Mercury stationed retrograde over the weekend. Mercury’s change of apparent direction always takes a few days to settle in. You cannot really rush it. Get used to all the little things that seem to be different, subtle or overt. Notice what is and what’s not working, and don’t let frustration overtake you. You can expect, and work with, delays.
The retrograde, which will last through Oct. 25, is a time of reassessment, understanding and reconciling the past, and completing what you have started. Our world tends to be driven in a direction that it thinks is forward, when often that is not true. This calls for some reflection. Pausing on new activities, agreements and purchases is healthy, and for three weeks, three times a year, Mercury retrograde is suggesting we do just that.
As of this writing at noon Monday EDT (16:00 UTC), the Moon is in Pisces, in a dialog with two planetary groups — it is square the reactive conjunction of Mars and Pholus in Sagittarius; and trine the dense, potent conjunction of Ceres and Saturn in Scorpio. That is the tension between ‘burst out’ and ‘hold it in’. This seems to reflect two different approaches to the same scenario. If you make the tension between them conscious, you’ll be able to handle it better.
Meanwhile, the real news is that there is a total eclipse of the Moon brewing this week. Considering that these can be felt approaching for weeks, we are now right in the vortex. This is the Aries Full Moon, conjunct Uranus — and very close to Eris. (I have not said much about the Uranus-Eris conjunction, though it’s a major factor and will be increasingly so.)
The Moon ingresses Aries Tuesday at 6:07 am EDT (12:07 UTC), putting the Moon officially at full phase. The Moon-Sun opposition is exact one day later, on Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 6:50 am EDT (10:50 UTC). The Moon at peak eclipse will be conjunct Uranus to less than one degree. Notably, the Sun-Moon opposition is in aspect to Pluto, meaning that this eclipse is an activation of the Uranus-Pluto square (what I’ve been calling the 2012-era aspect).
We are seeing this manifest in world events that seem to be out of control, such as the so-called war against the Islamic ‘State’. I will spare any commentary on this now, and save it for Tuesday evening’s Planet Waves FM.
Personally, what we get is a momentary reminder — and a big one — of the Mars Effect cardinal grand cross series of events that dominated the first half of the year. It is worth noting that there may be some amnesia around Mars retrograde and all of its shenanigans (retrogrades can work that way; they are a world of their own). The Full Moon eclipse conjunct Uranus might startle you out of that amnesia and remind you what unfinished business remains from the first half of the year.
Mercury retrograde is the perfect time for that. Use the combination of the retrograde and two eclipses to set a pattern of reparation — of healing, repair, rest, correcting what has gone wrong, accounting for the cause and source of any errors. Proceed one project at a time, one day at a time. When something seems to have reached a limit, pause and move on to something else.