Uh Oh! Mercury is in Rough Shape This Week!

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today, we're going to talk about the fact that Mercury is about to get a little messed up. Mercury is combust about to go into Pisces, where Mercury is both in detriment, and it's fall. It is going into the bounds of Venus in the exultation of Venus which is a natural, planetary and archetypal contrary for Mercury. So we're gonna be looking at all of this and getting a sense of what to expect over the next week or so.

As soon as Mercury enters Pisces, it'll be headed toward the synodic reset; the conjunction with the Sun also happens right on Saturn. So, yeah, we've got some choppy waters from Mercury, and I want us to understand why. Understand what themes are likely to come about as a result of what Mercury is about to go through and, you know, be prepared for it and also know what the positive potential is in all of this as well because the light and dark are always there, right?

So anyway, as always, before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe; we'd love to hear from you. When you press the like button, you can tap the like button; you can do the river dance on it. Someone put that one, and I thought that was great; someone smashed avocado on their toast on the like button. Your creative contributions for how you may engage or depress the like button are welcome. So thanks for sharing all your creative ways of helping the channel to grow and before we get into it, as always, again, you can find a transcript of today's talk or any of my talks on the website nightlightastrology.com

Right now, I'm going to take you over there because we have a monthly webinar for March that's coming up, and you can participate and register for it now. Go to the Live Events page on nightlightastrology.com, and our Pluto event went over nicely. So we are preparing now for a March 14 webinar from seven to 9pm Eastern Time on the outer planets in our relationships part two, which is Neptune in Love.

We're gonna talk about Neptune's significations in the birth chart when it gets engaged with the topic of love, marriage, and sex relationships; we're going to talk about how Neptune shows up in transits to affect the same significations and topics. How do we deal with this? What kinds of things is Neptune trying to do to help us grow? Also, what do you know? What are the pitfalls? What can you avoid? How can you shift your relationship with Neptune when it's showing up around love and relationships so that you don't spill out? Then, in April, we'll also be doing one on Uranus in Love.

So these are for beginners, these are for people of any level, and the topic is specific enough that if you're a more advanced student, you should get something really good out of this. But it's accessible enough that if you're a total beginner, this should be a very accessible talk as well.

So, anyway, you can register there, and if you cannot make it live after the event, a live recording will be emailed to you to download to your device. So anyway, hope to see some of you there. Get the registration train rolling for that one after our first event here, which was really cool.

Now, let us go into the topic of the day, though. I thought it'd be fun to title this. Uh, Oh, Mercury. What are you doing? Uh, Oh, Mercury. So, let's put the real-time clock up on the screen so that we can point out exactly the problems that Mercury is facing this week.

What I want you to notice is right here, this little conflagration, so as the week goes on, we are going to see that by Friday, February 23, Mercury will enter Pisces. It's really between Thursday and Friday that it happens. The 22nd and 23rd. Once that happens, Mercury is now has been combust. But some people will quibble about whether combustion applies across sign boundaries or not. Whatever. Whatever.

Then Mercury will continue moving closer to the Sun, which means that Mercury is in the process of dying and being reborn in its synoptic cycle with the Sun. But now Mercury is not only combust, Mercury is also in detriment and fall in the bounds of Venus, which is a natural planetary opposite in the exultation of Venus a natural planetary opposite and the conjunction that comes along, which is our cazimi moment where Mercury is reborn and sort of, you know, kind of empowered in that rebirthing. Well, that is a very unique signature that we have coming up around the end of the month. This is February 28, and you'll see that we have the triple conjunction between Mercury, Saturn, and the Sun, which means that Mercury and Saturn are both cazimi at the exact same time.

Now Mercury's encounter with Saturn in a conjunction on its own well debilitated not wonderful. Not so great. That cazimi empowers this moment, and that could be. I've never seen anything quite like that. So I have to be honest and say, I'm going to learn from this one; I'm going to see what happens more than I'm going to tell you what happens to just being honest. But I have some ideas, and I can see how if it goes, well, there are certain themes that I imagined might be associated with this sort of double cazimi moment, and if it goes poorly, and you know, for some people, it might go one way, and for some of the other, I can also imagine what themes might be involved. So we're going to talk about that today, as well.

The one thing that's kind of positive about this that I'll be throwing into the mix today is that right is this triple conjunction happens between Sun, Mercury, and Saturn by the end of the month, Mercury is also starting to engage with Jupiter who is in the bound of Mercury in Taurus. So you get a little bit of a form of mutual reception because Mercury will also be in Jupiter's sign. So you have a sign exchange, a dignity exchange that gives a mutual reception between Mercury and Jupiter, right as all of this is finishing. So, a little bit of reason to be hopeful or optimistic if this all looks a little, you know, difficult. Anyway, so now let's review these five things and go into a little bit more detail with each of them.

Uh-Oh, Mercury, number one, the combustion? Well, as soon as that's already at work, like if you just back it up to the beginning of this week. You know, as soon as Mercury comes to within about eight degrees of the Sun, it's considered combust. Within 15, it disappears under the rays of the Sun and becomes invisible.

