This week brings us to the heart of the matter as Mercury retrograde in Libra moves into a conjunction with the sun on Thursday, October 16th, signaling the deepest part of its journey. It’s the half way mark of the retrograde cycle and we are also in-between two eclipses. Potent times.
Consumed by the sun’s light, Mercury was thought by the ancients to be in the deepest part of its underworld journey at this phase of its retrograde cycle. We can’t go back and we cannot quite see our way out. Might as well sit a moment, pause and touch down. Some might call it hitting rock bottom.
But if we have hung in and hunkered down during the first half of this retrograde (the mythic descent into the underworld) this next phase can bring clarity of answers well-deserved, fought for and most likely needed. (Though not retrograde, Venus is standing close by and has her own conjunction with the sun during the next new moon/solar eclipse on October 23rd, entering her own heart-harrowing experience.)
Mercury rules magic, liminal spaces, traversing worlds and transgressing boundaries as well as being the god of communication and information. This phase of Mercury’s cycle asks us to turn our knowledge into wisdom. We must be willing to be transformed by the information we receive in order to grow from it. Otherwise we might as well just be flesh-colored computers.
As the god of transitional spaces, the essence of Mercury is present during our personal transitions. If we are lucky we get to have an experience of being bewildered, lost and confused about who we are and what we thought we wanted because then we search for meaning, healing and clarity. That search is our own personal descent into the underworld. What we do with the information – if we are changed, transformed and informed by it – is our choice alone.
Choose wisely,
Chani
Aries & Aries Rising
For all the confusion, condemnation and crisis that last week’s eclipse may have brought you and your intimate partners, this week looks like it’s ready to release the tension through some tender teasing and terrifically tempting tastes of forgiveness. Oh yes, forgiveness. You forgot about that little ditty, didn’t you?
I mean, it’s still eclipse season so let’s not get this pause in the performance twisted. It’s just that I believe in celebrating every turn of the season and while Mercury is still twisted (aka retrograde), this week marks an important phase of its journey. It’s aligning with the deep, bright, beautiful heart of the sun. While Mercury retrograde is known for confusion, this moment can clean up some of the chaos and debrief us on the debris floating about so that we find a moment of clarity. And that moment of clarity is for you via another or at least about your relationship to another.
I’m hoping that the current transit of your ruling planet, Mars, has left you wandering past your normally known reality without even an extra ounce of harshness. Anytime you sense yourself cutting down an expansive thought rally the Masters in your mind and have a meeting. Go back to fairness, go back to win-win, go back to before anyone had to be wrong and see if there isn’t a third way through this duality.
That’s what Mercury wants for you and from you, the ability to sit long enough with an issue to see another way through it.
Taurus & Taurus Rising
From this vantage point you are growing strong in the places you used to fold. From this position it looks like you’re ready to love even the parts of you that suffer (and they are the loneliest bits and Bobs). From this window it looks like you are about to come smack dab into an intimate understanding of dis-ease.
It’s nothing more than understanding the lies we were told, the lies we created and the long lists of lies sold to us on the daily.
Daily.
A healthy society has room for all of all of us. A healthy mind knows that dis-ease is not separate from at-ease. It’s just the other side of the coin. A healthy body is one that is celebrated exactly as it is or for exactly what it feels it needs to become. A healthy relationship knows that most of what arises in the forms of shame, anger, guilt and sorrow has very little to do with the person/people we are engaged with.
When we can track the unease back to the root of our suffering and allow our body to respond to the recall of it as it needs to, we give ourselves the pause necessary to heal. And if we want to experience any joy with any part of our lives and anyone in our immediate environment then we must take responsibility for our own healing.
Gemini & Gemini Rising
Consult your muse. Make her smile from the secrets you whisper to her. Make him dance with delight from the way you are willing to deconstruct your believed-to-be creative failures. No creative progeny is ever born without having a place in this world. And that being said, some of them do hold places at the bottom of our drawers. Some of them are meant to stay in the darkroom. Some of them were just for our evolution and self-understanding.
But some were made to fly. Free. Finding their way out into the world. Our creations are like children-they have their own personalities. They are to be respected. They are to be praised, they are to be guided and they are to be encouraged to find their way. We are like their parents: proud, concerned and celebratory of their unique contribution to the world.
This week your ruling planet, Mercury, moves into the heart of the sun. Yes it’s still retrograde. Yes things are still being sorted out by moving in odd directions. Yes you are more than likely to have run-ins and run-away-froms exes and old flames but if we dig deeper there are always reasons why.
Why are you being asked to review certain situations? Why the time warp back to this particular paradigm? Why return to the scene of this crime now? There are reasons and the reasons would like to be known. They would like to come in for tea. They would like to sit you down and have a long meaningful chat.
These too are your muse. Try not to reject anything this week. Try to sit with the both and the and. Try to see the benefits of being open to releasing the shame of failures and celebrating the courage it took to make them. Love all the children.
Cancer & Cancer Rising
The good news is that the getting down to it is generally the worst of it. And this week You. Get. Down. To. It. Down into the deep down of it. On your hands and knees down in it. Eyes cast down almost fascinated with it.
