Dear Friend and Reader,
IN THE MIDST of all the intrigue the past week or three, I forgot to mention that Mercury is about to be retrograde. Blame Mercury retrograde for me neglecting to mention it, but we are now in what some call the Mercury storm phase of the extravaganza, which are the five or so days that surround Mercury changing directions relative to the Earth.
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What makes matters more interesting is that the Libra equinox happens today, Sept. 22, in the midst of the storm. That’s at 11:44 am EDT, with the Moon in early Cancer. Equinox is one of the ‘quarter days’, when the Sun enters a Cardinal sign and a new season begins (autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and spring for our friends who have endured a long winter in the Southern Hemisphere). The change of seasons is always palpable. After this week, night is longer than day in the Northern Hemisphere, and we approach the next two major points in the Great Wheel, six weeks till Sahwen (Halloween) and six more weeks till Capricorn solstice. Here is a little diagram that shows the solstice and equinox to confuse you a bit more.
When we pile on the big events, we get a kind of ripple effect. Things seem of greater magnitude, or they actually are. Lots of Libra is square lots of Jupiter in Capricorn.
For those new to the discussion of Mercury retrograde or those appropriately confused by it, I will offer one paragraph of technicality. Mercury takes 84 days to orbit the Sun. The Earth takes about 365. So three times a year, Mercury passes by the Earth, and that is how we get the retrograde. Because Mercury is passing us, there is an effect where its position seems to go backwards, which is disorienting, like looking at a moving train out of the window of another moving train. (There are days when I can visualize how this works and days when I cannot. If you feel like hunting around the network for an animation, I will post it.)
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The sprawling Caloris basin on Mercury. Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ. APL, Arizona State U., CIW |
Now, Mercury is famous for bungling up contracts and things electronic. It is also famous for things seeming to be wrong but not really being wrong. The caveat “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” would seem wise, but things darned may well seem broke and they seem like they need fixing. Hold off. I could tell you a lot of stories, some of which ended well. Avoid doing what you don’t have to do. Avoid spending money you don’t have to spend and signing things you don’t have to sign. If MGM offers you a movie deal and you want to know when to sign, hire me on to do the electional chart and I’ll find you a window (that was not an ad, it was a public service message).
As for the dates, the retrograde actually begins on Sept. 24 at 3:19 am EDT. It goes through 4:05 in the afternoon of Oct. 15, thankfully missing the election by about three weeks. But it does not miss the peak of the campaign; some of the debates; and it doesn’t miss the $700 billion to $1 trillion Big Business bailout package. Oh, I envy these people, trying to hash this thing out just during the Mercury storm. The reason I envy them is because it’s gonna be just so gosh darned easy to skim a hundred billion here and a hundred billion there, you would think it was eating lemon sorbet.