By Len Wallick
In spite of the long term outer plant aspects we have been striving to keep you conscious of (and there will be a written test), today belongs to the luminaries and Mercury.
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Go back to Monday, ok just remember the blog. A planet is said to be in “fall” when it is a sign which is opposite the sign of its exaltation. A planet is in “detriment” when it is in a sign opposite the one it rules. Make-up-your-mind Mister Mercury rules two signs, Gemini and Virgo. Don’t know why but he does get around, so, porque no? The problem is that makes things complicated for the bumpkin astrologer who is walking the narrow path of integrity.
Mercury is in Pisces since Monday. Hence Mercury is either in detriment or fall. Either way, it’s not a strong placement. It mutes the expression and saps the identity of Mr Wing Foot. He hasn’t been himself lately and neither have a lot of Geminis and Virgos.
This morning that old, incorrigible Scorpio Moon finds itself in the unlikely role of hero, coming to the rescue of Mercury with a trine aspect (120 degrees of separation). Signs with the same element (earth, air, fire and water) form trines because four elements divides into twelve signs yielding a dividend of three. Trines are like winning a lottery – beneficial but too easy. Overall, just as likely to lead to overindulgence and excess as to uplifting and sustenance. It depends, as it always does, on the context and syntax of the aspect. In this case (Scorpio Moon trine Pisces Mercury), it’s all good. If only for half a day or less, there is this glorious, open, static free channel between unconscious emotional intuition and the conscious calculating intellect. It’s like Salvador Dali working you a non-linear differential equation and you were digging it. So, thank you Moon. You’re welcome Mercury.
Luna then goes on to trine first Jupiter, then the Sun later today. This is where the not so benefic edge of a trine might (emphasize: might) show itself. Unlike Mercury, Jupiter rules in Pisces. It is comfortable, it is fully expressed and strong. If we are lucky this will be a positive, even enthusiastic while also compassionate and altruistic influence. Like your boss taking you out to lunch, picking up the check and informing you that you are getting a promotion, a raise and an office with a door.
If we are not lucky, this can be a overbearing, fanatical energy with a heavy load of entitlement. Like your boss telling you to meet him at lunch, sticking you with a heavy bar tab, insisting you drive him home and informing you that you should convert to his religion if you want to keep your job. How will it turn out? Remember, each one of us has something to say about that. Keep in mind that the energy you put out there will come back to you.
Then, Luna trines the Sun. This splits the difference between the aspects with Mercury and Jupiter because Sol is neither domiciled nor detriment-ed, neither exalted nor felled in Pisces. The main thing about this one is to be conscious and aware that today is like no other. Hence habitual, reflexive reactions are to be avoided in favor of conscious creativity.
Finally, the Moon gets a symbiotic benefit out of all this. Considered to be in fall while transiting Scorpio, all of this attention and energy lifts Luna from the deep, depressive, dark waters to skip on the surface. Assuming we choose to sing along, we can follow the bouncing ball from one wave crest to another till the Sun goes down.
Speaking of the Pisces Sun, today finds it in a square (90 degree aspect) with the Great Attractor in Sagittarius. Lest this spoil your fun, remember squares are not all nor even necessarily bad. It just means you have to get up and go at it with a mind to work it out.
The main problem with this one is that we don’t really know what the Great Attractor is. Even if it were in our face, with a passport and a resume, we still probably would not be able to comprehend it. So what action is the luminary of the higher mind required to take to resolve a square with the mystery of the cosmos? Well, faith might help. Art is a powerful tool. Trying a new approach can be useful. So if you get out the water colors and pray while standing on your head, what’s the worst that can happen? Double-dog dare ya!
Oh yeah, back to Mercury in Pisces. As is fitting for for such a swifty, it’s double-dog aspecting today. In addition to its trine with the Moon, Hermie forms a sextile (sixty degrees of separation) with Pluto in Capricorn. Now, don’t let the Pluto thing put you off. This is rich and potentially golden.
Once again we heed back to Monday’s blog, LOVE it when a plan comes together! A sextile is a lot like a trine except you gotta work had for your money. And it better treat you right. So let’s put a little work into Mr Inside and Mr Outside. One clue from Greco-Roman mythology is that Mercury is practically the only one routinely allowed to enter Pluto’s underworld and leave again. It worked out for both of them. Pluto was able to stay in touch with his mother in law and Mercury had job security. After a while they must have gotten to know each other like people used to get to know their postal carrier. How’s the wife and kids, time for a cup of coffee, here’s a cigar for Christmas, yada yada. So, you figure that’s gotta carry over into astrology what with synchronicity and all. So this sextile, you see, can bring us the news from down below where the heat and pressure are transforming yesterday into tomorrow. It can allow us to open up and dish a little of what we have kept in the dark. There is an opportunity for mystery to be revealed and identity transformed. Sounds a little like a shot at freedom. Look for it and apply yourself fearlessly. It’s gonna treat you right.
