At the Heart of the Machine — Mercury Cazimi Conjunct Pluto

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at Mercury cazimi. That is mercury at the heart of the sun in Aquarius. Both planets are very closely conjoined to Pluto. They'll be moving into that conjunction in the next day or two. Here, Mars is then going to follow. Venus has just gone through this conjunction of Pluto. So we're continuing our exploration of these Plutonian transits.

I have a bit of a written meditative reflection to read today, or kind of speak from my guests. I'm excited to share it with you that'll be that'll be our agenda for the day. So before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. Share your comments, your reflections, if you have them. We love hearing from you.

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All right, so what you should notice today is that we have a conjunction between Mercury and the sun. It's happening this morning, that's the cazimi, and both planets are within less than two degrees from a conjunction to Pluto. The conjunction to Pluto will occur with mercury tomorrow, and the sun will move through that conjunction Friday.

Mars then enters Aquarius and is within the three degree range of Pluto almost immediately, Mars then conjoins Pluto by Tuesday of next week. So we are in this kind of long series of Plutonian events, and today I really just want to speak on the the sun cazimi That's happening at the conjunction to Pluto moment.

Now I'm going to share with you a dream that I had. I'm going to share with you an I Ching reading that I did, and I'm going to share with you some thoughts that I have about the the meaning of this, this dynamic. I want to say a few things first, technically, before I read you the meditation I wrote.

Some of you know, I'm pre drafting right now for a book, another book that I'm writing, I just finished one that, by the way, will be out soon. But anyway, I'm pre drafting, and so just spending some time writing occasional episodes has been really useful for me. I hope you'll enjoy it.

But let me say something first about the technical space of the transit and the archetypal space. So the cazimi is happening while it's ruled by Saturn. Saturn is culminating in Pisces, and is by next week, Neptune will enter Aries, and Saturn will follow it into Aries.

So we're dealing with a cazimi in Aquarius that's hosted by a late degree, culminating Saturn in Pisces. And I think that figures into the I Ching reading today in some interesting ways. The cazimi Given the conjunction with Pluto also suggests that while thoughts, ideas, words, speech, ideological or philosophical perspectives can become empowered and a lot brighter and hotter and bolder and more intense or powerful or transformative, that we also run the risk of becoming polarized.

The reason for that is that Aquarius is a Saturn ruled sign in traditional astrology. And for as much as Aquarius, is often about progress and the future and advancement, scientifically, culturally, politically, it's a very progressive sign that always is always looking at the horizon.

This is partly to do with the fact that the seasonal symbolism informs planetary rulerships. So when we're looking at the sun rising out of Aquarius, from the standpoint of the northern hemisphere, which is where this whole symbolic orientation comes from, doesn't need to be anchored in it, by the way, because it's symbolic, always have to say that.

The sun is rising out of the darkness, and the second sign of the winter is significantly different from Capricorn, right where Capricorn is at the darkest point of the year, sort of surviving and rising out of the darkness very incrementally. Aquarius is established in the rising of light out of darkness in a much more solid way.

It's why we call it a solid or Fixed sign, and it has its eyes set on zodiacal spring and summer, the pole star that it's climbing up toward is like an ideal in the future that Aquarius is reaching toward. But it has to reach toward it through the limits of the time that it lives in.

If you want a better future, it's always in contrast to the limitations of the present or the past, or even for Aquarius, the best future might look like going back to some bygone era that we've regressed away from, either way, however you frame progress, whether it's getting back to something or going forward towards something, the vision of Aquarius is toward A brighter situation, and it in that way, it tends to run up against the limits of the status quo, or the way things are.

And it introduces the idea that we should go towards something, or get back to something, that tends to be a Saturn, a Saturnian kind of place, because the conversation that we're talking about implies limit. It implies the limits of the status quo. It implies the limits of what what we're doing versus what could be and the limits of Saturn always set up a kind of binary opposition between what's on either side of a demarcated boundary right the future versus the past, or the old versus the old versus the new, on either side of a demarcated like a line drawn in the sand, so to speak.

So because of that, a moment like this, especially given the conjunction with Pluto, can empower ideas, voicings, plans, opinions, ideological perspectives, that even if they are good or righteous or virtuous, can still be a part of that line drawing in the sand, that can still step right into oppositional and polarized states of being that will often show up as power struggles, ideological tensions, marginalized groups versus groups that have power.

Those kinds of tensions tend to really pop around moments like this, and I guarantee they will when Mars gets into the mix with Pluto coming up here. So I have written today. I called this little essay Mercury at the heart of an impasse. The impasse, I think, is probably ideological, and the impasse is rooted in the way that Aquarius tends to present the best or brightest future or direction that something ought to take relative to what it sees as regressive or old or outdated, or status quo or tyrannical or whatever.

