Astrology: Two Steps Forward

A post by Jane Lewis

As the Sun enters Gemini there is an exact conjunction with Mercury in retrograde motion, set to go back into Taurus in the first week of June. Fast-moving planets like Mercury spend shorter spells retrograde relative to the slower planets, and the effects of such periods can be easily seen in everyday life. 

Yesterday, we might have had letters going astray in the post, whereas today it’s more likely to be telecoms or computer problems, or even gossipy tweets: who said what to whom and why, and was it defamation?

On the day of Mercury’s first station on 10^th May the media buzzed with excitement over the impending fun it would surely have (and the newspapers it would sell) as it reported on the so-called ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial which began on that very same day. 

No doubt about it, Mercury retrograde in Gemini was going to have a whale of a time! The ‘little boy’ was truly in his element: getting up to his old tricks, causing mischief by setting friends at loggerheads, and giving the public oodles of fun with nods, winks and chipolata-puns! 

Perfectly timed for the holiday season to divert nation’s cares away from pandemic/war/cost-of-living worries, Mercury was providing a modern-media, end-of-the-pier type show complete with a cast of a pair of boys and a pair of girls. 

If only life were straight forward and progress could be made smoothly without hitch! Seen heliocentrically, i.e. from the view point of the Sun, planets don’t go retrograde, but from our lower vantage point down here on earth they appear to do so. 

This reflects our situation as earthlings for we don’t see things as they really are, rather the purpose of our earthly incarnations is to school us in this fact and teach us to see things as the Sun does, in other words, from our higher sun-Self.

Irritating as they are, Mercury retrograde nuisances serve a useful purpose provided we learn the lessons they contain.  

Whilst many such events are relatively trivial and quickly rectified, they nevertheless have deeper meaning as they externalise some inner process of our mind, attitudes or behaviours that are in need of change.  

Mercury retrograde periods provide windows of opportunity to review and re-assess things in order to make sure we are really on the right track to reach our desired destination and achieve our ultimate goal. 

They stop us from blithely carrying on in ways that are actually taking us down blind alleyways. They make us pause and look back at what we’ve done, force us to check if we’ve got things right, spot mistakes and rectify them before it’s too late. 

And what of Agatha Christie herself, what would she think about it all? Mercury is very strong in her horoscope, ruling as it does her Virgo Sun and ascendant, as to be expected for such a prolific writer: Sun, ascendant, Saturn all in Virgo, grand trine in air signs: Moon, Jupiter, Neptune-Pluto along with moon’s north node forming 10^thhouse Gemini stellium. 

The Wagatha Christie pun was first coined by journalist Dan Atkinson, aptly referring to himself as the Jester, who made his Tweet at 11.16am on 9^th October 2019.  

Going viral within minutes it set the nation quite a-titter. Curiously, a quick glance at transits to Agatha Christie’s chart at that moment shows its strings to have been posthumously struck, which suggests she might have appreciated the pun: transiting Mercury was conjunct her Venus, transiting Sun conjunct her Mercury, transiting MC con her Sun, tr AS opposition her MC, tr Moon opposition her AS, tr Mars opposite her Moon. 

When all’s done and dusted by the end of the trial we’ll have had the opportunity to ask ourselves some serious questions about social media as a communications tool and whether or not “that’s the way to do it!”