Mercury Entering Pisces

Transcript:

0:00
Hi everyone this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Monday everybody. Today we're going to take a look at Mercury's entrance into the sign of Pisces, discuss its meaning and give you a few ideas about what to expect from this transit, especially the internal logic of Mercury in Pisces or the archetypal tension that is present when Mercury enters Pisces. So here is mercury on the screen. Entering Pisces this evening, March 15. You're going to see Mercury move into Pisces by tonight depending on where you are and what time zone you're in. And it you know, it's going to be in the sign of Pisces for a while. It spends the 15th all the way to about April 3. So you know about about three weeks. Okay, so that's what we're looking at today. Now remember that Mercury in the sign is right now as it enters this evening is going to be co present with Venus and Neptune Venus who's currently exalted in Pisces, the sun still in Pisces, Neptune is in Pisces, there's still we have that big new moon lineup a couple of days ago in Pisces, and now Mercury is entering Pisces to join the party. Jupiter will be entering Pisces later this spring, we'll be talking about that, too.

1:24
Now we're going to talk about what to expect from this transit over the next say three weeks or so. So a couple of things. One is that Mercury in Pisces is said to be in its fall. And there's some debate in the traditional astrological communities about the importance of the category of detriment or exile, but it would be in in both its detriment or exile as well as its fall under some really interesting esoteric reasons for that, that I'll be unpacking in the talk that I'm giving later this year at the ISAR conference. And so after I give that talk, and I have a chance to give it publicly, I may do something on that for my channel, and explain a little bit about why there are these two different kinds of opposites in the Zodiac. There's domiciles and detriments, exaltations and falls, so but you will notice if you're a student of traditional astrology, that there's some debate about these categories and how old they are when they come in, stuff like that. At any rate, I'm going to try to unpack mercury in Pisces today and kind of why it gets this, why It's said to be a difficult space for mercury in particular.

2:37
We're mostly going to talk about the fact that there are different kinds of planetary opposites and pairings of opposites across signs. So Mercury, for example, in the sign of Virgo is at home, that's its home sign, when you put it in the opposite sign of Jupiter. That is going to create a kind of archetypal tension. And that's where we get this category of exile or detriment from. Same thing if you take Jupiter and put it into Virgo, it's going to be in the opposite sign of mercury. So there's a kind of archetypal tension that's present. Because Mercury and Jupiter are opposites. How are they opposites? One way that I like to teach people about their opposition is to imagine for example, that you have two different ways of looking at let's say, like a basketball game or a soccer match or something like that. On the one hand, you have if you stand back and you're sort of neutral, and you don't have a team that you're rooting for, and you're just you're just watching this thing unfold, there's a sort of grand unified feeling that that soccer field has or that basketball court has things are going back and forth. Things are going up and down, but it's all contained in one great arena. And that's sort of like Jupiter. Jupiter is this planet of greater unity of law and order and cohesiveness. If you're on the court playing Mercury who is the ruler of court games like that, that in fact go back and forth back and forth, it's going to appear a lot more chaotic, uncertain, a team is gonna go up and hit a three point shot and then another team's gonna get a rebound and, you know, rejected basket and then eventually they'll get a shot in and the score goes up in one team's favour and then the other team pulls ahead and even in a boxing match or something like that mixed martial arts or something. There's going to be a constant weighing, and back and forth quality and it feels very chaotic and uncertain, right. If you've had an experience of going to the airport that's been smooth and easy, and there's just been an overall cohesive travel experience. everything goes according to plan and the universe seems to be working in order and then those times where things just seem to be falling out of sorts, like all over the place all the time everything is sort of chaotic and uncertain and every all the details and timelines, and there's a line at the airport. And that's a bit more of Mercury's world. So a simple way of thinking about it not that anyone who has Mercury in Pisces is good or bad, not that the placement is really good or bad in some, almost like a Christian sense of God versus the devil or cosmic evil versus cosmic good. We're talking more of with these dignity qualities, we're really talking about just energetic or archetypal forms of opposites and tensions that are created when you mix one planet into the sign of its opposite. So Mercury in Pisces, is challenging because of two things. One, Mercury's natural back and forth nature, which is more deconstructive, skeptical, analytical, communicative, fluid, changeable, adaptable, but also kind of uncertain and a little chaotic, that energy is suddenly going to have to conform to Jupiter. And you can see, for example, a negative example of Mercury and Jupiter sign would be for someone to lose their intelligence, their reason, their ability to doubt, and to be taken in by someone who's very powerful or influential, say, to be suckered by someone who convinces you to sign up for a service you don't need, or, you know, or a guru who's like, really powerful, but like, maybe, maybe they're just using people somehow, or there's been so many unfortunate examples of that in religious communities all over the world where religious leader Jupiter tells people not to think too much. And then suddenly, you've lost your ability to think you're taken in by this larger thing, you're convinced that like, actually, the mind is your enemy, leave it behind, you know what I mean? So, Mercury can kind of be susceptible to something like that when it's in Jupiter's sign.

