The Biggest Week of the Year for Mercury — 5 Things to Watch For

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

Happy Monday, Everyone. I think this might be the biggest week of the year for Mercury. Mercury is going through an opposition to Saturn, in opposition to Neptune, trines to Uranus and Pluto, all within the span of a couple of days. And then after that transition, Mercury becomes the ruler of a solar eclipse that's happening at the end of the week.

So I'm going to map all of that out for you today. We'll of course be looking at it as the week goes on. I'll give you some horoscopes for the mutable signs to start this week, but we will have more horoscopes later in the week. Also tell you what's on my altar today. So lots of good stuff here.

I'll give you five things to watch for, for this major sequence that Mercury is going through, and we'll sort of map it out big picture today. So anyway, that's our agenda for today. Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. To like and subscribe. It helps us grow tremendously.

When you give us that thumbs up, drop a comment, join the channel as a subscriber, community member. All of that really does support us quite a bit. You can find transcripts of any of my daily talks on the website, Nightlight Astrology.com.

And when you go over there, a couple of promotions that I want to run by you. I'm realizing that I need to pull up my website here. First of all, I will say that our year one program that begins again in November, we have two cohorts every year. The November cohort is now open for enrollment.

So if you go to courses, click on first year course, I will be telling you more about the course as the week goes on. So it starts on November 8. This is our first year course in ancient Hellenistic astrology. You want to study with us in a fantastic webinar based program.

Everything's recorded for you so you can attend live or follow along at your own pace. We go through a full year of study together, lots of amazing content, live clients, live readings, and the early bird rate is now open as well. We also have need based tuition.

There will be an informational video that I will start running either later this week or next, at the end of every day's content. If you want to stick around and learn more about the program, there'll be some information there for you so you can learn about it and see if it's a right, good fit for you or not.

The other things that I want to turn you on to: go to the immersive retreat. We're taking a retreat for a brand new training program on divinatory astrology called The Oracle Within next June. The early bird rate lasts until the first week in October. So check that out.

Also, live talks this month. I'm giving a talk on Mercury's Many Faces. This is a first in a series of talks I'm giving on pairing the planets. And if you've never learned this, don't sleep on this series, because this is all about the philosophical first principles, or the archetypes of the planets from the ancient Greek philosophical perspective.

Pairing the planets as first principles is how you generate all of the lists. And this will teach you how to pair planets in your own birth chart or in charts if you're reading for other people. So really, really, I can't encourage... if you've never learned planetary pairings from the ancient perspective, check this out.

The first one will be on Mercury this month. If you can't attend any of these live, you always get the recording afterward. And then finally, in person, I want to turn you on to a Fall Equinox gathering that we're hosting. This is free, coming up on Saturday, September 21, here in Minneapolis.

If you're in the area and you want to come hang out with us, we're going to have some meditation on the equinox, a time to have some movement and meditation in a group, and some communion, or community time communion as well, I guess, with cookies and tea afterward.

This is free to attend, just RSVP so we know you're coming. So that's all the news here, and more on all of those things as the week goes on. Okay, so on that note, let's take a look at the sequence of events that's happening this week.

It really is a major week for Mercury. I do think it is the biggest week of the year for Mercury. Of course, that's subjective, but I'll tell you why I think that's the case. So we start off here on the 16th, Monday, and I want to walk you through the transitions of Mercury throughout the week.

So it's really getting started on Wednesday of this week. The build up is occurring between now and then. So you could be feeling any of this to start the week, but you'll really notice it on Wednesday when Mercury opposes Saturn. This is the beginning of Mercury's major sequence.

So we get Mercury in Virgo opposing Saturn in Pisces, and that is coming just days before an eclipse that will also oppose Saturn. There's a kind of echo during the eclipse of the recent opposition from Mercury to Saturn that will be present in the eclipse while Mercury is still ruling the eclipse.

