Mercury Goes Direct

 A statue of Mercury in Bratislava

(photo credit: Peter Zeliznak, April 2009)

As of Saturday, July 20th at 6:23 in the evening UT/+0 time, Mercury will go direct at 13 Cancer. That means the window for station effects opens as this post goes up on July 18th…and ‘closes’ again on July 22nd.

During this time, we can expect the metaphorical Mercurial breeze to be making itself particularly known, particularly if our natal chart…or the chart of the company with which we work…or the town or nation in which we live…has any particular placement which ‘answers’ to the degree of this station.

By ‘answers’ I mean the following:

With regards to any planet, cusp, node or important object between

15 and 25 degrees of any of the cardinal signs:

Cancer, Libra, Capricorn or Aries...

These are the ‘hard’ aspects, the word “hard” meaning more challenging to work with. The Cancer conjunction will feel personal (especially since it’s in an emotional sign all about feelings!), the Capricorn opposition will bring up questions of acceptance, acceptability and everything which triggers ambitions or insecurities (which sometimes appear so, so similar!) and the two squares (Libra and Aries) represent factors which need factoring in. Maybe you’re just “getting to that step in a process”…and maybe you just didn’t take something into account. Squares of any type are life’s way of getting us to think in not so linear a fashion. It’s as if life is saying ‘it’s not so simple’ or pointing out the value of slowing down and appreciating the fullness of things as they occur.

With regards to any planet, cusp, node or important object between

18 and 22 degrees of Sagittarius, Aquarius, Gemini or Leo...

Sagittarius and Leo are fire signs, and fire signs are all about the sliding scale which at one end is ‘the vision’ and which at the other is ‘the expectation.’ The difference between these being all about our ‘emotional mindset’ (if you will), Mercury doing its turnabout in Cancer may well raise exactly this…reminding us that expectations, like the vision which we confuse with reality, leads to disappointments. Visions are meant to inspire, not replace reality. Situations and realizations which now prick our mental balloon and force us to be more realistic aren’t fun – but they do offer a way forward with new lessons learned, lessons which well may yet lead to future achievements.

On the Aquarius and Gemini side we’re dealing with the idea or the theory, against which Mercury’s station in Cancer is akin to life’s rubber hitting our mental road. Temporary burnout, the burning of bridges, burning brain cells (or midnight brain oil)…all can be part of the process here as we reconcile ourselves to having to deal with reality. In that process, Mercury in Cancer represents our frustration, our wanting things to work differently.

Except they don’t work differently. Sometimes the ‘idea’ isn’t the reality. And that’s what we have to adjust to. Skinned egos and bruised momentum incurred during this time hurts like heck, but despite whatever our ouches are telling us, all is not lost.

With regards to any planet, cusp, node or important object between

17 and 23 degrees of Taurus or Virgo…or between 15 and

25 degrees of Scorpio or Pisces:

These are the ‘easy’ aspects to this Mercury station. But don’t kid yourself – they aren’t all benign. Scorpio and Pisces are the trines here, and far from being the ‘pleasant’ aspects Victorian astrology would have had us all think, all trines mean is ongoing. And let’s remember, there’s already an ‘ongoing’ water trine between big boy planets Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter in progress.

However…there is some light, even if what we’re doing is looking up, up, up through what seems like acres of water to where dancing sunlight promises freedom, options and air.

This goes to the idea that Mercury’s station are always about a ‘turn of thought’ or our ability to alter our trajectory, path, methodology or rationale, which here happens to be focused through the feeling-memory-sensibility and (oh yes) money-as-means-to-survive sign of Cancer. For you, that money thing may be about what you have to survive with. Or it may link here to what you do to earn that money. Or what you do with your money in order to have, protect or create a foundation for all else.

As opposed to the trines, Taurus and Virgo are sextiles – the happiest of all aspects in astrology, if aspects which get little to no press.

