
Having Mercury stationing retrograde as we step into the New Year is a reminder that life is full of paradox and ambiguity: the very stuff of human life. Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Last year we started off with Venus retrograde in Capricorn. This year it is Mercury in Capricorn.
A Mercury retrograde New Year is less about our expectations and more about the need to take inventory (which may already be underway since Mercury entered the shadow around mid-December). Capricorn suggests an inventory of nuts and bolts, the foundations or supporting structures of your life. As Mercury journeys it will make mostly favorable aspects: A sextile to Neptune around the station and a trine to Uranus at the Full Moon. Nobody likes hard times, this is true, but most of us look back on our difficulties – the ones we made it through – and recognize a sense of being fully alive when the stakes are high, when we are focused and determined toward an outcome. Perhaps our inventory should take those times into account and remind us of how well we have done, and how it feels when we focus our intention as if it really matters. Our storehouses aren’t just full of stuff but also of abilities and strengths and most valuable, the wisdom that comes from experience.
These next few weeks might ask us to consider how we might offer ourselves, our gifts, our resources to the collective for the Good of All. Capricorn is a cardinal, universal, earth sign. Put these qualities together and you have a dynamic ability to steward resources for the benefit of the group, not just your group but the entire planet. What if humans are the Universe becoming conscious? If you knew this to be the truth (and you can’t say it isn’t) how would you then focus your attention, your intention?
Warm regards,
Julie
Flavor of Mercury Retrograde April 21 2023
If it was possible to remind someone of what is going to happen in the future this Mercury Retrograde would be that. Science fiction? More likely the shape of things to come seen through the lens of hindsight. Mercury’s journey will take place over exactly the same degrees as Jupiter will travel between June and February of 2024. And this just happens to be the degrees which Uranus traveled between June 2019 and February 2023. Mercury’s trajectory points backward and forward at the same time!
The degrees and sign in question are between 5 and 15 of Taurus, essentially the first half. We are asked to focus on our values at a personal level and our economies at a collective level. Taurus reaches deep into where climate change and the economy are one.
Uranus reveals, Mercury retrograde reminds and Jupiter expands. You might say: Uranus has revealed the problems we are facing (failing banks, melting ice caps, war and the possibility of extinction). Mercury is asking us to reflect on how these things impact our immediate realities (our resources – more than just money in the bank. Resources are time, energy, money and something we might call love or even pleasure) and Jupiter promises to make things better or worse depending on how we engage this awareness. We have seen the problem, we are being reminded that it is real, and it will get better or worse over the next while depending on where we put our enthusiasm for a world that matters.
Given that most of us don’t rule the world, the focus is on our present individual realities. To have peace I must be peaceful, to have abundance I must be generous, to have stability I must be centered and present. This retrograde offers a good time to survey the landscape of your resources and get as real as you can about how to use them going forward in a time of such great upheavals. Whatever your adventure while Mercury is retrograde keep aware of how it uses resources, your own and the world’s. Don’t judge what you discover about this. You did not create the world’s woes all by yourself. Even so you might consider what you can do, how to do it mindfully and where you can invest yourself to stand with beauty and the perception which comes through your senses not what the algorithm is telling you is real.
During the retrograde journey there are days when Mercury makes aspects to other planets which will accentuate the themes:
April 23: Mars sextile Mercury: How does your exploration of Mercury retro themes encourage action?
May 1: Sun conjuncts Mercury: What are you learning or could you learn about values, money, economics?
May 12: Mercury sextile both Saturn and Venus: Given that you can’t change the world, what opportunities are there to engage the world around you responsibly as well as esthetically?
Warm regards,
Julie
Julie Simmons, Astrologer
Join us for the Mercury Retrograde alignment April 21st
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