Mercury Squaring Jupiter with a Strange Mutual Reception

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/]. Today we're going to take a look at Mercury in the sign of Pisces making a square to Jupiter in the sign of Gemini. This is a pretty quick-moving square, but it is really significant because Mercury is invisible, slowly emerging from combustion to show itself as an evening star, and the two planets have a form of mutual reception.

Again, you may remember back to the end of the 2024 calendar year, Mercury and Jupiter were opposite each other and in each other's signs, but also both in detriment. They are now, again, both in their detriment. Mercury is also in its fall and exchanging signs through mutual reception. This is a bizarre thing to happen several times in a row, right? This is due to the fact, of course, that Jupiter is in its detriment. And so during this period of time, while Jupiter is in Gemini, we have these really interesting conversations that are taking place between Mercury and Jupiter.

So that's what we're going to break down today. And I'm going to give you five things to watch for given this exchange between the two planets. So that's our agenda for today. Remember, you haven't yet to like and subscribe. It really helps us grow our work and the channel. Deeply appreciate it. And of course, we have a goal on this channel to try to get ourselves to 80,000 subscribers on the channel. We're setting little milestones for ourselves to try to achieve as the year goes on. We're close to 75 right now, so we're getting there. And just much appreciated to everyone who's helping our community grow.

You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, which is Nightlightastrology.com, and I'm going to take you over there right now because there is a webinar coming up tomorrow night that you can join if you would like to. So go over to Nightlightastrology.com, click on the events page, click on live talks, and you will see "Venus through the Fire: Unpacking the Mysteries and Magic of Venus Retrograde." That's tomorrow night, February 20, from 7 to 9 PM Eastern via webinar. When you register, you'll get the link to join, and if you can't make it, you get the recording, audio or video, to watch on your own time. So if you can't make it live, there's always that option with all of our events.

And I hope to see some of you there for this talk on Venus Retrogrades. We're going to look at every little facet of Venus's retrograde, which will help you identify which phase Venus was in when you were born, and give you a little extra insight on the placement of Venus in your birth chart, and also prepare you for things like this upcoming Venus Retrograde that we have in March in the sign of Aries.

Okay, so on that note, let's turn our attention to the real-time clock, and let's take a look at what's happening today. So here we are, February 19, and you can see Mercury about eight degrees away from the Sun in Pisces, moving into the square with Jupiter in the sign of Gemini. We're now within three degrees. That's the engagement range. So if I move this forward to tomorrow, February 20, you're going to see that it's at that time that Mercury will square Jupiter. So this is a transit that's building today and tomorrow, and if I give it a little bit of time beyond that, then we're going to see the three-degree engagement range fully separate by Saturday. So you get a couple of days' worth of this transit, and you were in the early stage of it yesterday even.

I want to show you something else that's going to happen. This is an important little detail that we're going to keep in here as we look at this transit. So here are the two planets in isolation, and actually, I need to add the Sun back in for this to make sense. Let's do that. There we go. So the two planets are squaring one another, and then what I want to draw your attention to is what starts taking place when the two planets are about 15 degrees apart, on the 28th of February. So just eight days after this square that's taking place tomorrow, on the 28th, we'll see Mercury crossing that 15-degree threshold, which is a symbolic and average number of degrees under which the planet combusts. The Sun will typically make a visible appearance again. So that 15 degrees is an astronomical average that ancient astrologers used to understand when the phasal dynamic would shift, and Mercury will appear from invisibility back into the evening sky as an evening star.

So the reason that I mentioned that is because, when we consider this from the standpoint of today, the square is being made as Mercury, within the next week or so, is preparing to emerge from invisibility and make a phasis, which is a facial appearance. So that facial appearance was considered a very significant part of Mercury's cycle. Now that is going to play a role in a number of the delineations that I have to make today, and you'll now understand why, and I'll refer back to that a little bit. But anyway, let me just adjust this really quick. Here I had one little slide that wasn't—you had a typo in it, so let me just fix that. Yeah. So anyway, here's five things to watch for given this interesting exchange.