Sextiles represent opportunities. Sextiles aren’t the open door, but the having the address where there’s a door you could go to an open. That astrologers and devotees of astrology don’t think much about opportunities really says things both good and bad about human beings…how on one hand we tend to take things for granted, and how on the other we are so afraid of change.

I had an amazingly telling conversation with a young professional just recently. This thoroughly likeable person had not only finally finished his degree and passed his certification exams, but had almost instantaneously got invited into a firm where he could begin to build what will eventually be a substantial life in the big world of business, commerce and human transacting. (Yes, I have his chart. He has huge potential.)

So what does he say to me? I really need to begin dealing with things. But who really wants to grow up?

Like I say, humans don’t like change. He didn’t ask me (and I was taken off guard by his comment, frankly) but even if he knows he can accomplish just about anything he wants to providing he’s willing to work for it and take on ownership of his trajectory in life…will he do it?

Some of us just don’t want to take on carving our futures. For that matter, even our present.

The sextiles given here connect earth with Mercurial water. So the idea of what am I going to MAKE of this….moment? Situation? Opportunity?…has the ‘making’ part of the equation representing whatever symbol we have in earthy Taurus or Virgo set against the waves of Mercurial vacillation brought up by this Cancer station.

And again…all of this, even for those of us who have not a shred of anything aspected by this station…all of this is taking place in a world awash with situations emotional and emotional provocation. No matter who we are, no matter where we live, things we don’t (Neptune) understand, things we want to feel (Jupiter) better or good about, things which we need to work for us and work in (Saturn) general all seem in flux.

Are they? Or is this time, this moment, month and year simply part of the evolving continuum?

My answer…which I give you to with all wryness implied, all empathic channels invoked and all awareness set to ‘acceptance’ says ‘probably all of the above.’

Amzinybe (Eternity) by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1907)

So where is this station happening? The degree is 13 Cancer, a degree known in lore as one which is perceptive in the utmost, blatant to the point of disquieting and quick to grasp and perceive inner meanings. These notes from lore are particularly interesting (and probably telling) in that they refer specifically to mental function coming from Cancer, an emotional sign. So does this mean that our thoughts will be emotional? Or that the information which is evidently dealt with in such a facile manner at this time provokes emotion or evokes memories or stirs up all those Cancerian cultural or familial or childhood ‘settings’ we all grow up having installed in our psyches and hearts?

Probably. And of course there is that ‘standard’ station concept about before-the-station versus after-the-station to take into account. Anything which occurs around the time of any station appears to be more important to us…which given Mercury might be better more about making a deeper impression on us. Things which happen going into a station often have yet to play out ‘in full.’ Things which happen after the moment of station exactitude often pertain to things which have already happened – the playing out of that, or what happens (or occurs to us) as a result of something prior.

Then we add in the idea that Cancer is not only the first of the water signs…AND the fact that in terms of zodiacal order and the ‘natural’ zodiac wheel, Cancer is the first of the reactive signs. Whether you think of this as emotional responses or how reactions based or built on experience (or cultural orientation or personal history) Cancer is always about the me, the I, the most basic sense of being.

And where we find Cancer in our personal natal chart, that tells us many things about where and how and through what sorts of experiences we are affected by…and how we go about learning how or why or when we’d react on this level. Or come to understand ourselves and where we ‘come from’ in our lives in a better and more clarified sense. I have a friend who has Cancer on the 12th house. He learns about his own feelings through his spirituality – through feeling himself as one person among many, and but a tiny part of the universal whole.

I feel for him. His love/hate relationship with being simultaneously totally individual and but a spec in the cosmos confounds him. And well it should…there’s nothing tougher than our 12th house lessons. The same joy of release so many feel in accepting that there is a Greater Power or a universal function beyond our being can scare the willies out of us when we realize that we are but a grain on one of a million beaches which front…and confront…the eternal flow of time and space becoming. This 12th house position also says that though he will be ‘imprinted’ (if you will) by the sign on his 4th house natal like we all are, he will learn about who that Self is in terms of emotional basics (the Cancerian archetype) last of all.