7:02
On the other hand, Mercury, using the similar analogy, I guess, or similar example, that the positive side of it is that if Mercury, if a person tends to have a hard time letting go because they're too rational or skeptical, or something like that, mercury in Pisces can be about sort of letting go of the defence mechanism of the rational mind. So that could be a good thing. So again, it's not really a good or bad, it's just understanding the archetypal tension and the different ways subjectively positive or negative, that that might express itself. With the reminder that there is going to be tension, we can't just say, well, it's a really positive placement, because when a planet faces tension and another planet sign, and has to deal with a compromise with the host of that temple. there is tension there, and life is created through tension. You know, think about there's sexual tension that creates life, there's tension in energy fields that changes the plates on the earth, or the magnetic poles, or I mean, I don't know, you know, but so tension is like, is necessary. And tension is tension. You can't, you can't whitewash tension.

8:27
So it's important to understand what kind of tension we're dealing with. And you know, I always tell people, this craft language is not meant to be used with clients unless they know astrology you don't tell someone Oh, you've got a Mercury that's in its fall. No, you just know, when they have a transit vehicle client has a transit to Mercury in Pisces, you just, you kind of sit back and you go, okay. I need to make sure that they know the kinds of tension that are present with this and that this tension can be particularly challenging in these specific ways. And then, you know, here are the blessings or virtues that can come through as well. But yeah, these categories are very wise and they don't, they weren't, they were not some people misunderstand dignity categories is this kind of old, prescriptive, ultra positive, ultra negative thing it was not like that. The language in ancient in the ancient world is different than the language we use now. And the world was a little bit more severe because we weren't living I mean, now the average person living in a you know, a house with air conditioning is living like a king compared to the ancient world all over the world in many ways. So in some ways, the ancient texts look kind of bleak and Stark, and the language sometimes appears that way. But we have to remember how prevalent and present death and so many other terrible things were some of which we've had to evolve and get better at some of which are still present but in just different forms. So at any rate, I say that because I deeply believe that these dignity categories are really very beautiful when you use them sensitively and I that's how I teach my students as best I can.

10:10
So there's also an oppositional tension in Mercury being in Pisces because it's said to be in its fall. So its exile has to do with being in Jupiter's sign and this kind of tension between Jupiter and Mercury. Pisces is also the exaltation of Venus. And Venus is in its fall in Virgo where Mercury is exalted. And Mercury is in its fall in Pisces where Venus is exalted. So, in Rhetorius, he explains all of these categories really beautifully. One of the ancient authors from a little bit of the on the later side of the text that we have, but he's also recalling earlier authors in his text as well. And he says that, "Why is it that Mercury's exalted, where Venus is in its fall, and Venus is exalted when Mercury's in its fall Pisces in Virgo?" and he says that it's because the sensual and the intellectual have a kind of built in tension with one another. So Venus is considered to be related to beauty, and femininity, and harmony, and sensuality, and desire. So whether it's the desire for a beautiful sunset, a swim in the ocean, sex with your lover, a beautiful dance performance, like a ballet or something. Venus is attracted to the Venus is always looking at the life through the lens of ornamentation, look at how beautiful it is, look at the beauty look at the harmony. In that way, Venus is very similar to Jupiter in the sense that where Jupiter is putting things together almost in a more law based sense religion, education, the laws of physics, the sense of having you know, like a democracy or a legal system, these are Jupiterian. Jupiter is like the 10 commandments coming down from the mountain. Jupiter is always always the law giver and the cosmocrat.

