By Len Wallick
Well now, there’s two, there’s two trains running / well they ain’t never, no, going my way / well now, one run at midnight and the other one running just `fore day”
–McKinley Morganfield
Today retrograde Venus conjoins on-rushing Mercury in Scorpio. In order to appreciate and utilize their brief engagement in passing we need to review the back story.
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Recently, after months of dogged pursuit and adventure, Venus and Mars had two dramatic conjunctions in short order. In August, just as Venus achieved its greatest eastward elongation, it caught up with Mars in Libra. On the same day Mercury stationed retrograde in Virgo. At about the same time Saturn and Pluto exacted the last of their three T-square aspects, closing a chapter for Libra and Capricorn and laying the foundation for another. It seems so long ago.
The second time it was Mars that did the catching up. Earlier this month it was in Scorpio, just days before Venus stationed retrograde. That rare retrograde started about the time of the Libra New Moon. In turn, those events were closely concurrent with the asteroids Juno, Pallas, Vesta and the minor planet Ceres all changing signs within days or hours of each other.
All of that may also seem like a long time ago. By the time the Scorpio New Moon takes place in the same degree of that most recent Venus-Mars conjunction, the midterm elections will have concluded in the United States and today may seem to be in the distant past as well. Such is the current pace of events as reflected in the planets.
Coincident to that apparent expansion of time is a sudden and ephemeral collection of planets in Scorpio. It started with the yin of Venus last month. The yang energetics of Mars followed less than a week later. Vesta was next, making ingress just hours after the Libra New Moon. Nearly two weeks later Mercury was next. Closely following was the ingress of the Sun this last Friday, just hours after opposing the Aries Moon. All of a sudden, it seems we have a stellium in the sign of metamorphosis and transition.