When I’d signed up for Sunday’s On-Camera Auditioning workshop, I wasn’t thinking about old messages I might have received from adults when I was younger — messages that apparently undermined my sense of what I could do with my life.

Mercury and Chiron? Boys playing in La Mina Falls, Puerto Rico. Photo by Amanda Painter.

I was just hoping to fine-tune some skills in my actor’s toolbox that could lead to well-paying gigs. When I looked at the astrology today to help Eric out with this Monday Diary, I realized that what I’ve been pondering for the last 24 hours was triggered by the Mercury-Chiron conjunction in Pisces.

Exact Tuesday at 9:07 am EDT (13:07 UTC), Mercury-Chiron is in effect now. This is the planet of mind and communication (Mercury) merging with the planet of awareness of wounding and healing (Chiron). For me, this meant being asked by the acting teacher running the workshop why I wasn’t performing with the local professional theater, and why I wasn’t Equity (a member of the professional union).

After bumbling through some answer about never feeling like it was the thing I could really make a living at, he asked me if I could follow that belief back to a specific person, and pressed me to do so.

Like I said — it was not what I expected to walk away thinking about. Mercury and Chiron in Pisces had other ideas.

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Some years ago I wrote an article that described the combined effect of Chiron in Pisces and Uranus in Aries. These are two long-term placements (properly called ‘transits’) involving slow-moving planets that change the lives of those who experience them.

Photo by Bev Dulis.

What they represent are deep processes of change. On some level that is all of us — being whipped and hurled through more change than we can keep up with.

Currently, the planets are aligned in what is mostly a water/fire pattern: Chiron, the Sun, Neptune and other planets in Pisces; and Uranus, Venus and Mars in Aries. This division is potentially a source of tension — unless blended perfectly, water can extinguish fire, and fire can boil away water until there is nothing left.

Though the Sun has recently arrived in Pisces, and is now conjunct the lord of the oceans Neptune, there’s been a shift over the past few days into fire signs. Venus and Mars, in particular, have moved into fire sign Aries, which is emphasizing heat, impulsiveness and the need to achieve.

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This week we have the second New Moon in Aquarius. Lately New Moons have been happening close to the beginnings of signs, such as on the very day the Sun changes signs. This has been going on for a while, at least as far back as September.

The Star — the tarot card representing Aquarius. This version was painted by Lady Frieda Harris, with some help from Aleister Crowley.

Of its own, this has been an interesting pattern to track. For reasons I have not been able to figure out, the solar cycle and the lunar cycle have been hugging one another. If someone understands the astronomy of this, please do explain it in the comments area.

On Jan. 20 there was a New Moon in Aquarius. That occurred a few hours after the Sun had ingressed Aquarius, and 15 minutes after the Moon had ingressed Aquarius, once again impressively close to the Sun’s transit into the new sign. Now it’s exactly one lunar cycle later, and we’re about to have a second New Moon in Aquarius.

This week’s happens at 29 degrees, 59 arc minutes and 54 arc seconds of Aquarius. Said another way, that is just ridiculous — the New Moon happens a mere six arc seconds away from the edge of Aquarius. (These are measures of space, not time. An arc minute is a sixtieth of a degree and an arc second is a sixtieth of an arc minute. The zodiac comprises 360 degrees — or 1,296,000 arc seconds.)

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Mercury stations direct this week — to be exact, just before 10 am EST (15:00 UTC) on Wednesday, Feb. 11. For those unfamiliar with the concept of Mercury retrograde, three times a year for about 22 days, Mercury passes between the Sun and the Earth. This creates the Mercury retrograde effect.

Will Robinson and the robot from Lost In Space.

Thanks to the Internet, many more people know about Mercury retrograde than ever before. And, I believe, thanks to our increasing dependency on technology, which has infused and/or infested every corner of our lives, Mercury retrogrades have become more noticeable.

Often the last few days stand out the most — and in recent years I’ve seen that the weeks following the retrograde can include a number of lingering effects. At minimum, it can take a week or three for things to settle down. Things, as in financial issues, problems with technology and various shades of confusion and miscommunication. Mercury retrograde may or may not stand up to scientific scrutiny, but it’s certainly a well-established psychological and social phenomenon.

Mercury will be stationing direct in Aquarius, the sign associated with patterns and in particular thought patterns. These patterns tend to be fixed rather than flexible, in the style of Aquarius, which is a fixed sign (the other kinds of signs are cardinal, representing initiative; and mutable, representing the ability to flex or toggle between modes easily).

So here, we get an image of rethinking thinking. This is happening in an environment where we’re constantly needing to relearn things. The learning curve associated with technology is a constant grind, so it seems like we’re rethinking; but my observation is that as technology evolves, people tend to become increasingly fixed in their patterns and points of view. This may be your basic “reaction formation” kind of psychological response.

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Notes from a Resonant Universe — Cosmophilia Feedback is In

Monday is Groundhog Day, and first I have a correction — contrary to what I wrote in an article two weeks ago (Published in Planet Waves and Chronogram), and in a prior article in 2000, groundhogs (also known as woodchucks) actually do hibernate.

Not your ordinary wildlife — the groundhog is the largest member of the squirrel family, who can eat your whole garden. Photo from Earthsky.org.

According to Ted Andrews, author of Animal Speak, they are true hibernators, whose body temperature drops to 40 degrees F, down from the usual 96 when not hibernating. Their pulse drops from 110 beats per minute to four or five beats — a yogi-like trick of slowing down their metabolism and conserving energy.

So distinctive is their hibernation that Andrews describes them as embodying “the mystery of death without dying, trance and dreams.”

I’m not sure where I acquired that incorrect fact in my original article on Imbolc; I’m still trying to figure that out, since the original article (in StarIQ.com) had a great research team on board. In any event it’s now Groundhog Day.

Apart from the ridiculous tradition of live-televised weather divination, groundhogs can represent signaling boundaries, which they tend to keep to a minimum. Their main boundary is their home, that is, their tunnel.

The groundhog “is also a symbol of opening fully to the dreamtime, the heavy winter sleep, allowing the individual to use the dreamtime more powerfully. those with a groundhog totem will find that there will be increasing ability to develop lucid dreaming — especially during the winter. Any time groundhog shows up, the clarity and power of altered states will be amplified. Dreams will become more significant.”

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Sunday at 11:53 pm EST (Monday at 04:53 UTC) the Moon reaches an opposition to the Sun, which is the Cancer Full Moon. Every Full Moon has something in common with every other — and every one is unique. This is similar to The First Law of Cats: They are all the same, and they are all different.

Central aspect pattern of tonight’s Full Moon in Cancer. The lines connect the Moon, the Sun, the lunar nodes, Uranus, Pluto and the brightest asteroid, Vesta.

This Full Moon is in Cancer, the sign of the Moon’s rulership. This typically happens once per year; very rarely, there are two Cancer Full Moons in a row, though not this year.

That grants dignity to this Moon, and an emotional quality that might be described as passion, drive or instinct.

With the Moon closely trine Chiron and in a wide trine to Neptune in Pisces, this effect can rise to the level of intuition, which may come through dreams, one’s emotional body or ‘just knowing’.

If you get that kind of information, I suggest you act on whatever you want to address after the aspect has passed, not before. The Full Moon typically comes with pressure to speak or act. But you want to make that choice under your own steam, and make sure that you’ve accounted for any emotional distortions.

Remember that the Full Moon on its own has a quality of releasing deadlocks. That, you want to let the celestial bodies do. In any event, the momentum of the moment is likely to come with a “whatever happens, happens” feeling. Still, I always recommend a conscious approach to existence, and using astrology to help with that end.

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