12:46
Venus is very similar in the sense that Venus looks for not just order, but beauty. And we have to remember that for the ancient Greeks and I talked about this in a recent video, the world was pervaded by this principle called Harmonia, which was a combination of truth, justice, beauty, kind of all together. So Venus plays the role of unifier, but unifier through beauty, through arranging, taking what appear to be disparate elements in creation and bringing them together harmoniously, just like a good designer can take the disparate elements of you know, a house or room and somehow put them together in just the right way, so they all come together. You know, I'm reminded of you guys ever see The Big Lebowski? That rug man, it brought the whole room together. So that's Venus, you know. So naturally speaking, Venus is going to be opposed to the intellectual. It's not that they can't come together. It's not that there's no overlap, there is of course, tensions always have the opportunity for the tension to be complimentary and for the tension to result in a kind of creative working of the opposites. But for the ancient astrologers the intellectual is a different thing altogether. Counting, dissecting analysing, inventing, deconstructing, you know, like inventing a machine or inventing a computer taking its apart and putting it back together. Tinkerer's, people who, people who are going to be more comfortable, let's say we're, you know, with the basketball court of life, where there's a lot of back and forth and a certain degree of chaos, and everything's very changeable in the moment. And of course, there can be beauty in there. So it's not that they're mutually exclusive. It's just that there's a tension between those two in the same way like you know, you'll be eating dinner and someone will bring up something that's really heavy and sort of detailed and may be critical. And there's a lot of moving parts and it's like, ah, can we wait till after we eat? You know, why is that because we want to digest our food, we want to enjoy our food. So Venus is some somehow naturally opposed to Mercury. And when you put Mercury into Venus's exaltation, where Venus is like, just worshipped and it becomes so romantic and so beautiful, and and then Neptune's there too, right now in Pisces, which amplifies the imaginative and romantic qualities so you have an Venus is actually in Pisces right now exalted too, right, so. So you have this innate tension between the two is the point. And that's why you're going to see some of the challenges and we'll go over some of what those are here. But you're going to feel the tension between the reasonable or rational and the aesthetic and the beautiful, the desire versus the reason the changeable and the chaotic versus the cohesive and harmonised those tensions are going to be present for the next three weeks with Mercury in Pisces. So in a sense, it's a time where you have to be careful about those qualities.

16:45
I want to talk a little bit about now going from some of these tensions between the two. You know, the reasonable being overwhelmed by the sensual or the sensual being overwhelmed by the reasonable that those tensions might be especially apparent, but the tendency is going to be for Mercurial things to be overwhelmed by Venusian things. So make sure you have your thinking cap on this month and be aware of the way that your mind can be influenced by those Venusian desires, perhaps negatively, that would be the main beware. And that can mean a lot of different things. On the other hand, allow your mind to take a dip in the pools of Venus, take it take a lay on your back and let your mind drift down the river. There's a lot of benefits there too. So I want to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot lately in my prayers in my daily meditation, which is this idea of insignificance. Because there's this is a word that I feel is a really good one to break down and talk about with Mercury and its tension with Venus in Pisces and Pisces, the exaltation of Venus in Pisces and so forth. Versus sometimes the tensions you'll also see with Venus in Virgo. Okay, anyway. So the word insignificant, if you look at the etymology comes from the 1650s, apparently, without meaning, answering to no purpose, or the knot or opposite of significant answering to no purpose. That's interesting. So you can see here in the initial etymology, that there is the potential for the mind to assign meaning to something that actually has no significance. There's something about that, for me that is getting at the tension of Mercury and Pisces, as well as answering to no purpose, almost that we lose the potential to lose the plot to lose the storyline to lose the mental sense of control over things, for better or worse, could be a way of thinking about mercury in Pisces. But let's break down the word significant because we're talking about we're just adding in, you know, in to the beginning, significant, as an adjective having a meaning from Latin, significare to make known or to indicate, also, often having a special or secret meaning hence important. So insignificant could mean unimportant. Or it could mean that it's without meaning. Or it could mean that whereas to, to signify would mean to make known that insignificant in a sense is that you're not known or that you're not recognised or something isn't made known. I feel insignificant. What does it mean when we say that in one way it means I feel unknown. I feel unindicated. I'm not standing in life as the indication of something that other people appreciate or validate.

