Retrograde travel, July 2006

I am in South Africa at the moment and am fortunate to have internet access in my hotel room, so thought I would blog my experiences to do with travelling during this retrograde period. As I mentioned in a previous post, Robert Wilkinson is generally positive about travelling during a Mercury retrograde.

In his book, A New Look at Mercury Retrograde, he reasons that ‘[m]aybe a journey removes us from our usual routine, and we natually remove loosen up a bit regarding schedules and expectations because of the highly mobile environment in which we find ourselves’ (17). In other words, we are already primed for potential changes to our routines. There can be unexpected surprises and not all of them unpleasant.

The purpose of this trip was for a conference. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I gave a paper on a topic not normally in my area of study, and yet, it is also not a new topic, but one that I had always had an interest in at one point or another, but somehow never made it my main area of research. About half an hour before I was due to present, I realised that the PC in the room allocated to me could not play DVDs. I was prepared to talk my way through it when someone offered her laptop. Great, we plugged it in… and the sound wouldn’t play. The ironic thing is silence was the point of the film clip I was planning to show. So I had to explain that while the sound didn’t work, my point was to show that sound wasn’t needed in the first place! In a sense, things worked out, through a roundabout route. This effect is often overlooked in accounts of Merc retrogrades, which emphasise hassle and delay.

I also ran into an acquaintance I met several years ago but never had a chance to speak to properly. Funny we would both end up at the same conference at the same time. This chance meeting allowed me to review some old relationships in the past, and how toxic they had been without my realising it at the time. The reason I never even spoke to this person years ago was because he was so badly bad-mouthed by a friend I was hanging out with at the time, and I just took her word for it. Being in post-apartheid South Africa and experiencing its new openness brings me even closer to the realisation of the importance of seeing people as they are, not as refractions through someone else’s perception.

Retrograde self-reflection is truly illuminating. At this rate, I might even begin to look forward to future retrogrades.

References
Robert Wilkinson. A New Look at Mercury Retrograde. Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1997.

 

Mercury Retrograde book — found!

I am pleased to have found Robert Wilkinson’s book, A New Look at Mercury Retrograde, which has been out of print, on Abebooks a couple of days ago.

How funny is it that it turns up during this Mercury retrograde?!

Anyway, I shall be away tomorrow for a week and will take it with me. Hope to be back with better insight soon.

 

Mercury Rx in Cancer, July 2006

Mercury next retrogrades from 4 July to 29 July, from 1° 22′ Leo back through 21° 04′ Cancer, and we are well into the shadow period now. In this post, I shall deal mainly with Mercury Rx in Cancer.

Rob Tillet of Astrology on the Webreckons that

When Mercury moves back to Cancer on July 11, the need to revisit emotional commitments will become more present. Family issues are likely to arise and you may need to review decisions regarding your residence and any career moves you have in mind.

Similarly, Kim Marie, writing of the last Mercury Rx in Cancer in 2000, notes:

All of our emotional insecurities will rise to the surface and this Mercury retrograde along with the eclipses can make us feel like we could easily loose it and emotionally explode. Family issues that we thought we had dealt with will come back again. Old wounds will resurface to be hopefully healed once again on an ever-deeper level.
…
The essence of Cancerian energy is to learn emotional self-reliance. To realize that no matter how “bad” or “good” our relationships may be, no matter what gender we are this lifetime, it is still our own responsibility to take care of our own emotional needs. No matter who we think is “hurting” us it is just the mirror to help us to greater levels of emotional self-relating. So this Mercury retrograde will help us determine where in our emotional relationships we need to relate to ourselves better.

So where Mercury Rx in Pisces touched on aspects of the non-rational, the intuitive, Mercury Rx in Cancer will be going over aspects of our emotional lives.

References
Kim Marie. ‘Mercury Retrograde’ . Astrology by Kim Marie. Accessed 26 June 2006.
Rob Tillet. ‘Mercury Retrograde’. Astrology on the Web. Accessed 26 June 2006.

 

Mercury Rx in Pisces and the White House

I meant to post earlier but Mercury going direct has meant that my schedule’s picked up again! Since I’m no astrologer, I won’t attempt to relate Mercury Rx to recent world events on my own, but instead put together a sample of what other astrologers have foreseen.

Pat Paquette, of The Pisces Chronicles, wrote on 25 February 2006 that:

As Mercury retrogrades through Pisces, I expect that some embarrassing truths are going to emerge about what the White House has been up to. This may include information about who our real enemies are and to what extent this administration has been involved with them.

In her update on 26 March 2006, a day after Mercury went direct, she identifies the following incidents, and I quote her directly:

1. The most sensational revelation came during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who faces the death penalty for his alleged connection to 9/11. FBI Agent Harry Samit told the court that he repeatedly notified his superiors in the month prior to 9/11 that he suspected Moussaoui was part of a terrorist plot to fly an airplane into a building, but that no one would approve his request to get a warrant to search Moussaoui’s apartment.
2. A close second for “best secret” came out of another criminal proceeding. Court papers filed by lawyers for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, indicate that his trial on perjury charges could become a major embarrassment for the White House. The documents themselves aired plenty of dirty laundry, including evidence that high-level officials manipulated intelligence on WMDs to justifying invading Iraq.
3. [...] a report released by the Pentagon on Friday asserts that Russian spies in Baghdad obtained information from the American military command about the impending U.S. invasion and relayed it to Saddam Hussein. Not only is this embarrassing to the White House, but it could affect U.S. relations with Russia. [....]

I’ll post more as I find them.

Reference
Paquette, Pat. The Pisces Chronicles. Accessed 13 April 2006.

 

What I’ve done this Merc Rx

Mercury retrograded from 26° 55′ Pisces to 13°11′ Pisces, from 2 March to 25 March 2006.

What I’ve done during this period:

• Revised an old paper
• Applied for new jobs
• Started three blogs
• Learned to accept writing as my vocation and practice
• Meditated far more consistently than I ever have in the past year
• Returned to some old haunts and old friends

Not a bad month’s work at all, I have to say.