STARFIRE

October 2008

October 2008 - MERCURY DIRECT: Moving On
Click on the image for a larger view.
NOTE: Image will come up in a new browser window.

MERCURY DIRECT: Moving On

When Mercury goes direct, the zodiac marks the moments when it is easiest to take charge of our lives. The next opportunity for seemingly magical change is October 15, 2008, at 2:06 PM Mountain Time. For those of you along the East Coast, your moment will arrive at 4:06 PM.

As regular readers of this column know, Mercury retrograde is a time for repairs, completions, planning, and time off from shopping. Mercury spends three weeks retrograde (from September 24th to October 15th this cycle), followed by three months of direct motion.

The retrograde motion is an optical illusion, of course, caused by the elliptical cycle of the Earth around the Sun. But it symbolizes a real and creative cycle in the human psyche, a cycle that can give us leverage and help us reclaim our personal power and initiative regardless of outer events and situations.

The Secret of Mercury

Mercury corresponds to the Magician, the second card in the Major Arcana of a tarot deck based on the Golden Dawn methods. (The Magician comes first in the Italian or Marseilles versions, which put the Fool in the next to the last position. The Fool is each of us, curious and innocent and wandering along the path of spiritual and creative growth, and both methods recognize that the Fool doesn’t have a fixed position beyond convenience.)

The Magician stands with one hand pointed up to the heavens (or toward higher vibrational levels if you prefer New Age terminology), and with that hand he draws down the invisible substance of the Universe. His other hand points to the world around him, and his focused attention directs the universal energy into manifestation as a garden.

Mystics through the ages tell us the secret isn’t to fix things. It’s to create something new.

We don’t get leftovers out of the refrigerator and ask how we can fix them–well, not after our first novice days in the kitchen. We wonder what we can make “new” out of the leftovers.

And that’s the Magician’s message in life. (Mercury also represents Hermes, the wing-footed messenger of the ancient gods.)

Take what’s given and make something new. Don’t dither. Don’t make lists. Just decide what you want and use the materials at hand to create it. The materials at hand for the Magician are usually ideas. He is Hermes. He does use invisible substance. Mercury is the planetary ruler of writing and writers–and until Uranus (the higher octave of Mercury) was discovered, Mercury ruled all creative efforts of the mind.

The Creative Tricycle

When Mercury goes retrograde, we focus on completion for at least 10 days. Some of us, of course, spend the entire three weeks uncluttering our minds, but the idea plan is to get our mind chatter cleared and our physical worlds in order by the halfway point of the retrograde period (when Mercury retrograde conjuncts the Sun).

Halfway through the retrograde cycle, we switch gears and move from our personal backstory to the actual beginning of the new cycle. We start brainstorming and planning, preferably on paper or at least on the computer. We cluster, journal, shop and bookmark on line–but only virtual shopping. We make blueprints and plans for action.

Mercury direct throws us into forward motion again. Our minds are clear, and we have plans and ideas. All we need now is focus. We need written goals so we call bring our minds (the Magician’s mind) to order and use every moment that opens for creative work.

Last night I watched an old movie, a John Wayne movie about the Civil War. I listened to the order for the bugler to sound recall and wished for a moment that I had a bugle to recall my mind. Much more fun than a written list–but less effective than a written list copied on post-it notes wherever I’m likely to see them around the house. And what woman ever thought “Goals! Gotta work on my writing goals!” when a dashing young man in uniform was rushing around blowing a bugle?

We all know the cycle anyway. We tell it in every story, every work of art. There’s the beginning with its reliance on backstory (the planning stage coming right after the completion stage of Mercury retrograde), then an inciting incident (Mercury going direct) that throws us right into the action stage of our lives, and a quick wrap-up (Mercury retrograde again three months into the future). In between, it’s just one plot point after another–and the protagonist wins because the protagonist focuses on the goal over and over again.

Notice I didn’t say the protagonist was single minded and never got distracted. Of course our heroes and heroines get distracted. Even Scarlett got distracted by Ashley. And she didn’t get focused beyond herself until she got hungry. Sometimes that is the lesson of adversity–the fact that real solutions worthy of the work of creation usually benefit more than one person.

No wonder Mercury-Hermes delivers this message. Mercury’s everywhere, flitting from place to place in true Gemini fashion, then exulting in details of completion like Virgo. Mercury’s one of the inner or personal planets, but Mercury’s also considered to be androgynous and analytical rather than emotional.

Universal Creativity

Part of Mercury’s message is that creativity is a universal quality. Carl Jung’s work with personality types set the stage for research into the different ways we’re creative. Some of us write stories. Others create ways to resolve family conflicts or organizes professional teams. Some paint pictures. Others plan battles or discover DNA.

The Mercury motif is, however, the universal underlying myth of creativity. Draw on the invisible (ideas and inspiration), focus on results, use what’s available to create something new and useful for yourself and at least one other person.

Even if it’s just a new way to use leftovers.

Mary O’Gara, Ph.D.