20:27
It's a funny thing, how our lives are all like planets and symbols themselves. Because the way that I live my life, the things that I do, they mean something, they stand for something to someone who watches my channel, or someone who takes my classes or something like that I represent something in their mind and in their world and in, you know, in their reality. And, you know, isn't it true that sometimes we have to, I've seen memes floating around, they're like, I'm not responsible for you the ideas that you have about me, in your head, you know, it's kind of like this. People assign significance to things all the time. And there's a weird way in which when Mercury goes into Pisces we can give significance to things that really don't matter. Or we can find the things that we thought matter really don't matter intellectually there can be this releasing, or we can feel insignificant our thoughts and ideas can feel too many to grasp too subtle to understand. We can feel the need to make ourselves obscure, to drift into states of contemplation and to become a little bit more almost like a contemplative artistic reverie of the mind rather than controlling things. So if significant means to make known or to indicate there's a weird way in which Mercury in Pisces can make known or, or indicate things incorrectly, or through fantasy or projections that aren't really valid. It can also stand for things that aren't known or that become insignificant or lost somehow. The word signify if you go down to the actual verb means to be a sign of to indicate or to mean to make signs to show by signs to point out to express to signify to foreshadow or to portend. So what do we call planets? We call them signifiers. It's interesting that when Mercury goes into Pisces, there's this way in which, when you think of the word insignificant, that we're unable to read the signs, we're unable to see them clearly.

23:00
It's harder when you're in, let's say you go to a spa. Or let's say you're in some kind of tropical location or on a vacation somewhere. You lose track of time when you're in Venus's exaltation. Jupiter's double bodied water sign, you know, when you're swimming with the fishes, there's a way in which you lose track of things. And when you lose track of things, it's easy to forget, oh, I have to go I there's something in the oven or like there's, there's somewhere I need to be, oh my gosh, the time has flown. So we can lose track of our signposts when Mercury enters Pisces because Mercury is the planet of hermeneutics of interpretation of reading the signs, and following them, Mercury is the psychopomp. And when it gets into Pisces, there's this way in which the mind can be loosened. That can be a very positive thing, but we can also lose track of the signs, forget them. In fact, in the Silver Chair, speaking of my Narnia fixation lately, reading them to my daughter. In the Silver Chair, one of the big themes is that as Lance says, watch for the signs, watch for something that is significant, don't lose track, because when you get down there to Narnia, the air will be thicker and you'll have a tendency to forget the signs. These are my signs. Don't forget them because they're showing you the way. Mercury and Pisces in the exaltation of Venus that in some ways, the worst thing that happens is you know, we've been sipping so many cosmic margaritas, whatever they might be that we forget to watch for the signs or we confuse the signs or misread them or give meaning to them that isn't there. That happens when you're in the smoke and mirrors and mist of this kind of glorious, sensual Venusian paradise. That's Venus Neptune territory in Pisces.

25:10
So I wanted to mention all of that, because I think that that word is really important. But I also want to talk about that word and what it's meant to me lately and why, you know, it's been on my mind a lot as there's been so many planets in Pisces. What I've noticed, is in, in New Age communities in in general, which I'm a part of, so I'm not trying to hate on anyone, but this is just something I've noticed is that there's almost like a conspiracy of meaning. Which means that people sometimes walk around like almost looking for signs. And I mean, I do this too, so I'm not trying to rip on it. But you know, it's like, oh, my gosh, the clock is at this number. And I've seen it so many times recently. And I just saw this number here, or, that's a bad example, because, you know, I do that too. So I'm not trying to rip on it. But there's a way in which we walk around everyday just constantly looking for meaning as though reality is just sort of all we were always looking for signs, you know what I mean? And we become like a little bit, a little paranoid about it. There are signs to be seen. So I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't be watching for them, or that they don't speak through things like clocks or whatever. But we often try to make meaning is my point because we think that there is none. And there's a big difference. You can tell that a person, there's an underlying anxiety when people are constantly looking for and trying to make meaning out of everything.