Jupiter is in the sign of its exile or detriment. Mercury is in the sign of both its exile and its fall. The two are squaring one another, so they're in each other's signs. So that's mutual reception through debility, plus a square, which can be a little contentious, creative, but action-oriented, and a little bit stressful. So given all of that, we have some really interesting possibilities to watch for on an archetypal level. Of course, these are taking place in double-bodied signs, which are transitional spaces. They also reflect the relationship between air and water, which are elemental, but also part of the yin and yang of the elemental language. So there's a lot to take into consideration, but let's try to boil it down into some basic takeaways.

Number one would be that something invisible or incoherent becomes visible or coherent. The reason I say this is because Mercury is a planet that likes to take things apart, especially when it turns retrograde. Right now, as it is emerging from the combustion of the Sun and coming into the Evening Star position, it is more about building coherence out of a process that has been deconstructive, that has been maybe stressful or even a little chaotic. That's what the combustion phases of Mercury's cycle are often like. Mercury emerging from that phase while squaring Jupiter, a planet that likes to build consensus, likes to build unity, likes to build cohesion, likes to build understanding and wisdom. Mercury is very analytical, likes to take things apart and understand all of the little pieces. But the two really are two sides of the same coin. This is why they are in their detriments, in each other's sign. Mercury likes to take things apart, but put it into a sign of Jupiter, where things tend to be put together cohesively, and it's a little bit stressful. It's like telling someone who's naturally skeptical that they suddenly have to be a believer, you know, or someone who's naturally a believer that you need to develop your analytical, skeptical capacity. It's a very kind of oversimplified way of explaining it, but this is why the two planets get stressed out when they're in each other's signs. It doesn't mean that they're bad or good. We're just talking about an archetypal tension that places the planet in an environment that is somewhat foreign to its own nature.

So now we have these two planets working together in each other's signs, while Mercury is emerging from invisibility and Jupiter's just turning direct. That can mean that we're taking something that's been unseen, unconscious, invisible, and making it visible as well as coherent, and we're developing some kind of more sophisticated understanding, or even developing a certain kind of maturity from an unconscious space or something that's been in a process of questioning, like there's been a big question mark around something, and now maybe we're starting to come to something like an answer or a clear understanding. So one way of thinking about this is, again, Mercury will be emerging in the next week into its visibility, is that this connection is starting to make something unseen or invisible, more tangible, more visible, more understandable. So watch for that, because it can be subtle. It could be something that you're understanding about your health or within a relationship or within yourself psychologically, or something at work or something in a project you're working on.

Number two is secret or hidden communication or deals being made. The thing is, is that when two planets get together in mutual reception, they are often exchanging things. That's one symbolic way of understanding mutual reception is that the two planets are doing something cooperatively. So when you think about that, you think about cooperation, deal-making, whether it's emotional or financial, or it's something in business, or it's romance or it's sexual, there's an exchange, and that exchange could be somewhat secretive right now or happening behind the scenes, but will shortly become visible. It's another way of playing with that theme of Mercury emerging into its visibility in the next week. So watch for things that deals that are being made, agreements that are being reached, exchanges that are being agreed upon, or the development of some kind of trade or exchange of values, goods, services, energy, etc., that might be in the process of being developed or cultivated right now, and you might see it become more tangible in the weeks ahead.

Three would be emotional and rational qualities working together. Look, put it really simply, just call this water and air, working together cooperatively. Despite their differences, one might be really rational and mental and logical and sort of organizational practical, a little bit more like that with Mercury. And on the other hand, we have a... uh, excuse me, a little bit more like that, with the sign of Pisces, a watery sign. And then we have Gemini, of course, the airy sign where things—or excuse me, I'm getting this all—I got this all backwards. I was talking about water to start with, or I was talking about air to start with, and then switched over to water. And you're thinking about things like instinct and emotion, that intuitive, empathic, compassionate, sensitive, romantic, imaginative, kind of quality with water. And so you put those two things together, and you get something like logic and romance, or you get something like sensuality and instinctiveness. What is my body's wisdom telling me versus what is a good, objective way of stepping outside of this situation and assessing it logically or practically. When those two qualities maybe a little bit stressfully, but when they come together nonetheless, they might provide us with some nice kind of emotional intelligence, or they might provide us with logic that is informed by the way people are feeling, or the feeling and subjective level of our reality that is just as important as the objective, rational level of the situation. So watch for a nice synthesis or combination of those qualities.

