By Amanda Painter

Do you ever wonder how you’ve come to believe some of the things you believe? We’re bombarded these days with a non-stop stream of information, ideas and news stories (both real and ‘fake’), and we’re continually exposed to cultures, religions and philosophies that may be vastly different from our own. This can be stressful and overwhelming; it can be exciting and stoke curiosity; either way, you are constantly judging what you encounter according to your beliefs and biases.

The 2015 Gemini Full Moon; photo by Amanda Painter.

The two major peaks of this week’s astrology both tap into these themes, and they both arrive on Sunday. Mercury stations retrograde at 2:34 am EST (7:34 UTC). Then a little over eight hours later, we get the Gemini Full Moon at 10:47 am EST (15:47 UTC).

As with any Mercury retrograde, you’d be well advised to take care of some basic mental, electronic and financial housekeeping, starting now and running a little past the official retrograde phase, which lasts until Dec. 22. This includes backing up your computer; being extra careful, focused and patient while driving; and double-checking your wording and the recipient’s address with any and all digital communication.

The typical advice to reduce spending on major purchases (and to delay contracts) hits a snag during holiday shopping season. But you can still follow the basic principles by reading anything with fine print two or three times, paying extra attention to return policies and warranties (along with your intuition — heed those subtle inner tugs), and tracking your spending against your budget regularly.

With Mercury in big-picture Sagittarius, staying intentionally mindful of the details becomes even more important. Yet Mercury retrograde can also be an incredibly useful period of introspection and review. In Sagittarius, you might find yourself encountering reminders of how you’ve come to believe what you believe.

This could relate specifically to religious and spiritual beliefs (a main theme of Sagittarius). It might also point you toward broader cultural or political judgments.

With Mercury still in close proximity to Saturn in late Sagittarius, what authority figures taught you as a child would seem to be a particular focus. Do you still carry beliefs and judgments that are not really yours? When I say “not really yours,” what I mean is ideas about the world (including your place in the world) that often put you in conflict with yourself.

For example, you may have been raised to believe certain things about relationships, sex and your body that cause you a lot of guilt, or that seem to repeatedly undermine the kinds of connections with others you most deeply desire. Or maybe a parent approaches everything with fear, and you’ve noticed that you do, too — and that it keeps you from trying things you’re curious about. Perhaps your family has a history of bigotry or sexism and you’re becoming increasingly aware that you don’t quite feel the same way about people.

I could go on, but you get the idea. And chances are that if you read astrology columns, you began the process of extricating yourself from beliefs that are not really yours long ago. Even so, there’s often still more extricating that can be done — and done with love and compassion: for yourself (since this process can feel un-tethering or even threatening), and for those who modeled these beliefs (since they likely did not have the awareness to be able to teach you differently).

Speaking of love and compassion — which I consider to be hallmarks of humanity at its best: in the process of the pre-, post- and main retrograde phases, Mercury also makes three conjunctions to the Galactic Core (GC). This is the center of our Milky Way galaxy, considered by many to be a ‘cosmic homing signal’ of sorts. Mercury also makes three squares to Chiron in Pisces; Chiron representing awareness designed to facilitate healing.

The cosmos would seem to be asking, “Are you getting the message? And if you are, what are you doing with it? Are you communicating it through humane action to serve the highest good? Are you letting it inspire or provoke you to heal what has been (or has become) painful?”

With Mercury making three sets of contacts with the GC and Chiron, it looks like this inquiry comes in layers; you may find yourself revising it over the coming weeks. What you learn might eventually point you in a new direction.

Meanwhile, we also have the Gemini Full Moon this weekend. This is the Moon in Gemini opposing the Sun in Sagittarius. Full Moons always indicate peaks of energy, especially in interpersonal interactions.

In this case, the Sun and Moon are exactly square Neptune in Pisces. Neptune tends to indicate something might be unclear, deceptive, slippery, obscured or otherwise not reflective of reality.

