have to trust yourself as the first order of business. Long ago, somebody almost certainly spoke these words to you for the first time: “You can do it!” Do you remember? Can you hear it now?
Offered In Service
Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.
Yes nice experience Len in this retro mercury in Scorpio in terms of intuition, but I felt heavy is Saturn on my March. A little depressed tonight but I think it comes from my lack of sleep, but before turning off my computer I wanted to leave a little message
Good night and good Sunday to all
be: Thank you once again for drawing on Sibly as a supplemental and you so adroitly demonstrate the triplicate aspects taken by Mercury’s Scorpio retrograde cycle really do correspond to “malfunctions for teaching purposes”. That’s a wonderful way to look at it, and really does leave “no loose ends”. You and your astrology are both be-autiful.
wandering_yeti: Thank you for sharing your wisdom gained and teaching as only you do. We are grateful for your participation here. You continuously show us the light.
tattonement: Thank you in turn for sharing your touching personal experience in correlation with your insightful observations.
suria: You are most welcome.
Kari: Thank you for your reminder to breathe, that is a biggie. Thank you also for sharing how the transits are correlating with your evolution.
aword: Thank you for taking us both back and forward. My your forward find an abundance of encouragement here at Planet Waves.
Chief Niwots Son: It is a joy to know you do find confirmation in my service. Congratulations on your hard-won clarity, and thank you for supporting Strawberry.
Cheers, Aword! Here’s to knowing there’s friends out there!
Chief Niwots Son, I was about to ask about your handicapped buoyancy; you’ve sounded much more confident these past weeks than you were anticipating. I’m happy to see you moving from strength to strength, behind your curtain or out in front of it 😉
“But when the Lord gets ready, you gotta move…”
Len- you made me dig into my Cassandra Wilson collection to find this musical gem.
I remember getting a good ways down the sidewalk, thinking my dad was still holding the seat of my bike to steady me, and discovered to my surprise he was WAY BACK THERE and I had done it myself. Woo!
This Mercury retro has brought me great clarity, unlike the prior watery reversals which drove this Mercurial boy damn near crazy. Now the conversations with friends and colleagues have brought clarity, and the seemly disparate events have been revealed as a large tapestry of action in which the path forward has been woven by single steps of action into a yellow brick road- bright, well-paved, with me as the guy behind the curtain. And all of it emerged from following my gut feeling of rightness in each individual choice. Ahhh! Thanks for the confirmational reading of the stars.
Strawberrylaughter: This is re-birth, you died the other night and there is no way to go but towards the new life you’ve been creating since before we met.
I learned to ride a bike the moment I stopped listening to the ridicule of the older kids about how I couldn’t do it. Only took a moment to pick up the bike and ride; no applause, no congratulations – only me, the bike and an internal feeling of pride and exhilaration.
I have been here before. I do believe I can fly. And it’s not someone else’s bike on the lawn – it’s my own. But the best part is a re-emerging sense of trust in myself and the idea that I may have friends along the way. Riding or flying surely must be a heckuvalot better with encouragement and congratulations from like-minded people. And that surely, is a new place and position.
Thanks, Len.
Wow. This is kind of a lot, Len. I’m definitely a “feel”-er. Water, water, everywhere, etc. I’ve actually loved these Merc retrogrades because they’ve given validation to the way I generally go about life — feelings first & foremost. But wading into this stationary Merc/Neptune energy naked, heart-first is a lot for even me. I’ve actually avoided it all day, thinking my way through, which is comical — not that I think poorly, but that I’m avoiding an invitation that feels tailor-made to me. Just, it’s a lot of adjusting. Attachment can be a son-of-a-bitch.
Breathe, Kari, breathe. I keep thinking of that tiny snake from the other day–this is just rebirth. What’s there to run from? 😉
Dear Len, thank you. Wonderfully mysterious and mysteriously wonderful – a treasure.
as the mother of a baby who’s not yet walking and a person currently being called to achieve great things in my career this brought tears to my eyes. especially this: “you can do it”. i can imagine saying it to my daughter with love and really meaning it. that made me wonder why i don’t do the same for myself. funny how much harder that is. thanks for the reminder, len.
Hey, that foot to bike thing is exactly what I did. Yep, it felt like a call from the trees I used to whiz past in my car, back before I knew how to stand without fidgeting. Blitzed out on corn syrup and the high salt/fat of fast food, animals as slaves churning my guts while hurling down the road like a comet in a sense muffling box on wheels: no wonder we feel as though time is speeding up. I think it’s all the sugar, all the stimulants. Beer, coffee, tea, sugarsugarsugar, bread, tobacco, and the fire worship: all of our machines burn.
The bike didn’t replace my walking devotions, but it replaced the bus. I’m thankful for the health to have been able to do this, but really my health has only gotten better with the years instead of the reverse. I was older when I was 25 than I am now because I didn’t get much exercise and I didn’t eat vegetables while I did smoke tobacco and drink a lot. Perhaps this is a mirror, a scale model of what could happen in the biosphere if we stop attacking it and start repairing it.
Do you remember the first trine Mercury made to Neptune on October 1st? It was on the day when the ACA (Obamacare) roll out began signing up folks for health insurance, 20 days before Mercury stationed retrograde. They were both trine the U.S. Sibly Venus who had as companions, natal Karma and transiting Hades, all at 3+ Cancer. Neptune at 3+ Pisces was partnered with Ophelia (madness!) also at 3+ Pisces. In stepped Mercury, direct for the moment, at 3+ Scorpio and the trickster started pushing buttons like crazy. Talk about a Mercury storm!
Now we revisit the madness – twice. This will essentially be 3 days of trine energy between Mercury and Neptune. Too much fun. However, Mercury will also make 3 conjunctions to Saturn, the 1st being one week after the initial trine between the trickster and Neptune. Two weeks after that trine Mars entered Virgo (fix it!) and 4 days later Mars opposed Neptune. By the time Mercury makes this last 3-day double trine to Neptune, a lot of water will have passed under the bridge (or is it over the dam?)
The second conjunction between Mercury and Saturn came Tuesday before Halloween and the last one will be on Monday night November 25th. I believe that the gods, Mercury and Neptune, designed this escapade of malfunctions for teaching purposes, as well as the fun of it (for Mercury anyway). Haven’t we all learned a lot about what Obamacare does and doesn’t do for its participants? Haven’t the news media folks dug deeper into the costs and coverage of this new insurance program and compared it – ad nauseam- to policies they replace? Would they have done that without the “disaster” that was the roll out? I don’t think so. Transiting Neptune is now in the U.S. Sibly 3rd house of communication and data gathering.
The gods do work in mysterious ways sometimes, but Neptune and Mercury have provided the opportunity for Saturn to do his thing Scorpio style as he transits the U.S. Sibly 11th house of “groups”. Mars in concert with Mercury (mutual reception and a sextile last Friday) and Saturn (sextile this Saturday, the same day as the 2nd Mercury trine Neptune) will bring Virgo order and a beginning of the end of the “madness” I bet. Mars will conjunct the U.S. Sibly Neptune on Saturday the 23rd of November, just as transiting Venus sextiles transiting Saturn.
As for Jupiter, he works in concert with Mercury as opposite ends of the same polarity, and Jupiter co-rules Pisces with Neptune. There are no loose ends really, just illusion, and a reminder to not be so terribly dependent on technology. The gods are jealous when we get too much independence too soon; remember what happened when we mortals got fire!
be