That Guy with the Wings on His Feet

As it’s wont to do, planet Mercury turned around and started going Backwards 16 February 2020 (5pm PST).  This will be very difficult for you to verify, since Mercury is too close to the Sun to be seen most of the time, and “Backwards” in this context is kind of metaphorical.  Mercury symbolizes Communication, Awareness, Thought, and Analysis mostly.  Backwards (“Retrograde”) Mercury has a bad rap around travel, but if like the Angels we take travel delays and disruptions Lightly, we can still Fly.

A planet goes Backwards when it wants us to really Pay Attention to some Lesson it has in mind.  It crosses the same zone of the Zodiac thrice, to make sure we don’t Lose the Plot.  The Plot this month is about the Thinking we’ve been doing, and the Conclusions we’ve been drawing, about the way our Culture should work (Mercury thrice crossing the last few Degrees of Aquarius), and how we Respond to this Emotionally (Mercury thrice crossing the first dozen Degrees of Pisces).

Overzealous Emotions cause our Mentality to Misfire.  It’s one thing that some of us are Emotional Thinkers – when we’re Analyzing something, How We Feel about it is one of our most important criteria, and that’s just Who We Are.  But it’s quite another thing when something Triggers our Karmic Judgments and we lose all hope of Neutrality.  Neutrality after all is where we must be if we want to Change or Manifest anything.  For instance, if we try to Create Peace from a position of Anger, all we’re going to get is more Anger.  Trying to Create Peace from a posture of Bliss will probably only promote Denial.

And in the section of the Zodiac that Mercury crosses thrice, there sit a couple of dwarf planets that are likely to Trigger our Karma.  One of these is the symbol for Intrusive Memories (the as-yet-unnamed dwarf planet that we affectionately call “OR10”) which are usually Karmic.  The other stands for Abuse and Privilege (dwarf planet Nessus).  That’s almost always Karmicas well.  The timetable looks something like this…

• 2 February – Mercury begins its first crossing (at 29 Aquarius)
  • 6 February – Mercury Triggers Intrusive Memories
  • 11 February – Mercury Triggers Abuse and Privilege Issues or Memories
• 16 February – Mercury turns Backwards (at 13 Pisces)
  • 21 February – Mercury Triggers Abuse and Privilege Issues or Memories
    
  • 28 February – Mercury Triggers Intrusive Memories
• 9 March – Mercury goes Forward again (at 29 Aquarius)
  • 22 March – Mercury Triggers Intrusive Memories
  • 29 March – Mercury Triggers Abuse and Privilege Issues or Memories
• 30 March – Mercury finishes third crossing (at 13 Pisces)

When planets change their Direction, they Slooowww Dowwwn, Stop, and then slowly Accelerate again.  While they are Slowing and Stopping (ie, 16 February and 9 March), their Influence upon us is at its Strongest.

Do you have any record or recollections of what was going on for you around 6 or 11 February, give or take a day or two?  The usual astrological process is that this first crossing raises an Issue or Problem (we refer to this as a “Can-Opener”), which usually puts us into our Victim.  Then the second crossing (the “Exposition”), if we’re Awake and Responsive to it, Teaches us a lot about what’s really going down, and we can begin to see our own Role in it.  By the third crossing (the “Confidence-Builder”), if we were Awake at the second one, the original Issue or Problem recurs, but this time we Realize what’s happening, and we Handle it with Aplomb.

Mercury stutters like this three times a year, so we get a good deal of Practice with it.  Our Journey from Victim to Adept increases our Neutrality a lot, helping us to be more Objective and Effective Problem-Solvers.

If you happen to have a birth (“natal”) planet in the thrice-crossed Zone of a Backwardation, the Cosmic Headmistress is giving you a Special Lesson.  For instance, one reader has their birth planet that means Truth of the Heart (asteroid Aletheia) in the Zone of this Mercury trifecta, and that planet is in a Challenging Relationship (Square) to their birth planet that stands for their Soul (Uranus).  Birth-planet Relationships are with us for our entire Life, so the more Practice we get with them, the better.

So our reader may frequently run into Issues where they feel like the Desires of their Soul, and the Desires of their Heart, are in Conflict.  How can Soul and Heart be in Conflict?  Heart should Serve Soul, and do it Well.  But Karma can intervene and mess things up.  That makes it even more important to Practice with the Energy, and bring it into Consciousness, so they can Notice when the Karmic prompter is reminding them of their Lines, and Frankly, Not Give a Damn about what it is they’re Supposed To do or say.

