Mercury (and Byblis) Retrograde

Highway I-80  (the Eastshore Freeway) near Berkeley, California

(photo credit: Minesweeper, May 2005)

All those many things that the December-January Venus retrograde revealed things to us about how satisfied or dissatisfied we are with who we are and how well we are embodying the truth of who we are and can be to and with others…

All that is starting to dawn, to congeal, to become manifest realistically and in real world terms about who we think we actually are as the dark pall of Venus retrograde begins to retreat.

And now, something about ‘the idea of the feeling’ (or having had that feeling or being required to confront some feeling) at some level about some facet of our lives takes center stage.

Mercury will go retrograde on February 6th at 9:44 in the evening UT/+0 time just about as main belt asteroid Byblis (that terrible idea) also goes retrograde – this time in Libra. Call it a recipe for really terrible confrontations with our Self with regards who who we are to-and-with others.

No, we don’t (Byblis) want to have to even think about something, never mind contend with it.

But we have to anyway – and we will. Willingly or unwillingly, we will.

For those who haven’t already got a self-confrontational idea in mind, life is likely to provide you with one (actually, it probably already has…you’ve just been ignoring them or your issues with them)…and any such person will appear as ‘the problem’ in your life.

They aren’t. We are. The you, me, the guy down the street and that sovereign ruler across the ocean, we are all going to be going through something…well…here I will revert to a memo I got handed Way Back When in the Lore Days of Hollywood. Despite humble beginnings, Star Wars (the first one) had become a huge, huge, HUGE hit. So suddenly every Hollywood honcho (particularly those who had seen the project and turned it down) wanted to be worth their paycheck.

Out came this memo. I’m not sure how widely it was circulated, but there it was in studio black-and-white typeface: we want something just like ‘Star Wars’ but different.

That ‘just like but different’ idea is what I want to point out here. From December into January the planet was Venus and the sign was Capricorn. Where Venus is about feeling supported or rewarded and that had us wrestling with that working the way we wanted it to (even needed it to) versus how it did or didn’t work, Mercury is more mental. Mercury is about the idea, the text of the thing, the steps which lead us from one thing to another, through our day or through our mental processes.

So that this month’s Mercury retrograde…a retrograde which starts in Pisces (a water/emotionally evocative sign) and which then backs into Aquarius (an airy/theoretical sign) until it finally goes direct (on February 28th) at a point which incites ‘fervent determination – this would seem a time bent on making us understand that things can happen.

And that if we don’t make them happen and work to make them into the thing we want to happen, that’s not on any ‘them’ out there – that much is on us.

This is the onset of the Aquarian Age. Mercury is backing into Aquarius and heading for a station rife with mental conflict (and questions about how we feel about mental conflict) suggests we can make things happen, expect things to happen…and how the more we greet situations and people as provocations meant to get us to think.

So will we listen, consider or questions our Self or our own motivation, alienation, possible misconception, level of expertise or willingness to try?

Maybe. Then again, this is Mercury retrograde, so don’t count on it. Under this influence we often we ignore, resist, reject or otherwise avoid thinking through, about or into the ‘other side ‘of everything until it proves itself (generally at the end of the retrograde or in that week after) to be valid.

Still, our thinking does get affected – as should it. This is a time to think things through – inclusive of why we think we should be thinking what we’re thinking about anything. Others may ‘tap into’ in our heads now. And that will get a reaction – from us, at least.

Were they ‘doing’ anything? Probably not. The shift is happening in(side) us. That's how retrogrades work - they work inside us by calling our attention to some facet or factor in our life.

And that 'they' may or may not care as part of our current equation? Or that some part of the world doesn’t seem to be listening? That isn't the issue - what we think about it and what that means about us now or before or in terms of what we believe in but do or don't embody well (or not well)...

Who knows…that maybe be part of our problem. But whatever the problem is, the problem is ours. That’s the process in all retrogrades – to get us to understand that some of the issues or the reasons things aren’t working the way we might want them to is all about us. It might be about what we think something is when it isn’t that at all – for good or ill. The dream may not be dreamy at all and the monster under our mental bed may only be a personal phantasm.

