Mercury Retrograde, Full Moon in Pisces
Mercury is retrograde, but don’t freak! It’s not a bad thing. Maybe there will be a few technical snafus, some miscommunications, a few blind alleys… But I always see Mercury retrograde as a gift– a chance to digest the undigested material clogging up your mind, to assimilate the nutrients and flush the rest. It is a chance to look at supposedly familiar things in a new way. It is a chance to recover and rediscover. I always come away from these periods with a clearer mind.
The mind, ruled by Mercury, is a slippery bugger. Like the metal Mercury, the mind will reflect what you put before it. It will take the shape of its container. And it will poison you if you mishandle it.
True, Mercury retrograde is not the best time to proceed with business as usual — but it doesn’t exactly spell disaster. In fact, the way we’ve picked up Mercury retrograde as a scapegoat for whatever problems we are experiencing for these three-and-a-half week periods, points right to the heart of the issue: the mind will grab onto anything and make a “thing” out of it.
So, during this period, try not to fixate on all that may or may not go wrong. Ok — backup your files, check your tires, double check the departure time for your flight. But more to the point, take the opportunity to discover something about this strange and marvelous, world-shaping instrument you possess. Detangle the wires behind your inner TV. I highly recommend my recent video on meditation, if this calls.
With Mercury opposite Jupiter, this is a particularly good time to review those sweeping beliefs and assumptions that shape your world view. Be open to a radically new perspective. See it as an opportunity, not a threat, and be showered with gifts. Explore new ideas. Journal.
Tomorrow, the Full Moon in Pisces lights up the Pisces-Virgo axis. In some ways, this axis is what it is all about: the Mystery (Pisces) and what the hell to do in the face of it (Virgo). Pisces: divine perfection — a radical wholeness that can’t be broken. Virgo: divine discontent, always trying to fix what’s broken. Why should we feel broken, if we know ourselves to be perfect? They don’t call it the Mystery for nothing.
We need to purify ourselves (Virgo) and surrender (Pisces) if we want to truly face the Mystery. Otherwise, we get scared and worn out. It’s too much to really experience life, so we oscillate between escape and dissipation on the one hand (Pisces), and nervous, bustling attempts at control on the other (Virgo). We stress ourselves out all day at work, and afterward have a few drinks and fall asleep in front of the TV. Meanwhile, eternity sits silently, waiting for us to notice.
It can be scary to feel the true vastness of All This– too much for one person to handle. All we need to do is stay aligned and let go, over and over and over. That’s the Virgo-Pisces polarity: Align and surrender.
When you change your consciousness, you change your life. As an astrologer, writer, teacher, and coach Alex helps people to discover just what their consciousness is capable of. Weaving together practices from ancient and modern traditions, both Eastern and Western, Alex helps people let go of their limitations, discover powers they did not know they had, and open up to whole new dimensions of experience and manifestation. Alex lives in Benicia, CA and is currently pursuing a PhD in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.
