Mercury’s Scorpio course flows into a water trine with Neptune in Pisces at 10:38 pm EDT tonight (which would be 3:38 UT tomorrow). This is Mercury’s third and final water sign connection with Neptune this year, implicitly connecting you with the previous two — when, in some sense, you were already here.

As Eric noted yesterday (re: Mars’ Capricorn conjunction with Pluto), aspects from “a fast-moving inner planet” to slower-moving outer planets can serve as an “observation tool.”

What applies to Mars interacting with the Uranus-Pluto square this week applies triple with Mercury’s water trine to Neptune tonight (or tomorrow, depending on your time zone). Triple because Mercury conjoined with Neptune in Pisces on March 22.

That conjunction was followed by Mercury’s first water trine to Neptune in Pisces (from Cancer) on July 19. Today makes three. It’s a situation Planet Waves anticipated for you in this space back on March 18.

All three of Mercury’s water aspects to Neptune this year share a similar something in common. What they have in common in turn provides an observation tool you can use.

Each case presents Mercury freshly emerged from its final echo (or “shadow”) phase by having passed the point where its most recent retrograde began, followed by a water aspect to Neptune just days later.

Hence, in each case, Mercury is on fresh ground, representing the symbolic clarity of a mind freed from a pattern ingrained by repetition. This renders it (and you) able to see things from a fresh perspective as a result — provided Neptune’s association with delusion can be objectively dealt with.

Using all three cases of Mercury in water aspect to Neptune (March 22, July 19 and either today or tomorrow) together as an observational tool has precedent in tangible practices of the actual world. In the tangible world, three points routinely provide you with actual perspective. You can, as the phrase goes, “connect the dots.”

For example, you can perform the navigational (or orienteering) practice known as triangulation by taking a compass fix on two known landmarks to determine your position as a third point on the two-dimensional representation we call a map. You can also employ observations of height, width and depth to define a three-dimensional object (just like 3-D printers do), or to locate a point in three-dimensional space. Finally, any three similar occurrences in your life can at least begin to indicate a pattern over time.

Hence, the three reasons Planet Waves anticipated this moment for you last March. First, so you could overcome with awareness any proclivity Neptune has for delusion (especially while in intimate connection — conjunction or trine — with Mercury, emblem of your mind, through the subjective milieu of water signs). You can do this by setting up an objective time frame correlating with Mercury’s three water aspects to Neptune.

Next, so you could formulate an attainable goal by looking ahead with the aid of a time frame anticipated by three correlated astrological events. Finally, so you could measure your progress from the perspective you had on July 19, and have today.

If your life happened in the meantime while you were making other plans (probably the case for most of us), you can still use the three Mercury-Neptune water aspects this year as a tool to observe where you are at this point.

After connecting those three dots in your own life, you can then begin (objectively, please remember) observing for any further connections your personal circumstance has with what Eric called the “generational aspect” of Uranus square Pluto. Mars in Capricorn conjoined with Pluto yesterday, and in a cardinal square to Uranus in Aries on Thursday, likely is revealing something to you.

It will be up to you to remember that what you are looking for is concrete, measurable, verifiable, actual observations — not delusions. You don’t need delusions for the results to be efficacious.

Then, you can look back at March and July one more time to appreciate how you may have, in some sense, been here then, so as to learn rather than regret now. That’s what you are here for. That, and to share with us what you have learned so that we can separately observe how we are one with each other as surely as all time is (in T.S. Eliot’s words) “eternally present.”

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Mercury returns to Scorpio at 6:09 pm EST (23:09 UT) Saturday to weigh in and move on — a good example for you to follow. Mercury first entered that realm of fixed water on Sept. 27.

Then it stationed retrograde barely two degrees in on Oct. 4, ultimately rolling halfway back into Libra.

There will be no turning back for Mercury after its second ingress to Scorpio in six weeks’ time, but it will find a lot more company than the first time.