So here is here are my thoughts for you as I'm considering this, in light of a lot of things that I've I've noticed in the news in a year that has a lot of collective tension with a major outer planetary alignment taking place. Just keep all of that in mind and take from this whatever is most beneficial.

There are these familiar spaces that I enter into as an astrologer where my thoughts start to feel like they're pressing up against something immovable and invisible. There are moments when a fresh idea appears in my mind, something I'm really excited about, but immediately there's an anxiety or a pressure or a weight that comes in at the exact same time.

I've come to recognize these as familiar Aquarian spaces. I have my South Node in Aquarius. Perhaps that's why I'm particularly sensitive to them. There are moments in my life when an insight that comes up that feels like it could liberate, free something up, take me forward in a really good new direction, it appears, but it immediately asks me to stop, be quiet, and think about some very hard things before it can progress.

I have recognized these as powerful Aquarian moments over and over in transits. To me, this mercury in cazimi, in Aquarius, feels like one of these spaces right now. Mercury stands at the heart of the sun, illumined, sharpened, awake, and yet there's Pluto. Pluto is waiting.

And for astrologers, this isn't hidden. It's not subtle. It's close enough to bend the light of the sun and the illuminated state of mercury when our minds meet power this frontally, the temptation, I think, is to speak with a degree of certainty that none of us really have to name, to declare, to diagnose something, to believe that seeing clearly gives us the right, or even the obligation, to do something decisive right now, in my experience, clarity like this that comes in a conjunction with Pluto is rarely innocent.

We have to be so careful, because there's a hidden gravitational center behind this sense that I know something certainly and I must act decisively. In my morning reflection on this transit today, I consulted the I Ching, and I received hexagram 39 which is called obstruction. The third line of this hexagram was changing, moving toward hexagram eight, which is called bonding, or holding together.

Hexagram 39 if you don't know it, is the image of water over a mountain. The top trigram is water. The bottom trigram is mountain, and it's a picture of a river that can't go straight because there's this immovable impasse the mountain. The wisdom of this hexagram in numerous translations, is not about being clever or dominant or winning, it's about the intelligence of movement when an impasse or an obstacle is present, especially ones that tend to be about strong oppositional forces creating a block.

The wisdom of this hexagram, hexagram 39 is about knowing when advancing will create resistance, and when restraint becomes the deeper pathway for progress to move through. It's paradoxical. The third line is especially interesting to me because it sits right at the top of the lower trigram, which, in I Ching speak, means that we're talking about something that's moving upward in the I Ching always, and the line is trying to move into the top trigram, where there's a transition taking place between these trigrams.

In other words, the next step seems obvious in the sequence of the logic of this hexagram forward motion right now feels justified. I have the right direction. I have the right idea, I have the right path. This is where I'm supposed to go. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is what's right. This is what's virtuous. This is what's clear.

And yet the instruction of this third line is absolutely unambiguous. It literally says going leads to obstruction, returning is beneficial. Now the commentaries on this line all basically say the same thing, which is that this is not a piece of advice that's about admitting defeat. It's not about passivity. It's not about burying your head in the sand. It's not about spiritually bypassing the clear encounter with someone or something that's evil or dark or difficult, but rather it's an inventory.

It's an invitation to reconsider what the intelligence of moving through oppositional impasses or oppositional resistance or even hostility, open hostility or conflict looks like now in Aquarius, I think that, as I was saying before, the impasse is often ideological. We meet ideology in structures and categories of identity, very real.

There's nothing unreal about this, to me, in principles, in moral frameworks, in systems of belonging. And exclusion in things like popularity and marginalization. But Aquarius has this strange way. It's very peculiar to Aquarius, and unique to Aquarius of turning difference into virtue and virtue into distance, or worse, polarization.

This is Saturn's rulership at work, and it can quietly harden positions even while speaking a language of progress. This is something you have to be ever vigilant about, with the sign of Aquarius, with mercury cazimi ideas can feel very empowered right now. Convictions can feel justified, perspectives, airtight identity, categories undeniably relevant to who we are and how we feel and experience the world.

And yet, with Pluto, the urge to press those ideas in the world, to compel, to enforce, to restructure, grows stronger. You belong. You get out. There's a bit of that in the world right now. Now at the same time, we have Mars completing its exaltation in Capricorn, moving toward Aquarius, prepping to meet Pluto as well.

So that's like a pressure that's also pushing behind all of this. The atmosphere is tightening along these archetypal lines that I'm discussing. The lines in the sand are being drawn more clearly. Impasses are becoming more personal to us. Hexagram 39 in the I Ching doesn't deny any of this as real and very difficult.

