Battle of the techno titans redux

In February 2008, when Mercury was retrograding in Aquarius, I blogged about Microsoft’s bid to take over Yahoo. I wrote:

What’s interesting about Microsoft’s announcement during this Mercury rx in Aquarius is how the old establishment (Capricorn) is attempting to establish control (Pluto) over a younger upstart, by using a previous upstart, Yahoo, incorporated in 1995, but over-expanded (Pluto in Sag). In other words, there appears to be a cycle of big fish trying to eat smaller-but-getting-bigger fish.

Mercury rx in Aquarius appears to be providing the environment under which the battle of these titans is drawn to the surface. That Mercury is in retrograde in the maverick sign of Aquarius, however, suggests perhaps that the outcome may not be what anybody expects.

Today, with Mercury’s ingress into Gemini (announcement), quincunx Pluto rx in Capricorn (corporate backtracking), square Saturn in Virgo (prudence), it is announced that Microsoft has abandoned the bid for Yahoo.

Update, 5th May: Glad to know I’m not the only one who thought it was bad timing.

 

Re-think

As Mercury glides towards its home sign of Gemini, my Sun sign, entering it on Friday, 2nd May, and prepares to retrograde in Gemini from 26th May to 6th June, I am thinking of re-thinking the format of this blog. Very much a task for Mercury rx in Gemini, I’d say.

Having just moved jobs and cities less than a month ago, I am currently still half living out of boxes. At the same time, I am travelling for most of May, so I am not likely to see any stability in my routine until mid-June.

I will try and blog on and off while I am on the road, if the retrograde allows me access to the internet! However, I am still uncertain as to what form the new format should take. I may carry on as I have for the rest of the year, making small modifications as I go along, or I may try and post more often, giving each incident and entry its own post, instead of logging it onto one long post. Or try something else altogether. I don’t really know yet.

That last paragraph is an example of someone with Sun-Mercury in Gemini thinking aloud. I understand that its lack of certainty is frustrating to those who’d prefer to know, but I hope you will bear with me while I work it out. I’ve long learned to trust my instincts — it may seem like my thoughts are meandering, but each option is being simultaneously weighed out in my mind, and the answer will emerge out of the cogitation, like a card from a deck being shuffled.

In the meantime, enjoy the sociability and chattiness of Mercury in Gemini for most of May, and some of you may even find yourselves bursting with the desire to put your ideas into words, but also remember to back up all your data in anticipation of the retrograde in June!

 

The Internet and the oceans

On 31 January, it was announced that several undersea internet cables had been cut. This occurred shortly after Mercury went retrograde in Aquarius. Mercury is the planet of communications and Aquarius rules not just technology but also the egalitarian nature of the internet, Aquarius being the sign of the humanitarian.

This incident brings to light not only the connectedness of human society (ideally) embodied by the internet (it is clear that not everyone is connected and the question of uneven access is always contentious), but also calls attention to how fragile those connections might be. It also calls attention to the intimate connection between those networks and the raping of oceans we are experiencing as symptomatic of the central crisis of our times.

 

Mercury from the other side

The first pictures of the other side of Mercury, which have never been photographed before, were revealed today. On each of the three occasions space craft had flown past the planet before, ‘the same hemisphere was in sunlight’ ( NASA MESSENGER website).

I can’t imagine more appropriate news on the eve of Mercury retrograde in Aquarius. Uranus rules space travel, as well as technology, which makes space travel possible. Uranus is also the modern ruler of Aquarius. The fact that the new pictures revisit a hitherto unseen part of the planet on previous occasions also resonates with the retrograde, during which events from the past may resurface and be reassessed.

This is the link to other information on the flyby. MESSENGER is a team at NASA dedicated to research on Mercury. I’ll post their link on the Resources page for future reference.

 

Oh, Dumbly-dore!

Talk about past sex lives being uncovered when Mercury is retrograding in Scorpio!

I’m not sure the latest revelation by JK Rowling is necessarily the best move for the wildly successful Harry Potter franchise, but the tone and the timing of the announcement are uncanny.