At that point, Mercury is thought to be entering the underworld, where it begins its transformation from Morningstar to Eveningstar, or vice versa when it's retrograde. So now we have Mercury leaving its morning star position and starting to transform back into the Evening Star position and that happens by Mercury first disappearing.

Mercury does that as soon as it's within about 15 degrees of the Sun. Within eight, it's getting burned up, which means that Mercury as a planet representing so many different things, house topics in a chart, if it's in a natal chart or in the sky just loosely, you want in a mundane level all of the significations that Mercury represents from the mind and speech and communication, and so forth.

Now Mercury, as the messenger, is also taking us through a death and rebirth process all of the time that subtly shifts our perceptions or mind or mood or understanding of things. Because we're always rapidly transforming, and Mercury's one of the planets along with the moon that represents the most frequent kind of flow of the river, you know, the most dynamic level of fluid change that's happening around us.

Sometimes, it's hard to notice because it's so constant, and it's sort of subtle. But Mercury's transformations tend to step up big time when it gets to within that eight degrees of the Sun because Mercury is then sort of dying, and that can sometimes be a little intense that combustion can represent a period where things are falling apart, breaking down just like the body does at the end of life.

I think recently, you guys know who watch my channel, I lost our family dog of 11 years, and you know, the last couple of weeks, I had a sense just watching her that this might be really serious. It doesn't look like just another stomach bug. She was deteriorating, she was dying, she was ready to let go of this mortal frame, you know, she was ready to release.

Mercury is doing that symbolically right now, and so when Mercury does that, whether it's thoughts or ideas, or communication, or strategies or plans, or some area in life where we have a working order of things and an understanding of things, and that order and understanding is deteriorating, and it doesn't have to be the world's biggest thing. Most of the time. It's very mundane; it's very subtle even to notice these Mercury dynamics unless it's in a very dynamic place in your chart at the same time. But it does get a little bit more noticeable when Mercury is debilitated by sign, and the combustion is happening, which is why you may notice that in addition to combustion, Mercury, again number two here is badly debilitated, and that can lead to problems.

Now, what kind of problems when Mercury's badly debilitated in the double-bodied water sign? Well, this has to do with the fact that not only is it badly debilitated by sign, which can then bring forth more problems for Mercury's breakdown of more noticeable visible things. Now, for most of us, that's going to be plans, thoughts, moods, feelings, especially moods and feelings when Mercury's in a double-bodied water sign because it's the very watery place for Mercury.

So the mind and emotional connection are very strong, and we may notice that it's just harder to hold shit together emotionally and mentally, and so you just notice that things feel like they're just overwhelming or falling apart a little bit in various areas. There's a kind of chaos that starts coming in. That's going to be one of the most common ways of understanding Mercury's combustion and debilitation.

But then, to get a little bit more specific, we have Mercury in the bound of Venus and in the exultation of Venus in Pisces, and ancient astrologers explained that the dichotomy between Virgo and Pisces was in part explainable due to the opposites of Mercury and Venus.

Mercury, and its domicile and exultation in Virgo, where Venus is in her fall. Remember, the first bound of Virgo is also Mercury's bound. The first bound of Pisces is also Venus's bound, where she's also exalted. So they explained this opposition between the two sides in terms of the sensual domain of Venus being a natural opposite on an archetypal level to the mental and rational and sort of particular, organized, practical level of Mercury in an earth sign.

So when we're thinking about Mercury entering Pisces and being debilitated, and being combust, one of the ways we can make that more practically understandable is to say, look, the emotional, may overwhelm, you know, the rational and so forth and the sensual, the romantic, the dreamy, the mystical, the sentimental, there's nothing wrong with any of these things are not better or worse than the rational, but when the stalwart ruler of the philosophical mind of Mercury, you know, enters this domain, yeah, things can fall apart in a very particular way, one that tends to pit the rational and the sensual against one another.

So you just think about it broadly, like that's kind of characterizing what type of meltdown you might notice or you might be moving through, and many of us have tools to move through that. We have meditation, or we have a therapist, or we have good friends or a partner, and some of us have fewer resources or who might be in the process of building them, in which case, it's important to sort of double down on the things that help you to, I don't know, not stay in control, but just to move and with grace and flexibility through, you know, these kinds of waters.

Number four is the cazimi with Saturn that comes up. So, if we fast forward this a little bit, you're going to notice that right here. So we have the cazimi with Saturn, which is February 28. Now, the reason this could be difficult is because when you put all of these together, first of all, Mercury in this position with Saturn in this position, becomes very melancholic.

Melancholic can be contemplative and sort of mystical and a little distant and romantic and even artistic. So there's nothing wrong with that, and you might find that all of this is leading to some kind of real deepening, emotionally, romantically, imaginatively, and that can be fantastic.

That's the upside of this, as far as I can tell; this divine overwhelm is the kind that often comes with real creative transmissions or real deepening of our emotional sensitivities and maturity and things like that.

