Caught Out by Trickster Mercury!

It is no fun for the Sagittarian Moon native to find themselves stuck in any rut-like situation and I am no exception, perhaps my glib jibes about the Mercury retrograde came back to haunt me and caught me by surprise yesterday! A sudden realisation hit me that when Mercury stationed it was conjunct my natal Pluto and is now re-tracing its step through Libra and back in to Virgo forcing m to re-examine the last few weeks. Much in the way one is forced to tweeze a bit of gravel from a nasy cut my old friend Pluto is forcing me to get real about promises I made to myself a couple of months ago, along with the coming Saturn, Mercury, Sun conjunction I am in for some good wholesome purging fun!

Always being one for the tried and tested kill or cure method I feel the influences will be more than favourable for cutting the crap and seeing a situation for what it is.

No wonder then that a re-occurrence of troublesome feelings and circumstances should crop up again. Now that is a Mercury Retrograde in action I am once again finding myself in a rather joyless work situation of late has made me feel increasingly restless, irritable and confined - hence my comment in a previous post about running away to join the circus. The circus is my favourite fantasy when the unbearable grind of mundane petty chores becomes too much to bear. Do they not understand that my Sagittarius moon does not do petty detail! The very act of dotting the crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s makes me that bored that I can’t even bring myself to write that sentence properly through utter disdain. There, I had to muddle it up to make it more interesting. In fact, I am currently waiting for something amazing to happen and I am so frustrated I feel as though I am about to burst! I am always nosey about other people’s charts and what might be going on for them that I seldom bother to look at my own.

This weekend will be different as I have been set a challenge by an Aries gentleman to calculate my current transits using the B.I.D.E technique of astrology, sounds exciting eh? If that tickles you fancy why not mosey on over to the Astrological Repair Manual blog and check it out for yourself!

Whenever I feel on the verge of following the circus dream I call my father, a Libran who can give advice that is so detached and objective that sometimes I get really wound up! He is perhaps the only person able to talk sense in to me in my irrational moments.

Signs that are of the air element are Gemini, Libra and Aquarius and these are said to be the most sociable, urbane, logical signs; able to be cool, analytical and detached. Of course, my father does his fair share of ranting and can be rather blunt at times, but as you would expect he is a sociable soul and is a keen blogger. You can see some excellent examples of my dads swearing and political commentary; it is most amusing. Simply visit Hundreds and Thousands on the Trifle of Life

Air sign people do have an excellent penchant for logic and a handle on their emotions, a trait which I am rather envious of. Having a large amount of fire and good amount of water in my natal chart makes for a somewhat highly strung volatile nature and a nervous disposition, I tend to feel my way through life and the concept of detaching from my emotions is completely alien to me. All nearest and dearest are air signs, I have two Libran parents, a Gemini partner and I am blessed with a beautiful Aquarius son!

Sometimes when you read descriptions of air signs with their aloofness and lack of emotional substance they sound rather like Mr Spock. This of course is a complete nonsense, my Aquarius son is a complete softy and is ever so sensitive. His theatrical and flamboyant Leo Moon is apparent as soon as you meet him, his Natal Sun, Uranus and Mercury conjunction means that he is a true individual. How many 10 year olds tell you that they want to join the mafia and change their name to Vinnie Fontaine. How many 10 year olds join their school council at their new school with the intention of bringing down the system from within? In fact, he got on the school council at his old school for that exact same reason, once he realised he had no power to change the status quo he became disillusioned and left the school council in disgust! Such is the way of politics.

It is times like this when I feel secretly proud that my son has such a strong sense of himself and his individuality, he will always march to the beat of his own drum. It is flashes of pure outlandish genius and a stubborn refusal to bow to convention that captures the essence of Aquarius for me, not emotional detachment or cool logic.

I will be returning to my home town next week to reconnect with some old friends this weekend, it will be good to catch up with some old pals and of course my two lovely Libran parents. I can't wait!

Mutable Appreciation

In case you haven't been enjoying the sunny Venus in Leo transit, I would like to once again reiterate that you should take advantage of the increased creativity and make the most of this favourable period for all artistic endeavours.

I was thrilled to find that I had not one - but two people comment on my Mercury and Law of attraction post which is about the Mercury "gatorade" and this is most synchronistic as one person was a Gemini and the other a Virgo. I am a Pisces and all I need now is for a wandering Sagittarian to comment and we will then be able to form some sort of cyber mutable appreciation society! Could things get any more Mercurial, all happening online in the bloggersphere too, if you have any doubts as to the validity of astrology, this must surely be evidence that it expresses a higher truth!

What made my day was the Gemini leaving their twitter id, and on a post about the planet Mercury too, does it get any better than that? Well, when I saw the comment from the Virgo gentleman about his tinfoil hat duck covering circus antics I thought it was Christmas, Easter and my birthday rolled in to one big glorious day!

Mutable signs are generally the curious, dexterous, flexible, flighty social signs. If there is an obstacle they simply change course, where a cardinal sign would seek to win the battle, or the fixed sign would spend the next 6 months climbing over it a mutable sign veers off on another course to pastures new. Pretty soon the obstacle that caused the radical departure is forgotten and there are new tangents ahead! It's good to be flexible and open to new possibilities. When you think about mutable signs think movement, change, flux, bending and flowing.