Breaking down the too-big-a-bite you might have recently tried to take out of your past into better-sized particles is brave. And totally necessary.
It’s always so fascinating to see how a fear unravels. Each fear, so tightly woven, holds multiple layers of truths and un-truths. Truths twisted seem like a good idea when our view is skewed by the blind spots of inadequacy.
It’s time to take off the blinders.
Seeing is believing and if you are willing to, I think what you will see this week is a treasure, buried deep under the rubble of your past, but not tarnished in the least.
You’ll have to wade through the feelings. You’ll have to wait patiently for the sediment to settle. You’ll have to pay the price that clarity costs. You’ll have to withstand the burning away of what kept you captive in order to get to the luminous truth that sets apart the gracious from the grotesque. Good thing you are so good at holding on. This time hold out for healing instead of holding onto the sorrows of your past.
Leo & Leo Rising
You know, there’s been a lot of action. Like a lot of action. At lease you can’t say you’ve been bored.
Please Gods don’t say you’ve been bored.
If you have then I fear you’ve missed a big opportunity to recreate your relationship to creativity, with your transient and playful identity and with passionate purpose.
Identity is a funny thing to communicate in this day and age of status updates and profile pictures. Mostly we broadcast who we are. Drive-by declarations. Not a lot of human contact. Not a lot of stopping to be reflective in our communications. This week offers you a pause in your sentence.
We don’t need an another status update. We don’t need to capture ourselves with a pithy quote or a snazzy snap-shot.
But if we want to be happy we do need to understand our spiritual value. Understanding this reminds us that there is no such thing as competition when it comes to the value of each of us.
Self-celebration is often comment-inducing, yes. But a true and honest celebration of Self doesn’t care for such things. It’s a natural flow outwards: effortless, graceful and generous. A natural extension of Self that inspires the same in everyone it touches.
With Mercury entering the inner chambers of the sun’s heart this week you’ll have special access to your own truth. The mind put to rest frees the heart and vice versa. Stretch the wings of both and relax into knowing that it’s all you have to do.
Virgo & Virgo Rising
I’m not saying it’s an easy job that you have this week, but the depth with which you are given access to it is almost enviable.
Your ruling planet, Mercury, is of course still retrograde. It’s about to join the sun – a part of its cycle called the inferior conjunction. It’s the deepest part of Mercury’s travels. The planets were seen as deities and Mercury was one that was thought to travel to the underground during its retrograde movement. The inferior conjunction marks rock bottom on the Underworld Tour.
Bottoming out is good news. It’s an important part of the journey to recovering and reclaiming ourselves. Once we get down that low, there’s nowhere else to go.
Mercury is currently traveling through your Second House, known to the ancients as the Gates Of Hades. Perhaps the ancients attributed this house to the gates of hell because it also has to do with our finances, what we own but more so, what owns us.
Snore.
Who wants to spend their whole life suffering over material things that are sure to fail us?
You have the task of getting clear about the reasons why you might participate in your suffering over the disposable (I mean why, when so much joy rests where you have some power; in the talent that you were born with). You have the task of getting clear about why you might be unconscious about your participation in such self-undoing. You have the task of getting clear about why you might be participating in the proliferation of it.
This is excellent news. Because getting clear here is an understanding so valuable it serves you in every aspect of your life and for the duration of it.
“I wish I would have owned more stuff” said no one, on any death bed, ever.
Libra & Libra Rising
This week your ruling planet, Venus, gets to make a sextile with Jupiter. That’s her favorite thing to do. Her best trick. Her sauciest seduction. And after her square last week to Pluto and a Lunar eclipse in your Seventh House of relationship, this week looks like a pretty sweet treat. Can you say make-up sex? Better yet, can you have some?
Right now I’m not going to mention that Venus will be a key factor in the next eclipse on October 23rd. Nope. I’ll just set that over there for a moment.
The main theme to keep your eye on in the days ahead is appreciating love while love is here. Appreciate whenever it’s easy. Appreciate it wherever it’s available. Appreciate whatever form it comes in.
On Thursday, Mercury retrograde in Libra will enter the heart of the sun. This movement is an important one if you are watching the retrograde cycle. It marks the half-way point. It marks a depth of understanding about what this time has meant for you. It affords you a moment of clarity, a possible moment of profound insight and a moment of understanding that everything really will be OK because you have everything you will ever need and if you trust that the guidance you seek will always seek you too.
And there is a sweetness after the storm. This week offers some kind words or wants you to. Speak beauty. Refuse gossip. Speak understanding. Refuse condemnation. Speak faith. Refuse hopelessness. Speak what you would like to experience and let the rest rest for now.
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger if it doesn’t make you completely mad first. This week is ripe with the healing that you have spent months searching for.
With your ruling planet, Mars, involved in some pretty heavy petting with Uranus and Jupiter via a grand trine in fire for the past few weeks there are quite a few reasons for some restless ramblings and spur of the moment actions. I’d be a little worried if you hadn’t taken advantage of at least some of this motion although it can have us feeling a little tossed about.
