This morning, May 7, 2009, at 1:00 AM EDT, Mercury, that planet of mischief and the mind, started going backwards again! Of course, the planet is not really going backwards – but that’s the way it looks to us from our little spinning globe, and – well – perception is absolutely everything! Mercury remains retrograde until May 30 – three weeks.

I know so many of you are at the end of a school year, whether it’s your personal school year or whether you’re a parent. Some of you are even graduating – finally able to hold in your hand the fruits of your labor, hard work and ambition. Some of you are getting married – or you’re helping a bride or groom who is. Kudos to you! This is always an incredibly busy time of year, and it’s hard to slow down and find moments of peace and reflection. Yet, let me suggest that you really try. No. Just do it. Consciously move with the “one-step forward, two-steps back” gift of this new Mercury Retrograde in Gemini and Taurus, and create space for introspection and reflection despite your hectic schedule. If you do, and you know this is true, it all won’t seem quite so hectic, and the end result of all your plans will be a little sweeter.

So far as I have been able to discern over the years, the best way to greet Mercury Retrograde is with surrender, and of bit of stroking. Take a moment each day over the next 3 weeks whether in a ritual, during your meditation, while you’re walking or taking a shower, or simply when you have a moment alone to take a deep breath, and say “Thank You”.  Thank you opens so many more opportunities,  and inspires a beautiful shift in attitude. If you simply say “Oh no! Mercury Retrograde again!” you really don’t get that sweet shift and that ephemeral portal to possibility stays firmly shut.  The “Thank You” is for the chance to rest – the often overlooked Mercury Retrograde opportunity to set aside the churning and demands of life, just for a few minutes every day if that’s all you can manage. My advice here is to create the space to slow down a few moments each day – or it will be created for you. Savvy? Move with the flow of energy, rather than fighting against it. And in that pause that you consciously create, reflect on your life and the way you communicate that life to others.  Let me just say that again – reflect on the way you communicate with others. No kidding.

Think about that for a minute. Do you communicate in a way that effectively and compassionately confirms understanding of your meanings and intentions? I won’t list all of the other ways to communicate here – but you know them all by now, and many of them are far less than effective and certainly far less empathetic than communicating compassionately. The fact that Mercury is retrograde in it’s own sign of Gemini, the sign of communication and the mind, underlines our assured energetic focus on the mental processes, communication and transportation (See my Mercury Retrogade article for a complete understanding of this.)  But on the 14th of May, Mercury moves back into Taurus, the sign of the body, the earth, pleasure, business, practicality, and money.

Another opportunity for a further shift of focus. After the 14th reflect on your body. Reflect and re-instruct yourself in pleasure. Look at the business of your life and your finances and and restructure whatever isn’t working. Re-connect with the Earth. (Re-read the previous post on the “New Moon in Taurus – Body Connect” to get your physicality flowing.) Don’t spend unnecessarily – but on what brings simple pleasures that feed the Soul. Reconnect with beauty. And even, based on the sextile between Mercury and Venus over the next few days, do something physically demanding – sweat, get hot, feel the muscles flex in your body. Push yourself physically and reap the rewards of that. Trigger those endorphins of pleasure to secrete in your brain, and then relax with a smile. These things won’t take long – and you’ll certainly be working with Mercury, rather than against him. You really don’t want to work against Mercury – that’s when you experience all the negatives that people fear with Mercury Retrograde!

This energy certainly affects everyone, however if you have points, angles and planets in any of the following signs, this is an especially important retrograde for you and you really should try to follow the above advice: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. If you don’t know your points, angles and planets, then send me an email.

I’ll end here with some words from the great master, Leonardo da Vinci:

Every now and then go away,

have a little rest and relaxation,

for when you come back to your work

your judgment will be surer;

since to remain constantly at work

will cause you to lose power of judgment…

Go some distance away

because the work appears smaller

and more of it can be taken in at a glance,

and a lack of harmony or proportion

is more readily seen. 

