Mercury/Mars/Hamal + Drakonia… Really?

Mercury's Southern Hemisphere by Mariner

photo credit: NASA/JPL

So now that Saturn is sitting at 10 Libra (where it’s going to sit for many weeks during which time we will all be working a lot of things through)…

Now we have a few folks having gotten Ye Olde Stamp of Life’s Approval. But there are those who have just delivered – or received a good swift kick in the pants…you know, back around the time of May 17th’s Scorpio Full Moon?

The kickee’s are feeling sore. The kickers are feeling disappointed (with themselves and whoever has so offended them).

And now we get to Drakonia going on station as there occurs a triple conjunction of Mercury, Mars and fixed star Hamal.

Let’s be real here…we are now in the waning (as opposed to building/waxing) half of the Moon’s current cycle. So on one hand, there are things in  motion which are going to stay in motion whether we like it or not. There, we pretty much have to see how all spins out. As the Moon wanes and heads towards a next New Moon (which in this case will be a solar eclipse on June 1st), there is also a natural tendency for things to ‘wind towards their end’ or for us to ‘let go’…whether of expectations or situations or…considering this was a values/self worth-versus-risk sort of lunar cycle…that goes with the May Taurus/Scorpio thing.

Not to mention an incoming eclipse.

Make that eclipses. 

Not to go through the whole list of recitations, but we’ve also gotten plenty of celestial indicators that this is a time when things coming to an end is entirely apt. Even necessary. But that with those endings come consequences…(which you may regard as results).

The Mercury, Mars and Hamal thing of the moment is taking place in early Taurus. Early Taurus is all about what kind of shape our self worth is in…and how helpful/healthy our attitude is towards investing ourselves in our abilities.

To be more specific, the degree we are speaking of here is 7 Taurus. And 7 Taurus is a degree known for being ‘haunted’ by things which happened (past tense). Sometimes that’s plainly about events in one’s personal life, but sometimes planets placed here will indicate that a person has a sense of past lives – some of which may not even be their own.

Added to this is a serious sense of discomfort. That may be emotional or physical – and it’s not anything we simply shake off. Things are not made better by others simply saying ‘get over it!’ or ‘think positive’…this is a situational quality each person has to grapple with in their own way.

And all that urging from outside about how happy one ‘should’ be? That just makes things worse. And yet, how other people would make things worse is part of this 7 Taurus dynamic. The lesson here is about being and individual and being individuated. 

Then we add in Hamal. Again, though they’re called ‘fixed’ stars, stars do move. They just move really, really slowly. The whole fixed star thing is an interesting legacy of times when humans had no Hubble Space Telescope and such too. The fixed star could be seen from Earth with one’s own personal eyes. Distant objects which are actually in our solar system and thus a whole lot closer to us – things like Eris and Sedna, whose orbits can take hundreds of years (closer to a thousand in Sedna’s case)…they move pretty slowly too. But back when such things were being named, they weren’t seen. They were too small. They were not a light in the sky by which to be guided. 

So with Hamal, the issue is how you use the smoldering, bubbling, continuous energy which goes with this star. Currently positioned at 7 Taurus, this is yet another indicator of the aura of struggle which has become so manifest in many a life whether your struggle is physical, financial, moral/ethical…

Hamal has been positioned at 7 Taurus since August 1952 and will leave 7 Taurus as of June 20, 2024 (which will be just as Pluto and Neptune are changing signs again). Everyone born during these years – with an emphasis on those with chart points within 5 degrees either way of 7 Taurus, Scorpio, Leo and/or Aquarius – among other things, you were born with 7 Taurus energetics on high as Hamal magnifies proclivities, positive and negative. It also describes where and how we will tend to accuse others of our own worst fears (or flaws).

Mars in Taurus tends to manifest as what I want and how I want things to be. Remembering that Mars rules Aries and Scorpio choices, everyone with Sun, Moon, Ascendant and/or natal Mars in one of these signs or in 5-degree orb of conjunction, opposition or square to 7 Taurus (see above) stand to be challenged by their own sense of desire or feelings of being denied or discredited at the moment.

