Mercury Turns

Mercury entered its shadow:  October 21st
Mercury went retrograde:  November 9th
Mercury went forward:  November 29th
Mercury leaves its shadow:  December 16th

For the Astro Geeks like me: You probably know this, but just a little reminder: Before Mercury actually ‘goes retrograde’, it has to move through what we call its Shadow—the degrees it’s going to retrograde back into—so we actually begin to feel a Mercury Retro cycle about three weeks before it goes backward. This fall, Mercury entered into its shadow on October 21st. And now that it’s turned around to go forward again—Saturday night—we’ll experience it climbing out of its shadow until December 16th. So we feel the influence the MercRetro cycles for almost 9 weeks, three times each year. Whew! 

What does all this movement back and forth mean to us?

It means that each Mercury Retro Cycle is divided into three parts, helping us to learn to process our perceptions more deeply with a sort of sliding scale of awareness; we’re entering into the 3rd phase of this cycle today. 

We began this current cycle before Mercury went retrograde; we got a sort of “heads-up’ about how we were engaging with the energies of Sagittarius and Scorpio. We were asked to be more aware of how we use intellectually stimulating Sagittarius in conjunction with emotionally transformative Scorpio.

The second part of the cycle began when Mercury actually went retrograde on November 9th and we began to process some of the thoughts we’d bumped into three weeks earlier, but in this second phase our brains have access to the deeper layers of understanding available in the inner sanctum of our inner mind. In other words, for the last three weeks, we’ve been fine-tuning our ability to merge our intellects with our gut feelings and to make sure neither of these wants to sidestep the other. This has been a subtle shifting toward more respect for what we ‘know’ without intellectual ‘proof’ because we’re listening more carefully to our emotional intelligence.

The third phase of this cycle began late Saturday evening when Mercury went forward again. This third phase offers us a way to notice a deepening of our conscious as we move back into the experiences of the outer world with more balance between thinking and feeling. At this point, we begin to feel more buoyant because we’ve subtly shifted our ability to merge head with intuition.

I know that’s a lot of astro babble, but I want to encourage you to allow time for some of the deeper information you’ve been processing. We don’t flip a switch when Mercury goes forward again and suddenly feel released from that cosmic request to allow for our thoughts to be transformed by new emotional awareness. We’re still in process for a couple weeks, but going forward we sense that we’ve actually gained yet another level of soul awareness, subtle but meaningful.

So give yourself all the time you can spare to breathe deeply into the next few weeks. You’ve enriched your lovely human brain and found a little more of your pure voice.

On a completely separate note: I want to remind you that I offer a number of different kinds of readings if you are searching for a meaningful gift for someone. And if these offerings feel a little too extravagant for your budget, please remember to support small businesses, if possible, as you choose your gifts this season.

As ever, and with such respect and gratitude, I wish you peace and love and many many deep breaths.

Deborah