Fallen Mercury Conjoins Saturn in Pisces: 5 Things to Watch for

Hey, everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/]. Today, we are going to take a look at Mercury in Pisces conjoining Saturn in the sign of Pisces. This is, of course, a Mercury that is debilitated in the sign of Pisces. So, it makes for a unique, interesting conjunction when it comes together with Saturn. Some of those very specific Mercury in Pisces themes become really interesting, and they are made a little bit deeper and more sophisticated by a conjunction with Saturn. So, we're going to look at that combination today. I'm going to give you five things to watch for. I think that this will be one of the highlighted transits of the week as the week goes on.

There are a few more interesting Mercurial dynamics that are taking place that I'll mention briefly, sort of previewing them, and then we'll get to those later in the week as well. So, that is our agenda for today. Remember to like and subscribe, share your comments and reflections. If you have them, if you've got a story to share, you can always put them into the comment section using the hashtag #grabbed, and then tell us the transit, then concisely, tell us your story or email it to us at grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks always on the website, nightlightastrology.com. Go over there and click on the events page.

A couple of things coming up: in-person events. We are having a Spring Equinox gathering for free here at the Grapevine Collective in Minneapolis on March 8, from 6 to 8:30 PM. This is an in-person event. It's not live online. It's just in person. But if you want to come and bring in the Spring Equinox together here in the Northern Hemisphere with us, we'd love to see you there. We'll have some snacks, and we'll do some movement and some meditation, and meditate a little bit on the meaning of the Spring Equinox from the astrological perspective.

Also, if you go to the events page, click on live talks, you'll see that my talk for the month of March is happening rather quickly at the beginning of March because my kids have spring break, and we always take a little family time around that part of March. So, having my March webinar a little bit early, April's is as well due to other travel that we have these couple of months. So, on March 6, I'm doing a talk on the third house, which was called the Temple of the Moon. But why? And why is this house so nebulous? It's one of the most difficult houses to understand. It kind of eludes us. We think of things like siblings, but we don't have a real deep grasp on this house. So, we're going to spend a lot of time with the third house in my next webinar.

And then in April, I'm going to be telling you all about essential dignities, how they are, how they work, and why you should not be afraid of them or think that they are something that they aren't. A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about essential dignity. So, those are a few things coming up at Nightlight. I hope to see you there for those. Remember, when you register for any of those talks, you get the recording if you can't make it live to the webinar. And then I do hope to see some of you in Minneapolis. We had a great Solstice gathering, so this will be nice to continue that new tradition.

All right, let's now turn our attention to the real-time clock, where we are looking at this transit on Tuesday, February 25, today. And my Epic Pen updated. It seems like it wants to update every couple of days. I don't fully understand why, but anyway, here we go. So, we can see the conjunction of Mercury and Saturn here, Tuesday, February 25. I mentioned this in my weekly overview yesterday, so you could have been noticing or feeling this archetypal combination yesterday, or even on Sunday as the two planets were approaching, and you may notice this continuing to have an impact on your experience, I'd say, all the way up until about Thursday, when Mercury gets about four degrees away from Saturn. You really won't be feeling this as much any longer.

And then we're getting into the territory of Mercury, the North Node, and Neptune, which will be our focus later in the week. There's also very briefly between today and, excuse me, tomorrow, Wednesday, the 26th, and Thursday, the 27th, Mercury will very briefly sextile Uranus in the sign of Taurus. So, we might do a little bit of coverage on that. I'm not exactly sure yet. I like to, every day when I wake up, meditate on what I feel the best content is, even if I have an outline in mind, sometimes that changes directions. Right now, I think we'll talk about Mercury and Uranus having a brief little get-together. Since it's coming right off from the conjunction to Saturn, I find that a very interesting sequence. It's probably worth paying attention to. So, right now, tentatively, that's what I'll probably be talking about tomorrow.

Anyhow, we have a New Moon coming through in Pisces this week. So, it's very watery. That New Moon is going to be forming on Thursday of this week, February 27. So, some Piscean energy in the sky this week, really. Now, what I want to do today is give you five things to watch for, given the coming together of these two planets today. Maybe you pick up on this yesterday, maybe you pick up on it a little bit tomorrow, or even into Thursday a little bit. But these things are reliably Mercury-Saturn-like, and then we're adding in the sophistication of Mercury being in both its exile and fall in the sign of Pisces. There are some reasons for that. Why? Okay, let's start with that, and then let's talk about Saturn. And then we'll get into these five things to watch for.