Our reader’s Heart-Truth planet, with it’s Teasing Relationship with their Soul, is Triggered by Mercury on 4 February, 1 March, and 19 March.  The most important thing to remember about our birth-planet Relationships, is that they’re like a Graduate Seminar.  They aren’t Problems to be Solved, they’re Dramas to be Studied.  We don’t Solve Dramas, we just Learn how to Handle them a little better each time we deal with them.  They have no Clean Edges, they’re always Ragged.

Imagine you’re an fiction writer studying situations where a person’s Heart would lead them in a different direction than their Soul would, so you could write a realistic short story about their Adventures.  With that mindset, after several repetitions of this Pattern in your Life, you could write the script of your next episode of it.  That would probably help immensely to make it Easier for you to Step Out of that Role the next time those circumstances arose, and Enjoy playing the role of someone else in your script, or someone different entirely.

If we Endure our “favorite” Karmic – aka Educational – Drama once more and leave its Edges just a little less Ragged than the last time, then we’ve Succeeded Greatly, and we need to Acknowledge ourself with Celebration.  While we’re “still kickin’,” we’ll probably never know Why our Immortal Soul Chose to Experience a Lifetime with such a Drama in it.  We just have to Accept that it in fact Did, Trust its Wisdom, and try to be a good Student.

The more Conscious we can be about the Dramas hard-wired into our birth charts, the better, but we also have to remember that it’s not about Analysis (even when Mercury is being Compulsively Analytical), it’s about Experience.  We get a little more hip to our Dramas each time we Repeat them, whether we beat ourself up for Stumbling over them again, or Congratulate ourself for being Open to Learning more about them.  Analysis can give us “Book-Larnin’,” but it isn’t nearly multidimensional enough to give us Wisdom.  For that we need Experience.  That’s what Karma is all about – Inertia, Repetition, how to Use the Patterns we have to their Best Advantage, instead of being Victimized by them.

Marching On

Well, as we approach March we have to partially retract our comment that

“We should be through with the onslaught of our Abuse Memories that we’ve been through over the last several months.  More ancient Memories may still arise around the time of the Eclipse, but they’re unlikely to be as Traumatic.  The Important Thing to remember is that they’re Up so we can Let Go of them.”

While it’s definitely true that “The Important Thing to remember is that they’re Up so we can Let Go of them,” we have several more days of potentially-Abusive memories coming, as Mercury crosses Nessus.  The crossing culminates at noon on 28 February, but may extend as much as three days either way.  Now Mercury is “just” the Mind, so it’s actually very Shallow.  Mind is, however in bed with the Emotions, so we could drop back into Trauma if we aren’t monitoring our thoughts in order to clean up what we Manifest.  

Consider it a Portal – a Ring of Fire even, where we’re Tempted to fall into Mind-Emotion helicopter trips and Bum ourself out.  Choose to shoot down the helicopter and see what happens.  Choose to be Loving with yourself no matter what.  “You poor Sweetheart, it’s really Tempting to Believe those Threatening thoughts and let them trigger those Horrible Feelings again, isn’t it.”  What if those Horrible Feelings really are finished for me.  What would that Feel like?  

We might Feel kind of Empty.  We might be Tempted to go back to them because they make us Feel Real, because the Anger and Isolation that they Triggered was our only reliable way to Protect our Most Vulnerable Self.  People have always turned away from us when we’re in that space – probably because they can see from the look on our face, or Feel from the Energy we’re projecting, that the wise thing will be to keep their distance.  Or because it Triggers their own Abandonment, and being Extroverted they reach out to Other to Rescue themselves from our Bummer.

What if we could Stand Still in the Emptiness, let What Is be What Is without having to Change it.  What would happen next?  What would we Like to happen next?  What would that Feel like?  Would we Believe it and Allow that Feeling to stay with us?  What if we Imagined  – Made Up from Scratch – a conversation with ourself that could replace those old Bummer tapes.  A conversation that would Spiral us Up into an Open Future rather than Spiralling us down into a Closed Past.

A conversation that Allowed us to Receive what we’ve Always Wanted, to Imagine Receiving now what we Never got in the first place, when we most Needed it.  An Adult version of it, not the Infant and Adolescent Fantasy versions we’ve been stuck with All of our Lives.  Would we even know what an Adult version would look like?  Not from the Movies, but from our own Heart.  Better spend some time with that Question.  There aren’t any Easy Answers, are there.  Reaching into Unknown Territory, maybe we should Ask our Self.

What would it Look Like to Receive What I’ve always Wanted, to Receive what will Really Fill my Heart?  Before we can Focus our Attention on it, we need to know What It Is.