You got to move, child, you got to move.
— Mississippi Fred McDowell
Jupiter commenced apparent reverse (or “retrograde”) motion through Cancer just after midnight EDT. Mercury resumes direct motion Sunday afternoon, ending a Scorpio retrograde period of nearly three weeks. Other planets, major and minor, will soon contribute — through either changes of direction or sign — to what feels like the sort of adjustments you would make after assuming a new place or position.
One way or the other, in one sense or another, you probably have assumed a new place or position since the Scorpio solar eclipse last Sunday. It comes with the territory. Now, it’s a matter of adjustment, and how to make it.
Indications are you would probably be better off feeling, rather than thinking, your way through adjustments for the next week or so.
That’s because Mercury’s slowdown to direct station is holding it in an unusually long (for Mercury) water trine aspect with Neptune, and Neptune itself is in a prolonged pause before stationing direct next Wednesday.
Neptune’s trine from Mercury connects two of the most complex planetary energies through the auspices of symbolic water. Mercury was mythology’s jack of all trades: messenger one minute, mediator the next, and much more — from medic to murderer.
Tangibly, the element Mercury is a unique, useful, yet toxic paradox: liquid metal. Mercury is also the planet closest to the Sun, which makes it both emblematically swift and inherently influential in astrology. Also, for astrologers, all of Mercury’s mercurial qualities go exponential whenever it slows down just before and after changing direction — a period known as the “Mercury storm.”