Mercury’s sextile from earthy Capricorn to Neptune’s watery Pisces dominion at 1:49 am EST today contributed to start the New Year with symbols of mind, earth and water. Indications are that the innermost planet’s first aspect of January will elaborate further into a dominant theme for 2013, when every mind on the planet may find occasion to rethink the meaning of water. That’s largely because of where Mercury will take its famous retrogrades, and the company it will keep while doing so.
Mercury shows up in your life as mind because it is always close to the Sun’s symbol of consciousness, and because it moves quickly like thought. It is so quick that nearly every calendar year the swiftest planet passes between Earth and the Sun three times.
In the process of passing between Earth and the Sun, Mercury’s motion appears to reverse for about three weeks. The period of apparent regression is called a retrograde. Retrogrades, among other things, represent an auspicious opportunity to rethink. In 2013, all three of the innermost planet’s backtracks will take place entirely in the three signs identified with water. That does not happen every year.
Each water retrograde of 2013 will also find Mercury in the company of a large, slow-moving, sign-ruling outer planet. That does not happen even every decade. During its first reversal this year, from Feb. 23 to March 17, Mercury will share Pisces with its modern ruler, Neptune — thereby symbolically perfecting its first aspect today.