Mercury Retrograde: Can You Hear Me Now?

This week is the often-highly-anticipated astrological event called Mercury Retrograde!  (Oh no!  Run for the hills!) What does this mean?

Traditionally this three-week period is the time when otherwise-decent conversations go horribly wrong, signing a contract can have Faustian overtones, your car experiences the equivalent of a medical emergency or a neurotic breakdown, your iPod goes haywire (the worst!), or traffic becomes hugely inconvenient right when convenience would be most convenient.  Basically, as a stereotype, Mercury Retrograde is the time when the lives of good, decent, well-intentioned and thoughtful human beings can look an awful lot like an episode of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. 

The truth is, these kinds of things can happen any time, and they do happen anytime.  What, then, is so special about Mercury Retrograde?

With Mercury Retrograde I always imagine those cell phone commercials and the incessant “Can you hear me now?  Can you hear me now?” inquiries, as the caller questions the quality of the line as the connection drops in and out.  That is really what Mercury Retrograde is about:  looking at the quality of how things are connecting in your life―and what your thoughts have to do with that.  How do your thoughts impact and facilitate the connections in your life, or disrupt them?  You mean I got into a car accident because my mind wandered to my upcoming vacation time in the Bahamas?  Absurd!  You mean my computer was tragically and slowly dismantled by a virus because I went to a gaming site instead of paying attention to work?  Who, me?  Mercury Retrograde is a time to pay attention when things go wrong.  Mercury is a mischievous planet—a Trickster—and during Mercury Retrograde what goes wrong may not be going wrong at all.  It may be setting things right.  Right?

The Sign of Virgo

From August 20 until September 12 Mercury Retrograde happens in the sign of Virgo.  Virgo is a very practical, down-to-earth sign.  And it’s about the health of your daily life on earth, connected to the health of your body.  When people talk about the “mind-body connection,” they are talking about Virgo.

Virgo at its worst is when life is routine and you live habitually, day in and day out, just doing it (not in the Nike sense).  When life becomes habit, something is amiss, and it will likely show up in your health.  That’s how Virgo operates.

Mercury Retrograde in Virgo is about being discriminating with your thoughts, by noticing what works and what doesn’t work.  It’s the difference between being critical and being discerning.  Virgo at its best is discerning.  It’s about sifting through the finer contours of the landscape of your thoughts to discover which ones might not be serving your life particularly well.

For some people, the practice and practicality of daily life has perhaps squeezed out a great deal of the wonder and spontaneity—the spirit—of life at the same time.  If that’s you, this is a great time to reflect on how your practice of life has become a bit stale, a bit too cleaned-up.  Where has your life been dressed up in white for far too long and white just isn’t working for you anymore? 

And for other people, daily life might require a bit of grounding.  If you’re one of the types who flies around all the time from this place to that place in responsible service to everyone in your life, chilling out and paying attention to your own life may be at hand. 

The late Irish poet and mystic John O’Donohue asks a couple of really wonderful questions that I think apply to Mercury Retrograde in Virgo, for working on improving the overall quality of your life.

He asks, “When was the last time you really listened to your heart?”

And, “If you were to clearly explain to your heart how brief your time in the world is, what are the things your heart would make you stop doing right now?”

If Mercury Retrograde can often seem to lack any subtlety whatsoever, in Virgo it may just be the Trickster’s merciful style of getting us to, as O’Donohue says, “attend to the subtle life we have, and look after it, and come into touch with it.”  It's Mercury's way of asking, "Can you hear me now?"      

Mercury goes retrograde on August 20, at around 3pm.  Or to say it in the style of Virgo:  August 20, 2010, at precisely 2:58:32 PM CDT, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Saturn In Libra - Order In the Court!

The planet Saturn has entered the sign of Libra until October 2012. Saturn is pretty serious stuff.  Saturn deals with weighty issues of responsibility, structure and authority, and wastes no time getting down to business.

In Libra, this serious focus turns to relationships and partnerships of all kinds (romantic, business, adversarial, etc.) and the entire notion of “relating” in general.  It also puts the focus on marriage, which is vitally important to the sign of Libra, as are issues regarding law, civility, and fairness.

You never know which side of the scale you’re going to get when Saturn is in Libra.  On the one hand, history shows us this dynamic during the United States’ Civil War (1862-1865).  On the other hand, we’ve seen the glorious wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana (1981).  Sometimes you get both sides: The rock band Yes said “no” and broke up in 1981, only to say “yes” again a couple of years later to re-form.

The Judge

Saturn in Libra at its best brings out the Judge archetype.  It’s about being centered, seeing both sides of any situation with a clear and level head, carefully weighing the options, and then making wise decisions.

Saturn was moving through Libra when Ronald Reagan appointed the first woman to the United States Supreme Court, taking a step toward establishing a more balanced Court, a balance that continues to slowly equalize to this day, during this Saturn in Libra cycle, as Elena Kagan becomes the 4th female judge to hold a seat.

The next two years could see important steps forward in legal issues regarding marriage, especially the issue of gay marriage, or it could see some major steps backward.  It all depends on how willing and able both sides are to respond to the challenges wisely.

The Victim

Saturn in Libra can constellate at its worst in the Victim archetype, when all that is unfair and unjust in life dominates, and when the most important question becomes, who is to blame?

