by Robert Wilkinson
Mercury goes direct in motion at 8:58 pm PDT July 31, 4:58 am BST August 1, 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 24 Cancer, 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 24 Cancer hold for us? Perhaps it would be useful to take a look back on what the last Mercury direct station brought us since late March 2019.
You will recall that the last time Mercury went stationary direct in March, it was at 17 Pisces, showing we’ve all had forms of “social rebirth” since then. Between then and now, we’ve been guided to our Soul through renewing, reviewing, closing some things, and finding compassion and understanding by letting things flow down the time stream. Through the Mercury direct process, we’ve learned that once we forgive the old, we naturally invite Divine Grace to enter our lives and free ourselves from the old cause and effect cycles.
The March 2019 retrograde period saw Mercury going stationary retrograde at 30 Pisces, bringing us glimpses of new laws, new lives, and new dreams of potential archetypes to embrace and live. We went from “the power of our spiritual ancestry” in 2018 to realizing much had to be left behind in March and April 2019.
This retrograde period began at 5 Leo, helping us come to an impersonal vision of what we need to accomplish and how long it will take; we’ve now taken a look back at permanent factors in our lives, and remembered what our heart’s spontaneity feels like. We’re now set to move forward into a new expression of late Cancer and early Leo energy in our lives.
We’ve now re-traced ground that we first saw via Mercury’s first pass from June 19 through July 7, and re-examined via the RX from then to now. Of major importance will be when Mercury goes back over 5 Leo on August 15, when it moves into unknown zones for the year while carrying all its RX lessons forward.
Now we face 4 months of being guided to our Soul using the qualities of 24 Cancer. How we use those realizations to coordinate the qualities of that degree into our lives over the next 4 months will show us a different way of shaping our minds to become more receptive to current and future new qualities of Being.
Reflect on recent redirection of energies leading you to a new love, creativity, spontaneity, enthusiasm, or way of relating to children; take a new look at what you’re heart’s into, and how to express what you really care about in playful or creative ways. Take a new look at how to project a more personally relevant way of caring to your world. All of this involves learning your “technique of integration” as per the Sabian Symbol of the SD degree.
We should all start seeing, hearing, and understanding things that point the way to some Mercurial fulfillment related to how we have been and continue to be guided to our Soul. Given that it falls at 24 Cancer, it has qualities of actions leading us all to a sense of integration and relatedness on a social or emotional level of life wherever this SD degree falls in our charts.
The Sabian Symbol for Mercury’s Direct Station
The Sabian symbol for the 24th degree of Cancer is "A woman and two men on a bit of sunlit land facing south.” In the original notes from the Marc Jones class on the symbols he published in The Astrology of Personality, Rudhyar says this degree is one of “the three ‘souls” in man – actional, emotional, mental – ‘exiled’ in the body,” “potential fulfillment,” and “Sense of being lost in life.”
In his Astrological Mandala he states this degree is one of “the focalization of complex inner potentialities in harmonic and concrete relationships.” Here we are told the women and men symbolize parts of our personality, where each confronts the need to relate to the others in a “passionate” setting.
He says in this symbol we need to find “a harmonious and well-integrated (way of life),” and must learn a technique of how to live. This can help us integrate our mental, emotional, and biological drives through understanding how interdependent the parts of our personality are on each other. He says it falls in the span of Ingenuousness, and it’s the penultimate degree in the emotional-cultural level of the scene of Consolidation in the Act of Stabilization.
According to Dr. Jones, creator of the Sabian Symbols, this degree is one of “the soul’s necessary decisiveness” in its practical allegiances. This is a degree of “mediation between the competing demands for immediate attention to various transient needs, and for some consistent or over-all goal which will bring (our) efforts into a cohesive pattern.”
We are told “inner capacities must be disciplined continually for the sake of a plethora of outer opportunities.” He offers us the keyword INCEPTION. He states when operating in a positive manner, this degree “an unusual gift for organizing and exploiting the self’s potentials.”
Of some relevance is that this direct station falls on the New Moon degree of July 2015, as well as the Mercury stationary retrograde degree in late June 2013. Some of how we move forward, or any sense of isolation we may feel, could very well have some relationship to the events of July and August 2015, as well as the reflections and insights we had during that June 2013 retrograde period. We may find the issues of interdependence we were dealing with during those times will be relevant to what we experience these next 3 months to come where “the Guide of Souls” offers us the ability to use our Mercury function to find ways to see how connected we are to others and life itself.
Aspects in the Shadow Zone
Mercury will transit its “shadow” span, i.e., the span it’s been in since it went retrograde at 5 Leo, through August 15. Of course there will be residual echoes for the next 13 weeks as well.
Mercury going direct will re-activate many of the aspects it's made over the past few weeks, and there aren't many. In fact, when it hits its station, we see it make NO aspects to any other planet! As it moves forward, it will binovile Uranus and then sesquisquare Jupiter just as it leaves Cancer. That begins a "Hammer of Thor" configuration as it then sesquisquares Neptune as its final aspect before leaving its shadow zone. This will create friction wherever we have late Cardinal planets or mid-Mutable planets.
We’ll close today with a reminder that although Mercury is now direct and won’t be retrograde again until late October, the retrograde we’ve just experienced will affect the coming months until the next Mercury stationary retrograde at 28 Scorpio, the same degree it went stationary direct in December 2018. If you want to know more what the coming retrograde in November and early December will be about, please go to those articles in the archives.
Of course you can find out more about that coming retrograde, as well as all others past and future, by getting your copy of my book A New Look At Mercury Retrograde.
Here's the Amazon link to where you can order your paperback edition of A New Look at Mercury Retrograde. And here’s the link to where you can order an ebook copy of A New Look at Mercury Retrograde to check out possible ways this Mercury retrograde effect could play out over the next 4 months.
In part 2, we'll continue to examine what we can expect over the next 3 months now that Mercury is direct.
© Copyright 2019 Robert Wilkinson
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