On the 18th, the very next day, Mercury will then go through an opposition with Neptune as Mercury crosses into Libra. Mercury will oppose Neptune in the sign of Aries. So that opposition to Neptune occurs the very next day.

So we have opposition to Saturn followed by opposition to Neptune, and they're in different signs, so they're going to have a slightly different feel to those two oppositions. The very next day, on the 19th, this is Friday of this week, we will then see Mercury go through the trines to Uranus and Pluto.

And this is early in the morning, Thursday into Friday, 18th into the 19th, that the trines from Mercury to Pluto and Uranus will occur. Now one other little tidbit. We're going to cover this later in the week. On the 20th, actually, another sneaky little aspect this week, Mercury ruled as well, with Mercury and Venus in mutual reception now.

Because Mercury will be in Libra, which is Venus's sign, while Venus has moved into Virgo, which is Mercury's sign, Venus will square Uranus. So we have a Venus Uranus square that is taking place by Saturday, September 21, with Venus and Mercury in a mutual reception, and Mercury ruling both Venus and Uranus as they square, having just completed this major sequence of events.

As if that's not enough, right? Huge week, right? And then on the 22nd, Sunday, to close out the week, we get a solar eclipse in Virgo with the south node, and that solar eclipse is happening almost exactly opposite to Saturn.

The opposition from the Sun to Saturn will pass just prior to the actual eclipse, but there it is. So this is one of the bigger weeks of our year. Eclipse week is always a big week in terms of some of the more significant astrological symbolism that we see in the sky.

But the fact that it's host Mercury, the host where it's at, what it's doing, the host of an eclipse is always really important, okay? And the fact that it's going through so much this week should really give us pause.

We should really be looking at this as an interconnected sequence of events. So given that Mercury is going to oppose Saturn, then Neptune, trine Uranus and Pluto, what ways can we think about that? So I've got five things for you to watch for.

After I do this, I'll tell you what angular houses are getting hit for which signs by the eclipse in Virgo. And again, we'll do horoscopes more later in the week. I'll tell you what's on my altar as well for this week.

So here are five things to watch for, given this overall sequence that Mercury is going through. Keep in mind that all of these are meant to capture something of the totality of the sequence, including Mercury's very interesting rulership over the solar eclipse.

Number one on my list would be facing and overcoming. You could think about it in both ways, cognitive, intellectual or technical limits. The reason for this is that Mercury in Virgo, a very strong placement, is running up against oppositions to Saturn and Neptune that may for Mercury come up as some kind of mental, cognitive, intellectual facing of a limit or something that opposes or blocks.

Oppositions are often experienced like that, or that's one way that we can describe what a planet, if we could put ourselves in the position of the planet and the archetype that it represents, what does it feel like when it goes through an opposition to another planet?

It will often feel as though it is facing something that opposes it, and for Mercury opposite Saturn, that could be various mental, intellectual, communicative, technological limitations. Now, the limiting factor is often part of a creative process.

This is important because all oppositions are of the nature of Saturn and all oppositions create a kind of binary or tension that can actually be very creative. In fact, in Greek philosophy that was underlying the way that ancient mystics thought about oppositions and polarization between things.

They believed that the tension of opposites, although it could be potentially destructive, could also be creative. So we may be facing some kind of limit that feels destructive and limiting, and that maybe tears down something that you've been building, or temporarily prohibits, delays, blocks, restricts something, and that something would be mercurial.

So that's why we think of mental, cognitive, intellectual, technological, communicative kinds of things, feeling limited, blocked or stifled. However, the tension of the opposites can also create an opportunity for creativity, innovation, problem solving, and so, especially given that right after these oppositions occur, there are trines to Uranus and Pluto in an airy kind of grand air trine that gets created between Mercury in Libra, Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius.

That grand air trine coming right off the oppositions could suggest that where there's an initial block, like oppositions creating the potential for innovation or creativity, that we find some innovative solution or some work around for whatever initial limit we face.

