Mercury enters Sagittarius

image: 'Abacus - a 12 part color wheel'

(image credit: DigiLab AVU, 2002)

Mercury is entering the Sagittarian realm on December 5th at 2:43 in the morning UT/+0 time. And that it’s doing so by hitting 0 Sag at a moment when it can be the thing shoehorned in between fixed star Toliman and universal(ist) Sappho would seem to say that everybody has stuff on their mind.

It's a bit of that Toliman thing...the what we can do but which we may or may not get around to doing (or being)?

Oh yeah, we’re all a bit at sixes and sevens with ourselves. No doubt we’d like to think we’d like things to be simple. But considering the evidence of how complicated all our lives seem to be?

It would appear that we humans don’t actually want anything to be simple. It would be antithetical to our big-brain beings to have nothing to think about, no matter what the meditation-prone think. Meditation and philosophy and all those things, those are coping mechanisms. They’re ways of gaining insight.

But for those who think any sort of silence or stillness or directed thought is going to change life? It may change their life, yes. But that’s because they’re changing the way they think.

That’s the Mercury precept. Whether we’re running through life, thinking about life or planning what we’re going to do with our lives, whether we’re using our thinking mechanism in a focused manner or merely to process our dance steps through life (I’m currently highly partial to electro swing, if you care) that’s the Mercury precept.

Mercury in Sagittarius has a reputation for lacking bounds and boundaries. So it would figure we will all have a lot…too much…the stuff we would rather not be thinking about…floating through our heads. And being that we’re humans (a mouthy species, it seems) some of that will fall out of our mouths and we will hear ourselves speak. Or we’ll hear others speak. Or we’ll have to contend with what we’re being told about ABC while we’re trying to finish up thinking through XYZ.

Yet for all that Mercury in Sagittarius tends to lack boundaries, for that same simple reason this is a hallmark of moving ahead. So you may be feeling like you need to ‘get out there.’ Or you need to throw off some shackle, some limitation, some old way of doing things because it’s just too confining.

The pitfalls during these weeks of Mercury in Sag (December 5th – December 24) are generally twofold. The all that’s out there and the wanting to get to what you want to get to can cause us to rush. Or be sloppy in some way which is going to trip us up.

Some of this is going to happen. So we take charge of what we can get ourselves to take charge of and we try and think through why we were sloppy in the moments when we were sloppy. What was so fool important and did we at least maintain enough of a sense of priority that the thing we did screw up on wasn’t something which is going to extract some life lynchpin?

A couple of days from now you’re going to hear that Mars is entering Libra. Considering that, it would seem that we have a time of opportunity.

And maybe we need it, yes. A lot of us have come to  Orcus' station with one path blocked, creating a consequence (Orcus) which is our needing to adapt... change...find a new way.

So some of us need to reach out. That quality - and minding who you're being as you reach out - all that becomes heightened once Mars gets into Libra. But there's more - the need to break through or break barriers for many of us is going to require striking out into uncharted territory of some type. That would be Mercury in Sag as the exploring and Mars in Libra as a 'conscious putting of Self (or what we do, have done or haven't done) on the line.'

Then as the month rolls forward we get into Uranus territory, which in raise tensions propels some of us into that 'new action' (creating our own 'breaking through' - namely of our own hesitation or resistance). That being mostly for those who have been having it in mind (or planning) coming into mid-December, others will find this period manifesting as new cracks in their mental asphalt and fractures crazing their nice neatly whitewashed image of things.

All of which gets us back to that Sagittarian ability (and tendency) to force the reality of the unknown on our imaginings. You know: learning differently. Or the different way. Or about the different thing. Or that your thing isn't what you thought it was, begging the examination of why you believed something so patently untrue.

(Oh yes...you wanted it to be true. You held onto its being true all during that long, long Mercury transit of that fixed emotions sign Scorpio.)