~Leonardo da Vinci

New Moon in Taurus
April 24, 2009
11:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time

How long since you laid down on the ground and felt the connection of life beneath you? Luxuriously soaked in a bubble bath? Got a full-body massage? Rubbed your partner sensuously in oil? Dug a hole in the ground and planted a seed? Held the ones you love  in a long, slow, comforting embrace? How long since you fully delighted in the beauty of the physical world?

If you’re like most of us, especially in urban areas, the answer to those questions is probably “a long time”.

This New Moon, a time for new beginnings, occurs in the sign of Taurus, the most sense oriented, body loving sign of all. The Sun and Moon share a sign during each New Moon placing great emphasis there. The emphasis today is about connecting to our bodies, to the Great Mother Earth, to pleasure and serenity.

Can you remember when you found joy in discovering roly-polys and earthworms under a rock as a child? What an amazing discovery: the pungent scent of warm, damp earth; the rich colors of earth and stone; the dark, shiny bodies of wriggling earth-dwellers.  This New Moon draw that sensation of awe and delight back to the surface of consciousness. Re-connect to the importance of soil, skin, and sensation. Allow the zen of relaxation to settle into your being. From this point of being, create something new. Something solid and fine and ripe within you wants to be acknowledged and FELT.

There couldn’t be better timing for this particular Taurus New Moon. We’ve just experienced Earth Day, and moving through Earth Week. Reconnecting with our intentions of restoring and re-connecting with Mother Earth are absolutely perfect now. If we feel the Earth as a living, healing, caring and creative source that nourishes us, then we can in turn live, create, nourish and heal from our inner core.

In addition to the Taurus influence from the two luminaries, this moment of opportunity and newness is being supported by a flowing connection to Pluto. So not only are we conscious of the material world and the body, but we can create profound and transformational results within ourselves and the outer world.

Taurus and Pluto together bring up ideas around deep love (a transformational relationship?), rich resources (money ventures toward stability?), working for change (environmental activism?)…and of course sensuality and sexuality.

Lie back on the ground at least once in the next couple of days and feel the energy of what this means for you.

This New Moon is truly a time of new birth – literally and metaphorically. What seeds will you plant?

How many of you are familiar with how we mortals know when the moment of Spring arrives? The answer may surprise you, because it is an astronomical event, with an astrological interpretation. It becomes Spring each and every year when the day and night are of equal length after Winter (in the Northern Hemisphere). This equality of day and night are the reason for the term “equinox”. Spring coincides with the Sun moving into the sign of Aries. That’s our clarion call to the brave new season that takes us out of the cold, dead Winter, and breathes new life into all that we behold. When the  Sun entered the sign of Aries at zero degrees this past Friday, March 20, 2009, it became Spring once again.  We feel the burgeoning of new life in every corner of our lives. Nature is speaking eloquently of rebirth, and we are feeling the contractions, forcing us out weak eyed and pale into a new life of sunshine and vibrant color. In a matter of days (in the Southern US at least) we’ll be walking out into an even greater saturation of bold hues and breathtaking pigments, no doubt designed to pull us happily out of our germinating Winter stillness.

What does this season hold for us over the next 3 months?

From the Eastern Daylight Time Zone (I’m in Atlanta, GA),  Spring looks both  aggressive and reserved simultaneously, with a compelling push down into the grasp of karmic destiny, if you will. That will take some explaining. First the aggressive.

Specifically for those of us in Atlanta, almost unbelievably the sun was rising on the horizon at the exact moment of the Equinox (7:45 AM EDT – in other places and time zones, this won’t be true), perfectly and literally symbolizing a new dawn, heralding a fearless hormone driven season fresh with promise and brash confidence. An Aries rising herald to Spring in Georgia speaks volumes about the  nature of the season we’ve just entered. The true purpose of this brief era is to bring forward the will in a clear expression of assertion.

I’ll expand on this thought further in just a bit! I must go forth bravely and feed my family dinner.

A friend wrote today with this: 

Below is my response. Please feel free to leave comments and send me questions! I’d love to hear from you!