For the last four Thursdays, your humble correspondent has offered a series of installments examining the mutual reception between Uranus and Neptune, soon coming to an end after seven years. This week however one is compelled to call a moratorium so as to study up on the materials Eric sent back from the NCGR astrology conference.
You see, i wasn’t invited. Gotta rep. They know that after a couple of the preferred i would be under the banquet table, trying the laces together on Robert Hand’s wingtips and giving Richard Tarnas a hotfoot; followed later in the evening by chucking water balloons at Michael Lutin from my hotel window. Somehow, they didn’t think i would fit in. Some folks just don’t know how to blast.
So until next time. Stay well. Step light. And remember the time honored congressional protocol for people who can’t take a joke.
Offered In Service
bk,
Thanks and you might want to scroll down when you visit my blog……I feel a lot better today and I posted something very different. :::koff:::
Mystes, Thanks.
This blog of mine starts at the bottom and goes up so the latest post is on top; this makes no sense to me because the continuity gets lost if they are read out of order.
carecare7
Bless your heart, I know how sad this is for you, even before I check out your blog. . which I will in a few minutes. When the pain is so acute it doesn’t seem to help knowing that this is happening for a good reason, whatever that could possibly be.
I probably would not have commented this evening, however, I was trying to remember the name of the lady who could predict the future and because Apollo’s feelings got hurt he fixed it so nobody would believe her. Then there you were with the answer! Just had to say thank you and I have no doubt that something will happen to make you realize why this has happened to you.
be
Carecare! I am so sorry you lost your creative partner! but thank you *so much* for pouring out your description of the Merc in Pisces effect. It was a vivid example and will stay with me as a principle upon which to build understanding.
Cassandra got a raw deal, but the story is being re-written even as we speak. I’m glad you have taken up her icon – what no one remembers is that Cassandra could only *hear* the truth, as well as speak it. An important gift.
Arms around you,
Myst
Ah, Merc in Pisces. Here’s a scenario for that: my friend that I have only known for one year who is one of the very few I have IRL is moving back to her home in Florida tomorrow. With her I was finally able to be my real, intelligent, thinking-out-of-the-box self. I could be REAL with a friend (ok I am not counting my husband here because I am always real with him) and not be marginalized for it. I could actually let out my intelligent side and not be resented because she is intelligent too. We both have Pisces sun, Virgo rising; both of us intensely feel so out of place among most unaware people (they don’t know who they are) and we both found we desperately want to create a sense of community for thinking, joy-givers like us. She and I tried so hard to form a caring, sharing secular homeschool community but alas, it didn’t happen despite all our efforts.
Here comes the Merc in Pisces thing: she leaves tomorrow and I have been having deep, grieving crying jags all day. Oh sure, I could blame it on my Chiron return, or the fact that my hormones are all out of whack because I am entering that crazy-making time called pre-menopause but I think it is Merc in Pisces. Why? Because how did I deal with my unremittant grief last night and today? (Besides cry buckets that is.)
I wrote. I wrote on Facebook, I wrote all day, I wrote like crazy. I emoted via my fingertips in e-mail and I burned up the keyboard as I poured out all my misery and pain on my new blog. I could not stop the flow of words piling up and spilling over like water in a flash flood. Then I went one daring step further: I put the link to my Blog on my FaceBook wall. Yep, in my grief I decided to be brave and send what I think out on the airwaves for all my FB friends and friend of friends and so on to see. This was a HUGE step for me. Merc in fall in Pisces? Not in my life, that’s for sure. Even now, LOOK at this post! It is filled with endless words and feeling, the fabric of my soul and pathos and thoughts in black and white. I cannot type fast enough with Merc in Pisces.
Oh and that blog? I called myself Cassandra for the seer that could see the future but was never, ever believed. It is here: http://cassandrasmusing.blogspot.com/
Cassandra’s musing….. a little peek into my heart, mind, and soul.
I titled it “Intelligent Life in the Housewife trenches: Yes, even housewives that are educated, well-read, and well traveled can have amazing lives and deep philosophical, intelligent thoughts while in the trenches of motherhood and housewifery.”
There. All this typing has helped mitigate my grief. I still cry and I still miss her terribly but Merc in Pisces helped me deal with it all. For me, Merc in Pisces IS the consummate healer.
Musicman- Thank you for catching my typo error and for being so kind about it. Seems like it’s not my day. Arf!
Moon just is trining Jupiter….6 minutes of arc past….but exact as I crammed todays comments.
Eric
“We live in a world that is mentally obsessed, yet where people ignore their intuition. Mercury in Pisces is all about in intuitive kind of intelligence, one that can make connections that others don’t see, and can handle depth.”