So this would be one way of thinking about it, where there are blocks and limitations, there comes an opening for innovation and problem solving and new ideas that can carry us beyond the temporary or initial feeling of prohibition or limitation that we experience.

Alright. Number two, articulating non ordinary states of consciousness. One of the interesting things that happens when you put Saturn and Neptune together, because they're just a couple degrees apart, even though they're across the sign boundary, especially outer planets, don't always really care so much about sign boundaries compared to the way we think about planets in the traditional Hellenistic way.

Anyway. The point is that when those two planets, when something like Mercury runs through an opposition to Saturn and Neptune, and they are conjoined, we might be talking about the mind's challenge. Let's call it a challenge of articulating, conveying, cognizing, communicating, understanding something that is not ordinary, like a mystical state of consciousness, for example.

How do you put into words some of the things that you realize or see or intuit or understand in deeper states of prayer or meditation? For 1000s of years, that's been the work of poets, or that's been the work of contemplatives and mystics to try to convey something non ordinary, or artists to try to convey feelings that are often very complicated.

And if you were to describe them in normal intellectual language, that things might seem unclear or contradictory or incoherent. And so sometimes it takes music or poetry, or it takes the paradoxes of mysticism. A Zen koan, for example, will often capture something of the essence of a Mercury opposite Saturn dilemma, or Mercury opposite Saturn Neptune kind of dilemma.

It's as though we are sometimes required to adopt a different form of consciousness, the kind of consciousness that thinks in terms of riddles and paradoxes. Yeah, might sound a little weird, but it's true. Like things that are not... they feel somehow like they're beyond ordinary logic.

I would say, for example, that one of the hardest things to do for astrologers is to capture or convey what astrology is. And one of the things I'm very passionate about is saying that, look, it's not a science, it's not a... it's not a testable kind of thing, not in any normal empirical sense.

Until we do more to understand the entire epistemology of the planets, divinatory traditions in a much broader, more comprehensive manner, we're not going to get close to trying to understand what astrology is, or certainly not to test it right? So this is the kind of thing that may show up where things that are not irrational, but they're not traditionally rational, either, may have to... they may need to speak.

They may need to be given voice. This is the same thing when you know you have a week where dreams are speaking, and there's maybe a number of synchronicities occurring, and you have to be with the right kind of people to convey those things without feeling like it's exhausting, and you feel misunderstood.

Like if you're with the wrong people, and you try to convey a week of dreams, omens and symbols flashing all around you, popping like popcorn. It's just one of those weeks like you. It's very uncomfortable if you're not with the right people to try and talk about those things.

And so some of those struggles and challenges, as well as the joy and thrill of being, the mind being in touch with a non ordinary form of knowing or communicating. Alright? Well, number three, for me, is a difficult shift of perception prompted by difficult messages or communication.

Look, sometimes we get feedback, we get a message, we have a conversation, and that conversation challenges us to think differently, to speak differently, to perceive something in a way that we weren't perceiving it. And so one blessing of this will be the way that our mind is opened because of a piece of information that comes our way, a message that we receive, a piece of news, an insight, you know, just like even like a piece of gossip we receive.

Oh, did you hear about this? Oh, whoa. So having to adjust our thinking, our mind, our paradigm, our perceptual reality, to accommodate for news or information that is surprising and that is not in line with our habits of thought or perception.

So I would watch for that this week, this opportunity, perhaps, and if it's not happening in you, there's nothing wrong. You may notice it happening in the life of a co worker, or you may notice it happening, I mean, you know it. Keep your eyes open for how this may be appearing in the lives of people around you, or even in the ideas that you're entertaining about something that may seem very mundane, like how you're going about a work project.

There could just be a difficult but necessary encounter with something that you... you know you have to think about it differently, and it's very mundane. So a lot of times we miss these things, because the way we convey them as astrologers makes you feel like you're supposed to have these earth shattering revelations.