Mercury Retrograde:  well, this one is in Libra, so while it does impact everyone, it will impact people with planets and points in all the Cardinal Signs the most, meaning if you have stuff in Aries, Libra, Cancer or Capricorn, you’ll feel it the strongest. The focus of this Retrograde is around relationships…specifically fairness and balance within relationships. It’s about how we participate in relating to others…not how we feel about it. If we’re typically involved with people on a level that isn’t balanced we’re meant to take a deep look into ourselves and figure out why. And then we’re meant to change it. If in typical Libra fashion we tend to put everyone else’s need s before our own, believing that they must be more important, then this is the time to really see that. Or if we usually think of only ourselves and go through life being a tyrant, making no true heart connections, we need to see that too. The Retrograde is the catalyst. Reflection is the key. Action is the solution (but only take action AFTER the retrograde is past…say beginning around the 20th or so). This is not the time to be looking outside and placing blame on those that we love. This is about what’s inside…self-responsibility. Right now Mercury Retrograde is connecting to Jupiter, so that if there’s any communication break down over the next few days, its likely to center around making our beliefs and philosophies on life understood. It’s also likely that we become overwhelmed by our thoughts…feeling like we’re turning on ourselves perhaps…the voice in our head can get really loud now. This retrograde can also hold us away from elements of all things Libra: beauty, art, design, our deepest and truest values. During the retrograde we might have a more difficult time finding these things…or we aren’t soothed by them as we usually are. That’s because what we love and value is likely changing dramatically, due to something else that’s going on in the sky.

Saturn/Uranus Opposition:  These two planets are completely unlike each other. Saturn wants to maintain tradition and the status-quo, while Uranus will do anything (ANYTHING) to break down the status-quo and change it for what it believes is better for the greater good. Sound familiar? In the political fight for the presidency, we see an uncannily resonating symbolism: Barack Obama is Uranus, and John McCain is Saturn. It’s like the quintessential battle between light and darkness. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vador. Right now these heavy weight sky gods are in a direct face off, with us in the middle. How do we respond? Do we hold on ever tighter to our old ways and traditions, refusing the winds of change? Become rigid in our beliefs and take on a dogmatic attitude? Or do we honor the change that is so needed, and bow to the needs of everyone (not just those who already have), and embrace the innovative, un-tested, wave toward the future that will enhance life on a broad scale? How do we know what’s best? Some scream for the tried and true and dig in their heels (Saturn), and some cry for equality and radical change for the economy, the environment, and for those without (Uranus). This polarization creates a huge rift not only in the political arena but also in our very Souls. We cannot help but be affected. We feel it at every turn in our lives. Saturn is gravity. Uranus is electricity. Saturn is the long-white beard, while Uranus is the brilliant upstart youth. Saturn is experience while Uranus is rebellion. It’s as though we are being pushed and pulled between these very different and opposing belief systems and we are absolutely required to choose. In the best case scenario, we will find a balance. We will be able to keep what is good, solid, sound, and secure from the past, while embarking on the innovative changes that will establish the new way that incorporates more freedom and more independence for everyone…not just those who already have all that they need. The lesson of this dramatically different opposition IS to find this balance. However, before that can happen realistically, the pendulum must wildly swing, first in favor of one way, and then in favor of the other. Since we’ve already experienced the swing toward tradition and the structure of creating boundaries between us and the greater world, it’s likely that we’ll see it swing the other direction by Nov. 4.

Chiron conjunct Neptune:  With this connection we feel our deepest wounds surface around the quest for the sublime…our journey toward God (whatever that means to each of us). Chiron, The Wounded Healer, and Neptune both have a spiritual connotation. When they meet it’s time to allow whatever isn’t healed within our psyche’s to surface, and to put our focus on everything that’s outside our 5-sense world. What lies beyond the physical realm? How can transcendence of mundane reality help us find our way? With this combination, we can almost touch it. And it is probably painful, but ripe for healing if we can suffer the contents of our unconscious selves to step into the light. What happens when this is too overwhelming is the need to escape. Watch for addictive behavior taking precedence over the better use of the energy…which is to deeply connect with your inner Divine and to heal the rift that keeps you divided from a transcendant spiritual awakening.