When Mercury re-enters Scorpio this weekend, it will join the Sun, Venus and Saturn expressing their unique archetypes through a common — and weighty — raiment.

That’s nearly half the sign rulers of the solar system — true heavyweights — harmonizing to play very much the character of a chorus in what the whole zodiac is doing right now.

The character of Scorpio can be a lot of things, but it is seldom a lightweight. The energetics conferred upon any point or object traversing fixed water address facts of life that distinguish adult from child.

Given versatile Mercury’s correlations with (among other things) mind, words and how you think, this particular return to Scorpio is no time to speak as a child, understand as a child, or think as a child.

So it is that you will best harmonize with the conscious solar undertone, as well as with the deepest phrasing of Venusian values and Saturn’s somber anchor when Mercury comes into Scorpio once again. Not necessarily darkly, but by facing up to what is, and not just in part.

Fortunately, Mercury is also coming into its own again even as it is coming back to Scorpio. Which is to say Mercury’s apparent motion is getting back up to its usual blazing speed. Already, the planet appropriately named after the speedster of the gods is covering about three degrees of the zodiac every two days — faster than any other sign ruler except the Moon.

Implicitly then, Mercury returns to Scorpio this weekend to accompany your moving on just as much as to accompany your taking on a serious tone.

Appropriately then, Mercury will blow past the point where it stationed retrograde on Monday, ending the final shadow phase of its final retrograde period of 2014, and getting your week off with a figurative foot on symbolically fresh ground.

Nevertheless, it will still pay to watch where you step. The Scorpio chorus has a lot left to say, both to you and through you. Best to say it (and hear it) all soberly and seriously, while also not dwelling overmuch in dark reflection. There is so much to do now that Mercury (and by implication, your mind) are finally getting free.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thursday’s Taurus Full Moon at 5:23pm EST (22:23 UT) will not be an eclipse. Even so, the event will be something more than the midpoint of a lunation (or lunar cycle from one New Moon to the next) that all Full Moons represent. Thursday’s Full Moon also marks the midpoint of a season.

Both realistically and symbolically, the position of the Sun determines what season it is, and what point in the season you are experiencing.

There are many ways to measure the position of the Sun, but the tropical zodiac (what we use in Western astrology, and here on Planet Waves) is among the most convenient and reliable.

When the symbolic Sun entered tropical Libra on Sept. 22 (or 23, depending on your time zone), the actual Sun was appearing directly overhead at Earth’s equator. It was thus an equinox.

The Libra equinox represented the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, and the initiation of spring in the Southern Hemisphere, but took place for everybody on Earth at once. For many of you, however, the seasonal change was not immediately apparent in actual experience at the time of the Libra equinox.

By now, however, nearly everybody in the northern temperate zones knows from actual experience that it’s definitely not summer anymore. Those in temperate zones South of the equator have also by now seen evidence that winter is over for them.

That’s the power of the midpoint (or what some call the ‘cross-quarter’) between season changes. What starts at an equinox (when the symbolic Sun enters cardinal Libra, or cardinal Aries) or a solstice (with solar ingress to cardinal Cancer or cardinal Capricorn) reaches a peak of expression, and a turning point about six weeks later.

For tropical astrologers that peak comes when the Sun reaches the midpoints of a fixed sign (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius). So called because the Sun in a fixed sign corresponds in practical experience with a seasonal pattern being fixed into place, after being subtly initiated when the Sun first entered the immediately previous cardinal sign.

It is not every month, or even every year, that any Full Moon will take place while the opposing Sun at the midpoint of a fixed sign. When something does not happen very often, astrologers take notice — especially when the two brightest lights in the sky reach the midpoint of their respective cycles at the same time.

It is as if a point is being made, in italics, and underlined for emphasis when the Sun and Moon deliver the same symbolic message at the same time. In this case, the message corresponds closely to political cycles in the U.S. with today being the so-called midterm elections for the national legislature. Midterm elections occur halfway between presidential elections.