And sometimes it's just the subtle little shifts within some area of life that to us on the outset, that on the outside, it feels mundane. It's not like feeling like a particularly spiritual part of our lives, right? But this is how we spiritualize those parts of our lives, by bringing subtle, little perceptions like these of patterns into them.

Number four would be flooding, forgiving, surrendering, trusting, accepting. When the mind of Mercury is flooded by Saturn Neptune in an opposition and then opened to the vastness of Pluto in Aquarius or the quicksilver other mindedness of Uranus in Gemini, you have to think... this is a week where the rational mind may feel overwhelmed, flooded, and may be asked to do something very difficult, like set aside the accounting books where we weigh and balance and discern and discriminate and sort of forgive, surrender, trust, accept.

That's not easy for the rational mind. It's like, that's not its job, and yet we're asking it somehow to take on a different role. I think of it like this: when, you know, and I'm in the process of parenting, there are moments where I need to model, you know, healthy decision making, and, you know, rationality, like, here's how to think through this.

Here's how to make a choice and think, weigh the different factors involved in how you're doing something. And then there are times where, and any parent knows this, you have to, even though there's an opportunity for teaching some in a moment about being more rational, thinking through things more, you need to let big feelings exist.

You need to just let your kids feel whatever they're feeling. We need to do that for ourselves sometimes too. Could this be an opportunity to actually become smarter, more interesting, and, you know, more innovative in our thinking, because we started with allowing ourselves to feel and then let the thinking follow the feeling, as opposed to the other way around, where we try to mediate or direct how we ought to feel based on something that's sort of preemptively rational.

I could see it flipping in this situation. Now, the other thing we could say, in general, is just the tension between the rational and the emotional, the sort of other worldly, intuitive, synchronistic, acausal, quantum mechanical, you know, the synchronicities and something a little bit more discerning.

You know, there's... I always joke that I don't... I always, I've never been like, oh, the clock's at 11:11, kind of person. Like, I don't know. It's just not, I mean, if it, if people around me are that way, it's never like, bothered me. But I just don't, yeah, I don't look for like numbers on clocks, for example, other synchronicity, sure, but I've just never been like a number on a clock kind of person.

And it, sometimes it, I'll be with people. And because I've been with a lot of you know, mystical personalities over a lot of years doing this, a lot of people who are interested in mysticism. I can always feel the difference in my body.

I can always feel the difference when I'm with someone who it feels like... I don't know if any of these are really signs that I think you might just be addicted to noticing patterns, and that, to me, is distinctly different from being with someone who points out a sign.

I can feel it even though I'm not a number person. I swear to God, I'll be with someone they'll notice a number somewhere, and it will feel distinctly different from someone who feels like they're white knuckled, constantly looking for numbers. I'm being a little cynical, but my point is that there's... there may be tension in general this week between almost like a confirmation bias and... like we in divinatory mystical traditions have to be very careful with the fact that there is something like confirmation bias at the exact same time that there actually is something like an oracle speaking and knowing.

The difference really comes down to: Okay, is this thing speaking? Like I saw a crow on my walk back, you know, and it landed right in front of me. Okay, great. Now let's really feel into this. Is this speaking? Okay? It is, wow.

And then it comes up in a dream. And then maybe, little by little, I have a feeling of something that it has said. Right? Whereas sometimes on a walk, the crow lands, and, you know, I go, is it saying something? No, it's not okay.

That was it was nice to see a crow, though, you know what I mean. So how can we pair that kind of discerning, rational, listening, space holding but like discerning quality amidst the reality that's also teeming with magic, you know what I mean?

Like the two things don't have to be opposed. They can complement one another. And so, you know, one of the things that I... I was taught by some of my teachers, some of the... I would cite, for example, the time that I got to spend with Geoffrey Cornelius, who wrote The Moment of Astrology, one of the greatest books in modern astrology, in my opinion, talking about, you know, what is astrology, just kind of making the case that it's always been a different way of knowing.