On the other hand, you know, this triple conjunction with Saturn could lead to a moment of feeling very overwhelmed. Like there's just, you know when it rains, it pours kind of thing, or there's overwhelm or grief or loss or despair or loss of faith or doubt, or kind of a dark night of the soul motif, and some people are going to experience that more acutely and that's just being honest, the death and rebirth of Saturn and Mercury simultaneously with a badly debilitated Mercury is sort of like, Eyeore, I mean, it just, it can be a little bit, it might be a little bit like that.

Anyway, so as not to be like doom and gloom. But there are different ways of reading this cazimi moment. Again, another thought that comes to mind is just this is a great moment of emotional depth and, sophistication, and maturity. We're seeing things that are not easily seen, we're seeing through the veil, we're getting in touch with subtle realizations that can help us tremendously grow and mature in both intelligence and emotion. So, if there's an upside, I think it's emotional intelligence in the kind of artistic and romantic sensibility that's being born through some, maybe some trying moments of overwhelm.

Okay, then we also at the very end, that kind of nice thing about this is at the very end, Mercury goes through with a kind of mutual reception through domicile and bound Mercury will sextile Jupiter in Taurus, which we know is by the way, going through receiving the squares from Venus and Mars. So the idea behind the moon cycle that we started off talking about earlier this month and Aquarius has to do with the kind of blueprints that are being provided to the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction coming up as, like, you know, these otherworldly Aquarian blueprints of new high minded ideas of what the potential if something is where something could be in contrast to where it was or is and Jupiter in Taurus is trying to build something beautiful and sustainable in relation to these new images and ideas, kind of the blueprints on the table again.

Well, Mercury coming through all of this having gone through, you know, a little bit of turbulence emotionally, mentally, the blending of the sensual and the rational that you know, shaking it up in a bottle and saying, okay, you know, like, we need equal parts rationality and sensuality. Well, that could be in service to exactly what Aquarius and Taurus are trying to do together cooperatively, which also is a marriage, as we've said many times this month, of the mind and the body or the rational and sensual.

So Mercury, Saturn, Sun, all triple conjunct, while Mercury is going into a little sextile with Jupiter, could actually be aiding in the development of something ideal that we're trying to create through that kind of, you know, little mini-season of chaos around the exact same themes of mental rational, sensual and embodied energies kind of tangling with one another in a complicated way and yet, at the end, Mercury sextiles, Jupiter and perhaps takes what it learns and puts it into the developmental process that Jupiter is trying to bring forth as it heads toward the conjunction with Uranus.

So anyway, I know that that might be a little galaxy brain. But listen, the main thing is to understand that Mercury's process does lead to some kind of themes of redemption, or returning hope or faith or clarifying something by the end, and that's the rebirth of Mercury that's coming forth.

Remember that Mercury, after it emerges as the Evening Star, is going to blast into Aries, where we then have eclipses. We have an eclipse on April 8, right before Jupiter and Uranus get together. So you know, what Mercury is going through is leading to a very, very cardinal month of April where it turns retrograde in Aries and where we have so much explosive energy of initiating things, as well as the breakthroughs of Jupiter Uranus. So this little moment of overwhelm is serving in a larger process for sure.
Anyway, themes to take away from all of this, I'll just resynthesize some of them.

Boundaries and communication is probably really important. This can be a little fluid, and boundary lists can lack grounding or appropriate care or concern for boundaries around work, or people are going to watch for gossip or oversharing, and so forth.

Number two would be emotionality, grief, romance, sort of melancholic stuff, overwhelming the rational mind, which may need to happen; maybe it's not something to try to control.

Number three is the inability to think or see clearly, just feeling like you're in a bit of a, you know, kind of walking through the fog a little bit, but just trusting the process, right? Don't try to control it mentally. Just flow your way through it.

Number four, sensuality dominating the mind in general, especially with, you know, the Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Jupiter in Taurus, from Aquarius, it's like, they just be careful that you're not getting overwhelmed by urges and desires that are so emotional, so sensual, so desire oriented, and so idealistic, that we're not being clear and discerning in our thinking.

Number five would be, you know, returning to hope and releasing and surrendering as themes that can help build us in grow us. Because Mercury may have to let go. Mercury, the mind may have to sort of just let go and trust and surrender to something bigger that comes in and is kind of overwhelming.

So anyway, these are some of the themes that I see in the sky for the next couple of weeks here as Mercury goes through this big process, and it'd be good to talk about it now before we're right in the mix of it and people are like, I can't even make sense of what you're saying.

So anyway, I would love to hear from you guys and hear how you work through this as we go through it. If you have any stories to share, use the hashtag grabbed named the transit, tell us your story in the comment section, or email us your story to grabbed@nightlightastrology.com.

I do have a storytelling episode in the queue. But the transit has been so busy to start the year, and I've told you guys this a few times. I'm just waiting for the right moment to insert it when there's a bit of a lull in normal transit action. So I think that it's going to be probably in the next couple of weeks that we find something like that, but it's busy, busy right now with the sky. It's a strong start to the year, too. Anyway, that's it for today. Hope you guys are doing well. Talk to you again soon. Bye