Dear Friend and Reader:

Mercury stationed retrograde in Scorpio today at 11:41 am EDT (15:41:20 UTC). It will station direct on Nov. 20. As strongly as Mercury is associated with tricks, especially during its retrograde phases, it does in fact bestow treats as well — though it can require actively seeking that perspective, often in the form of recognizing the lessons hidden in the mischief and frustration.

Mystery figures at the 2016 Sacred and Profane festival, Peaks Island, Maine; photo by Amanda Painter.

I guess you could say that the blessings of Mercury sometimes arrive in disguise, wearing an inconvenient costume. You know, like that one friend who dresses up as a ‘concept’ that nobody gets, and then is bummed about having to explain it all night. (I’ve totally been guilty of that.)

Yet once you grasp the concept, you kind of have to applaud the cleverness behind it. Is Mercury too clever for its own good? More likely we’re the ones guilty of that charge — zooming around, physically and mentally, often faster than our full awareness can keep up, and trying to fool ourselves into thinking that we’re ‘multitasking’. As you may have read before, Mercury’s retrograde phases are a good time to slow down — move slower, rein in the pace of your thoughts, take a little extra time and care with communication.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Any predictive astrologer looking at the astrology of our moment might have seen that the political environment would be boiling over the sides of the pot and onto the floor. The wide-angle factor here, the one spanning decades and indicating that something is reaching its conclusion, is Saturn conjunct Pluto in Capricorn.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

One of my journalistic hobbies is listening to the scanner. All I have to do is unmute Channel 1 on my soundboard, and it comes through my speakers. I can then eavesdrop on the chatter of government. I hear some law enforcement, but mainly what comes across are medical calls, fire calls and stuff like road maintenance.

My basic audio setup includes a Uniden scanner (device right under the candle, made in Sugarloaf), so I can listen to public service activity in my community. I make no secret of the fact that I monitor; I discuss events and procedures with local leaders. Photo by Lanvi Nguyen.

For me this is like a civics meditation. I don’t actively cover local news. When I hear something newsworthy, I will text the city editor at the Daily Freeman, which does not have the time to monitor. But that’s not my main reason for listening. I just find it interesting, and also, I feel reassured to hear that society is functioning.

One of my favorite items happens on the hour, when the toll plazas along the New York State Thruway check in with the temperature and road conditions. I can hear this because they’re on a relay system that broadcasts all the interchanges on one local channel. There is nothing special about this; what I love is hearing routine business, and also the sense of space as the toll plazas announce the weather in their immediate area, spanning hundreds of miles.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

We are in an era of “power aspects” — rare events that shift the tectonic plates of history. This is easy to see, difficult to look at, and challenging to feel.

Syrian Kurds gathered around a US armored vehicle on Sunday. Kurdish forces reported that U.S. troops had begun leaving the area near the Syrian border with Turkey ahead of a planned Turkish assault on the Kurds, which it considers a terrorist group. Kurdish fighters were key allies in the US-led campaign against the Islamic State. Photo by Delil Souleiman.

That would be especially true if you’re feeling unstable, overwhelmed or stuck in the mire, like those three tractors I described last week.

Those “power aspects” include Saturn conjunct Pluto, coming in early January and in full force now, the first Pluto return of the United States, Pluto square Eris, and a lot of action in the chart of the chief executive. As I learned early in my studies and have described many times before, when planets close to the Earth line up with distant planets, there can be a pronounced effect. That is what we are experiencing.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

First, please get over the notion that if you take any of this seriously, you’re nothing but a partisan of evil Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton. Or that if you shrug it off, you’re a brave protector and defender of the United States Constitution and the honor of a duly elected executive officer.

Pres. Trump speaks calmly and politely to reporters Wednesday, after he was asked just what favor he wanted from the Ukrainian president. After he dodged the question for five minutes, the reporter asked him again. Photo by Doug Mills. View full size; link to Doug’s Instagram.

Also, for those who care, I will offer some thoughts about how not to leap across the table and pummel those who act like nothing special is happening, as they torture you with their blasé attitude. Or, for that matter, those whose acid cynicism makes you want to hate the fact that you’re interested or concerned.

In this article, I’m planning to go over the basics of the impeachment and the astrology behind it, though I think it’s secondary in significance to something else, something much larger and more personal. I want to speak to the figure-ground issue that will help clarify what is happening with the attempt to remove Donald Trump from office, and what the implications of that are.

This may take a few words. If I sum it up with a statement such as, “It’s not about them, it’s about us,” all the nuance will be lost, which is part of the problem — this stark contrast view of the world that is taking over. I will do my best to be succinct without skipping over any critical details.

If you have a question, you’re invited to write to me, and I may respond on Sunday’s Planet Waves FM. [Here is a link to Monday’s open call-in session.]

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Over the weekend, astrology did one of those handoffs from one era to the next. All year long, we’ve been under the influence of the Jupiter square Neptune aspect, what you might think of as a bubble of unreality. That aspect completed and began to separate on Sept. 21, meaning it was, in effect, finished as a mundane event.

Photo by Lanvi Nguyen.

Now the current pattern is the long-awaited, anticipated or feared conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, which takes place on Jan. 12. This three-time-per-century aspect (and others in its cycle) has a way of driving history forward, often with events that bring a contraction and conservative or fear-based uprising. I challenge anyone to come up with two aspect patterns that reveal greater contrast. Dreamy, fluffy, hopeful, sweet-talking Jupiter, Neptune, Sagittarius and Pisces, as contrasted with gritty, hardcore Saturn and Pluto placed in earthy, rocky Capricorn. This is the shift of energy we experienced over the weekend and into this week.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

My phone rang at 7:30 this morning. I was up making breakfast for my canines. It was a potential client, planning a career move at about age 50. He has his Sun in Aquarius, and was talking about his plans for late 2020. He knew that there was about to be big activity in his sign around that time.

Saturn-Pluto conjunction of Jan. 12, 2020, is a more complex alignment, additionally involving Mercury, Ceres, the Sun, Jupiter, the South Node and Pholus. Mars in Sagittarius is involved. Link to full chart.

As he described his various plans and preparations, he kept saying, “Everything is happening so fast” — as in his new career was engaging before he had completed his commitments to his current one. I was curious about that, and checked when Saturn (which has been in Capricorn since late 2017) would enter Aquarius, and was reminded that it makes its first ingress on March 21, 2020, just after the Aries equinox.

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Sketch of Jupiter and its moons from Galileo’s notebook, the night of Dec. 27-28, 1612. He noted the existence of Neptune, but recorded it as a star; you can see it off to the left side of the drawing. Such began the history of Neptune manifesting and unmanifesting, till it was finally officially noted to exist in 1846.

Dear Friend and Reader:

We’re now experiencing a Full Moon conjunct Neptune in Pisces. The aspect is exact Saturday morning at 12:33 am EDT (9:33 pm Friday PDT, 5:33 am Saturday in London, 2:33 pm in Sydney).

This is a complex chart for a number of reasons, most of which include many aspects to Neptune in Pisces, the distant ice giant planet discovered in the age of the telegraph, with an orbit of 164 years.

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