Or maybe they are real.

The point is, our ability to confront our own demons is the heart and soul of Pisces – and however it happens, as Mercury goes retrograde on February 6th at 3 Pisces, we’re all going to be experiencing a little taste of mental traffic.

‘Heavy car traffic on a narrow isthmus linking two seashore resorts.’ That’s the Sabian Symbol, one which Marc Edmund Jones typifies as ‘the mobility and intensity of interchanges which make possible and characterize complex social processes.’

The thing which is easy to miss here is that the whole is us – our Self. And thus all that ‘traffic’ refers to the many things in our (Mercurial) mind. That Mercury’s retrograde begins in early Pisces starts us into a three-week period of internal reflection and growth of self understanding on a feeling note. As an early (first decan) degree, 3 Pisces is all about what we are doing about our feelings or even our willingness to own that our feelings are ours and not anything someone else is ‘forcing’ us to have…at the moment, things are personal.

We’re just not entirely in the personal mood. We think we are – there is going to be a lot of ‘leave me alone’ going around now…but part of all that is our blanket mortal tendency to prefer projection.

You know, particularly when the emotional water gets warm. Or very, very cold. And because Mercury will quickly back into Aquarius (as of February 13, UT/+0), we can expect – at the best – to be working on clarification, realization, effective efficiencies…and a variety of understandings with our Self that if we are going to be who we are we don’t just get to be part of us.

We have to be the whole Self and nothing but the Self…(you hate that I took U.S. history, I know)…but that’s so help our Self.

That’s the thing to understand here: we either help ourselves now or we put ourselves in a place which is guaranteed to get slippery. Remember Sedna? Didn’t Sedna just go direct – in Taurus – with Venus, ruler of Taurus, having given us the pressure-cooking and Plutonic-transformative time of our lives?

Yes, we need to reconsider something. That 'old' or preconceived notion...that unrealistic dream...that unwillingness to face who we're proving to others we really are (or aren't)...that's in play.

You did hear the stakes change, didn’t you?

If you didn’t, plan on a bad time going forward. If you did, proceed on that basis, but no leaps off tall buildings. The lunar nodes will be changing signs very soon. Remembering that the nodes (as a function of what nodes are) cycle backwards through the zodiac, this means that the last two years of Scorpio-Taurus is finally coming to a close.

It also means that we’re working…or if you prefer, functioning (either may apply) at a very basic and  baseline level. This can become something to build on…or it can be experienced as a limitation. 

Moving forward into two-and-a-half-years of societal connections based more purely on the ‘I/thou’ principle of Libra-Aries (and thus what we are to others and what they see us as) being free of connections which clog the works is as important as whether we’ve built the right alliances.

And since this Mercury retrograde overlaps that shift of nodal (social – societal – relating/relationship) energetics, it would be implied that we’re up against a series of decisions.

No, not about them – about our Self. It’s another of those ‘who are you’ moments…which in this case is going to lead us (along a garden path or otherwise) to Mercury’s station at 18 Aquarius on February 28th which will be immediately followed by Mars…then Saturn going direct.

Let me say that again:

Mercury goes direct February 28th.

Mars goes retrograde March 1st.

Saturn goes retrograde March 2nd.

That is a major large sized astrological helping of emphasis. Mercury will be in Aquarius, land of economics, income, all things digital, societal, marketplace elitist and everyman… Saturn will be in Scorpio, testing our ability to deal with how we are tied to others whether we want to be or not because we absolutely have to exist on the same plane as everybody else (whether we like it or it scares the willies out of us)…and Mars is going to be in the latter part of Libra, confronting us with the essence of the Whole until we get it – we’re not alone but we do have the choice whether to be who we are or not.

How long it takes us to understand that is individual. How long it takes us to accept what that (Mercury in Pisces) really means in terms of what we’re going to have to deal with meeting up with in life…that’s up to us. Life isn’t about our cuddly comfort – it’s about being who we are. We can’t have the sense of existing without doing the existing and the interface between the idea of what we want to do and the doing it is all about our willingness to give both of what we can do – and what we feel.

You know, as a knowingly mortal human being.
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