For him, that emotional self-knowledge comes last. It’s in some senses the ‘why’ he goes through many a process.

Whatever sign is on the native house of Cancer (your 4th natal house) is how you get colored. It will describe the attributes which color your most native, feeling world. Where the sign of Cancer falls is where you learn about that.

And those are two very different things. (Alas, right?)

Being that astrological signals are both objective and subjective, there’s the simple and straight-on sort of experiencing of personal revelation which now may come to light. Or maybe you’re someone who will now meet up with events which prompt some sort of Cancerian insight.

As for astrological specifics, Mercury’s going direct a degree off Sirius’ position is a plus, as Sirius is known as a star all about ‘brilliance.’ And since Mercury will have backed over Sirius just prior to going direct, that rather backdates the glimmerings of brilliance date all the way to July 13th – or if you’re into orbs, some sort of ‘dawning of brilliance’ (or ‘seeing the light,’ perhaps) which was experienced during a ‘reflective’ Mercury retrograde phase anywhere since July 6.

Moral: never underestimate a Mercury retrograde. It isn’t all about losing your keys, car breakdowns, waiting for someone to get back to you and such. It can also be a potent time when by experiencing that slowdown…or by simply stopping to think, to reflect, we recognize that thing which was probably waiting to be discovered all along.

Once Mercury goes direct, it will move forward and again conjunct Sirius on its way to moving on into other realms, other decanates, other signs and districts of the zodiac.

But here, at this station it’s in a grand trine (yes, another one) with the North Node in Scorpio and Chiron / Achernar in Pisces. And with the North Node conjunct Medea and more-than-substantially sized asteroid Psyche, that we may meet up with some aspect of our mentality (Psyche) and in particular those parts of it we damage ourselves (Medea) by being over-invested in (or not letting go of) is more than an echo of the idea that sometimes we just can’t help but get in our own way.

And (Chiron – Achernar) how we are going to do that over and over again until we simply decide to do something different…or differently. With Chiron in this mix, the ‘not knowing how to’ quotient stands our loud and clear, if not helpfully. About the only thing to say here is that as humans (and not mythic figures such as centaur Chiron) we have the ability to direct ourselves along a new path, even though it may not be comfortable and may not feel even vaguely native to our being.

As someone who feels these influences as deeply and thoroughly as anyone else might, I sympathize for our lot as humans. Chiron being involved in this grand trine suggests that as long as we refuse to walk through that long, dark, scary mental tunnel towards the thing we “don’t know how to do” we’ll never learn how to do it.

That’s terrible. It’s scary. But what’s our choice?

Having said earlier on how sextiles are opportunities, the sextile to the Taurus South Node and Menkar is the obvious ‘out’ – the “opportunity” we may feel (or think) we have to simply do the easy thing. Or continue on doing what we know or have already learned how to do. Any Taurean reference conjures up the question of security and thus our so-called ‘comfort zone.’ And with Menkar involved, who’s to say we can’t be effective if we just keep on doing what we’re doing?

- link to -

MENKAR: SOUL, SEARCHING

The answer to much of that would seem to be posed by TNO Deucalion sitting with Psyche, the North Node and Medea. Deucalion being a Trans-Neptunian Object which speaks to our finding the moral way to be who we are (i.e., fulfill our human potential) that’s probably the biggest clue to this whole Mercury station.

That the moral thing is to do what we need to do (that North Node thing) – whether we want to, like to, or even feel we (Chiron) know how to, is now our challenge most moral.

Some of us will take it on. Some of us won’t. Some of us are likely to feel judged for what we do, while some of us are will feel judged because we choose to do nothing. Some of us will own our feelings and responsibilities while some of us continue to project, ignore, deflect and abdicate.

The reasons…the feelings we do any of that however, all that is in – and comes from our minds.

And that’s the Mercury in Cancer point.
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