Mercury rx in aries
WHEN:
Important Dates for Mercury Rx in Aries:
Stations Retrograde at 3:14 pm PT Monday April 1st, 2024 at 27°13’ of Aries
Cazimi (enters the heart of the Sun) at 4:02 pm PT Thursday April 11th at 22°32’ of Aries
Conjunct Chiron at 8:22 am PT Monday April 15th at 19°49’ of Aries
Conjunct Venus at 1:59 am PT Monday April 19th at 17°33’ of Aries
Stations Direct at 5:54 AM PT, Thursday April 25th at 15°59’ of Aries
WHAT:
What is a Mercury Retrograde?
Astronomically, Mercury Retrogrades are three-week periods of time where the planet Mercury appears to pause, turn around and move in the direction opposite to how it typically travels through the Night Sky, from our vantage point here on Earth.
Astrologically, these are periods of time where the topics that Mercury stewards may have unusual (unusually paced, unusually perceived …) happenings, experiences, troubles, snafus. These topics include but are not limited to: your voice, communication, communication devices (phones, computers), travel, technology, appliances (fridges, etc), as well as platonic relationships, sibling-like relationships, friendships, neighbors, cousins, learning, teaching yourself something new, logic, reason or rational faculties.
The opportunity of a Mercury Retrograde is connected to the ‘re-’s: review, reflect, re-orient, re-assess, re-frame, renew, refresh, re-apply, restore, rejoice, recreate, rekindle, recalibrate (we could go on …).
Notice: Which ‘re’ are you feeling pulled towards? Or, which ‘re’ feels most beneficial for you this Retrograde?
To mitigate the challenging side-effects of a Mercury Rx, you can take your time with things. Move a little slower in your communication. Double, triple check schedules. Be as clean, clear, complete and conscious with what you are communicating, as you can.
And still, know that mishaps and disconnects will happen, partly because our minds are re-organizing themselves around these ‘re’s.
So, one question that comes with Mercury Retrogrades in general is — where can you give yourself (and others) more generosity and grace through how you’re framing and, thus, responding to mistakes, distractions, or detours‘? What defines a distraction? It’s a distraction from what? What doors do mistakes open? A deepening of our self-kindness and curiosity grooves is one aspect of the multi-dimensional update to our operating paradigm that a Mercury Retrograde makes possible (though doesn’t guarantee).
When you embrace the possibilities of a Mercury Rx and buffer the perils with radical self-care and compassion, you might receive a data point, a piece of information or a perspective that was previously left out or made invisible from a previous vantage point, given where you were in relationship to the endless other moving pieces. But, when this data point or perspective is included, it could update your understanding, your perception, the way you’re connecting the dots and making meaning of things.
This could be as simple as someone mentioning how they navigate a situation and you realizing that this option just NEVER OCCURRED TO YOU and how interesting that you never thought of that! What stood in the way of that seeing or reception?
Ultimately, Mercury is a playful, agenda-less trickster who is able to convey divine messages from the heart, across divides, between worlds precisely because of their agenda-lessness. Part of a Mercury Rx is to develop more flexibility and playfulness — while, also, noticing what is genuinely fixed and should not be compromised. Fixed, not in a deadened, hardened or rigidified way, but in rather a steady way, a steady-burning-fire-at-your-core that is part of who you are and why you are here, kind of way.
Will this Mercury Rx impact me?
First of all, I will say that if you intend to creatively collaborate or align yourself with the highest potential of this transit, or if you intend to contemplate the place in your chart/life where you have Aries, you will be “impacted” by it personally.
If you are feeling inspired to work with this transit in such a way, and want guidance and cosmic reflections to go with any of the ‘re’s (re-calibration, re-orientation, re-freshing, etc), you can book a reading with me here. Also, if you are feeling nervous about this Mercury Rx amidst the turbulence of Eclipse Season, book a reading! Let’s see with fresh eyes what’s happening in context of your soul’s journey and in relationship to a wider wholeness and integral field of Story.
And, lastly, I’ll point astrologically-minded folks who want to assess how this Mercury Rx is significant given your natal astrology, towards Diana Rose Harper’s recent work on the topic.
What is this month’s Mercury Retrograde about?
With this retrograde in Aries and Mars (the planetary steward of Aries) in Pisces, one reminder that comes through now is this:
We need endless ways to convey the same heart-message. We need YOUR unique and irreplaceable way to convey this one heart-message, for it to be fully sung.
There are endless bits of information and ways that these bits can be linked together. Just experiencing how different pictures and meanings can pop out of the same dots, tells us something about the nature of who or what we are, the power of our intention and attention, our perception as fundamentally creative, and perspective play as creative.
One question that comes up this Mercury Rx season is:
What relationship contracts keep your children (biological or creative progeny) under control and limited by a thought lineage that doesn’t acknowledge or honor your wild and living wisdom? What contracts DO liberate your children?
What old beliefs have attached you to a position, perspective or role, preventing full movement of Mercury’s magic and capacity to freely translate your heart’s truth into thoughts, words and action? And, what beliefs DO let you play, speak or create more spontaneously?
