by Robert Wilkinson
Today we explore the Superior Conjunction of April 18, 2021 at 30 Aries and what it promises for the rest of April and May. This “fusion of life and mind” will impact the rest of the Mercury direct period, as well as the first part of its next retrograde up to the Inferior Conjunction on June 10 at 21 Gemini during Mercury’s retrograde between 25 and 17 Gemini in late May and most of June. Of course, all previous Superior and Inferior Conjunction points, as well as Mercury’s retrograde and direct stations, are triggered by subsequent transits long after Mercury was there.
As we covered in part 1, the superior conjunction occurs when Mercury (mind) conjuncts the Sun (life) when in direct motion, while the inferior conjunction is when Mercury (mind) conjuncts the Sun (life) when Mercury is retrograde. Each operates as a fusion of Life and Mind, but in each “Mind moves in a different direction.”
When either conjunction happens, it indicates that signals, messages, and ideas from either outer sources or subconscious sources will fuse with the life principle. This sets the tone for the lessons involving how our minds are relating to our lives during the weeks which follow the inferior conjunction.
Since its last retrograde, Mercury in direct motion has been moving faster than the Sun. It has now caught up to the Sun and making a “superior conjunction,” beginning a several week period when mind will race ahead of life, heralding things to come when the Sun transits the span Mercury will show us over the next few weeks. The degree of any superior conjunction shows how our perceptions have caught up with our lives, which can bring forth a new expression of our light.
The Sabian Symbol for the Superior Conjunction
The Solar-Mercurial degree symbol for the Superior Conjunction falls at 30 Aries, and it is said that the last third (decan) of any sign deals with the individual, mental, and spiritual levels of life, and being the third decan of Aries it has a sub-influence of Sagittarius with an additional Venus tone. While I've given you a sense of this degree up to now, this is where we go into depth.
The symbol for the 30th degree of Aries is ”A duck pond and its brood.” In the original Jones notes published in The Astrology of Personality, Rudhyar says this symbolizes "essential social cooperativeness and appreciation of selfhood," and "contentedness" perhaps associated with "a sense of inner restriction."
We are told in the Astrological Mandala that this degree follows our "glimpse of universal order" and requires grounding and focus through "peace and inner contentment with (our) essential destiny," also known as Dharma. Here our concrete action and effective activity, focused through accepting natural boundaries, brings the message of harmony (we have) heard inwardly down to (our) karmic field of operation.
He offers that if our potency would be substantiated, "Power must accept the principle of focalization." He says it falls in the Span of Examination, Act of Differentiation, and Scene of Potency on the Individual-Mental level.
Dr. Jones says this is a degree of our need to "take the fullest advantage of the cosmic ordering." Here we can demonstrate our "ability to establish (our) world of experience according to (our) own needs" by aligning ourselves with our genius and seek satisfaction in being ourselves.
He gives us the keyword RELIABILITY. He states that when operating in a positive way, it's said to be a degree of "an accustomed competency or ease in dealing with immediate circumstances."
Given the themes of this degree, we'll use the ”fusion of life and mind” through the next Inferior Conjunction to see the light of prior and current ways we accepted certain limits in our area of effective function, how we fit into the larger scheme of things, and focus our power to achieve a contentment in doing our thing in our natural way with others who we can play and work with. This fusion of Life/Light and Mind is showing us how to cooperate, appreciate, and find peace and contentment with the part we are to perform, demonstrating our genius in how we deal with immediate situations.
Who Leads the Great Light Now That Mercury is Ahead of It?
At this conjunction, Mind is no longer following Life, trying to catch up to it. Now Mind races forward as herald, catching glimpses of knowledge, perception, and understanding that shows us where Life is headed in the near future.
When Mercury outraces the Sun and moves ahead of it, it no longer "leads the light." Now "Life" leads "Mind" even as Mind blazes the trail the Light will follow these next few weeks. This is the time when we stretch out into the future, with a period of looking back beginning late May at the next Mercury retrograde.
In this chart, since Mercury no longer leads the Sun, if we exclude Chiron at 11 Aries, Neptune in Pisces is now the “entry to the Light.” While this can bring confusion, it can also bring a deep sense of “knowing” what’s going on in the collective atmosphere, as well as “flashes of intuition” which can give us a sense of things others don’t know. This is our “common humanity” gatekeeping for the Great Light.
Neptune will lead the Sun until the Sun conjuncts Uranus on April 30, at which point Uranus will lead the Sun until the Moon is between 12 Taurus and the New Moon at 22 Taurus on May 11. Then Uranus resumes its place as gateway to the Light until the next Inferior Conjunction of Mercury and the Sun at 21 Gemini on June 10. The study of which planet leads the Sun is a crucial but often overlooked part of the study of how the planets work in sequence.
What’s Ahead?
This Superior Conjunction can fuse foresight and life experience to see how new forms of light, life, and perspectives can come forth these next few weeks. Because this “fusion of life and mind” takes place in the last third of Aries, we enter a time of getting our potency and potential focused in pleasing ways. As Aries is “Electric Fire,” we are offered ways to focus our electricity into new spiritual practices on our own terms. When in doubt, don’t look to other for permission!
