The Guide of Souls in October 2013 - Mercury Slowing Down, Preparing to go Retrograde at 19 Scorpio

by Robert Wilkinson

Yes, it's THAT time again! Mercury is radically slowing down, preparing to go stationary retrograde at 19 Scorpio on October 21, 3:29 am PDT, 6:29 am EDT, 11:29 am Greenwich (BST). This has important implications for all signs.

I'll be composing several articles about this Mercury retrograde in Scorpio over the next several weeks. Until then, adapt to the slowing pace of things, be willing to put some things on hold for a little while, and take a look at what's been set into motion up to now with an eye to seeing what has to be done before things can again move forward in early November.

I know there are many unfortunate things attributed to Mercury retrograde, but there are also many productive things that get done, connections that are made, and different angles of view glimpsed that make our understanding more complete and well rounded.

The two weeks before the retrograde is good for setting things in motion that will need a delay before being picked up anew. Or for doing things that will need research, rehearsing, or reworking to whatever degree before completion. The time before Mercury goes retrograde is good for doing what must be done so that other related things can be done later, as well as reconnecting with people and activities from the past that are somehow related to the future.

The coming retrograde will be an extremely important one showing us how to use our magnetism differently, in terms of what we attract and what we do not want to attract. It may offer new insights about things we’ve eliminated or lost before now, or new insights into what we need to eliminate or regenerate. We’ll all get some interesting signals from the invisible world.

We may find insights, memories, or foresight directly related to lessons we are about to learn when Saturn transits this degree in December 2013, again while retrograde in late May and early June 2014, and then yet again when Saturn crosses it a third time direct in motion the first half of September 2014. These will be times when we see how well we’ve utilized the Mercury retrograde experiences we’re about to have.

Some will see what has held them back and decide to move forward. Others will see the crystallization of a deeper power, focused feelings with a sharpened clarity, and more fluid ways of moving with life energies. Pay attention to reflections, returns, and new insights into the emotional intelligence that you’ve been cultivating since June. This period will allow you to adjust the magnetics based in what you “hear.”

In late October and early November, we can see what life has prepared for us since the last Mercury retrograde. This Mercury retrograde will offer us opportunities to look back and distill wisdom from our past experiences even as we navigate the Grand Irrationality set into motion by Mercury in a stationary retrograde septile to Pluto. In fact, with the numerous septile driven aspects in play when Mercury goes retrograde, it’s safe to say we will all confront a) major choices and changes that will alter the direction of our lives in several ways, and/or b) we will get a new look at, and a new understanding of, prior choices and how they’ve created results we’re dealing with in the present.

This retrograde will help us take a new look at what we want and don’t want, so we can come to a new understanding about how our environment conditions our understanding, and open to a new way of listening to the inner voice, or new ways of giving or receiving knowledge. Here we learn indirect or roundabout ways to attune our mind to a more acute receptivity to higher ideas, or perhaps take a new look at how our feelings are or aren’t bringing us what we like and value.

Consider the next 3 weeks as a bridge to a new year, where we will find many interesting insights based in looking back or within. Here we see what is coming between December 2013 and September 2014, so pay attention to the signs, signals, information, and understanding that comes through your feelings and introspection, since Mars will set them into quickened motion beginning late August 2014.

Trust your final insights more than your initial ones, and see what needs to be eliminated and/or regenerated. This is where we get to look back on what has been and what is happening right now in order to get insights into what is to come. It will certainly be an important retrograde, given the aspects in play!

This chart gives us a huge number of extremely important aspects indicating what’s up both for the next few days and the entirety of the retrograde period. The day that Mercury goes stationary retrograde, the Moon is quincunx the Sun, septile Jupiter, and makes an out-of-sign T-square with the separating Mars opposed Neptune.

Venus is semisquare the Sun and biseptile to Mars, and Mars is semisquare Jupiter, sextile Saturn, biquintile Uranus, and trine Pluto. To that we add Jupiter is trine Saturn, biseptile Uranus, and sesquisquare Neptune, Saturn is biquintile Uranus and tredecile Neptune, and Uranus is square Pluto during the entire retrograde period. I’ll elaborate on these in coming Mercury RX articles.