First of all, Mercury is in Venus's exaltation. And one explanation that ancient astrologers gave for the planets being in their falls in each other's signs is that there's something archetypally opposite about sensuality, Venus, and rationality, Mercury. And so, put Mercury into the place of the sensual, romantic, imaginative, otherworldly, mystical, Jupiter, and Venus, the two planets that rule Pisces in ancient astrology, and you get a Mercury that might lose its rational grounding. It might be in an environment that is not. There's not. It's not that there's no interesting synthesis that can come from Mercury in Pisces because there are many brilliant souls who have Mercury in Pisces, right? It's not saying, "Oh, you're not rational, you're not grounded," but it is saying that the mind will be taken captive by the poetic, the imaginative, the romantic, the sensual dimensions, and that can be a little contrary to where Mercury finds itself most naturally at home in the Zodiac, which is Virgo, the opposite sign, or Gemini, both of them are also opposite signs of Jupiter.

Whereas Jupiter loves to build a cohesive sense of understanding, Mercury likes to pull things together and take things apart constantly, back and forth. Mercury is a little bit more like chaos magic, whereas Jupiter is this clear, orderly sense of meaning and understanding. Neither of them exist without the other. All things in ancient astrology work according to these sacred dyads. And so, Mercury is not bad in Pisces, but it is a little conflicted by planets that have something of a natural archetypal opposition to Mercury's own nature. So, that's what it's about, and that's what I'm saying when I mentioned the archetypal talk I'm doing on dignities. It's really meant to explain what dignities are and how they work and how they can be used sensitively. Because sometimes people think that they're prescriptive. They're not. They're really about understanding archetypal dyads and understanding how the tensions create work creatively and, at times, destructively.

And so, when Mercury is in Pisces, you can become ungrounded. You can become irrationally romantic or sensual, or you can overpromise and underdeliver. Or you're, that's like going to the grocery store on an empty stomach, not a good idea. You know, the Mercury in the sign of Pisces may struggle with some of those issues. That doesn't mean that nothing good can come of it. For example, sometimes the rational mind's ability to deep-dive into the unconscious or into the dream space, or altered states, or mystical states, or delve into spiritual sciences, will be depicted by a Mercury in Pisces. A Mercury in Pisces may be that chain or that stream-of-consciousness writing that is the mark of many brilliant artists in the way they convey or communicate their ideas and thoughts into different mediums: color, words, sounds. So, a very interesting Mercury.

Now, Saturn is a planet that was the ruler of the opposition. Ruler might not be the right word. It's the planet that was associated with the aspect of the opposition. That is because Saturn sits at the limits of what was thought of as the material universe and/or cosmos. Beyond Saturn was the numinous, intangible realm of the Divine Mind, which was in some ways distinctly other and also a reflection of, but other than, the material universe. So, Saturn is like a gatekeeper between realms. And as such, Saturn demarcates boundaries and limits, but also, it frequently brings up the oppositional tension between things that exist on either side of a wall, boundary, barrier, or limit, and thus cannot strictly be seen as limitation. It has to be understood also as oppositional tension that involves clearly demarcated boundaries between one thing and another, but also relates them to each other through oppositional tension. And that can be a very creative thing that has within it the seeds of the mysterious conjunction. And this is something that ancient mystics were well aware of, which is why Saturn was also a deeply mystical planet.

So, when Mercury, in its fallen detriment, comes into contact with Saturn, it's very interesting the symbolism that comes when you combine those things. Philosophically, we get, for example, number one, emotional depth and maturity. When Mercury in Pisces is thought of as the mental and emotional qualities coming together, and we reach Saturn, which is the end or the limit of something, then we may have gone very, very deeply into something, or we may have reached the limits of our understanding and then made some leap to go beyond, especially with Mercury in Pisces, the ability to convey things that exist across the barrier of the known limits of the mind can be quite profound when these two planets come together in a conjunction. And as though, paradoxically, when we reach our limits, and Mercury is able to seamlessly navigate across boundaries, we are also maybe able to grasp something that we could only grasp by coming to the limits of our understanding. When you come up against the limits of your understanding, it is often that moment where you find yourself knocking on a door, and the door opens. When you reach a limit, a genuine question emerges, and that's often when answers proceed magically. So, Mercury and Saturn coming together can represent something of great depth and maturity coming into focus, some kind of understanding being conveyed because we've reached a limit, because we've reached a barrier or a boundary, or because we've gotten to a "no," we might understand a "yes." Oftentimes, when we deeply define what our "nos" are, our "yeses" naturally emerge. So, there's also a way in which the kind of depth and maturity and Mercury reaching this space with Saturn can represent a leap in our understanding that's come because we've also been able to accept a limit, things like that.

