by Robert Wilkinson
Mercury goes direct in motion February 28, 6 am PST, 9 am EST, 2 pm Greenwich, and speeds up for the next 10 weeks. This shows a quickening of the ability to coordinate, put things together, understand the whole and the parts, the process and the larger cycles. It is now stationary at 19 Aquarius, affecting that area in our lives for 3 months to come.
Mercury, or Hermes, "the Guide of Souls," is also known as the Divine Trickster, as well as all lesser models. What does Mercury going stationary direct at 19 Aquarius hold for us? Perhaps it would be useful to take a look back on what the last Mercury direct station brought us since November 2013.
You will recall that the last time Mercury went stationary direct, it was at 3 Scorpio, tredecile its prior station at 14 Cancer on the Star Sirius. It is now 19 Aquarius, tredecile its last station at 3 Scorpio. It would seem that Mercury is being serendipitous to and from itself within the larger cycle of direct stations! Very unique and gifting times indeed!
Stationary retrograde and direct points become “hot spots” set into motion by future transits. Venus will offer pleasing or valuable experiences associated with this stationary direct Mercurial energy when it too crosses this degree in late March 2014, while Mars will definitely quicken activities related to the lessons of the coming 4 months when it crosses this degree in late December 2014. This implies we will be offered opportunities to realize and apply these Aquarian techniques of action in late March, and then need to use them in productive activities in late December.
Pay attention, since from now through June the lower mind (Mercury) can “know” through synthesis what’s coming in June, July, and December 2014. Over the next 3 months, we can find new ways of rising to some occasion through seeing and/or responding to some “big picture” issue.
This will help us weave a lot together, preparing us for the next time Mercury goes stationary retrograde at 4 Cancer, another point in trine to the Feb 2014 SRX degree at 4 Pisces and the Nov 2013 SD degree at 3 Scorpio. We can use the next 3 months to continue to see a bigger picture, synthesize information, and mobilize to take care of something that needs our urgent attention and response.
This is a harvest point and helps further our understanding of what we need to activate in the way of new responses to the feeling-knowing (emotional intelligence) that was awakened during the radical shift humanity went through at Winter Solstice 2012. This feeling-knowing was stabilized for good or ill in the Summer of 2013, and is now at a point of renewed expansion since Jupiter is about to go direct. We will move through this final set of major Water trines before exploding into the fiery inspiration coming when Jupiter enters Leo in July 2014.
We now enter a phase of “active management” of these feelings within a greater vision. For now, keep learning about how to feel your knowing through knowing your feelings, and try to achieve fluidity in balancing your hemispheres.
Just as we had opportunities to practice Mercury’s function of being “the Guide of Souls” using the qualities of 3 Scorpio to weave together the higher and lower realizations we’ve awakened to since 2012, we now have the opportunity to be guided to our Soul using the qualities of 19 Aquarius. Again, how we use those realizations to coordinate those into our lives over the next 4 months will show us our way to a deeper connection to our Higher Self and others over the next few weeks.
In any case, we should all start seeing, hearing, and understanding things that point the way to some Mercurial technique of how we have been and continue to be guided to our Soul. Given that it falls at 19 Aquarius, it shows us some way to find connectedness on inner and outer levels that can make us more fixed in our intention, more fit for some form of social service.
The Sabian Symbol for Mercury’s Direct Station
We are told the Sabian Symbol is "A forest fire quenched.” According to Rudhyar’s notes from the Marc Jones class, this degree is one of “Exaggeration of life-problems, which reveals to man his real stature and which expands him,” “Impatient challenge,” and “Ascendancy.”
In "The Astrological Mandala" he states the keynote is "the skill and courage necessary to bring under control the destructive potential of carelessness of karmic ‘visitations.’” He notes that “fires” can result from all kinds of things, forcing us “to face spectacular reactions to seemingly insignificant acts. These are to be considered means to test (our) strength, ingenuity or emotional stability.”