Again, of major importance are Mercury’s aspects when it goes retrograde. The big ones include a quintile to Mars, a conjunction with Saturn, and an EXACT septile to Pluto, making the Grand Irrationality in full force during this retrograde. Expect big “forks in the road of destiny” via Mercury in the global situation. Some of these were decided a while back, and now we get a new look at what worked and what didn’t. Now we get to re-decide, chopping what needs chopping and introducing what needs to be brought into the mix.

So all of us will be going through changes in areas impacted by the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, involving almost every sign in the zodiac. This period will help us redefine, research, rehearse, or rethink our relationship with our Scorpio energies. We all have it somewhere in our chart. This is a new look at how we relate to those energies.

Regarding the Grand Irrationality, if you have a planet or angle in any of the 7 zones of this configuration, expect some heavy insights, reviews, returns, and new understanding forcing a new set of decisions that will determine your future direction. These zones are approximately 9-13 Capricorn, 1-5 Pisces, 22-26 Aries, 14-18 Gemini, 5-9 Leo, 26-30 Virgo, and 17-21 Scorpio. To learn more about this long wave phenomenon please go to recent articles on the subject. Obviously when the Moon is moving through any of the 7 hot zones it’ll set major things into motion.

Along with the Grand Irrationality creating an energetic field of destiny-producing choices and changes, as I noted we have septile series aspects involving more than a few other planets. As I noted earlier, that’s a LOT of craziness where many areas won’t make much sense but we’ll have to be dealing with things anyway! I’ll elaborate in which degree spans are activated in a future article in this series.

This stationary retrograde chart has many of the same major aspects as the coming Full Moon Lunar Eclipse chart, so when it posts, please check out that article to know more about the major aspects in play right now. The major difference is that Mars is now separating from its opposition to Neptune, though the Moon in this chart does make an “out of sign” T-square, setting that opposition back into play.

So while it may be a wild ride from time to time, we should be able to reorient and integrate some things as we move sideways into the future. Since much won’t make any sense and be thrown into some temporary confusion, or we’ll confront our own or someone else’s compulsions, kick back a little, outwit whoever or whatever you need to so that your “experiment” can be successful in the future, and keep relating to others at the highest level of social interaction.

This Mercury retrograde will give us many signs and signals for what will dominate Mercury-ruled areas from early November through early February 2014. This retrograde is a time of critical choice and change, where we can take a new look at what’s behind us before moving forward anew at the end of the RX period. We can get all kinds of new insights into future potentials, while seeing things in the recent past differently.

As the Inferior Conjunction happens November 1 at 10 Scorpio, just before the New Moon Solar Eclipse at 12 Scorpio, the coming “fusion of life and mind” will show us how to feel closer to others with whom we’ve done something together. This is the beginning of a new set of groups forming, so expect more “urge to merge” energies to pervade the coming holiday season.

So all in all, we begin a period of important choices and changes in trajectory and destinies thanks to the challenges and weirdness of the Grand Irrationality coupled with the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus in septile series aspects. Welcome to many things being reviewed or coming back up to surface thanks to the retrograde quality of the time. Some will review past efforts to see what still needs to be integrated into the life, and/or there could be returns, rehearsals, or echoes of the past and its needs, habits, and personality structures.

While there will be some hard edges, this time should help us integrate our feelings with a new way to viewing how we feel what we know and know what we feel. This period can help us join with others who share our ideals. Many will have the return of old friends and allies. This period is the beginning of a genuine renewal. The trick will be to figure out how to make needed adjustments to “get fit” for what’s coming as rewards come and things break apart.

For all of us, during the next several weeks the future that's already rolling forward will slow a little so we can get a new look at crucial elements of the process we cannot afford to ignore. We will all have opportunities to grow through hearing a powerful message that helps us get a clearer focus. Let go of preconceptions, be persistent in working things through to the essence of what they are or aren’t, and open to a clearer understanding of what “success” would look like to you.

Open to a greater mental vision that overcomes a form of “blindness to life,” and come to balanced dynamic actions about things that require repair or reconstruction, and rehearse and/or research potential futures already showing themselves in symbolic forms. This is the beginning of an important phase shift in all our lives, as well as the threshold of a new way of living, feeling, and knowing.

It promises to be a very intense time that doesn’t make much sense, but it doesn’t have to. Learn to monitor and steer the flow, adapt and adjust to the limits of the circumstances and ideals available at the moment, and focus on what you like as much as what you don’t.