Add in Mercury’s mental/communication aspect and we have a recipe for disputes and accusations. There is plenty of energy here to think things through and find realities and solutions, but will we? Since that will take effort and self-discipline, we can bet there are a whole bunch of people who won’t go the mental mile.

And there is that Drakonia going on station thing to consider. Symbolizing play, the player and getting ‘played,’ Drakonia in combination with Mars, Mercury and Hamal could spell some grandiose manipulations, some of which may well be for good – but most of which will simply be of the garden variety ‘I can and I want my own way!’ sort of stuff.

There is an aura of ‘fixation’ going around, what with Lust (aka fixation) being at 5 Taurus (well within orb) as this Mars-Mercury-Hamal conjunction has its day.

But with Eurydike at 9 Taurus?

Well, let’s put it this way…just be sure you want to pay the possible price of what you go for now.

Jupiter, Drakonia and the shadow of Neptune: A Reality which Plays with our Feelings

 The Sombrero Galaxy in infrared

photo credit: NASA/JPL - Spitzer Telescope Team

 

As the 8th became the 9th, Jupiter exited the shadow of its 2010 retrograde cycle. Maybe you felt it. Maybe something you had been trying to do last year finally got wrapped up with a nice, neat little bow.

Or maybe you just stopped trying.

Known as sole ruler of fiery Sagittarius and first/initiating ruler of Pisces, Jupiter symbolizes everything about life which makes us know (Jupiter) that there’s tons out there to experience (Sag)…to feel we’re in touch with (Pisces)…to learn about (Sag)…and to be part of (Pisces).

But the 2010 version of this vision – that’s over with now. As maybe you’ve noticed, life has moved on!

So that’s all we have to say at the moment about Jupiter. Well, except that it’s still in early Aries…which puts the focus on who we are and what we’re doing or being in this world. And yes, there’s also how at this particular moment, Jupiter is wafting along through space in astrological (not spatial!) conjunction with Lust (the concept of intensity of focus) and Mnemosyne (reflection as the best teacher).

That implies we are all focused on what we’re going to become. Or – alternately – what’s going to become of us. Maybe even what we can make of ourselves in this world.

It’s rather like that old phrase: ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’

 A nursery of new stars

photo credit: NASA/JPL - Caltech

Then there’s the next thing…how as of February 10th at 2:28 in the morning (UT/+0), Drakonia goes retrograde at 17 Libra. By anyone’s estimation, 17 Libra is a second decan (emotional) degree of an airy, ‘the ideal of it all’ driven conceptual sign. Libra is highly, seriously poetic - poetry being the very essence of the idea expressed emotionally. But it’s not all that tangible. We think of it as being all about ‘relationships’ when it’s really more about the quality of relating – as in, ‘can we relate?’

The whole notion that relationships are ‘just one thing’ is about as nonsensical as saying we should match to each other merely based on Sun signs. If your Sun is your basic perspective and personal ‘tool box’ fine – that’s a vital and important aspect of who you are. But that's only part of who you are. The Sun doesn't symbolize your values - that’s Venus. It’s not your emotionality! That’s the Moon. It’s not how you communicate – that would be the Mercury department. And it sure isn’t about whether you put the cap back on the toothpaste tube unless you’re a Sun sign Virgo, in which case you’re likely to have a bit of the Toothpaste Nazi in you or simply never care what happens to the toothpaste altogether. (Yes, there are sloppy Virgos! Shocking, I know!)

Anyway…if you want to pick your ‘true love’ based only on your Sun then I want to see your chart because I’d like to know exactly why you think someone else’s values, feelings, sense of humor and ability to communicate, be all Saturn reliable and responsible….why you think that doesn’t count! 

So back to this 17 Libra thing…this is one of those Libra degrees where the two ‘sides’ of Libra are more pronounced or more apparent. You know, like the two sides of the coin – or in this case, of the scale. It’s a degree where Libra presents with great wit and facile eloquence…but to what end?

