Dear Cosmic Companion:

We are approaching the end of Mercury retrograde in Virgo, and are in the last day of the lunar cycle that turns over Wednesday morning with the Virgo New Moon. These are some of our earliest collective experiences of Virgo without the presence of Saturn there. So you might think of this as Virgo Light, after more than two years of the heavy-duty edition; but even that dense type of Virgo energy was met over and over again by an opposition from revolutionary Uranus in Pisces.

Photo of Myrna by Eric Francis. Design by Sarah, Blue Studio – New York.

One thing about Virgo in recent years is that it always seems to be setting itself up to get struck by lightning. That lightning is saying, “You don’t have to take yourself and everyone apart so they make sense and then you discover they make less sense in pieces. Leave room for direct knowledge; give yourself the freedom to adapt.”

That said, the Saturn-Uranus opposition is now something we’ve embodied, or have been in the process of doing; not quite the past, but something that we’ve internalized and accepted as part of the whole; as part of who we are. The current retrograde has emphasized the many things that feed into how we feel and what we think. And as much as we may know our history or be tapped into the ancestral realm, the question always remains, what do we do now? What is the best choice, now? What is logical, now? Or better still, what feels right, now?

Wednesday’s Virgo New Moon makes a square — a 90-degree aspect — to a deep-space point called the Great Attractor. We could sum up the square aspect as ‘something happens’ and the Great Attractor as enormous mass and energy propelling itself through the universe (naturally, in the midst of Sagittarius). The two combined add up to a revelation about existence; a thought with propulsion, with leverage, with a life of its own, but ultimately something we contain and embrace. These thought forms are within us; they are within the human experience. By definition we’re bigger and more encompassing than they are.

A minor planet called Ixion is currently working the Great Attractor. It has a 249-year orbit (similar to Pluto), so it’s going to be here for a while. If you’re wondering about the seeming vacuum of any distinction between right and wrong, or truth and deception, Ixion on the Great Attractor describes that crisis, and the New Moon reminds us that it’s time to do something about it. Virgo-styled, that something would be applying reason and rationality to our muddled perception of the world. Trust me, everyone: Obama is not a Bolshevik (as one of my neighbors hallucinated out loud yesterday).

At the same time, Mercury is close to stationing direct. It does so on Sunday, Sept. 12, so by Thursday it will be moving less than half a degree a day, retrograde. This is described by some astrologers as the ‘storm phase’ of Mercury retrograde, because it’s slowing down and approaching that moment when its relative direction switches. And that is, dependably, another moment when the truth comes out. Things that were just slightly veiled, or visible but slightly skewed, can have a way of making themselves known.

We humans sometimes have this odd glitch of thinking we don’t know what we think. Then we set about figuring it out. Here is where the ‘truth revealed’ quality of Mercury stationing direct is helpful. Not only do we have a window on revelation and a little extra mental leverage, both truth and ideas can be revealed in these moments of change. Mercury stationing — whether direct or retrograde — brings out a layer of awareness or understanding that can feel like pulling back a curtain on the obvious.

Part of the beauty of this event is that it opens the door to many more interesting points of interest. One that’s worth highlighting is the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in late Pisces, which is brewing now and is exact Sept. 18. This is the second of three Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions. The first was on the Aries Point on June 8. Take this conjunction and move it back into Pisces and it’s another critter entirely. There is a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction every 14 years or so, but there hasn’t been one in Pisces since before 1609, as far back as I can search. (Tracy just went back a little further and it turns out the last Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Pisces was in 1334. Here is a short article that covers that topic. That’s a long time ago, especially when you consider that it’s almost 2334.) So at the least, this is the first in the history of the Americas or of modern Europe and in England since King James I was boss.

I would sum up the current sequence of events as: what is the relationship between problems and creativity? Where do we invest our energy? At what point do solutions make that seemingly magical transformation into the truly creative process from which they stem? Or said another way, when do we let go of our hang-up with problems and stoke the fire of invention?

Nigh upon us is the time.

Yours & truly,

PS, This weekend I am giving the keynote presentation at the Loving More national conference. This is a small, friendly event at the Easton Mountain Retreat Center near Saratoga, NY. It’s easily accessible from Western Mass., the Albany area, Binghamton, the Hudson Valley and not too far from New York City and Boston. More information about the conference is here.

Here is a description of my talk, which is Saturday night:

Community & Compersion

One role that polyamory plays in culture is to help us rebuild our fragmented communities. Households meet other households, lovers meet one another’s lovers and group events based on human contact appear in cities around the country. What makes that possible is conscious dedication to the many relationships we all have. This in turn is facilitated by compersion, the space of allowing and embracing the pleasures and life path of the people we love. Compersion is based on the recognition that your partner is a whole person, which in turn grows from your own experience of yourself as a whole person. This sense of wholeness is extended into our community experiences and becomes a viaduct through which we embrace one another in a cooperative rather than competitive way. As we learn to experience ourselves as whole people, our communities will reflect our state of mind.