By Len Wallick
Well my mind is goin’ through them changes, I feel just like mittin’ of time…
-Buddy Miles
Mercury enters the cardinal water sign Cancer today at at 3:09 pm EDT, the latest in a rapid succession of planets changing sign or direction since the first of June. Among them all, the trickster is setting the tempo at this point. The implication is that we are encountering events head first. That may be a good thing. It may not. At the very least, we should be aware that it is our minds that are both taking the brunt and leading the way through a complex and demanding cycle of eclipses.
The whole thing started with a partial solar eclipse in Gemini on June 1. The Moon cast its shadow over Earth’s geomagnetic north pole. Less than 24 hours later, Mercury, the planet we associate with magnetism, left lush Taurus behind. It came home to the sign it rules. It found the Moon still there spooning with the Sun right on top of the lunar south node. If you can forgive the employment of a biblical allusion, it would be fair to say our trickster knew that eclipse better than any other planet.
A wealth of puns aside, the symbolic connection between Mercury and the first of three eclipses is hard to miss. The planet associated with mind found its twin bed occupied by brighter lights. At about the same time our consciousness was confronted with the intimate lives of public luminaries. Our thoughts were challenged to find the narrow path between attention and distraction. To ignore the situation completely would have been to deny our sexuality; to become obsessed would have been an act of neglect. Our consciousness was taking the brunt of too much information. At the same time we have needed to be fully conscious to find our way through events in a healthy manner.