It doesn't ask us to pretend, in other words, that a mountain isn't there, that categories socially don't exist, but it asks us how we move through and around them with care and sensitivity and tact when those oppositional tensions arise. And that answer of the third line is return, not advance, but return.

In the I Ching language, return doesn't mean abandoning your conscience. It doesn't mean retreating into numbness or silence. It means stepping back from the fantasy that force resolves obstruction in any situation whatsoever. It's like teaching you the tai chi, the jujitsu of the energies of reality itself.

Now the changing hexagram, when line three changes, is called holding together or interdependence, or bonding, and what it suggests, specifically, because this line turns into that hexagram when it changes, is that what becomes possible through restraint, rather than pushing into that opposition, but just so gently holding ourselves back, you hold all of the truths of that Opposition while not acting upon them in energetic opposition is that when you do that, bonding takes place.

What that means is that resources gather allies appear, and a different rhythm of consciousness appears, one that can cross a river without capsizing the wagon like a bad Oregon a bad Oregon Trail nightmare. Remember, let's Ford the let's ford the river, or should we caulk the wagon and float it across? Either way, Johnny's fucking dead.

I'm just kidding. Okay, sorry, I couldn't help myself anyway. Let me switch gears here, when you pull back in the face of strong ideological and intellectual or principled convictions, and you don't need to the myth is that we abandon it unless we fight all of the some of the greatest peacemakers and advancements of truly empathetic, courageous Bodhisattva like wisdom in our world have taught us that that is just not the way to fight.

I you want to get the river, get the wagon across the river. You need resources, allies and a different rhythm of consciousness. It's about flowing across an obstacle and through it. That kind of intelligence is rare in my experience, even in myself, it is just so rare for me to pause at the brink of such certainty and decisiveness and to say, hmm, maybe going will be met with difficulties. Maybe return.

Turn will be met with success. Lately, I listened to a reflection from a Buddhist teacher. It's a podcast you may know called Doug's dharma. I really enjoy him as a Buddhist teacher, and he was considering this perennial question in one of his episodes, whether spiritual life calls us into activism or away from it, whether awakening, he said, belongs on the cushion or in the streets.

And I think that language has probably been used before. But what stayed with me from his talk was not a verdict that he came to, but the way the question itself dissolved in the process of the talk, the early teachings, he reminded listeners, never reduce life to a single path.

There's a path of ethical engagement in how we speak, how we act, how we protect one another in ordinary life, and there's a path of inner liberation, where craving loosens and identity softens and the compulsion to conquer even in the name of goodness fades. He said, these paths were never meant to compete.

They temper each other without ethical action. Inner practice struggles to survive in a world overwhelmed by chaos without inner work, ethical action easily curdles into righteousness, anger and the intoxication of power, which, even for the good, noble position of line three hexagram 39 will fail when it goes forward rather than returns.

He said that the danger is not engagement itself. The danger is engagement fueled by certainty rather than compassion, gentleness innocence, sweetness, goodness, rather than guile. When belief systems enter the realm of power, even the best ones, something precious is at risk. That is the hardening of ideals.

The hardening of ideals is co-present with the appearance of enemies. The two co arise as one in Buddhist speak views cling to us and possess us, even while we think this is my good, very good perspective. And to me, this is where the wisdom of returning in hexagram 39 line three feels so appropriate right now, I can only reflect on where I'm at and then hope that it may resonate for some of you.

Of course, it's not about withdrawing from the world, but returning to the ground beneath our motivations for how and where and why we engage in it, returning to that question of how we act, not just what we believe, returning to the awareness that power, especially when it's justified by clarity, tends to be very dangerous.

I want to close with a dream that I had after the death of Rene good here in Minneapolis recently, and after feeling this old ache of watching a city I love brace itself once again, we moved here in 2020 just months after George Floyd was murdered, and our city was devastated in many different ways, and I felt an echo of that come back.

And I thought, Dear God, not again. So the night after this happened, I had a dream. I found myself dreaming of a city that was not quite Minneapolis, St Paul. It was futuristic. It was kind of cold and vast and but it was unmistakably my city, the one I lived in.

In the dream, though it wasn't named in any way. In this dream, I was running. I was breathless. I was terrified. My heart was pounding, and I was searching for an official building, some authority, although in the dream, I It wasn't clear. Was it a government authority? Was it a religious authority?

I don't know what it was. I was just searching for an official building, some institution where I could go and turn myself in. In my dream, I knew that authorities were coming. I knew that I would not be able to produce my paperwork. But the paperwork in this dream wasn't usually what we mean by that word.