So far the Mercury retrograde is going well for me, as the planet of logic and reasoning moves backwards I feel rather oblivious to this. As a Piscean with my natal Mercury in Pisces I live in a constant woolly minded state of confusion, most days I leave the house without an essential item and I can't even remember what happened last Tuesday, I just go with the flow and trust that the universe is unfolding the way it should and I feel no concern about the possible miss-haps of a Mercury retrograde. My life is a never ending ebb and flow of losing things, being late for things, forgetting things, being late, things turning up, things being remembered, such is the way of the creative mind.

So, perhaps we could start collecting comments from the other signs of the zodiac on the current Mercury retrograde, has anyone else considered the tinfoil hat option or is it just our Virgo friend so far?

Mercury Retrograde and The Law of Attraction

In case you are wondering why this post comes with a picture of me and a cow it is because I was attempting to communicate and bond with this creature. Mercury is also a planet that rules all forms of communication as well as the mind, logic, short journeys, transportation, reasoning and education.

From tomorrow Mercury will appear to be retracing it’s steps, going backwards in its orbit if you are to observe it from Earth and this phenomena is called a retrograde period (all planets have them).

Perhaps the only thing to do during a Mercury retrograde is to go with the flow and not be too anal about it. Mercury retrograde always seem to create a bit of a buzz online and I can’t help thinking that there may be a degree of self fulfilling prophesy at play here. As the law of attraction states – what we think about most we attract.

Recently I have been reflecting upon the potential dangers of astrology, especially when people blindly follow traditional and accepted notions with no discernment or critical thinking, this kind of blind acceptance leads to fatalistic attitudes and superstition. Such superstitious thinking is extremely harmful to ourselves and others, next time you find yourself entertaining supersticious fancies I would suggest that you think back to the middle ages when nice old ladies that talked to their pet cats were burned at the stake for being witches – I’m sure you get the picture!

However, just in case you remain convinced that some sort of disaster may befall you during Mercury’s current retrograde period I have devised the following: strategies.

1. The duck and cover method
2. Wear a tin foil hat
3. Run away and join the circus

Let’s now take the time to look at how effective each of these strategies may be:

1. Duck and cover: This has proved to be ineffective in the event of a nuclear bomb exploding and I would not recommend this strategy for dealing with this month’s Mercury Retrograde cycle as it begins on September 7th and ends September 29th. This is far too long to hide underneath something!
2. Wear a tin foil hat: While making the tin foil hat may be a creatively rewarding pastime and will appeal to the more paranoid among you it could backfire on you. I shall explain; if you hope to protect your brain from any cosmic rays consider the following; antennae are also made of metal and you may end up attracting more cosmic rays thus amplifying the effects of the Mercury Retrograde.
3. Run away and join the circus: This is my personal favourite, however, as Mercury rules short journeys and travel is one of the things that is often affected during a Mercury Retrograde I'm afraid that you may never even reach the circus.

So, what we need to do is not panic, the trickster Mercury rules two mutable signs, Virgo and Gemini, both known for their dexterity and flexibility, and I think herein is where the solution lies. If we try not to be too rigid in our plans, expect the unexpected and we are prepared to go with the flow we can better deal with any setbacks that we encounter during this period.

Sure, computers misbehave, letters get lost and delays are possible and we might get to work late, but none of these are catastrophic happenings and remember, a Mercury Retrograde is great for going over the fine details of previous projects, you may come across a gem of information you missed first time round.

Progressions and Mercurial Mayhem

Following the Virgo-phile post of yesterday got me thinking more about progressed charts and while engaged in less interesting tasks I have, of late been reflecting on my new progressed Ascendant. I almost heard the gears change when this happened, although at the time I never considered the changing of my progressed Ascendant from Leo to Virgo to be the culprit.

As you get older you have what is known as a progressed chart. Your natal chart is a snapshot of the universe on the day of your birth and as your chart changes and the planets and points shift positions which makes perfect sense if you think about it. So, I started off with Leo rising and now I have Virgo rising instead and this would make the ruler of my progressed chart Mercury. However, Mercury has now progressed in to Taurus which I hope will dispel some of the Piscean branching logic that seems to land me in trouble with more linear thinking types. Unfortunately this will probably not be the case and I also have some hard aspects to my progressed Mercury including an interesting Mercury Uranus opposition. But enough of hard aspects to Uranus this is all about Hermes!

I became sensitive to Mercury changing sign in such a way that I had never experienced in the past and I couldn't help think how odd this was, there was also a sudden sharp increase in my desire for Mercurial pastimes and activities, again this was odd.

Curiously I noticed that in addition to an increased sensitivity to Mercury transits and I seem to be feeling more reserved and very health conscious. So, the burning question that I now need to know from as many people as possible is have they noticed a change in themselves? Have they noticed a change in others? If we take these changes and look at the corresponding charts we may well find some interesting things. I was suddenly able to account for strange things that had been afoot and changes within myself including a sudden new found affinity with the movements of Mercury. It was all in the progressed chart and it all made perfect sense.

If you would like to find out your progressed Ascendant you can go to Astrodienst.com and simply select the progressed chart from the dropdown menu in their extended chart selection section.