Between the Visible and Invisible Worlds
Dates and times are given for U.S. Pacific Time zone.
Filling the Gap
There’s what’s beautiful in the physical world and what’s beautiful in the spiritual, imaginative realm. Venus, particularly in earthy Capricorn, has a connoisseur’s appreciation for what the world has to offer – a beautiful body, an exquisite wine, a world-class plate of food. But what satisfies the senses can occasionally leave us with a hunger that can’t quite be filled.
Enter Neptune, and the songs that only the soul can hear. What does the heart long for? What connects us with others at a level higher than physical satisfaction?
As Venus makes a sextile to Neptune (Dec. 28, 2022, 00:32 am PST), open your imagination to those songs – and ask what might most happily fill the gap between the pleasures of earth and the ecstasy of heaven.
Mercury’s Retreats
At the beginning of each calendar year, I plot my major projects and obligations for the next twelve months. But I nearly always forget to include Mercury’s retrograde periods, though I know they go more smoothly for me with a little planning.
Mercury stations retrograde this week (Dec. 29, 2022, 1:32 am PST, through Jan. 18, 2023). It’s not that we need to shut down and stop doing everything while Mercury appears to be backward in his orbit. But overscheduling and moving at a hectic pace is not even close to being the best use of Mercury’s retrograde times. Ideally, we’d schedule retreats during those three weeks, three or four times each year, the better to do retrograde Mercury’s best work: reflection, retooling, recalibration.
Maybe Mercury retrograde is best imagined as naptime. It’s when our brains thumb through all the bits of information we’ve been cramming into them for the past few months, categorize what’s useful, and delete what isn’t. Ideally, we would slow down during these times and let our brains do their work. It does take some planning ahead, though; so, put the next Mercury retrograde station (Apr. 21-May 14, 2023) on your calendar now, and make sure you mark out a little downtime then.
Rocket Fuel
As the calendar year draws to a close, a First Quarter Moon at 8°18′ Aries (Dec. 29, 2022, 5:20 pm PST) issues a very powerful and particular call to action. It’s on the Sabian symbol 9 Aries: A crystal gazer. This is the time of year we like to cast our gaze across the blank landscape of calendars and planners and imagine what they’ll be filled with by the end of the New Year.
Ruled by Mars, this is a First Quarter Moon that pushes us toward the most ambitious resolutions for the New Year. But Mars is still retrograde through Jan. 12; it’s probably most effective, for the first couple of weeks of 2023, to plan your campaign of action, the better to implement it at the next New Moon. Unearth all the goals you set to one side back in March (when there was a New Moon near this degree), brush them off, and see which ones still make sense to you. Pay particular attention to the ones that truly excite you; if you commit to those, they’ll provide the rocket fuel to propel you along your 2023 path.
Conception
There is a moment at the beginning of a new romance when you’re so besotted with the object of your desire that you can’t think of anything else, can’t eat, can’t sleep. Want nothing more than to crawl into their embrace and just stay there, luxuriating in their fragrance and nearness. It’s both ecstatic and overwhelming. This level of intensity doesn’t last forever, but it’s the almost narcotic infatuation that binds us together with another and seals our connection.
This is one example of the symbolism of Venus conjoined with Pluto (Dec. 31, 2022, 9:25 pm PST). It is a moment of potential conception – not literally, necessary, but perhaps the conception of a new partnership or creative concept. Unless the planets involved are connecting strongly with, or evoking something in your own chart (they come together at 27º39’ Capricorn), the focus of desire may not last longer than a few months. But if stronger influences are also present – if the time is right for you to give everything you have to a person or an idea – this is the moment, the planetary aspect, that can seal you together through whatever comes next.
Between the Visible and Invisible Worlds
New Year’s Day 2023 enters on a happy little sextile between Mercury and Neptune (10:44 pm). It sounds like an inconsequential aspect, and I can’t say I expect any lasting influence from it. But it offers us an opening to articulate our dreams and most noble aspirations, something many of us are looking for as a new calendar year gets underway.
Mercury in Capricorn deploys its plans and strategies like a great general. But what makes for a truly inspired leader? One can be effective using logic and pragmatism; but to be truly great at anything requires something extra, a connection between the visible and invisible worlds.
As Mercury, the planet of the rational, connects with Neptune, the planet of all we know beyond earth – there’s an opportunity to take your abilities to the next level. Even if you’re as good as humanly possible at something, there’s always a chance to become inhumanly good. But you can’t get there through logic alone. You’ll need to accept Neptune’s offer to tap into the universal and otherworldly – something more far-reaching than any individual’s mighty brain or small, earthbound consciousness.
Writing and collages © 2017-2022 April Elliott Kent