What I lacked was proof, some kind of documentation, or proof, that I was human. It was a why it was wild. In the dream, I understood this, that I was like a I was a traveler. I was, I don't know, a spiritual Nomad, a borrower of a body, a consciousness passing through something called human life without any claim to having earned it or owned it, or any idea how I got here.

I had zero documentation, no origin story that could satisfy some kind of systematic attempt to demand that I prove my legitimacy. Now I and all I could, all I could think to do in the face of this pressure that was like hunting me in the dream, was to say, I cannot prove this.

I don't know why I'm here. I don't know how I arrived. If there is some kind of reckoning, I'm just gonna go and face it, and I'm just going to tell you I don't know, I don't know if I have any legitimacy. It was a really terrifying dream.

And when I woke there was a part of me that just laughed at the absurdity of it, like, well, I'm clearly processing the events happening here in Minneapolis, you know. And by the way, I am in no way at in any kind of danger compared to my some of my neighbors, you know what I mean, and I so I, in no way, does, did I?

Would I try to appropriate that experience? Because I, I don't know, I don't know what that's like, you know, let's be very clear about that. But this dream, to me, was still very powerful. And what if this I was later that morning, I had silent Sundays, so we had our meditation gathering, and I had just the dream had been, like, scary, and I woke up it was kind of like, ooh, glad that wasn't real.

And also just kind of laughing, like, I'm definitely processing the news of of the moment, right? Like my my body is, that's, I guess, how it's processing it, and that even though I'm in no danger, like other people are right around me in my community, there's something in me that's empathizing, or there's something in me that is is processing what's happening.

I guess that was about all I made of it. And then I'm sitting in silent Sundays, and this dream returned into my meditation, and I thought to myself, What if this is what power forgets when we persecute each other because we do or don't have legitimacy. It's like, are you legitimate?

You're only legitimate if you belong to this group or this people or this category, these identities, these categories, are provisional. And I've been studying a lot of Buddhist philosophy lately, and this is such a core part of Buddhist philosophy, our identities arise together, not separately. None of us can finally document our worth.

None of us can document and prove our belonging, our right to exist in the way that systems of control demand, or that we sometimes demand of each other in subtle, you know, ways every day, I think even of the brutal kind of caste system of schools that my kids are going through being like this, are you in?

Are you out and in Buddhist teachings? Are interdependence on interdependence, nothing stands alone. Everything arises through conditions. Separate selves and categories are useful conventions, for sure. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they can be dangerous when they become absolutes. When we forget this, we begin to believe that some claims categories are more righteous than others, that some lives are more legitimate than others, that some identities are more real than others.

I do not believe that my dream was equating my experience with anyone else's suffering. Again, let me be clear about that, but it did something quieter that was very helpful for me, which is that it loosened the illusion that I stand on firmer ground than anyone at all, on an existential level, on a metaphysical level, not in terms of the very real level of persecution that's happening in my city, But in that loosening compassion in my meditation that morning, as I was really reflecting on the dream, I felt the processing that I had been doing, a lot of which had just been anger and fear and like emotional agitation and lots of thoughts racing around that as I thought about the dream very deeply, I just felt compassion come back.

Maybe this is another way of understanding return, a return to humility that says, I don't stand outside the world's confusion, returning to the empathy that arises when we stop rushing to resolve tension through domination of any kind, even those cloaked in. Goodness returning to the bond that precedes our categories and will always survive their collapse.

May we all just turn ourselves in none of us are legitimate, not one more than the next. I think that mercury at the heart of the Sun offers insight, and Pluto sitting right next to it is that even the most precise articulations of goodness and truth wielded without care will injure.

I don't think that this is a time to abandon conscience or clarity. I am reminded of the kind of false dichotomy that this Buddhist teacher was talking about, about cushion or streets, but it asks us to hold things, hold truth, hold goodness differently, let our intelligence Slow down before it hardens into commanding command.

Voices. I think this is a moment that it feels like the world's standing at an impasse right now, you know, and I don't talk often about collective events, but some years are just more epoch shaping than others. 2020 was a year very much like this year.

If the world is standing at an impasse, and who knows, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but perhaps the most radical act is not to charge forward, but to listen, to gather and to hold together what hasn't yet broken. Even small gestures of restraint, of empathy, of returning are probably enough to let the river find its way around the temptation that the only way to be right is for you to be wrong.

That's what I've got for you today, guys, raw, but I just hope that it's a positive part of your life to have these meditations and reflections. I'm just one person. I'm just one dude with weird, weird dreams. So anyway, I Much love to all of you who are out there just trying to get along in a time that is.

It's really tempting to think that I'm only safe and I'm only good if another person or another category is gone. That is not the truth. All right, that's what I've got.