26:44
And this has come up in my prayer life a number of times in my life, and it's just this idea that there's really no, there's also no need to make meaning or to look forward or to go finding it because reality is overflowing with it. And not just one meaning but multiple meanings. Insignificance is such a blessing at times, because it allows us to calm the mind and allow meaning to come and present itself to us not just one but multiple meanings and let meaning speak as it wishes to. But when I can look at a sign or a message coming to me and say, you know, in a sense, this is insignificant. It's not that I'm saying that it doesn't mean something or doesn't say something. It's that I'm starting to look at life like it's just one symphonic orchestration of different signs calling out like birds in a jungle, there's just so many of them. And what I'm trying to say is there can be this anxiety about trying to follow signs. And then almost the best way to remember when and how to follow signs is to also let many things pass, we have to be able to walk around in a reality that's always speaking to us being like, reality just always speaks the reality is overflowing with meaning and messengers and signs all the time. And when my mind starts to think, this is significant, this is significant. This is significant. All of this is so significant. It's that exact time where I need to let the signs not mean anything, when I start to grasp and cling at to significance. I'm losing my ability to be already exactly where I need to be, you know, we get paranoid about following the signs. And this thing has secret, an amazing meaning esoteric truth, and I gotta follow it and all this and, and there are adventures in life that work because of that kind of experience.

29:04
I'm just in the space where sometimes I have to go. It's insignificant. There's just so many signs and meanings and I don't dismiss them in a cold or a hard way. It's just you just let things pass. And then you start to notice when you let more things pass and you just say look, reality is teeming with signification with significance. It's just teeming with it. That you start to realise your own. You know, you start to realise that I'm significant, the more that you allow yourself to let things pass and let things be insignificant. The more you realise that you are a centre of significance that needs no other significance to be happy. When there's a constant search for meaning in other words, we will start clinging to things that we will later find out we're meaningless but only because there's just so much meaning that we have to let go of the idea that any one thing matters more than anything else. What gives us the ability to do that is the recognition that I myself am assigned giver, I myself am a soul with intrinsic meaning that it needs no justification. There's no mission, I have to complete. I could if I want to, but there's not there's no imperative here. And that frees something up, it doesn't shut down significance, it doesn't shut down a following of the signs or reading of the signs. But it allows me to remember who it is that's reading them and following them and that this is happening for the sake of love and joy, not because there's a shortage of meaning that I have to go create something through. Anyway, I know that this is a little esoteric, but one time I was in an ayahuasca ceremony, and I had it was a pretty profound was pretty early on maybe like 10 or 15 ceremonies into say, 100 that I did. And what I realised because you're you're being bombarded an ayahuasca concerned as many people who have drank Ayahuasca know, you're being bombarded by so many thoughts, so many visions, so many signs, there is so much significance, it feels like you're being eaten alive by a jungle of signs, meanings, visions, significance, patterns, and it literally just feels like you're being devoured by them, like this huge, you know, cosmic creature is just taking you into its belly and the belly is just one endless fractal of meaning and significance.

31:40
And what I think is interesting about this is that I was having that kind of an experience, where it was so beautiful, so meaningful, so patterned, that it was actually terrifying. Because there was, there was so much of it, that there was no longer anything more linear for me to hold on to or for me to construct an ego or a narrative around. I had no centre to relate to it from the centre was everywhere, you know. So I realised that the only way to hold on was to let go, my mind simply could not process the amount of meaning and order and beauty that was coming at me. And ironically, trying to do so was the thing giving me stress. And so I had to go, there's just so much beauty and meaning, I can't hold it, I can't circumscribe it with my mind, I have to let go. The only way to hold on was to let go, weird. The only way to stop the mental turbulence was to let many things pass even beautiful things even ordered, intelligent patterned things, I had to let them pass. We think that a centre is held together by meaning that we create and construct like a second almost like a supercomputer, full of all these narratives. But what I learned in this particular ceremony was that a centre is not held together by meaning a centre is who I am. A centre is who I am, the fact that I'm having these experiences that I'm witnessing all of this, that's that's who I am in the most basic, fundamental way. That can't change it can't be added to or subtracted to, from its eternal, its unborn, its undying, it can't increase its value or decrease its value. It's just me, like that saying, you know, from the Bible, I am who I am is just, I'm just me. And it was through this ceremony that I took up meditation because I had this realisation as I was sitting and learning to let my mind go and just be myself and not try to follow the signs follow the significance down this endless rabbit hole of significance, beauty and meaning. That was actually terrifying. It was so overwhelming if I tried to make sense of it. This is when I realised you know that a lot of the times what we do when we're going around looking for meaning is like this conspiracy of meaning and it's actually coming from the space of doubting that there is any and that's how I had been living anyway. So I realised meditation is just remembering the space that I'm in right now. I'm meditating right now, holy crap, that's what meditation is. I'm sitting, I'm breathing. And I'm letting all of this like a Niagara Falls of visionary significance. Right? And I'm just I'm having to just let it pass.