In relationships, what do you consider fair and just?  How objective are you?  How thoughtful are you in your relationships?  Do you lose center and make hasty, emotional decisions, or do you take time to think about it?  These kinds of questions will tend to arise while Saturn is moving through Libra (and if they haven’t so far, they just did when you read this), and with Saturn it's time to take responsibility rather than place blame.  Perhaps the most important question is, how do you relate to yourself?  Your relationships are, after all, a reflection of yourself and what you value.

The key is to strive for balance, while remembering that balance is very delicate work, by no means easy to attain.  Balance is not fixed or stable.  Once balance is attained it must be maintained, for it will constantly shift as relationship dynamics constantly shift.  Unless, of course, you have successfully managed to live in a controlled relationship, in a controlled environment, on a controlled path, and―scratch that... that’s not a relationship!

Albert Einstein said, "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."  It’s a gift to have Saturn in Libra at this time, with all of its potential for wisdom and relationship.  The wise decision, however, is not usually the easy decision, which is probably why adopting a judge-like mentality for the next two years can be extremely beneficial, as can staying with problems a little longer when necessary.  When things get out of hand, demand a recess.  Or bang your gavel and shout, "Order in the court!"    Take some time, on purpose, and consider what you're building for the next 2+ years.  Love can build a bridge, or love can build a wall.  The decision is yours.

Reflections of the Vampire

My mother’s response to all-things-Vampire is, “Oh, gross. I don’t know how you like any of that stuff. It’s disgusting.”

Whether or not you find sickly pale skin and lack of a heartbeat appalling or appealing, it appears that Vampires are all the rage right now. Other than just writing them off as dark imaginings for the purposes of entertainment, what’s really going on with the ever-increasing popularity of these creatures of the night is quite interesting. Somehow the story of Dracula has transformed into the popular Interview With the Vampire series and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which paved the way for Angel and the global phenomenon of the Twilight saga, not to mention True Blood, V (those reptiles are total vampires!), The Vampire Diaries, The Gates, Underworld, and a seemingly endless stream of other movies, television shows and books that reflect these strangers of the night who can’t actually reflect themselves.

Vampires are creatures of intense desire who feed off human blood to survive, eventually draining their victims of all life. They sleep in coffins during the day, and can only come out at night because they happen to turn to ash when exposed to sunlight (although certain modern versions are more flexible with this bit). They glamour you with their fabulously alluring eyes before sinking their fangs into your neck for the first (and probably last) bite. They are warded off by sacred objects like holy water and crosses, and a nifty built-in safety feature for humans is that vampires can only enter your house by invitation. If you want a symbolic example of what happens if you innocently invite one in, check out Judi Dench in Notes On a Scandal and give yourself a gold star.

Taking these descriptors archetypally and looking at the state of the world right now, you might, if you’re so inclined, make a strong case that the United States invited a vampire presidential cabinet into our home (the White House) for eight years at the start of the 21st century. Now, issues regarding border security (boundaries) are almost a daily feature on the news.

Or you might consider that most of the modern vampire stories emerge from and are set in the South—arguably the “heart” of this country, that once lost a battle with the “head” of the North—perhaps as an outpouring of left-over residential ire of the Civil War.

You could even stretch it back to the founding of the United States altogether, with the Vampire as a symbol of the violently destructive forces that have single-handedly drained and decimated the Native American culture for the sake of survival. And, taking that into account while broadening our scope to the stronghold of Christianity over the last two thousand years of history, it’s probably worth noting that the holy communion is essentially symbolic of drinking someone's blood and eating a piece of their body. Communion and consummation, anyone?

And believe it or not, as the popularity of “Twilight” indicates, these dynamics apparently constitute the characteristics of modern romance! I guess it’s not too surprising amidst the ridiculously high number of marriages ending in messy divorces (I know a couple of people who seem to get married because they like the divorce process so much) and the challenge of redefining marriage in the modern era.

Interestingly enough, our cultural images of the romantic ideal have flip-flopped. The one-time image of a snowy white dead female is now replaced by a severely anemic, pasty white dead male.

Which brings me back to the fact that Vampires are, when all is said and done, dead. Dead. Cold. Lifeless. (I consider that a deal-breaker in relationships, but perhaps that's just me.)

One of my favorite ways of looking at the Vampire symbolically is through its connection to the past. See, vampires were human at one point; humans turned into vampires by another vampire. At the point when a human is turned, the human is dead. To see the person “alive” again is symbolic of our own desire to not only live in the past, but to take it to bed and sleep with it. Vampires are essentially an image of the past walking around on two legs and seducing you into living with it, turning your eyes away from the light of a new day, living an endless night, draining your own life force by living more in the past than in the present. Granted, the past can be very seductive. Romanticizing the past has a certain appeal: you survived it. Staring directly at an uncertain future can be not only troubling, but downright frightening. So frightening, in fact, that the false security of the past (“false” because it’s passed, it’s over) can seem positively luminous by comparison.

A good reminder in these times are the words from futuristic show Stargate SG-1, wisely imparted to Sam by Teal’c as she worried about stepping forward into her own uncertain future: “Draw from your past, but do not let your past draw from you.”