Mercury trine Pluto & Saturn under a Full Moon

Dear Friend and Reader:We all know that we need to have more honest conversations about the important things in life — and we all know what they are. There is nothing like a trine from Mercury to Pluto — supported by Saturn — to help get the conversation going. The astrology is pretty simple: trines open a flow. Mercury trine anything opens the flow of communication (specifically) about the topic of the other planet involved.

With Pluto this is about that delightful shadowy material of deep, dark eroticism, change, death and letting go, and our true emotional needs. Saturn addresses boundaries, the ego structure, and our willingness to change. These are all related topics — see if you can figure out the common thread.

One of the aversions to a real conversation is how we might feel the next day: about things we expressed (expressing a feeling is a form of a commitment, which is why we might shy away from it), needs expressed (also a form of a commitment), or secrets revealed.

“It hasn’t the same effect the next morning, when I’m in a different head space,” a friend wrote to me recently. “It’s like two different worlds. I wake up and see your emails and think of our conversation the night before and don’t necessarily want to go there in the daylight.”

We have all experienced this. It takes some time to get accustomed to the coexistence of the nocturnal self with the diurnal self; the self with fewer borders who can say, feel and need some unusual things; and the cognitive, rational ego self that is all about protecting its image, maintaining stability, and in general keeping a grip on reality.

If you open up under the influence of this weekend’s aspects, carried by the momentum of the Full Moon, be prepared at least to experience this effect. I call it the ritual effect. In doing any form of ritual — and honest conversation counts, particularly with the Full Moon coming through town this weekend — there is always an opportunity to deny or eschew what occurred; it can seem strange, inappropriate, or the part of your brain that the Christians, the U.S. government and the advertising industry have colonized can really wonder what you were ever doing.

This is the part of the brain that feels like the “uncreative self” that drags us through the day like a locomotive. When we open up in the reduced boundary world of the night, we make a subtle pathway out of that hard-edged world of money and limits and enter another space. I think that when people say they want to be more creative, what they mean is to get in contact with this softer, nocturnal, and more fantasy-driven aspect of their nature. That usually feels really good, though there can be odd things we find in the shadows that we simply need to accept or allow to be released.

And yes, there is the next day, were you need to accept who you became “last night.”

That ritual, exploration or intimate conversation is taking place in emotional and psychic territory (the limbic system). The rest of life is being lived in cognitive territory (the forebrain). Growth is the process of integrating the different aspects of consciousness, the various lobes of the brain, the different identities, and getting them all talking.

Part of the hitch there is we create relationships where people expect us to be a certain person; not only can’t we be “inappropriate” in those relationships, we might feel strange having any contact with this inner other identity. Image means a lot in our society, but it’s a prison. And remember — people never see you the way you think they do. You may turn on the prude, and someone who plays it totally cool who you see every day can’t stop thinking about eating your pussy.

Artists do something interesting: create something in one state of mind, and then deal with it the next morning in another. If you do drugs, all your fantasies and hallucinations evaporate; if you dream a really wild dream, it disappears, leaving you with a feeling. If you talk to someone, the words vanish. If you make art, you have evidence of your journey through consciousness; you have evidence of where you were, what you touched and what risks you took.

With sexuality and sex itself, the distinction between the “erotic person” and the “normal person” can be profound — and the two selves can quite literally deny the existence of one another. That is a huge split in awareness or consciousness. Where you have art to work with, you have a chance to reabsorb the product of one “personality” into the “other personality” due to the presence of physical evidence.

With sex, emotions and revealing secrets, you may need to stretch to accept this strange other person who you are — the one who did ________ last night or who admitted to _______ and still love and accept that person the next day — really claim this entity as yourself.

Otherwise, we run the risk of compartmentalizing ourselves out of existence. What we need, I think (it has worked for me as an artist, writer and to some extent as a lover) is to have the whole brain, the whole personality, be friends with itself, open up those compartments and allow ourselves the room to be a whole person, all the time.

“It takes some work to integrate and almost easier in the short term to let them be two different worlds,” my friend wrote to me this morning. Yes, and it’s a lot more than two. Here, we have a window into that odd experience of the ego, when you’re doing something really intense, you know what I mean, you’re stretched into this unusual shape (feelings and body) and you wonder: what would my father think if he saw me like this?

Indeed.

Yours & truly,

What could she say to the fantastic foolybear
and what could she say to brother
and what could she say
                      to the cat with future feet
and what could she say to mother
after that time that she lay lush
                                 among the lolly flowers
         on that hot riverbank
                 where ferns fell away in the broken air
                         of the breath of her lover
     and birds went mad
                       and threw themselves from trees
   to taste still hot upon the ground
                                     the spilled sperm seed

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

EVERYBODY LOVES A DISCOUNT! Yes, we have the two sides of our brain — the side that desires, and the side that rationalizes! Today I am speaking to both. If you subscribe to Planet Waves Astrology News (our weekly subscriber edition) for six months, you will get Small World Stories included. Astrology News arrives twice a week — you get seven horoscopes a month, many excellent articles, the monthly birthday report and six years of archives…and with Small World Stories, you have the annual horoscope for all 12 signs, many articles and our minor planet encyclopedia. This offer is good for this weekend only! So sign up today, get some fabulous services and help sponsor Planet Waves. (Note, if you want to subscribe for a year, we have an even better offer — call Chelsea at (877) 453-8265 and if you don’t get her leave a message — she’ll call you back.

Aspects for April 18 are courtesy of Serennu

Amor (26+ Aries) quintile Nessus (14+ Aquarius)
Mars (18+ Cancer) quincunx Quaoar (18+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mercury (1+ Taurus) quincunx M87 (1+ Libra)
Mercury (1+ Taurus) trine Pluto (1+ Capricorn Rx)
Mercury (1+ Taurus) conjunct Asbolus (1+ Taurus)
Juno (29+ Sagittarius) square Aries Point (0+ Aries) – Near Miss
Juno stations retrograde (29+ Sagittarius)
Vesta (29+ Pisces) square Juno (29+ Sagittarius Rx)
Venus (15+ Aries) septile Neptune (23+ Aquarius)
Apollo (19+ Cancer) square Sisyphus (19+ Libra Rx)
Mars (19+ Cancer) quintile M87 (1+ Libra)
Sisyphus (19+ Libra Rx) septile Orcus (28+ Leo Rx)
Mercury (1+ Taurus) trine Saturn (1+ Virgo Rx)
Sun (29+ Aries) sesquiquadrate Great Attractor (14+ Sagittarius)
Arachne (2+ Libra Rx) quintile Great Attractor (14+ Sagittarius)
Mercury (2+ Taurus) quincunx Arachne (2+ Libra Rx)
Eros (13+ Taurus) opposite Hidalgo (13+ Scorpio Rx)

Aug 08, 2003 – Aquarius – Weekly

This week’s stunning Aquarius lunation may not assuage your fears and misgivings permanently, but you feel the possibility of a life in which you can meet the world on equal terms. Part of your insecurity is the result of Neptune’s presence in your sign, which is melting all those crystals you usually use to hold your personality together. It’s also working through the layers of faux Aquarian certainty that do little other than isolate you from people and new information. Feelings are subtle, and you will never quite feel the way the people around you do. But they are offering you a lot of very constructive guidance right now, and a fine lesson in being alive.