I will say that there is a shadow in this exchange that could have to do with people playing people, selectively using information or ideas or forms of communication or philosophy to persuade us of something, because they know what we will emotionally bite on. So the potential for a kind of emotional and intellectual form of deception or illusion would be there as well—manipulating information. It's like, you know, when you see someone saying, "Did you know that sodas are actually good for your heart?" or something like that, and you're like, "It's paid for by Coca-Cola," you know? So it's like, where's this information coming from? What are they trying to convince me of? What are they—how are they capitalizing on my emotions? So there may be some feeling of unclear boundaries, or is this real or not that has to be weighed through. On the other hand, enter a topic like spiritual or mystical science. I think about astrology. I think about acupuncture, Ayurveda, all these great systems that are often symbolic, herbal medicine, the doctrine of signatures. When you study something like astrology, the system of Hermes, you're developing a form of wisdom and understanding that's super hermetic. And the hermeneutic art of reading charts is one that is really kind of a blend of Mercury and Jupiter. So any kind of study or intellectual or philosophical or spiritual pursuit that has a kind of logos to it, but it's also mystical and represents a different kind of gnosis, a different way of knowing. I always like to tell people astrology as divination does not mean that it lacks logic. It means that the logic of something like astrology is of a different epistemological order. It's sort of a causal—it's like we need to think about the different kinds of truths and ways that we come to know truth occur. Divination works on the premise that reality is sentient and communicates through signs, omens, and symbols in non-direct, a-causal ways. That's a totally different—it's just a different epistemology, so non-ordinary or different ways of knowing or understanding, something like spiritual and mystical science could be a part of this.

Now, number five would be—and by the way, there are some pseudo-sciences, and obviously there's ways in which systems can take advantage of people, you know, so we do have to be on guard against, you know, something like a charlatan system of spiritual—just study this and give me a million dollars and something like that. Anyhow, I think the last one is a shift in understanding, a decision and insight or an idea that will gradually emerge. Just very basically, when these two planets come together, understanding of a complex situation with many facets and parts where blind belief would not be enough, but neither would complete rationality. There's some mixture of non-ordinary gnosis and basic fundamental thinking and logic have to come together, perhaps the shift in understanding, or maybe coming to a conclusion, reaching an important moment where you know you're going to have to make a certain choice or do something a certain way, a new insight or idea may gradually be emerging from this point forward, as two planets come together, Jupiter's just turned direct, Mercury is about to appear as an evening star. So these two planets working together may represent something that is in the process of shifting—a shift of understanding, a shift of intellect, a shift of belief. This, in some ways, plays back to the Jupiter-Saturn square that we were looking at at the end of the year, that can represent paradigmatic changes. Mercury, in this position, may be implementing, or starting to bring about some of those changes in more immediate ways, since the paradigmatic change may have been larger and more philosophical. Now Mercury involved in the square to Jupiter, with mutual reception, might see some of that practically starting to shift in the weeks ahead as Mercury again appears.

So these are all ways of working with the symbolism today. I hope that you find them useful, practical, easy to follow, and that you get some nuances about tracking Mercury and the invisibility and the visibility, if you like this kind of stuff. By the way, this is what we're going to be doing for every single phase of Venus's cycle on tomorrow night's webinar. So be sure you check that out on the website, Nightlightastrology.com, under the Live Events page. Hope to see some of you there, and we'll be back for more again tomorrow. Bye, everyone.