In Greek and Roman mythology, Hermes/Mercury was the messenger of the gods. He moved between worlds much like a shaman. He is a mediator. He carried the caduceus, seen today as the insignia of the medical profession, so his activities have a healing quality. Communication can heal. The messages can be to oneself.
We all need a moral compass to help guide us forward. In the past, family, religion, school and community instilled in us a sense of ‘right and wrong’. Today we are questioning everything; rejecting and/or changing much of the way things are done. Some think we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
I feel we are in a period of profound change lying between the ‘certainty’ of the past and a future as yet unseen and unknown. We are on the doorstep of the Age of Aquarius.
For a week Mercury had a close and intimate conversation with Neptune in Pisces, the god of creative imagination, inspiration, fantasy, the dream world, and spirituality among other things. The polarity of Neptune is illusion, self-deception, glamour, addiction of all kinds and escapism. Not by accident, Neptune rules film and fashion. We just had a recent with the death by heroin of a successful movie star – the dark side of Neptune. With does Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death show us?
Success is not enough. Without a connection to Source, we are lost. Either we get the ‘real thing’ - Spirit or we get the toxic mimic* - spirits in the form of white powders, distilled intoxicants etc.
I think this ties in with the Mercury retrograde we are about to experience for the next 3 weeks in the following way.
Pisces is the last sign in the Zodiac and represents Unity. In the Precession of the Equinoxes, however, the direction is the opposite. We are just finishing the Piscean age, represented by Jesus, whose Christian symbol is the fish. The Pisces/Virgo axis is about service, sacrifice, and can be summed up by the phrase “no pain, no gain”. The old belief in the ‘starving artist’ and that there is no creativity without struggle. We have to let go of our addiction to learning only through pain.
The god of the Piscean Age demands that we suffer, hang on the cross – the axis between heaven and earth, forever.
There is a lot to be learned from hardship and struggle, but, there is a time to let go of that. We are not meant to remain victims and victimizers.
The Age of Aquarius is being born. Mercury is taking a message to Aquarius from Pisces and thus to all of us. In order to move into the New Age, we cannot bring the old attitudes with us. We will be dropping those service/sacrifice themes. We will be learning in a new way. You can see this in the proliferation of electronic media, webinars, etc.
A friend told me about something that happened the other day. After it was over he got a download to the effect that one reason the Law of Attraction does not work is that if it did, the guy who just cut us off on the freeway would be dead. We have to realize our thoughts, words and deeds have consequences. As we evolve, we have to take responsibility for our thoughts, because, they move very fast and can either harm or heal.
Aquarius is pictured as the water bearer even though it is an air sign. The astrological symbol, resemble two horizontal lightning bolts. The flash of insight brought by Uranus/Aquarius. The speed of our thoughts.
Another important feature of this Mercury retrograde is that it will move through the halfway point between the Uranus and Pluto square. A repeated theme of the role of mediator, this will help ease the tension between those two heavy hitters.
So, how do we work with this? Getting in touch with how we really feel. Looking for the underlying emotions behind our thoughts and behaviors. Since addiction is a way of covering up and masking our emotions, getting really honest with ourselves. Clearly despite fame, fortune, family etc. Hoffman needed to numb something. There must have been a deep pain or sense of emptiness that needed to be filled.
The problem with meditation, prayer etc. is that they only work if you DO them. Often when we feel good, we forget. We are too busy being happy to do our practice. Then the ‘X hits the fan’ and we are in crisis….there is nothing to hold on to. No life preserver. You have to do the practices so that the muscle is strong for when you need it. Chances are, if you do a regular practice you won’t actually ever need it, or if you do, the crisis won’t last as long or be as intense.
We need to get serious (Pluto in Capricorn) about healing our inner child – so that we can use the energies of the New Age (Uranus in Aries) to move forward into the future with resilience, trusting that it is all happening for our spiritual evolution….no matter what it is.
Spirit is trying to get our attention. “Wake Up!! You are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
*Expression first used by Caroline Casey to mean ‘the unreal copy that ultimately kills us’.