How are you feeling today? This week?
On Monday, it suddenly hit me that the solar eclipse in Aries is tonight. Despite posting about this week’s astrology a week ago, my brain had compressed time and merged weeks: I kept thinking the eclipse and Mercury stationing retrograde were all happening Friday and into the weekend. Why? Apparently because I’m leaving for a weekend workshop NEXT Friday and I associate the work I’ll be doing there with the potential of this eclipse period.
Voila: All The Important Things got sandwiched together, haha! Our minds are such funny things, powerful yet easily tricked. And The Trickster of astrology, Mercury, seems to have plenty of surprises up his sleeves, thanks to his current buddy in mid-Taurus, Uranus.
Mercury-Uranus is a symbol of the mind getting very stimulated while not in a position to do much about it. All that energy has to go somewhere. So where does it go? In my case, it connected some dots while skipping over others, leaping ahead to the future and conflating events.
As someone who has Mercury in Taurus, this makes a weird kind of sense. My preference is to be able to focus mentally on one thing at a time, and to do it thoroughly…apparently my unconscious decided that combining this week’s astrology events and next week’s travel was the “best” way to turn multiple events into one for ease of tracking.
Unfortunately, that’s a textbook way of falling for Mercury’s tricks when it’s getting ready to station retrograde or direct: we try to think about too many things at once, or think about one thing while actually doing another. Next thing you know you’ve locked yourself out of the house, or missed your exit off the freeway while going somewhere important, or sent a sensitive email to the wrong person. With Uranus in the picture, this goes double (and might lead to quirky discoveries).
I’ve also been feeling restless today — physically and mentally. How about you?
There are all kinds of things on my “to do” list. Yet settling down to do even the items I most want to engage with has been a challenge. I finally realized that leaving the house to run some errands might be the best way to channel some energy so that I’d be able to tackle my other priorities, and it worked.
This restlessness, too, makes sense. Not only because Mercury stations retrograde this Friday, April 21, at 4:35 am EDT, and is therefore in its agitated “storm” phase, but also because of the Sun’s situation.
As mentioned, we have a solar eclipse with tonight’s New Moon, which peaks at about 12:12 am Thursday morning on April 20. That event occurs in the last 10 arc minutes of the last degree of Aries (kind of like the tie-breaking basket happening in the final 10 seconds of the last minute of the ballgame). The Sun enters Taurus tomorrow at 4:13 am EDT.
Both of those things — an eclipse, and the Sun being in the last degree of a sign — can feel edgy and restless, with an urge to “get to the next thing already” even if you’re not sure what that is. Aries is the action sign, ruled by Mars the energy planet, so it’s no wonder that moving physically brought me some relief.
As I mentioned last week, the Sun is square Pluto in Aquarius (and the Moon is joining swiftly). Any Sun-Pluto square can manifest as a sense of deep pressure to change what is not working well. As astrologer Robert Hand writes in his book Planets in Transit:
“The best way to use this influence is to let go of old patterns of behavior that today’s events demonstrate to be invalid. Holding onto them will only make your life more difficult, and if you give them up, you will have room for the positive creative changes that can take place now. In fact one manifestation of this transit can be a powerful sense of having purged something from your life.”
Hand also notes that the parts of your life you handle well in the face of Sun-Pluto challenges become a source of great strength.
All of that sounds very much like an eclipse period, also. One part of an eclipse process is recognizing what is ready to be released: habits, possessions, mindsets and beliefs, relationships (to others or to facets of oneself), and so on. Something has outlived its value or no longer fits the person you are becoming. This part of the eclipse process actually aligns quite well with Mercury’s station retrograde and the Sun’s square to Pluto.
Mercury in Taurus tends to be a little attached (to ideas, people, ways of doing and thinking) and methodical, and is more of an experiential learner. This might translate to careful, hands-on reconsideration of some facet of your life that you’ve clung to for a long time. As in, you might need to do the thing again, handle the thing, feel all the associated emotions actively, and so on, in the process of finally letting it fall away.
Space then opens for the new to enter — and since Mercury will not station direct until May 14 (after the second eclipse), your initial steps toward the unknown that’s calling you forward may also be well considered (in a ruminating kind of way), tangible, and practical…maybe even artful. It’s okay to take your time chewing your cud these next few weeks, while taking persistent, gradual action in the direction you want to go.
Along the way, chances are you’ll begin getting a clearer sense of how to move toward what you desire, how to align your steps better with your intention. As you take those steps, the view will necessarily change and new options will emerge that might be even clearer and closer to that intention than what you’d first imagined. Throughout Taurus season, your body and emotions could be quite informative, even if your mind feels like it’s playing tricks on you.
Just keep checking your calendars and planners this month. 😉
With love,
Amanda
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