By Len Wallick
Mercury stations retrograde tomorrow just before 5 pm EDT at 24+ Aries. As was the case with yesterday’s opposition of Jupiter and Saturn, it is a big deal that is a part of something even bigger. That expanded picture involves six major planets, both luminaries and the cardinal signs Aries, Libra and Capricorn. The radiating locus of that larger something would seem to be the Aries New Moon this coming Sunday. The theme is moving from duality into unity.
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Like a very large boat moving through the waters of time, the applying conjunction of the Sun and Moon has been creating a sort of wake for weeks on end. Mercury has been a part of that. Indeed, Mercury may be said to have been part of the first wave, and on the leading edge of those that followed.
Mercury entered Aries on March 9, less than a week after the previous New Moon in Pisces and two days before the Sendai earthquake. It entered its echo phase shortly before the Virgo Full Moon that some deemed ‘super’, but it was not the timing so much as the location that stands out.
The echo phase of a retrograde cycle is an arc bounded on two sides. On the front end, the boundary is designated as the degree of maximum retreat — as far back as the planet will appear to go before moving forward again. Because that point is first crossed weeks before the object in question even begins apparent backward motion, it is an echo from the future. We get a preview, or first review of what is to come. This time, Mercury did that in spades.