This will be an important retrograde, where the future is magnetized, stabilized, or prepared for regeneration in some roundabout ways. Again, this will be a conditioning factor in the structures Saturn will bring between December 2013 and September 2014. It will help us rehearse or do the research we need to get ready to spring forward in early November, clear about what we are to build and who we are to build it with.

The last Mercury retrograde led us to a fearless, timeless truth that comes straight from the “Sun of our Sun,” the Star Sirius, said to be the source of all of the wisdom-traditions on Earth. Summer 2013 marked a new receptivity to a greater emotional intelligence and spiritual wisdom. New feelings, new understanding, new ways of living, and new personality integration experiences resulted from that Summer Mercury retrograde.

Renewals, returns, reconnections, reunions, and rebeginnings are promised by this retrograde. And of course, more on this Mercury retrograde period will come soon!

Copyright © 2013 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[gg]

awesome article :) you really break everything down. love it :)))).....thanks

[Chickie Farella]

Got that right Ur Highness! 5 minutes ago I got an email from the funniest front desk manager in all of Sicilia during my study tour 13 years ago...so it started a bit early for me.

[Heather]

Does it have a greater (or lesser) impact if mercury goes retrograde on a planet or point? Mercury will be going retrograde on my sun at 19 Scorpio.

[Robert]

Hi gg - Sure. You're welcome!

Hi Chickie - Well, it's already on its stationary retrograde degree!

Hi Heather - This is also happening to another friend of the site who asked me about this on FB. As I told here, consider this a review of what you've already learned about what it will touch. Perhaps a new way of seeing and/or expressing your Light with an eye to how it's matured through Saturn's structuring over the long haul? It's definitely showing you a "prequel" to what Saturn will bring in a few weeks lasting for a long time.

[Lee]

This essay especially resonates with me.

[Micheline]

Fantastic! Mercury retro is fine for me! Though this one entered shadow zone in my 3rd house and then goes Rx right on my natal neptune in my 4th house! Hmmm must be careful with my Neptune! Try to see through the veils of illusions that I may be confronted with! I feel very strongly that the New Moon Solar Eclipse on November 3rd will be very powerful and important for me!!! It falls almost right on my natal IC, and my Venus is within 2 degrees of my IC!!! To top all this off my progressed Moon is at 11 d Scorpio!!! The last time I has a Solar New Moon eclipse fall on my IC brought some very big changes! One of my oldest friends left the following year in February and almost exactly six months after the eclipse I met a man with whom I started a relationship with in August of 1995! It was a tumultuoes relationship with many priblems but that relationship brought me to Japan. I checked the ephemeris to see what other planets where! Venus was conjunct my natal Venus but interestingly enough square Mars in Leo! That makes sense on so many finite levels! His Venus in Gemini was square natally to my Mars in Virgo!!! He was also an Aries with Aries Ac!!! This time seems better as Venus will be in late Sag and close to my natal Sun/Moon midpoint which is in my natal fifth making no aspects to Mars in Virgo but thats within 3 degrees of my natal Virgo in Mars.

[Kate Minogianni]

Thank you for this wonderful article, Robert. It is really encouraging and inspiring. Natal Sun in Aries, MC and Chiron in Pisces, POF in Gemini, Black Lillith in Leo, Vertex in Scorpio are what I have in the zones you mention. I can't wait to see what is to come :)

[Kate Minogianni]

I was shocked to read that last Mercury retrograde was about acquiring a higher emotional intelligence and spirituality. And that was during the summer months. It was exactly when I started being involved with meditation and spirituality intensely. I thought that this happened because of the transits to my natal as well as my progressed Moon transiting progr.8th house Pisces.
If what you write about this retrograde period being about returns and reviews applies to my situation, then I have a lot to wait....

[Lisa Saliture]

Robert,

What if a man has Venus in Scorpio 10.44 Retrograde in his birth chart in his 3rd house at 15.32 degrees? Will the retrograde affect him as a double whammy coming up on the 21st? Plus, since Venus represents women in a man's life and his Venus is in Scorpio, I would guess that a Scorpio female or whatever planets rule the third house, and Libra/Aries for the Venus are a couple options for the type of woman he may also be attracted to. Plus, his 7th house is in Aquarius with no planets.

However, how does that natal retrograde affect his Venus in Scorpio in his chart? I bet he has problems in relationships? No surprise he is not married yet at age 42!

Lisa