It means we are at the midpoint of President Obama’s second and final four-year term of elected service. Because of how government works (or fails to work) in the U.S., the results of today’s midterm elections will largely determine what the last two years of the current presidential term will amount to.

Yet the Sun and Moon cannot be construed to correspond with the politics of any one nation. The two ‘greater lights’ can, however, be correlated with you, because the midpoint of a season happens at the same time for everybody on Earth, as does a Full Moon.

Hence the point being made by Thursday’s Taurus Full Moon must implicitly be global, at most integrating U.S. politics into a bigger picture.

The point being made by the opposed luminaries (Sun and Moon) on Thursday would be about a bigger picture including all, and excluding none. Implied would be cycles of all kinds, and how at least some of those cycles are reaching their midpoint simultaneously.

The big picture would necessarily include decision making, and possibly even side taking. From those decisions, possibly a determination of what the next two weeks of the lunar cycle, the next six weeks of the current season, and perhaps even the remainder of a longer period now halfway done could amount to.

It is as if you will be voting by what you do, or don’t do on Thursday — not as a citizen of any nation, but as a human being. A human being who is aware of how the Sun and Moon appear to move, and how (when the luminaries move in rare synchronicity) something of your own experience is implicitly synchronized with every other being on Earth.

It would be convenient if the Sun and Moon were more explicit about what’s up with the profusely illuminated confluence of their midpoints, but that’s not the way the universe works. The cosmos goes about its business showing, but not telling, to those who choose to observe and correlate.

Now that you are aware of what the luminaries will be doing on Thursday, you might want to observe and correlate yourself. What are your needs? What do you want? What has reached its peak or midpoint for you? What will your own choices and actions amount to?

Whatever the answer to those questions, imagine others asking and answering the same questions at the same time. Then, think about what the cumulative result would amount to, especially if everybody did the same as you at the same time.

From that contemplation alone, something truly significant could come on the other side of the midpoint the Sun, Moon and all of us will, one way or another, implicitly be reaching together on Thursday. Vote your conscience.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Mercury, Venus and Mars are moving so as to potentially help you employ personal history to make some delayed progress. The three planets most often called ‘personal’ are each separately moving into the same aspect (a sextile) with an outer planet often associated with history.

All three of those separate sextiles will be exact for most of you on Saturday.

Early Saturday, at 8:44 am EDT (12:44 UT) Mercury in Libra will open a sextile to Jupiter in Leo for the third time in two months. 

Then (at 7:09 pm EDT/23:09 UT), Venus in Scorpio will achieve a closing sextile to Pluto in Capricorn. Following about half an hour later will be a likewise approaching sextile from Mars in Capricorn to Neptune in Pisces.

Sextile aspects are separations of 60 degrees in the sky and on the zodiac, typically occurring twice in a given cycle between conjunctions.

Conjunctions are two objects merging in the same degree of the same sign to start a new cycle between them.

Sextiles represent both the first (or ‘opening’) major aspect after a conjunction to begin a cycle, and the last (or ‘closing’) major aspect before the next conjunction, to end a cycle.

In addition to being the first and last major points of evaluation in a given cycle between any two objects, sextiles serve (in the words of Robert Hand) “… to sharpen consciousness and heighten awareness, which requires a certain degree of initiative.”

That’s how you come to have a role to play along with Mercury, Venus and Mars on Saturday. Your role begins with taking the initiative to be aware.

You can start with being conscious of how Mercury, Venus and Mars are often referred to as ‘personal planets’. It’s because they go through many cycles of aspect with other objects in a typical human lifetime.

Thus, along with the Sun and Moon, personal planets correlate with the relative frequency of personal cycles in your life most often measured in weeks, months or years.

In contrast, events that are few and far between relative to a human lifetime (or series of lifetimes) are by definition historic. Cycles of historic events implicitly correlate with planetary cycles measured in decades or centuries.