What agreements keep birthing you back into an imagination or a Dream that isn’t yours? And, what agreements support you in uncovering and taking risks for the Dream that lives in your bones?
What oaths get in the way of you fully assuming the Aries “power pose” that supports you in taking a joyful, confident step forward on your path? And what oaths DO support a posture that’s lengthened and uplifted by a remembrance of what your inner child knew, from the very beginning, to be true about you — as well as a more mature, embodied wisdom from integrating your direct life experiences?
I keep bringing up oaths because, on the day of Mercury’s station, Mars (steward of Aries) is currently in Pisces forming a nearly exact opposition to Juno (asteroid goddess of committed 1:1 relationships and the relational contracts that shape and preserve the social fabric) in Virgo. And also because Juno has also been highlighted by the Eclipses. The last Eclipse in Libra occurred in opposition to the point where Juno was discovered — which is very interesting to me that it was in Aries. The asteroid goddess associated with oaths that bind us in relationship was first discovered in the place of the Individual, of primal creative energy, of life force, fire, separation, and battle.
What relational agreements can we re-dream from a perception of innate belonging and an acknowledgement of periodic retreat as part of whole-making/health and wellness?
What if there are points in a relationship cycle where no repair is possible without a separation (allowing a rest, allowing a future reunion), and separation or divorce is not a relational failure but part of a larger life cycle?
What battles do our (inherited or implicit) oaths perpetuate?
Where do our body’s limits and seasons come into play here?
What do we need to listen and attend to now within, which previous oaths have conditioned us to ignore or compromise?
New Moon Eclipse in Aries: 11:20 AM Monday, April 8th
I’m going to write more about this separately. But the flower friend who comes up for Mercury Rx in Aries with the Eclipse, is Chicory — specifically, to contemplate its blooming pattern of opening in the morning and wilting in late afternoon/evening.
The significations of the flower essence are helpful to read to learn more about Juno’s themes though, through the botanical realm.
Description of Chicory from the Flower Essence Society (FES):
“Positive qualities: Selfless love given freely, respecting the freedom and individuality of others; emotional containment
Patterns of imbalance: Possessive or manipulative behaviors disguised as love, demanding, or emotionally needy; getting attention through negative behavior; self-centeredness”.
Mercury Cazimi: 4:02 pm PT Thursday April 11th
This is a good time for you to set aside a moment to pause, ground, invite clarity, invite guidance, observe and attend to what arises. And if you find yourself in smack in the middle of some action at this moment, just notice what’s arising within and around you. You may receive an insight that helps you integrate or move with the disruptions, adjustments, re-organizations that the Eclipses are facilitating this month (…. and this year and a half with the nodal axis in Libra-Aries).
Mercury Rx conjunct Chiron: 8:22 am PT Monday April 15th
Chiron is well-known for being the Wounded Healer. This one facet of the multi-faceted story of Chiron will play a part of this Mercury Rx and Eclipse Season. We’ll be invited to continue sitting as apprentices to the core wound that never quite heals and slowly become (remember) the medicine (within). This apprenticeship can be a process of getting to know, with greater and greater intimacy, what we longed for as children but didn’t receive — and then discovering that what we need now is inside of us, and our service to the world is an expression of that remembrance, fulfilling that exact gap that hurt us so much to experience.
But Chiron is also the teacher and mentor, symbolizing embodied wisdom. Here in Aries, Chiron invites us to play with being both the student and the teacher. As we feel the Aries drive to push forward and embark on another hero’s journey, this time maybe we won’t forget the feminine, the Night, the dreaming consciousness, our interconnectedness, the unseen relational field, the power of rest, the be-ing . Redwood comes up as an ally, helping us bring our Adult Self, wisdom-making, maturation process into connection with this Aries, Spring-time, new beginnings energy.
Mercury Rx conjunct Venus: 1:59 am PT Monday April 19th
Venus — the principle of relating, magnetism and attraction, beauty and pleasure, the archetypal Gatherer — is in Aries, working with the tools of the Hunter or the Warrior.
What separations make space for you to experience the pleasure of being who you truly are?
What actions invite more fire and spirit into the body, letting you experience the pleasure of being who you truly are?
What contests sharpen your awareness of, and let you choose, to experience the pleasure of being who you truly are?
What words need to be said on behalf of who you truly are?
Mercury Stations Direct at 5:54 AM PT, Thursday April 25th.
This occurs five days after the Uranus-Jupiter conjunction in Taurus. How can we support our thinking minds in allying with what has been un-buried or excavated this month (and over the past several years that Uranus has been in Taurus)?
Keep giving our imaginations a rainbow of nutrient-dense food, rather than fast-food.
Keep giving our minds something with enough dimensionality to contemplate, without collapsing the mystery into a static answer — or the Dream into a static interpretation — and risk falling back to sleep in the illusion of being able to observe something as if our Dreaming consciousness and posture to it was separate from how it responds to us or what we see.
Support our minds in witnessing (and even finding delight in that) the point is the creative process.