So yes...Mercury in Sagittarius is a great time for expanding horizons. Some will tell you it’s even a good time for taking a trip – which is a fine sort of idea as long as you’re starting out from the perspective of exploring what you could do.

Mercury in Sagittarius is a great time for the possible. But it also can raise your hackles. Those who can do the cheerful ‘letting water run off your well-oiled back feathers’ do pretty well under Mercury in Sagittarius… although there is some tendency to look like you don’t care. Or like you’re flighty… irresponsible... overly self-convinced without any real reason to be so full of yourself.

A lot of what is going to happen over these next few weeks will have a societal aura connected to it. That could be direct (as in: them and me) or it could be exclusionary, as in ‘I’m getting away from all that (and them).’ Ruling factors suggest a time when we’re in our heads and we’re thinking about how we feel about this or that and it all adds up to a lot about who we think we are, a world we’re living in which may or may not be what we were raised to think it was going to be…what ‘they’ know…what (as we all say from time to time to ourselves) we’re sure ‘they’ have no idea about with regards to our world.

Looking along the path ahead, Mercury’s doubling up on the Sun’s presence in Sagittarius probably heralds a few bobbled, messy days after which Mars enters Libra and we fly a bit less intensely but not any less proficiently until the weekend of the 14th when energy really begins to (Mars/Uranus) pop.

Or for you, maybe it’s a sizzle. Or a crunch, crackle or creak. 

The Omega Nebula (Messier 17 or NGC 6618) in Sagittarius

(photo credit: ESO/European Southern Observatory, July 2009)

We need to move on. This whole time is about moving on – not in terms of other people, but in terms of who we are. This is a time of rapid-fire re-estimations and when our values are going to be flexing, fluxing and squeezing out our impurities.

Or maybe keeping the impurities and squeezing out the good – there is that chance…which may be the point.

The thing about learning is we don’t know what we’re going to find out. Sometimes we learn things and they completely revolutionize our world. Sometimes things get tossed into our life and we hate them but they turn out to be good for us.

There are famous stories among astrologers about Sagittarius – it’s a sign which can be all about the magnanimous mentor and equally all about the over-convinced person determined to set themselves up to tell you the truth.

Except the trouble is…under Sagittarius, those who talk the loudest are often not able to make much stick. They may tell you what you want to hear or what you don’t want to hear not for your benefit, but because you aren’t even part of their equation.

Some call Sagittarius the sign of ethics. The truth is, Sagittarius can be ethical, but then again – your boundaries on ethics may not be the same as that someone else has.

Who’s right?

The Sagittarian response: “They are all equally right and equally wrong.”

Why that would be, could be and should be is the difference between understanding our Self and our Self among others – or as one part of the Whole which you may call society, Existence, whatever.

Sagittarius is where the zodiac breaks out it’s boundaries in every way. Where the first four signs are about learning to be who we are and the second four are about how and who we interact with, the last four signs are global and pluralistic.

They’re where we stop looking at everybody else and begin looking at ourselves through the perspective of everybody else. Every time any planet moves into Sagittarius and from there into Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces we know life is going to be more global. Speaking astrologically, we’re currently living through a period when generations are being shaped on this global level and when many of the powers which have kept individuals apart are being melted away.

It’s to think about, surely.

In that, these next few weeks will favor stepping light and keeping pace with yourself. Knowing what you’re doing is a good thing but that doesn’t mean you should only do what you know – or what you know will end in some manner you can predict.

It’s time for us all to take a step up, lest life tell us to take a step back with Mercury’s transit of Sagittarius merely being a timer pertaining to matters we need to learn from. The major influences which go along with this transit (Mars-Uranus in opposition plus Uranus and Venus stations) are all about getting us to flex and let go of old ways, limits, patterns – even alliance which no longer function as support or even supportively.

As we all know, when it comes to life and growth, we can change or we can be changed. And sometimes those things are one and the same – an idea which in its own right is rather hallmark Mercury in Sagittarius.
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