This will give us a chance to articulate our Light fused with “the Guide of Souls” to find how we can BE the Light we are, expressed in direct focused activities with others who also play on our “duck pond.” The house this conjunction falls in shows where Mind now leads Life, and will open doors of perception wherever it falls, with many things “coming together in the Light of Mind.
This need to accept some natural limitations to achieve a more enjoyable spiritual focus will help us get free of pressures we no longer need to bear, and given where the Moon is, should be a time of tremendous potential for personality integration. Go your own way, do your own thing, while remembering your Spiritual Brothers and Sisters are more important than random strangers who want to argue.
This “fusion of Life and Mind” at 30 Aries sets a platform in the house where this conjunction occurs in our charts. In blending these principles we will see a shift in our affairs, attitudes, and understanding about those things symbolized by Mercury in Aries. Look for what you need to accept and/or let go of with an eye to the future, since this can bring a sense of contentment once we release the distractions and frustrations of the past. This is a time of transition from fulfilling an old initiative to enjoying the work to be done in your personal “duck pond” while dancing at the intersection of Fate Street and Freewill Street on Eternity Boulevard.
The Backdrop to What’s Happening
At this Superior Conjunction, we have the Moon, Venus, Saturn, and Neptune all in their home signs, indicating they share power behind the scenes. Because this conjunction is in Aries, Mars is the worldly ruler, and Pluto is the spiritual ruler. So the invisible spiritual power indicates we’re on our pilgrimage up to the mountaintop of our quest for group effectiveness, while the worldly backdrop indicates what’s done is done and we’re being released from old pressures so we can move forward into the new.
The aspects are a mixed bag, since there are plenty going on between the other planets, but the Conjunction itself makes NO forming aspects. This is a very rare situation, and would seem to indicate that this “fusion of Life/Light and Mind” stands on its own relative to all the other planetary energies in play.
The Lunar Influence
The Moon is at 16 Cancer for this conjunction. That means the focus is on personality integration, and seeing our lives as “living mandalas” we can study to see our “divine floor plan” in the architecture of our personality. This is the beginning of forms of consolidating our lives through direct action in seeing how all the “directions of our lives” are metaphors for what’s coming in, what’s sustaining us, what’s leaving our lives, and where we need “to make report” to our Higher Self, our Master, and our God.
As it falls in the second decan of Cancer, it’s a Crescent Moon, making the next few weeks a period of the need to make some sort of new impression on our world, and challenging old forms left over from previous cycles. We will need to become less personal and more concerned about what will shape the future. Once you get a new view of the whole of what’s happening, then assert yourself with confidence, since the future is coming at us like an express train!
Summing Up
Because it falls at 30 Aries, this Superior Conjunction helps us focus our spiritual potential to embrace the future already presenting itself. Look at it all as a Divine Play, or Divine Dance, teaching us skill as we find the right attitude for what’s leaving and what’s here. A new spiritual work is already in motion, and this period should be good for letting go of whatever has been or is a drag on our line. From here we embrace an intense experience of Taurus, with a new vision of how to best express our individuality within “the garden of our life.”
From here, even though Mercury will outrace the Sun for the next few weeks, it’s going to begin to slow down in speed, and will go retrograde on May 29 at 25 Gemini, challenging us to take a look back at how we’ve shaped our life and mind based in what we actively care about, and how we need to prune some things back a little while doing “topiary” on our various activities wherever we have late Gemini in our charts. That will give us a good look at past relationships, communications and miscommunications, as well as how some of our interpretations and understanding may need to take different points of view or new information into account. This will lead us to a new understanding of how to transmute our physical vitality into the power to build ideas, and on a more advanced level, thought forms which express some need for action. The coming Mercury RX period will in some way give us a review or returns related to wherever we have Gemini in our chart.
All significant Mercury events give us a chance to check in with our inner Mercury to make sure we’re listening to its knowledge so we may be guided to our Souls. By how our Mercury works, we are led to the “Active Intelligence” of Divine Mind, or scattered confusion because of the lower mind’s inability to know anything.
As I explained in my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend, Mercury’s duality is “Life/Death,” so we can get a new look at how our consciousness and responses are either creative, destructive, or both, to cite the venerable Kabalistic Arhat Paul Foster Case. Mercury is where we learn if our mental processes are creating chaos and disorganized scattered conditions through ambivalence, and thus come to see how to use discernment to coordinate various functions to bring forth perfect knowing how to do whatever needs to be done. Understanding its influence as a factor for weeks to come is crucial to the smooth operation of what moves forward from here.
Because we’ll be dealing with Mercury retrograde energies beginning May 14 when it enters its shadow zone, you should also take a look at the appropriate chapters in my book A New Look at Mercury Retrograde. You can find out all you need about the coming Mercury Retrograde in Gemini or any other sign, as well as the houses it occupies in your chart. Of course I'll give you a lot more about the coming retrograde in late May.
Here's the Amazon link to where you can order your paperback edition of A New Look at Mercury Retrograde. You can also find it on Kindle or Nook. It’s a great reference source where you can check out possible ways the coming Mercury retrograde effect could play out between May and July 2021.
Copyright © 2021 Robert Wilkinson
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