And your good self…. paras 4-5…
“It’s like Salvador Dali working you a non-linear differential equation and you were digging it. So, thank you Moon. You’re welcome Mercury.
Mercury then goes on to trine first Jupiter, then the Sun later today….”
Of course you mean MOON…I read it as Moon because my linear thinking said Moon….then my head got fried as I read it as Mercury….then I experienced a sort of Salvador Dali non-linear differential dive into an unknown whirlpool of Mercurial delight as a myriad of possibilities exploded into view as I interchanged the two energies….and suddenly Mercury in Pisces found its real intuitive stairway to Neptune, with Jupiter acting as midwife…..!!
It sure is good to be back…
PH
hey len —
i’m going to skip the whole personal aspects conversation and just say this: your post holds some very interesting nuggets for a gal who just had a video shoot this morning, received an interesting photo shoot offer this afternoon (as in, a type of gig i likely would never have considered a year or two ago, but perfectly legit), and tonight goes to her last night of work at a job she’s had for 6 years (fundraising over the phone for a nonprofit) and tomorrow hits the ground running with my continued/new employment endeavor.
thank you for the cheer inward and onward!
🙂 amanda
p.s. as for NCGR… had i known of your water balloon idea, i’d have offered to sub for you in its execution!
Hi Len. .
Lately I haven’t been checking out my daily personal aspects (partly because the daily planet placements are no longer available on this site) so when you asked us to think back to Monday, I remembered it was a green light day (car travel with no red lights) and figured Mercury was trining something in my chart, or the Moon or somebody was trining MY Mercury, so that explained all those green lights and would add that this can be quite a dependable outcome for me when planning ahead.
Today I’ve been consumed with random research (find a good website and follow it, including other links) while I should have been sorting laundry. Was pretty sure it was a Scorpio Moon thing, but now you tell me that Mercury is sextile Pluto. No wonder I found a veritable treasure trove on the Internet. . .thanks pal!
I agree with Eric in that personal experience with planets in fall or detriment within one’s own chart can prove to be a good thing in the long run. I was told that my Saturn in Aries was not a good thing by an astrologer when I first starting studying the practice. Much later, I learned that that rule didn’t apply to the later degrees of Aries, and since my Saturn is at 29+ Aries, there was a bit of “uh huh, I didn’t think so” thinking. Will try to find a website that explains that theory. . while the Moon is still in Scorpio!
be
Dignities: absolute categorical cartesian manichean european authority stamping forcefully absolute pre-fab interpretations on flowing continuum. Our language itself mirrors mono-authority~dualism-schizm. White, might, right, light, sight~ black, lack, hack, whack, smack. See? Greyface scowls even through the rhymes—ONE GOD!*. Mercury in Pisces looks like a gullible astrologer, a deluded hippie, Mars in Taurus appears to be a lazy native when you put on the Dignity goggles. Detriment, Fall, Exalt, Ruler: white man crazy talk~prison talk for armored people.
*Devil included with purchase.
detriment what I meant.
Mars in Taurus~Taiji Chuan. What means Fall, traveler?
Thank yoou, Eric, for helping the bumpkin out with the fine points – well taken. As you know, i have several of those “Chiron-like effect” challenge-creating aspects as well.
While we are on the subject of classical astrology, here is the table of dignities:
http://planetwaves.net/pagetwo/table-of-essential-dignities/
Mercury is in its detriment and fall in Pisces, according to this table — but what does that mean? What does ‘not a strong placement’ mean? We’re told this stuff; we read it in books; but what does it mean?
I would say – very little, unless we’re discerning and sensitive to the evidence. I have Mercury in Pisces. Would you say I’m a bad writer? Or that I lack ideas? (Only I know how much better of a writer I can be, and what ideas I have not expressed — but that’s part of the process — I keep working to improve my craft, and to evolve my thnking.)
When a planet is in a sign that it’s theoretically unsuited for, that creates what I call a Chiron-like effect: an inconvenient benefic effect. It creates a challenge; the native may feel the irritation as stimulation; and then he or she can respond, and often does.
Just looking at Mercury in Pisces, we see Einstein, Douglas Adams, Alexander G Bell, Johnny Cash, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Edgar Cayce, Bobby Fischer, James Madison, Gloria Vanderbilt, Liza Minelli and Anias Nin.
So you cannot say this is a weak Mercury. But you can say that it’s an interesting Mercury and you can look at how its natives process their thoughts and ideas. Weak planets are only as weak as you let them get from neglect.
We live in a world that is mentally obsessed, yet where people ignore their intuition. Mercury in Pisces is all about in intuitive kind of intelligence, one that can make connections that others don’t see, and can handle depth.