The next step in exercising some degree of initiative is for you to be aware that Mercury takes about a year to go around the zodiac, as (on average) does Venus. Mars takes about two years. Nevertheless, days when Mercury, Venus and Mars are more-or-less simultaneously in sextile aspect to sign-ruling planets of long cycle are few and far between.

Hence, no matter how ordinary or familiar the events of your life on Saturday may seem to be, there will implicitly be some extraordinary overlap or intersection with history, most likely your personal history. If such a possibility is not a reason to take the initiative and sharpen your consciousness, what is?

Mercury’s correlation with mental acuity makes it a good planet with which to sharpen consciousness. Fortunately, the first of the personal planet sextiles on Saturday is from Mercury in Libra to Jupiter in Leo, setting the tone.

Mercury last conjoined with Jupiter in Leo earlier this year on Aug. 2. Since then, because of its retrograde retracing of late Libra, Mercury has had two separating sextiles with Jupiter (on Sept. 10, and Oct. 20) with the third coming Saturday.

Typically there is only one opening sextile event in the more-or-less annual cycle beginning and ending with Mercury-Jupiter conjunctions.

For there to be three such events in two months is more than just another example of the few and far between encroaching to integrate with the frequent. It’s repetition.

Repetition serves (among other things) to get attention. So consider paying attention. Ask yourself what big (Jupiter) thing you started at the beginning of August only to be locked in mental (Mercury) evaluations ever since. Then, contemplate how turning the key to the third separating sextile from Mercury to Jupiter might be in what Venus and Mars are doing on the same day.

Venus and Mars might be the key to unlocking whatever you have been going back and forth with for several months. That’s because Venus is moving into the closing sextile of its annual cycle with Pluto. Likewise, Mars is approaching its final sextile in a two-year cycle with Neptune.

Both aspects will be exact on Saturday, shortly after Mercury repeats its opening sextile to Jupiter for a third time, implying a connection with your personal history of making progress — or not. 

Consider what unfolded after Venus last conjoined with Pluto on Nov. 15, 2013. Even though that conjunction was not repeated, it was followed by a retrograde that kept Venus in Capricorn until March of 2014.

Hence, evaluating now what you did to overcome delay and resume progress early this year could bring some heightened awareness to whatever repetition has been trying to show you more recently.

That’s the implication of Venus in a closing sextile to Pluto on the same day Mercury opens a sextile to Jupiter for the third time in two months without any headway. An implication worth looking into, given how such concurrences between Mercury and Venus sextile aspects to outer planets are few and far between.

Similarly, to have Mars compound the issue of a rare occurrence indicates something of what you might do to avoid delayed progress in the future. That’s because Mars is entering its final evaluation of a cycle that started with a Pisces conjunction to Neptune on Feb. 4, 2013.

Unlike what followed Mercury’s conjunction with Jupiter last August, and unlike what followed Venus’s conjunction with Pluto last November, Mars made rapid progress into an opening sextile and beyond after beginning its cycle with Neptune.

Mars may then very well be providing you with an evaluation of what you did right in early 2013 as part of its closing sextile to Neptune on Saturday.

Given how such an interpretation is consistent with what Mercury and Venus will be doing on the same day, you should think back on that part of your personal history and place some value on what you remember, especially when the alternative is missing the point Mercury has repeatedly been trying to make.

After all, a failure to learn from history frequently results in a destiny to repeat it. So take a cue from Mercury, Venus and Mars to take a hand in shaping your own personal destiny this weekend.

Look back on your personal history. Renew your grasp of what you started in early August, but somehow lost a grip on. Then, recall what Venus taught you about recovering lost momentum early this year.

Finally, remember how you got off on the right foot in early 2013 to sharpen your consciousness of what you want to get going again now. If you can put the astrology to use like that, this may be one of the most productive weekends you have had in a long time.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.