He suggests this is about us using “every faculty at our disposal,” and we need faith in our ability to allow the Divine Warrior to fight through us. Some could find themselves “in a crucial and potentially devastating situation” where we need “a total mobilization of energy and a deep sense of indomitability.” He states this degree is in the Span of Perspective, and it's the technical degree of the actional level of the Scene of Management in the Act of Capitalization.
Marc Jones says 19 Aquarius is a symbol of “regenerative relaxation after extraordinary effort,” and of our “exceptional capacity for achievement through a whole-giving” of ourselves in emergencies. He says “here is the dynamic co-operation by which (we gain) a high peak of self-expenditure,” where we intensify to rehearse potentials of discovery.
He goes on to state “what can be misfortune to be suffered can as easily become a successful adventure in broad social responsibility.” He offers us the keyword CONCERN. He goes on to state that when this degree is operating in a positive manner, it is “special skill in bringing personal interests to some larger point of effectiveness, and when negative, a fear of experience and a subtle delight in calamity.”
So clearly all of us will have to rise to some occasion and mobilize over the next few months, as well as at the end of the year. We can only hope that Dr. Jones’ dictum not to take the symbols literally is accurate here, since I’d hate to think this heralds a wildfire season! And there are many types of wildfires. Ukraine is one example.
Aspects in the Shadow Zone
We will also be re-tracing our Aquarius and Pisces lessons from now through March 20 due to Mercury still transiting its “shadow” span, ie, the span it’s in since it went retrograde at 4 Pisces. Of course there will be residual echoes for the next 14 weeks as well. Mercury going direct will re-activate many of the aspects it's made over the past few weeks. At various times over the past three weeks, it's made important conjunctions with other planets and a very powerful septile setting the Grand Irrationality into motion, as well as a very powerful square to Saturn and trine to Mars.
It now begins to move forward. This direct period is interesting because Mercury immediately makes a strong septile to Uranus. This indicates the power of a strong leap forward into a new life order! It’s followed by Mercury square Saturn, sesquisquare Jupiter, and trine Mars before it moves back into early Pisces, ending its shadow period.
Of special note is that just after it leaves its shadow zone, Mercury immediately septiles Pluto, conjuncts Neptune, and biseptiles Saturn, kicking the Grand Irrationality into high gear! This was recently powered up the last weekend of February by the Sun. Mercury should bring us insights and information related to these major shifts in global affairs, with Venus finishing the Pisces experience of the Grand Irrationality this year when it too conjuncts biseptiles Saturn, conjuncts Neptune and septiles Pluto in the second week of April, just before the Great Fracturing.
So in this Mercury SD chart, we have two septile-driven configurations involving Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. So not only is the Grand Irrationality in full force, there are other non-rational zones of experience involving Mercury and Uranus-ruled or influenced areas.
The very powerful Mercury septile Uranus. This affects our Aries, Gemini, Virgo, Capricorn, and Aquarius sectors. Those most affected by this set of aspects have planets or angles in 4-8 Scorpio, 25-29 Sagittarius, 17-21 Aquarius, 9-13 Aries, 1-5 Gemini, 22-26 Cancer, and 13-17 Virgo.
This set of active degree spans is immediately followed by The Grand Irrationality, which will next be triggered by Mercury and then the Sun several weeks from now. Those times will again power up and illuminate much of what the last two Mercury retrograde periods have been about. At the current time, those most affected by the Grand Irrationality have planets or angles approximately at 21-25 Scorpio, 12-16 Capricorn, 4-8 Pisces, 26-30 Aries, 17-21 Gemini, 9-13 Leo, and 30 Virgo-3 Libra.
Other Important Aspects
Besides the ones discussed above, other forming aspects of note when Mercury goes stationary direct are Moon novile Uranus and conjunct Neptune (out of sign, showing that something has to transpire before the effect will be put into play.) As long time readers know, I don’t put stock in the Moon “void of course” effect for a variety of legitimate reasons.
