Mercury and Pluto carry through much of the astrology this week. Today, Mercury crossed the point where its retrograde began 40 days ago. Now direct on Aries ground untrod, the innermost planet is speeding towards a Wednesday square with Pluto. For its part, Pluto is grinding slowly backwards from its own retrograde station in Capricorn on April 10. Look around at your life and it’s probable that you will see the same contrasts that Mercury and Pluto represent; fast and slow, back and forth, new and old, all on course to both test and motivate your resolve.
Resolutions form in the mind, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Among its many manifestations, Mercury appears in your life as mind and its expression. Right now, only the Moon, archetype of unconscious thought, is moving faster than Mercury. Also right about now, the Moon is entering Gemini where it will be under Mercury’s rulership for nearly three days.
The symbolism of the two speediest objects in the sky working together, with the Moon ruled by Mercury, is your mind, consciously and unconsciously, running on ahead of everything else. Thinking ahead can be very good or not so good, depending on what form your thoughts take.
Ahead, of course, is Pluto. For Mercury, it will be a square aspect from cardinal Aries to Pluto in cardinal Capricorn, yet another preview of 2012’s main attraction, the premiere square of Uranus to Pluto. With Mercury as the proxy for Uranus, your thoughts could even now be taking you in the direction of unconscious fear, getting you ahead of opportunities to explore and discover with awareness. Thinking ahead with fear limits and confines your perceptions and responses to familiar patterns from the past. That’s no way to meet the future. Old patterns can only be overcome if you use your noggin to recognize and resolve not to repeat them, and beyond that, by acting in new and untried ways. Action is the first and most indispensable protocol for dealing with a square aspect.