That’s what one needs to always ask, as this degree can manifest as caring or cutting, interested or quarrelsome, informative or snarky.

And when you add in Drakonia, it’s hard not to think that whatever side of this sugar-vs.-snark line things fall down on, it might not be real. Or realistic!

Making this all double-triple confusionating is that this may not be anyone else playing you! You could be just maybe, perhaps, sorta (kinda) fooling yourself! On the other hand, maybe the biggest (and certainly overarching) concept to consider here is that the third thing happening today is that Neptune is entering the ‘shadow’ of its 2011/2012 cycle.

Probably the best way to understand what this means is to consider what we were talking about in terms of Jupiter. Last year, life was about what it was about at that point. All the parameters and details of what you were doing and what the world was doing…we recognize (Jupiter = knowing, understanding, comprehending) now that all that is over. Done. Finis!

We’re in a whole new cycle of learning about life and what life can become. There’s a difference between where you are now and where you were then.

That’s a ‘planetary cycle’ of a yearly type!

So now Neptune is starting it’s new cycle. With all planets which go retrograde (Sun and Moon don’t, though granted, the Sun is actually a star and the Moon is Earth’s satellite)….these cycles aren’t set flush, end to end. Some have days or weeks between the end of one and the start of another. Time off, call it. Or a free for all in planetary affect terms!

 Planet Neptune - photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

If you work with transits, you know this idea from having seen transits – most often by Jupiter and/or Saturn – which are one-time transits, as opposed to three (or with Pluto and sometimes Neptune, five-time) transits.

The farther from the Sun a planet is, the longer its orbital cycle. The longer that orbital cycle, the fewer degrees that planet transits in any given year, and thus the more likely it is that it will go direct-retrograde-direct (or even direct, retrograde, direct, retrograde, direct) over any given point before moving on!

With Neptune, we don’t get any ‘free time.’ Actually…we get anything but! The last Neptune cycle doesn’t actually end until February 25th (happy birthday George Harrison…) of this year. But meanwhile, the new Neptune cycle has begun. This next cycle will take us to February 27, 2012.

That these Neptune cycles are overlapping suggests – among other things – that the great human desire to glue everything down and say ‘Okay! That’s taken care of!’ isn’t much in the offing. The lesson of the moment, for all that we may want to “know” what’s happening, is that we can’t…or that we at least aren’t likely to.

That ‘knowing’ thing? That’s the Jupiter part. So part of our Jupiter lesson going forward is that whatever we try to be or become, we can’t know how that’s going to turn out for us – we just have to try.

Or….seeing as we are dealing with both Jupiter and Neptune, which taken together equal rulership of Pisces, maybe the point is that we should accept. Accept ourselves for who we are and proceed from that basis, accept that we won’t know what every little thing is going to be or become and do a little bit every day to try and reach our goals…to let go of the idea that we know what things “should be.”

 Constellation Pisces

produced using Stellarium software

With Jupiter in early degrees (see it above...just past Pisces?), Drakonia in second decanate (middle) degrees and Neptune in the latter degrees of Aquarius, we have a spectrum laid out for us.

Maybe that’s just the point. We can do what we do wanting or looking for some effect or response, but when we do, Neptune defeats us. In all things Neptune, the thing you are most sure of is likely to prove untrue while that you think least likely most often proves out.

And that, my friends, would seem to be a perverse little lesson on how not you, not me, no nobody runs this world. ‘What Is’ is far bigger and more complex than anything we can conceive of. Our egos demand and crave that centralized sense of centralized, viable importance, but when you look at the universe, how big or important are we – really?

And given that, who is really getting played and isn’t the biggest and most consistent form of being or getting played that which comes as a response to having a mortal ego?

So do what you can, but don’t figure that’s all you can do. Know who you are, but figure on learning more as you go along. It’s probably a bad idea to figure you know what ‘should’ be as none of us really have the capacity to know.

Is it us against the world? Us against our world? Or maybe it’s the human race living on its world, gazing out at the stars realizing…

…Realizing what? Playing who?

Maybe it's all about our feelings...and our inborn, human need to feel.