Just because the Moon is at 30 Aquarius doesn’t mean nothing of significance will happen! And in fact, given 30 Aquarius is an extraordinarily important degree related to the collective planetary life as we stand of the threshold of a new Great Age, it might seem that the coming 4 months could provide many with a “spiritual gateway” to a greater experience of our Light Body within the larger field of Light/Life. Many will experience some form of “conscious totality of Being,” so how could that not be significant?
Other aspects of note include Mercury trine Mars, square Saturn, and decile Pluto, Venus square Mars and quintile Uranus, Sun sesquisquare Mars, trine Jupiter, tredecile Saturn, sextile Pluto and conjunct Chiron, Mars tredecile Jupiter, Jupiter sesquisquare Saturn, square Uranus, and opposition Pluto, Saturn sesquisquare Uranus and biseptile Neptune, and as always at this time in history, Uranus square Pluto. (Yes, Jupiter square Uranus is slightly separating, but Saturn collects the light and pulls it back into action via the double sesquisquare it makes to Jupiter and Uranus.)
In this chart, most of the planets have Saturn, Mars, and Venus composing the Chain of Dispositors. That will be the case until Venus moves into Pisces. The odd couple here is Neptune being its own final dispositor as well as the dispositor of the Sun, and Jupiter, which is disposited by the Moon, and thus its shading changes every couple of days. This will hold until Jupiter moves into Leo this Summer, when it will begin having the Sun as its dispositor. You can find out more about dispositors via the archives.
From Here We Move On
As noted, by March 20 Mercury will move out of its shadow span and enter its next "unknown zones" where the themes of this retrograde will be played out in forward motion. So for the next three weeks, expect some very productive intersections of past and future, with a promise of a many things beginning to pull together that require our immediate attention. Here we rise to some occasion, get it in gear, and focus on dynamic cooperation in order to achieve a form of social excellence.
We’ve now had opportunities to reshape our feelings of togetherness or separateness and what needs managing in our individuality or social experience. We’ve gotten to re-shape our potential response as a benefit of delays, worked through misunderstandings with others (and ourselves!), and how we deal with disappointments and delays.
Some have gotten glimpses or reviews about friendships and goals in their past, as well as old sources of sorrow, and can now see many old motives from the past from a more holistic perspective. This is now the time to move into a new vision of active cooperation, and prepare to say goodbye to much without struggle or even much sentimentality.
From here we should be able to find a new self-confidence through cooperative activities, and understand much that cannot be spoken. So now that we've done our rehearsals, reviews, revisions, and/or research on how we can coordinate the parts of this emerging process during the past 3 weeks, it's again time to get it on!
Here we face the future, and do what we must to weave elements of that future into our current life and affairs. We will continue to see ever-greater pictures of potentials, and at some point near the coming Equinox on March 20 will experience the interconnectedness of life as we find our unique place to doing our Being in a vaster field of activity.
The Good To Come
There are many good things promised by this direct station. The Sun trine Jupiter shows great openings in front of us, where we graduate into a new realm of being due to the skills we cultivated up to now. Mercury square Saturn and trine Mars shows a great ability to turn away from pessimism or narrow thinking while finding a new balance in our view of how and when to act.
This direct station also promises some uniquely great events to those affected by the Venus quintile Uranus, the Sun tredecile Saturn, or the Mars tredecile Jupiter. Expect unique gifts from the first, serendipitous circumstances and complementary specialized interactions from the second two.
Venus quintile Uranus most affects those with planets or angles near 8-11 Aries-Libra, 14-17 Taurus-Scorpio, 20-23 Gemini-Sagittarius, 26-29 Cancer-Capricorn, and 2-5 Virgo-Pisces. Sun tredecile Saturn affects those with planets or angles near 16-18 Aries-Libra, 22-24 Taurus-Scorpio, 28-30 Gemini-Sagittarius, 4-6 Leo-Aquarius, and 10-12 Virgo-Pisces. Mars tredecile Jupiter affects those with planets or angles near 27-29 Aries-Libra, 3-5 Gemini-Sagittarius, 9-11 Cancer-Capricorn, 15-17 Leo-Aquarius, and 21-23 Virgo-Pisces.