If you find yourself in any kind of conflict, confrontation or deadlock this weekend, there’s a good chance it may not be about what you think it is, or what someone (perhaps you) has said it is. This might not be fully intentional. For example, if you’ve been ignoring or repressing your emotions, you yourself might not be clear about your position — let alone how to negotiate it. Or one person might see many possible perspectives on a situation, while another person views it more dogmatically.

You’ll want to pay attention to what you think you’re expressing and compare it to what others seem to be hearing. Idealism could be running high, which can feel great and be incredibly useful. But with Neptune square the Full Moon and Mercury stationing retrograde, it’s a good idea to check idealistic ideas against known facts.

A couple last reminders: With Mars in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries, this is a good week to temper your temper and practice patience in any misunderstandings. If you’re feeling hemmed in by someone, see how you can begin to liberate yourself by noticing the freedom and empowerment you already possess, rather than rebelling outright. (You can read a little more about this in the Monday Astrology Diary.)

Also, Venus leaving Scorpio to enter Sagittarius tomorrow should bolster friendlier vibes, your sense of inner strength and your intuition. Luckily, you don’t need to ‘believe’ that for it to be true. Those are all qualities you can cultivate no matter where Venus — or any other planet — happens to be. You’ll feel better, and that extends to everyone you interact with.

By any standards, 2018 will be a distinctive year astrologically. Get your essential guide to riding the waves of the next 12 months and beyond. Pre-order The Art of Becoming, the 2018 Planet Waves Annual by Eric Francis.

It’s always exciting to learn about a newly named minor planet. Each one is a fresh fabric in the rich tapestry of archetypes we work with, which is constantly unveiling new layers of complexity.

The object in question is (47171) Lempo, a plutino first discovered on Oct. 1, 1999, but only given its permanent moniker last month. A “plutino” is a small, usually icy body, close to the orbit of Pluto. The name chosen was of a Finnish fire and fertility goddess. Not being familiar with Finnish mythology, I was eager to find out more.

Fire Woman. Photo by LadyDragonflyCC.

It would seem, unfortunately, there’s not an awful lot left to find. Lempo appears to have been a fire deity, in the style of the Celtic goddess Brigid; the people who encountered her became the “people of fire” after she brought them bread, iron and love. The description on this YouTube link hints rather delightfully that she presided more over romantic encounters than procreation, and that this emphasis was unique to Finnish folklore.

If that’s true, what happened next will probably be no surprise: after Christians invaded Finland in the early 13th century, Lempo became identified with the devil; her gender became clouded in obscurity (because after all, how can a woman be so fiery and strong?) and her name is now a mild swear word in Finnish; along with that of one of her helpers, Hiisi. For clues to her real nature, we are apparently left with the remnants of stories.

This problem with Christianization (which usually happened at the point of a sword; so much for peace and goodwill) recurs in the history of local deities many, many times over, and is deeply frustrating to say the least. It’s maddening to think of all the knowledge that’s been lost, all the little variations in ideas and practices, all the fragments of wisdom that could be so valuable in helping to form a more complete picture.

It’s infuriating beyond belief to consider that there are people who still think using their own creed to trample on divergent views is nothing more than the sacred word of their god. (Interestingly, the Sabian symbol of Lempo’s discovery degree, 26 Pisces, talks of the importance of acknowledging differences, and of the “fallacy of totalitarianism.” Quite.)

None of the astronomers we contacted knew exactly where the naming idea originated; this has happened before with minor planets, and I can’t help wondering whether, amid widespread social change and the impending dearth of Christianity’s chokehold over the Western world, the old gods are now making a bid to be seen and heard.

Perhaps their time has finally come. Perhaps, in the new, diverse world we are slowly constructing, we actually need them, and all that they can teach us.

It’s Saturday and the waning crescent Moon is cruising around the zodiac faster than usual. Having entered Virgo only today, Luna will be making ingress to Libra before Monday has run its course for most of you reading this. By Tuesday, next week’s true colors are likely to become more plainly evident. In all likelihood, so will yours.