It's always been a form of divination. Well, within that paradigm, you don't just throw out logos. You don't throw out Hermes, who is, by the way, associated with logos, the word, the reason, the understanding, the intelligence, the logic, the intelligibility, that can be articulated.

You know, it's intelligence. Well, if nature is intelligent, right, then we also have to bring intelligence to bear on how we interact with the nature of the cosmos. So you can't just throw Hermes out for the sake of being mystical and intuitive.

But at the same time, you lean on Hermes too much. It's all craft, it's all technique, it's all logic, it's all rationality. And you know that that's typically where astrologers then bite on some stupid temptation, why don't you give us a test that we can use to test astrology, to test astrologers.

And we go, Yes, I can come up with a good test, because this is totally rational. You know it's like that almost always fails and makes us look bad because we're leaning too much on Mercury and not recognizing that the Logos is usually in service of an oracle that is speaking.

And so trying to capture that in tests never works for this exact same reason. But anyway, this conversation is all emblematic of the tensions between Hermes Mercury and Neptune Saturn this week. So but think about the opportunity to allow for flooding, forgiving, surrendering, trusting, accepting as an option this week, in addition to trying to control everything mentally, rationally.

Number five would be a learning that leads to an eclipsing. This is the way, I guess, that we could summarize all of it, which is just to say, hey, there might be a sense that this entire sequence is leading to a very powerful genesis, or new beginning.

At the end of the week, we have a solar eclipse opposite that same Saturn, opposite that same Neptune, and that solar eclipse is ruled by Mercury, who just went through it all. So what does that mean? Well, I would say that this, what we learn and see from this archetypal combination this week is part and parcel of the planting of a new synodic cycle from the sun and moon that is not just a regular lunar cycle, but one that sets the tone for nine years, for 18 years, 18 to 19, right?

The full length of a nodal cycle. These solar eclipses that occur during, you know, the portion of the year when the new moons form around the north or south node. They are like a new moon that has a gravitas that will spread out through many, many years of our life.

Sometimes that's very subtly. Sometimes it's in big, huge ways. Often depends on kind of where, where it's happening in your chart, what it's touching, and what other transits are happening, and so forth. But even for someone who doesn't have a particularly active eclipse right now in their chart, this is still something that has the power to speak and tell a story over a much longer period of time in our life.

So the point is that all of these sequences that we're going through this week from Mercury are going to have a direct impact on the seed of the new moon, solar eclipse, which opens new doors, starts new beginnings.

So it's a... it's the starting point of a new karmic cycle in life. That's that's the gist of it. What we learn, what we open ourselves to, what we let go of on the level of mind or cognition or perception, what we allow of a paradigm of thought or intellect to be changed or open, what we accept and allow to come in emotionally, the impact that we allow events and people to have on us, not just mentally, but emotionally this week.

At the same time, the stretches that we try to make, intellectually, paradigmatically, perceptually, all of those things can lend themselves to a very deep and maybe a fruitful new beginning of some kind. We're going to look at what that might entail later in the week, when we study this upcoming eclipse.

We're going to do some horoscopes for it. Of course, we'll have all the things, but today, just prepping for the eclipse, knowing that the sequence of Mercury is going right into the seeds of the new cycle.

So that is it for our like, kind of the formal content today. I want to do a few more things, starting with, let me... I'm going to put the eclipse up on the screen, and I just want to demo for you guys.

So these are the... oh, you know what? Let's go like this. So these are your... I'm going to do some brief horoscopic reminders for the double bodied or mutable signs. The eclipse is falling in an angular house if you are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces rising.

Let's just briefly review what that might mean. These are the most powerful houses being activated this week in the eclipse for the mutable signs. So if you're a Gemini, this new cycle is taking place in the fourth house of home and family roots, the private or interior sphere of life, family, karma, ancestors, land, living environment.

Those are the kinds of things you want to keep in mind for the solar eclipse coming up. Now, if I rotate this forward, next mutable sign angular is going to be Virgo rising. You're getting this in your first house.