So as you can see, these zones of high specialization, interactive gifts and unique circumstances perfect for each individual overlap with the irrational zones mentioned previously. The Venus quintile Uranus will express and/or release via the Cardinal T-square created by Jupiter opposition Pluto with both square Uranus. The Mars tredecile Jupiter will also release through the Cardinal T-square. The Sun tredecile Saturn will release through the Mercury square Saturn, as will the Mercury trine Mars.
We now begin to ride the edge of extremely dynamic change, finding new forms of feeling connected to the new life archetypes we’ve been living since the Summer of 2010. Mercury direct will open many views and perspectives over the next 3 months, and the insights we receive and weaving we do in that period will lead us to a natural and powerful new feeling-expression related to our understanding of the collective consciousness by June 2014.
By then we will have glimpsed how we have fundamentally reoriented since the Summer of 2013, and will have to deal with the last echoes of an old way arguing with our life reorientation. This will help us into the next step of moving through the fogs and deceptions that pervade the atmosphere during this time of Neptune in Pisces and Jupiter opposed Pluto.
Past Mercury Retrogrades and What They Taught Us
In the 2012 Mercury retrogrades, we went through a process of learning how to look at the past with different eyes, seeing the storms and trials we’ve overcome as ways to rehearse how to deal with what is to come. Through retrospection, we had opportunities to call up old powers in new ways that helped us in late 2012. Mercury retrograde in November 2012 put us on the threshold of being able to know without thinking, directly experiencing communication rather than having to go through a linear evaluation of hearing and interpreting words.
Since November 2012 we have gained higher awareness related to the old “skins of personality” we’ve shed, as well as old ghosts from the past. Since then we’ve been able to use natural enthusiasms and ways of self-expression to demonstrate our higher “knowing,” and found new desires, new ways of skillfully using power in responsible ways, and new ways to interpret meaning.
Due to the Mercury direct point at 6 Pisces in March 2012, the same degree where Neptune went stationary retrograde in June 2012, we’re all awakening to a new dedication, a new set of motives, a new intuition, and a new way of bringing closure to old ghosts. Now that we’ve finished letting go of those ghosts, and as a result of the June-July 2013 Mercury retrograde in Cancer, we were led to feel a new permanence, a new courage, a new fearlessness, and a new way of knowing how to live whatever “Ageless Wisdom” is ours to live.
The last Mercury retrograde in Scorpio helped us reorient and focus, as well as eliminate desires and stuck feelings we no longer needed to carry. We’ve found a deeper togetherness with people and experience, and were led to our ability to cooperate with others in building something.
On the whole this retrograde period has been seeing our interconnections, examine our deeper feelings and aspirations, and find a new way of managing our energies at the close of an old life cycle, all of these wherever we have 19 Aquarius through 4 Pisces in our charts. Whether through direct or indirect information or realizations, we’ve also gotten insights, returns, and understanding about things we didn’t know about before the retrograde began.
So as Mercury now goes direct in motion, open up and be receptive to higher awareness, higher knowledge, and a greater faith in your ability to know in ways you’ve never known before. We are now solidly in a time of learning deeper experiential methods of weaving things together, and a deeper dedication toward integrating personality within a deeper Soul response.
As the Sun trine Jupiter is front and center, keep moving into your higher dedication, remember that you’ve quickened and now are a master of a realm you weren’t before now, and accept the challenge of allowing what inspires you to take you to a higher level of living and functioning. This is ultimately a “challenge to transformation,” and the reward is an experience of knowing yourself to be a particle of Light within an infinite Field of Light. Accept a new identity is already being made manifest, so go with the flow, learn all you can about harmonious ways to understand and express feelings, and get ready for an acceleration in the pace of a new life adventure that’s already prepared for you.
We went through a grounding and mobilizing period where we understood many elements of our emotional intelligence we developed between June and November 2013. Now we begin to move forward through the final phase of stabilizing and harmonizing that emotional awareness. We’ve also seen how to navigate the “psychic traffic jams” recently pervading collective consciousness, and can now operate from a higher vision knowing that the critical decisions made in late January and early February herald important changes to begin about three weeks from now. We’ve now reoriented in fundamental ways, and can now move forward on the basis of the insights we’ve gained these past several weeks.