Number two would be hard news, what we resist but must accept. Mercury and Saturn is a bit like getting that news from the doctor that your diet is the cause of a particular issue, and you have to change your diet, or something like that. It is the kind of news that we don't like to hear that might make us sad or might make us feel like someone is limiting us or restricting us, or someone saying "no" to us, or someone's putting up a boundary or barrier where we wish there was none. And yet, there may be some level on which we have nothing to do but accept and surrender to the facts of the situation. And there can also be a way in which we try to kind of snake or move around something that we don't like, but we may do so dishonestly or deceptively. That would also be something to be very cautious of during this time. Hard news can come, and it's something that can also deepen us and grow us because we're able to accept it. Also, hard news can come up. We can just be painful and heavy, mentally or emotionally, and yet, some ability to take it in and be with it is probably going to help.

Number three, Mercury and Saturn often come together when we've reached an understanding that's like a bottom line. Okay, now I have to make this choice or decision, or because I've reached a limit, or because I've reached a hard, practical space of a binary that's before me. I have to make a choice. It can also be about a recognition that we have multiple things that we care about, and that although we feel limited or prohibited by what seems like a choice we have to make between different things that we value and care about, we maybe there's a way through that involves holding the tensions of several things at once. That's always to me an interesting way that Mercury and Saturn work together because Saturn creates these very clear boundaries, but Mercury is very good at traveling seamlessly and fluidly across and through boundaries. It's interesting because Mercury was considered gender-fluid in ancient astrology, and sometimes Saturn was said to be gender-fluid as well. And the reason for that is that they both demarcate oppositional tensions and the relationship between things across two sides of a wall, a boundary, a limit, a barrier. Saturn was sometimes called neuter or neutral because, especially in the sort of mystical associations that were made with that were given to Saturn, that Saturn was associated with the ability to hold oppositional tension and to be in this world but not of it, or to be living in a hermitage on the mountain and in this world, but, you know, meditating your body into the astral realm. These were Saturnian signatures. And so, the fact that both Mercury and Saturn have this sense of fluidity, although a fluidity that does not mean the complete dissolution or elimination of clear distinctions or boundaries of duality itself, it's possible that in a moment like this, we have before us a recognition of something that looks like a binary but also some fluid, intuitive understanding of how to honor or hold two things at the same time.

Number four would be issues around fluidity and boundaries in general. Am I talking too much? Do I need to limit what I'm saying? Do I have that, you know, diarrhea of the mouth, like very watery? Do I need to be more boundaried in what I talk about, how I talk about, how I convey my emotions, or is there too much reticence? Do I need to open up more? Issues around fluidity versus boundaries can also come up, especially around communication, speech, emotions, thoughts, information.

And number five would be that sometimes Mercury in Pisces is very nebulous and shape-shifting and fluid. And when it comes into contact with Saturn, something can crystallize or take shape or form. And so, it's possible that whether it's just a simple level of mental, intellectual, or emotional understanding, that something congeals, that something comes into shape or form, that could be something very practical, something emotional, psychological, but just watch as something that's been rather intangible, perhaps crystallizes in some way. Those are things to watch for. But remember, we look at these things, we're turning a jewel. One of them may be more applicable than another, and there's also many other angles or dimensions to this archetypal combination. We're always just trying to tap into those that, you know, as an astrologer, that I think enough people that are kind of common, that enough people will see or experience, but if you have something to add, share something, because it's always interesting to hear what you experience from a transit. And also, remember, it's very brief. It lasts only a couple of days. And so, it's really important to utilize this as a kind of moving meditation on your experiences throughout the week, today, tomorrow, especially notice these things. See what you recognize, even if it's just on a level of what's flowing through your mind or your emotional body. Having a journal is really handy for this reason. The first several years of my practice, I kept a journal until I started developing a capacity to really notice and feel and recognize the transits each and every day. Of course, it's easier for me because my head is in this world like every single day, so it's harder to forget. But when you're in the process, and some of this is new, keeping a journal does really help. Anyway, that's it for today. Hope you guys are having a good one, and we will see you again tomorrow. Bye-bye.