That’s because Mars is currently moving around the zodiac a bit slower than usual as it nears the midpoint of Libra. Once the Moon is also in Libra, it (along with the Sun’s position in Scorpio) will highlight a Martian aspect that has been sneaking up on us.

By this time next week, Mars will have closed to within 90 degrees of separation from Pluto’s position in Capricorn. It is the sort of geometric relationship astrologers call a “square”.

Square aspects correspond to the sort of tension that is not sustainable. Think of the term “something’s got to give” and you get the general idea. What’s more, any period of time prominently featuring a square between sign-ruling planets tends to favor those who are proactive when it comes to resolving tension.

Interestingly, many modern astrologers consider Scorpio to be the joint dominion of Mars and Pluto. Since Pluto was not discovered until 1930, that has not always been the case.

Originally (and traditionally, still) Mars had the rule of Aries and Scorpio all to itself. Being a fire sign (and, not incidentally, the initial sign of the zodiac wheel), a Martian association with Aries makes intuitive sense. Scorpio, on the other hand, is more complex.

Even though it took decades to connect the proverbial dots, once we were aware of Pluto’s existence, its own astrological complexity gradually became apparent. Even Pluto’s ups and downs with astronomers (who are still in dispute regarding how to define it) are indicative of a layered ambivalence long associated with the one sign counter-intuitively combining a fixed quality with water.

In our own time, correlations with Scorpio tend to be kept behind closed doors. Sex, death and taxes are just a few examples. Politics, especially as it has been related to the manufacture of sausage, is another. Reliably, the Sun’s annual traversal of Scorpio will tend to bring some of that potentially discomforting subject matter to light.

Now, while the Sun is still in Scorpio, Mars and Pluto are moving to double down. In addition, Mars aspects often go off prematurely. Hence, it should be no surprise that an especially self-righteous candidate for the U.S. Senate has recently been accused of plying adolescent women with cheap wine prior to fondling them way back when he himself was well past his first Saturn return.

Nor should it surprise anybody that a significant number of people still intend to vote for that guy. You might be excused for wondering how many of them enjoy sausage daily. Not everybody, however, has that sort of stomach.

Hopefully, choices you are facing in your own life are not as uncomfortable as those facing Republican voters of Alabama. If they are, remember the astrology coming up.

In order to more happily live for the long term with the consequences of your own actions in the days to come, be decisive and choose to reduce tension rather than prolong it. Even if that’s all you do next week, it could well be all that really needs to be done.

Offered In Service

By any standards, 2018 will be a distinctive year astrologically. Get your essential guide to riding the waves of the next 12 months and beyond. Pre-order The Art of Becoming, the 2018 Planet Waves Annual by Eric Francis.

The waning gibbous Moon entered its Cancer dominion earlier today. A little over an hour later, Venus left Libra behind to trail the Sun and Jupiter in Scorpio. Add Neptune traversing Pisces, and you have a temporary scenario featuring half of astrology’s ten sign rulers expressing through emblematic water. Not incidentally, today (Tuesday) is election day in the U.S.

Each of the twelve astrological signs is associated with one of the four so-called elements: fire, earth, air or water. Any sign identified with water’s symbolism tends to have a subjective cachet. Sometimes, that’s helpful. Sometimes it’s not.

Corresponding to how astrology usually manifests, the course of political events is most heavily determined by those who participate. The degree to which water signs correlate with emotions provides a clue about how voting might go today. It would seem that the passionate might well prevail.

On the one hand, passion is a very good thing. A representative political system, for example, is as strengthened by avid interest as it is weakened by apathy.

On the other hand, emotions are more subject to manipulation than critical thinking. With Mercury (the sign ruler most closely corresponding to how you think) having recently moved out of Scorpio and into fiery Sagittarius, it’s quite possible that a lot of voters are being influenced less by intellect and more by either instinct or intuition.

As result, a significant number of electoral choices being made in the U.S. today may end up reflecting the intentions of a comparative few who have both the wherewithal and skill to twist and exploit tender feelings. Should that turn out to be the case, the results will not augur well for representative democracy.