Things related to Mercury will speed up considerably for the next three months, so flow with the greater vision and understandings that have been revealed and will continue to be revealed over the next weeks and months. We’re now at a threshold state, where we may get new insights into old things, new ways of seeing how to get beyond old stuck situations and find cooperative forms of taming something that’s out of control, and new ways of remembering old feelings that offer a new view of the movie of our lives.
From here we move forward into a clearer, more exciting future! Stay balanced and kind as you move through revolutionary developments, so concentrate to see the bigger picture. We’re in process of seeing events of the past from a higher symbolic angle that show us a new identity has been crafted, and we can now feel more connected and see more clearly what that is and how we can live it wholeheartedly.
And as usual, here are links to recent articles on what this February 2014 Mercury Retrograde in Pisces and Aquarius is all about:
The Guide of Souls in February 2014 - Mercury Slowing Down, Preparing to go Retrograde at 4 Pisces
Mercury Retrograde – A New Look At The Guide of Souls
A New Look At Mercury Retrograde in Pisces in February 2014 – What Is It Good For?
© Copyright 2014 Robert Wilkinson
Are you going to do any more radio shows before April 20?
Posted by: Larry Bolgar | February 27, 2014 at 03:16 PM
Hi Robert,
So then with all this Neptune & Piscean influence, if this Mercury SD at 19 Aquarius is exactly trining natal Neptune, will that further enhance and deepen these influences? or merely have a completely individualized effect?
And I was very excited to see that I have a planet in EACH of the 3 "uniquely great events" section, but alas with Saturn in my first house and it going retrograde next week,...well we shall see...
however, the good news is that the Sun trine Jupiter, will also aspect my ascendant, so I am looking for at least a semblance of peace/optimism with that grand trine...finally :)
thanks for the insights!
Christy
Posted by: christy | February 27, 2014 at 05:29 PM
Whoa! Lots be happening. I like the reminder to stay balanced and be kind. Kindness really does matter. Thanks for the navigational tips.
Posted by: Diane S. | February 27, 2014 at 08:12 PM
Hello, Sir Robert
Goodness gracsious and great balls of fire! Superbly accurate...Until I read the line below I nearly forgot what an enormous, life changing shift came to me in July of last year...
"...and as a result of the June-July 2013 Mercury retrograde in Cancer, we were led to feel a new permanence, a new courage, a new fearlessness, and a new way of knowing how to live whatever “Ageless Wisdom” is ours to live..."
For over a decade I clung on to this idea/dream of how my life is meant to be, my idealized state/condition of how I wanted to serve others. July of 2013 showed me that the future I had been planning, pinning, and aching for was already fully in my life. The wisdom was in being given the grace to hear and see it. And yes, it certainly took courage to make the leap, embrace the present and give up the safety of well worn plan, navigable waters of the known. Admittedly and in hindsight, this place where I am called to be scared the bejeezus outta me. I see that it was fear which stopped me from acknowledging the obvious and a longing for a safe place that I wanted to be elsewhere.
Here this Winter of 2014 comes to pass one of, if not THE Most Fear-filled moment of my life. Like a Universe sized wrecking ball, a mind blowing demolition has been taking place for the last 8 weeks. It is tearing through the house of all that I hold to be real, valuable, meaningful, spritual and holy. Were it not for Ammachi, Nisargadatta, Vimalananda having strong voices in my being I don't know how life would look or how'd I'd fare...then again, like the chicken or the egg, perhaps it bec they do that I am where I am.
Deepest, most heartfelt thanks, sir. I pranam to the Divine Mother within you.
Posted by: Marie | February 28, 2014 at 08:12 AM
Water gun loaded and on alert.
Posted by: caliban | February 28, 2014 at 08:56 AM
This is true, and it feels so edgy and uplifting at the same time. Thank you
Posted by: T | March 01, 2014 at 03:19 AM