34:43
What I also noticed in the ceremony was that love flowered right out of the centre of that, my experience. As I let things more and more things pass. Suddenly I realised that there was something in me that was capable of appreciating everything while holding on to nothing And I realised that that was love. And I feel like that was one of the first almost like glimpses of God that I ever had that, that this is the centre that is everyone and is at the centre of everyone. This is the centre of every atom, the soul of every soul. And that this was this divinity permeating everything. The soul, I realised, well what is the soul, I found that ceremony, I remember feeling that the soul was this meeting ground for all of these different rasas, these these different interactions of meaning and tensions of meaning and patterns of meaning and there's no shortage of it. And that my soul is here to allow them to play out in a particular way, that those are those are shaped by different kinds of interests I have, different tastes that I have for experience in the world. And it's helped me everyday sense to have a meditation practice so that I can let go of my mind's attempt to be the one following the signs and constructing meaning because I'm so scared of insignificance. And being insignificant, feeling insignificant, allowing things even as beautiful or interesting as they are to be insignificant to let things pass. It's made me a patient, I think more humble than I was anyway, kinder, gentler person.

36:32
And daily meditation has been the way that I've done that. So it's a good time, Mercury and Pisces to take up a meditation practice, look at the relationship between your mind and how it tends to grab or hold things to try to create meaning. And there's no shortage of it, there's no need to do that. And actually, when we let go of trying to grasp control with the mind and give significance to things and follow all these, choose your own adventure novels and like that we let go, we let go of that. And suddenly, we also allow meanings to be multiple and to speak to us and to take on more agency in life. It's amazing how much more interesting life can be when we don't grasp and cling to meaning all the time, when we just say there's plenty of it, I'm going to just have an ongoing relationship with it. But in order to let the relationship evolve, you have to be very careful not to just assign or grasp for a meaning but let the signs continue to speak. And in order to do that, you have to let a number of encounters be insignificant. Meaning you don't grasp or try to impress them with some particular kind of value. Just let things keep letting things pass and then things keep speaking. And relationships evolve. It's almost like if you're out on a date with someone, you know, you don't get out a list of 10 things that you know, let's as an interview, like how much money do you make, what do you do blah, blah, blah. And then I've assigned meaning and significance to all of this in a hierarchy of meaning and significance, because I fear that there won't be any if I don't do this, and I have to know right away because if I don't, then I could get hurt later. And like that, and the person feels objectified. It's so funny that life is teeming with meaning. And yet if we try to cling to any of it, we objectify it. There's a great essay by James Hillman called the snake is not a symbol. And he talks a lot about respecting the things that come in your dreams as living spirits and images and allowing them to speak and develop relationships rather than trying to interpret them. I think these are some of the hidden blessings of Mercury in Pisces. So that's why I'm talking about this today, you can lose the meaning you can lose the plot, you can lose significance, and that might be the best thing possible. Be careful that you don't lose track of time are the signs you need to follow that are a part of your Dharma in the world. Your responsibility to be a good parent or worker or family member or whatever. But don't hate yourself if you need to lose the plot a little bit too. Losing touch of our intelligence due to Central influences, assigning things meaning that aren't really meaningful, or being almost paranoid about meaning, allowing things to pass to pass over me. So that's what I wanted to say today. I hope that you found this useful. It feels it felt like the best thing to talk about as Mercury is going into Pisces. So it's a little mind bending that I'm playing mercury in Pisces. So tell me about your experience with Mercury in Pisces. I'd love to hear about it in the chat box and I hope you guys have a great day to day take it easy. Bye.