Identity, health, body, the physical nature, psychological nature, themes like individuation, individuality, getting a clearer, deeper sense of who I am, feeling good and healthy about who I am, taking care of my body, mind and health, getting down to more of the core features that make me me.

This eclipse can really lend itself to those things, but sometimes there has to be like a separating of what's real from what's not, and also who we are in relation to other people will be a real part of this for Virgos.

Then we go to Sagittarius. Sagittarians, you get this eclipse in your 10th house, career, vocation. You get this in the place that connects you to the world, to your work, to the hustle and grind of earning a living and developing a reputation, developing skills and mastery, maybe the workplace environment in general, or whatever connects you to the civic society in which you live, even if you're retired.

Finally, for Pisceans, this is going to land in that seventh house. And the eclipse in the seventh for you will be about shifts and changes in relationships, in the give and take of pleasure, in intimacy, in things that are reaching some place of finality or conclusion.

This is the place of the setting sun, and also anything that has to do with the interpersonal mirroring others provide us with, which is an important part of our relationships. We're here to enjoy people, to love people, to connect, to bond, but also other people provide us with deep insight about who we are and who we aren't.

So those are just reminders for the double bodied signs. Like I said, we'll do horoscopes on the eclipse for all signs later in the week. You guys know, on Mondays, I like to cover whatever signs are receiving the transits in the angular positions.

I'm going to show you what's on my altar to wrap things up. So let me just shift my camera's view. So right here you will see that there is a bunny on my altar. This is kind of a sad story, but my daughter, for her birthday, we decided we would foster a bunny.

And she has the Moon in Pisces in her chart, and she got that... a lunar eclipse happened to fall on her Moon in Pisces. And the foster bunny that we adopted unfortunately passed, and this was really my young daughter's first experience of loss.

There was a lot of, let's call it learning, you know, death and mortality, and there was a lot of pain for, you know, a little seven year old to lose a bunny, and to feel also like, you know, did I do something wrong?

You know, was this? Was this my fault, that I let the bunny down? And, you know, we, we've had a unique, challenging, unique parenting challenge in front of us to say, well, you know, let's reflect on this. What could we have done better?

There were, I think there are some things, although I do not believe it was her fault or our fault, but you know, it's like, let's reflect on it. Let's learn from what happened, and let's also surrender and trust and accept that it... you know, things happen as they do for reasons that are hard to understand.

Death is natural. Death, you know, it's just like, it's, it's just like a tough situation. So I have the bunny on my altar this week, just as a way of keeping my daughter and the loss of this little pet present this week, you know, really asking for guidance so that I can be a positive presence for my daughter as she's kind of having her first experience of loss.

To me, this is a natural, easy thing to do if you have an altar. If you don't have an altar, I highly recommend developing an altar practice, because it's just so simple. This is a week for me where I can connect everything I'm doing to a process that's happening in my life that I'm trying to hold space for, you know, as a parent.

And every week, it's a little bit different, you know, but you can always find interesting ways of connecting what you're living through in life to your connection with divinity, you know, just like, hey, help me stay connected here.

So that's what's on my altar this week. And next week we have, I mean, as the week goes on, excuse me, there's just going to be a ton of content. We're going to be unpacking some of this with Mercury, really looking at the solar eclipse coming up in Virgo, looking at that Venus Uranus square that's coming up from Virgo to Gemini.

Like this is a packed week, huge week for Mercury. So hopefully we've at least started off on the right foot. And like I said, later in the week, there will be an informational video about the year one course that'll be tagged on or either that or next week.

So we'll see when I get that made. But don't forget, the Fall Equinox event coming up in Minneapolis. Would love to see you here. Come out and meditate with us. Come out, hang, have some community time. Set some intentions for the fall.

I think this will be a really nice way of doing things. Don't forget my Mercury talk this month as well. Hope to see you guys soon, and we'll be back again tomorrow. Bye.