All transits calculated using the sidereal zodiac. Use this guide to cast your sidereal birth chart and see if any planets have changed sign. And if you’re ready to learn how to understand the changes, check out an Introduction to Sidereal Astrology.
Yes, you read that correctly. We’ve reached our 2nd of 4 Mercury retrogrades this year. Mercury takes a trip in reverse 3 or 4 times each year. This year we get 4 for our pleasure.
Mercury will travel from 10°-22° Pisces between March 8 and May 3. Mercury normally spends 3-4 weeks in each sign, but it will spend about 8 weeks in Pisces due to this retrograde.
PISCES
When planets are in Pisces they are under the command of Jupiter, they must undertake their tasks and execute their agendas with reverence to:
- Escaping the confines of identity;
- Transcending the awareness that defines the way one experiences and sees the world;
- Shedding the uniquely identifying aspects of the persona
- Disregarding the biases of perception in order to merge with something bigger and greater;
- Surrendering one’s individual will to the Divine Will.
With Pisces somewhere in all of our charts, we each have an urge to give ourselves over to an experience that overrides our own will and desires. We want our feelings to have purpose greater than self gratification and emotional satisfaction. We want our actions to further a cause larger than what can be encompassed within our own lives and lifespan. And so, we craft narratives that contextualize our feelings and give them the power to devour our self serving predilections. We make our feelings holy, our desires sacred.
MERCURY IN PISCES
In Pisces, Mercury is a land bound creature anchored at sea. It prefers the evidential and predictable paths of Virgo, or the height and breadth of airy Gemini’s way. Instead, words swim like jellyfish shifting in and out of schools when they’d rather come together like a gaggle of geese and take flight.
Language is a tool meant to confer meaning. Words are ideas, symbols in place of the object or person to which it’s meant to refer. And symbols are tangible in the sense that we can grasp onto them (their function and meaning) in predictable ways. Yet, in Pisces these symbols can be a confining prison to the meaning one intends to convey in their use. They can also be an exercise in improvisation and possibility as we fashion a variety of ways to use them.
Those are excellent concepts to consider during this retrograde—improvisation and possibility. How shall you re-fashion the tools you possess in order to work with the medium at hand? You must improvise and explore the possibilities.
Of course, with everything in life, nothing is simple or straightforward. So, it is here where we meet the complexity of this Mercury retrograde.
PISCES SQUARE SAGITTARIUS
The most recent Mercury retrograde was also in a Jupiter commanded sign, but it was fiery rather than wet. During that retrograde, Mercury in Sagittarius made 3 separate conjunctions with Saturn in Sagittarius.
Now, Mercury in Pisces will make 3 separate squares with Saturn in Sagittarius.
- 13° Pisces/Sagittarius – March 11
- 15° Pisces/Sagittarius – April 4
- 15° Pisces/Sagittarius – April 25
How do water and fire coexist without destroying each other? Fire is kept in check by water, and water is warmed, inspired, by the heat of fire. Action is checked by consequences, and feelings are aroused by passion.
Still, this is a square. And squares bring conflict. Pisces insists that knowledge needs no evidence and wisdom needs no experience. But Sagittarius thrives on action. Knowledge comes by doing, and wisdom is a process of distillation. Mercury in Pisces via its multiple squares to Saturn in Sagittarius magnifies this conflict.
How shall we articulate the embodied, intuitive knowings of Mercury in Pisces when Saturn in Sagittarius demands we make our lives a living testimony of what we say we believe? It’s not enough to feel it, we must do it. And if you say it, does that mean it’s true? Compassion will help manage the compulsion to do. Sometimes, you’ve got to let that compulsion pass.
But yes, improvise with the possibilities. The convictions we swear to demand our time, energy, money, and other resources. Of all the possibilities and forms circumstances can take, which ones allow us to make our lives a living testimony of what we believe?
Both Mercury and Saturn will be under the command of Jupiter in Libra. And so their agendas are secondary to that which Jupiter in Libra says they must undertake.
UNDER THE COMMAND OF JUPITER IN LIBRA
Jupiter in Libra has been crystal clear about its focus. Libra’s rationality, nuance, and objectivity can find the common ground between even the most disparate people and things. It enforces reconciliation. And so equality, fairness, and justice are shining emblems of Jupiter’s transit through the sign. Additionally, Jupiter being in a Venus commanded sign means that this trend is under the command of women, as Venus is a general significator for women.
It seems that despite Mercury and Saturn’s differences they both are working for the equality, justice, and fairness that Jupiter has commanded since September 11, 2017. Mercury articulates knowings that need no evidence to be true for the sake of justice, fairness, and equality. And Saturn works within the confines of social, political, and moral convictions for that same cause. It’s time to get righteous!
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