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San
Diego Astrological Society Vice President's Column
I
must confess that I’ve learned to like Mercury
retrograde, a statement, I sense, that may leave
my predictive astrology friends shuddering. Sure,
I’ve also found it unsettling and have my share
of Mercury retrograde horror stories, complete with
concussion, and plans gone south. I have yet to
have a travel story equal to that of Lee Lehman’s.
During a Mercury retrograde period, she planned
her last year’s September trip to California.
Her plane took off the morning of September 11,
and we all know what happened after that. [Note:
All SDAS members know what happened, but others
may not. Lee was in the air when the planes hit
WTC and was grounded in Oklahoma City for longer
than she cared to be there and missed her presentation
to SDAS and the Orange County group.]
Yet
I have found Mercury retrograde to be one of the
greatest indicators of creative potential, something
we often overlook when we are redirected by botched
plans and blown circuits. And why shouldn’t
we overlook it? After all, who among us when riding
high on the crest of cosmic currents, when life’s
energies throb and pulse as one, who will decide
in that peak moment of wonderfulness to seek out
the dark, scary, unexplored corners of one’s
life. Who says, “God, what a great day! I’m
going to go see how I can hurt myself.” Damn
few, I tell you. Maybe Ascended Masters, but not
me. No, the wave breaks when we least expect it,
when we don’t want it to, and there we are,
splayed out flat on (or near) the shore with a mouth
full of wet grit trying to get a grip on the situation.
Creation is very messy.
We
don’t like Mercury retrograde because it often
changes things from the way we want them to be.
We don’t get our way, thank God. In preparing
to write this column I sat on the couch for about
an hour with my last century’s ephemeris (isn’t
that fun to say) and reviewed the transits and progression
of Mercury retrograde. I was surprised at the ultimately
friendly role it has played in my life. To cite
a few examples, when I was a child my parents made
a big decision during Mercury retrograde that many,
including me, would and did say was not a good decision,
but one of its outcomes was that of saving my life
(and that is a story for another time). While still
in college, during Mercury retrograde, I interviewed
for and accepted a job in Chicago that I would begin
immediately after graduation. I hated the job, but
it got me out of hometown USA and into the big city
to make contacts that would connect me to a very
creative and fulfilling career, a career I might
add that began when my progressed Mercury went retrograde.
Many
points in my life during which I made critical decisions
with profound, lasting impact were with Mercury
retrograde. In retrospect, some of those times it
seemed I was thrown off course so I could find a
new course, a better one for me. Other decisions
were the ones that allowed me to face inner fears,
climb new mountains, stare down demons. I have further
discovered that while there are some life choices
I have regretted, they are not the ones I made during
Mercury retrograde. I wouldn’t reverse one
of those. The only changes I would make would be
to do a better job of honoring the opportunities
given.
We
do Mercury disservice if we just look at him as
indicator of communications, mental functioning,
as Coyote or Trickster, and how he plays with our
lives when he dons his helmet of invisibility and
on winged sandals flies backwards in the heavens
and our lives. I have come to view him more and
more as the Lamp of the Mind, the great mediator
of the light from the One Source. The light comes
through us, not from us; but what we do with it
is ours.
We best see where Mercury’s lamp is shining
when we’ve been thrown to the edges of our
personal universes where the outer light is much
dimmer, if we but remember to look, and if we aren’t
too busy trying to get back to the vehicle we were
just thrown out of, or on the path now blocked to
us.
So
where is that lamp shining? I believe it always
illuminates a place we have never been or didn’t
have the self-knowledge before to recognize that
this is the direction wherein lies personal treasures.
This unwanted, unexpected destination is where the
Great Intelligence shines its rays of light through
the lamps of our minds for our benefit, for our
discernment. We don’t often walk away from
a Mercury retrograde that’s profoundly impacting
our charts with something we can stash in a bank
account. What we can and often do get is something
of such value that no one can ever take from us
regardless of what happens.
I
have come to look on Mercury retrograde much as
Robert Frost must have looked upon that famous fork
in the road in the yellow wood, the one in which
he chose the road less traveled. Frost didn’t
say whether or not Mercury was retrograde when he
pondered that critical woodland juncture. When one
reads his poem one doesn’t get the impression
that he chose that road because his car broke down,
or his laptop crashed so he didn’t get the
e-mail telling him where he should have been, or
his GPS device failed to function, or even that
he fell off a cliff once on that path. Maybe all
those things happened, but all that seems important
for him to tell us was that his choice made all
the difference. He didn’t tell us why. Perhaps,
because its value was deeply personal, an individually
sculpted constellation of experiences for his benefit.
That to me is the potential of Mercury retrograde.
As
a poet I have often puzzled over Frost’s choice
of why a “yellow” wood. We’ll never
know, not just because Frost is dead, but in life
when he was asked what he meant by a particular
line or phrase he penned, he would smile enigmatically,
shrug a little and say, “Oh, nothing.”
But I have my idea about it. I grew up in the woods,
and even in brief periods in autumn, yellow is not
a color one would normally apply to woods, although
it is a color often applied to light, particularly
the light of the Sun. The wood was yellow because
the lamp of his mind was brightly casting light
in front of him and he chose to follow it into the
new experience waiting for him. And so it should
be.
©
2002 Deborah Smith
Parker
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