The big news for you is that next week the new moon and solar eclipse are happening in your sign. With Venus. It’s a menage a trois that I don’t think any of us are quite ready for. Less rocky than last week’s eclipse but more deep digging to get to the emotion core of things.
Oh. Joy.
This event moves us far beyond the need for glitz and glamor giving us oodles of Dark Mother matter to feel our way through. This is a dark moon in a dark sign with another mother in the mix. Venus conjunct the new moon in Scorpio.
But this is the season for things that go bump in the night. This is the season of mystery, magic and moon shadows. This is the season when we remember the dead and how thin the veils are between us and them. This is the season that we remember how close to our expiry date we really are and how liberating that knowledge can be.
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
Though you might have felt like you have recently moved beyond the bounds of a) what’s appropriate; b) what others tell you is appropriate; and/or c) what you’ve ever known to be reasonable, it’s all for good reason, or at least you have your reasons and it would be a good time to get clear on them if you aren’t. It’s good to get clear about the ruckus we cause when we cause it so we can see if the damage done is worth paying to be repaired.
It isn’t always.
Sometimes it’s best to cut our losses. Sometimes it’s best to just face-the-fuck-up and save the drama for no mamma, cause that’s who needs it. No one. I’m not suggesting that you are being overly diva-devilish but I am suggesting that you become conscious of your rabble-rousing so you can direct it to a cause worth crusading for.
This week gives your some good gab-festivities via the groups you get down with. In fact it looks like someone, or many ones, have some extra sweet-treats for you so be kind in your responses and giving with your goodies. Love them. Passionately sing their praises. Send them compliments, cautiously. With all this action oriented energy coursing through your veins you are undoubtedly more charming than usual when we add in this week’s astrology.
Again, stay conscious of what you are creating, attracting and sustaining. There’s a lot of good to work with and on the flip side a lot of damage that can be done. It is still eclipse season after all.
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
Problems are sacred solutions in disguise.
Problems protect our egos from being bruised because we can blame it all on the other guy. But problems can give us reason to pause. Problems can lead to profound understandings.
This week it seems as though an interior light turns on, guiding understanding home. It illuminates the reason why we have the problem in the first place.
And that reason is a part of our salvation.
If something in your career has been nattering away in a language unknown to you, adding only confusion and a little despair-this week offers either a translation of the mad muttering or a tuning of your ears to understand the guidance being offered.
If you have been feeling ill at ease with your place in the world, if you have been pondering how to take your power back from any outsourcing that may have occurred, I foresee you reigning supreme once again.
But there is a new tone in your address to the nation. A sweeter one. One that rings of justice, equality and fairness. One that puts you equally in the equation. Success and fame are fun but mean nothing if our whole selves aren’t there to experience it. How can you be in a deeper relationship with your public life? How can you be more open to receiving the praise, love and gratitude given to you? Can you let the grace that comes in this week melt your defenses so that any role you occupy in the world feels like its just a vehicle for connection?
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
This week some of the sweeter parts of your personality will shine through the eclipse fog that currently surrounds us all. You could be acting like a beacon of sorts, shining bright for those far and wide to see.
But the really interesting astrology happens for you when you allow yourself to travel deeply, widely and wonderfully inwards. These are interesting times to take journeys that will blow your mind. It looks like there is at least one relationship that will help you accomplish this.
Intimacy is everything.
It’s not only sweet. It’s not only romantic. It’s not only for lovers. Intimacy is for warriors because on the way to it and while going through it and absolutely while living it we must confront everything that stands in the way of it and it’s this kind of philosophical understanding that this week wants to bring you.
But other people are not the only way in. In fact I would say that if you don’t own a tarot deck, angel cards or some other divinatory tool, now is the time to get some. I encourage you to open whatever locked doors stand between you and your intuition. This week it is a ripe tree for you to pick from, nourish yourself on and share as you see fit.
Pisces & Pisces Rising
Seeing, experiencing and honoring the beauty contained in the shadows of our psyche is every bit as important as seeing the harm, sorrow and sadness that is there. Mostly we cling so fiercely to the fantasy that there are rights and wrongs clearly defined for every single aspect of life. While there are many situations where this is true there are many more where it isn’t, or where at least what is “right”shifts as we do.
There is healing here for you this week. A chance to move beyond the fields so starkly lit that the shadows seem overly ominous. This week it’s important for you to let yourself descend down. Down to the base, down to the roots and down to the way downtown of your backstreets. This week it’s important to feel the feelings that are connected to the thoughts that you think. It’s important to experience the trailing tendrils of emotion that are stuck to each idea that surfaces. This week has you running smack dab into the center of an issue that has for far too long run you ragged.
It’s a jewel and a gem.
But make no mistake about it, there is dragon holding to it tightly. You must confront the beast with your bare heart and your fighting spirit. Don’t get wishy-fishy now, Pisces. Make a commitment to go down into your own underworld and confront your own dragon so that you can turn the tale from one of woe to one of growth.