Then again, there’s nothing quite like a proverbial “teaching moment” when it comes to changing behavior. American citizens declining or neglecting to participate today may very well end up learning the same sort of lesson often absorbed by those who decide to ignore astrology. Were that to be true, one of the world’s most important republics would benefit immeasurably.

Obviously, astrology never applies to only one nation exclusively. So long as you reside somewhere on Earth, the same correlations between celestial and earthly events postulated in the preceding paragraphs could just as easily apply to you.

Over the next day or two, it would probably do everybody some good to be inspired by their emotions — while also trusting logic to make decisions. Even if hindsight reveals you are now being controlled by minds other than your own, there would be no reason for despair. If there is anything to astrology, all that really matters is whether you allow yourself to be changed by what you will soon come to know.

Offered In Service

By any standards, 2018 will be a distinctive year astrologically. Get your essential guide to riding the waves of the next 12 months and beyond. Pre-order The Art of Becoming, the 2018 Planet Waves Annual by Eric Francis.

The Moon is now in Taurus, setting the stage for a Full Moon opposed by the Scorpio Sun overnight between Friday and Saturday. Meantime, the two planets inside Earth’s orbit (Venus and Mercury) are moving to change signs as next week begins. Taken in context, those impending highlights suggest an unusual scenario.

Typically, the days leading to up to a Full Moon exhibit some palpable momentum. Usually, after a Full Moon, the tension associated with its opposition to the Sun is quickly released.

Beginning Sunday, however, it will be as if the Moon is handing off a relay baton. Minutes before the Moon departs Taurus to enter Gemini, Luna will oppose Mercury at the end of its Scorpio tenure. Then, less than nine hours later, Mercury (ruler of Gemini) will make ingress to Sagittarius.

Though Mercury is very small compared to the Sun, their proximity works to confer a certain similarity of one to the other. For instance, consciousness (which the Sun is posited to correspond with in this particular case) is never very far from Mercury’s correlation to a similar (but also very different) quality: mind.

This particular ingress of Mercury to Sagittarius also has at least one other indication of continued momentum. It will be 2018 before Mercury (a planet which normally traverses a single sign in three weeks or less) leaves Sagittarius for Capricorn.

That’s because 2017 still has one Mercury retrograde left in it, one which will begin in the very last degree of Sagittarius on the same day as the next Full Moon — Dec. 3.

Then there is Venus. Less than an hour before tonight’s Taurus Full Moon is exact, Venus will contribute its own quotient of tension by precisely opposing retrograde Uranus (winding up a long tenure in Aries) from Libra. After that, on Tuesday, Venus will do its own part to indicate an extension of momentum by moving on to Scorpio.

So what can this implicit relay of the Taurus Full Moon’s energy be said to mean? In short, the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus are moving so as to move you.

To paraphrase a parable specific to ancient Rome, history is not made in a day. Even so, the initiation, progress and decline of eras, empires and paradigms unavoidably proceeds one day at a time. With each of those days, people just like you make what seem to be insignificant choices which (with the passage of time) culminate to produce the broader outline of results remembered by posterity.

Slower-moving planets (especially sign rulers Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) have consistently been demonstrated to resonate with those broader outlines.

The so-called personal “planets” (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars), on the other hand, move fast enough to track the daily  pace of your own life. When they align in a temporal sense to extend and relay their respective alignments in space, your role in the longer term is implicitly getting more powerful.

And to think that it all begins with this Taurus Full Moon. Not so much that you are about to become a superhero, or even rich and influential. More like the fact you can clearly do better than so many traditional power structures which no longer have anything to offer but bad faith and abuse.

From all appearances the most personal of planets are moving to hand the baton off to you, and everybody like you (which, at this point in history, is nearly all of us).

You will know the moment. When it comes, you will be faced with a chance to be conscious, compassionate, mindful and loving towards somebody who does not inspire you to demonstrate any of those qualities. What you do then will go a long way towards determining whether the human race is, against all odds, finally won. Or would it be more appropriate to say “one”?

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