Brass Rings and Initiates
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The Happy Ending
There is a brass ring out there with your name on it. In your birth chart, we can locate it where the Moon’s North Node lies by house and in sign; your path to reach it is shown in the aspects to it from natal planets. But that path doesn’t follow a straight line. As the transiting Lunar Nodes trace their 18-year cycle through the zodiac, they offer instructions about how to find purpose and fulfillment on your journey right now. Following the transiting North Node is the best way to align your compass in the direction of your natal North Node brass ring.
With the North Node now in Gemini, the sign of the scribe – and especially as it’s conjoined by Mercury (May 27, 2020, 9:35 pm PDT) – you might try something I’ve enjoyed doing for years. I write a little story to myself about something that’s on my wishlist, as though it’s already happened and I’m a journalist who is reporting on it. And every day, I write it again, filling in more details. It feels a little silly, honestly; but more times than I can tell you, my story has come true, with amazing specificity.
Mercury leaves his home sign of Gemini this week, and just as he’s headed out the door he pauses to shake hands with the transiting North Node. “Over the past few weeks, I’ve been helping everyone write their stories,” says Mercury to the Lunar North Node in Gemini, “and now you’re here to help them write the happy ending.”
When you don’t speak at all
Let’s say you’ve spent a long, happy few weeks tramping through the countryside. You’ve thoroughly enjoyed meeting fellow travelers, telling stories, and enjoying the fresh air, camping under brilliant night skies.
But after three weeks, you’re tiring of the wind biting your face, of never seeing anyone familiar, of eating nuts and berries. One evening around dinner time, you find yourself walking past a cozy-looking cottage, the delicious smells of dinner wafting out of the window and the curl of wood smoke coming from the chimney. Someone calls from the backdoor and the family dog bounds inside. You hear the familiar sounds of children complaining about their baths and a tv murmuring. And all of the sudden, you’ve never wanted anything as much as you’ve wanted to be sitting in your own little home, with your own little family – secure and loved amongst people with whom you don’t need to say a word. You don’t have to make them laugh or entertain them with your stories. They love you even when you don’t speak at all.
That’s what Mercury wants as it leaves Gemini and enters Cancer (May 28, 2020, 11:09 am PDT).
Promises made
As a woman of a certain age, I occasionally get the urge to run away from home and completely reinvent myself. To start over in some place where I don’t know anyone. Change my name. Cut my hair. Find out who I’d be if I didn’t know who I am.
Our lives, it seems, are the sum total of thousands of little decisions about where to live and with whom, what to do for work, which organizations to serve, the friends we choose, possibly something about flossing. But what we remember during Venus’ retrograde times – especially during her weeks of invisibility, as she leaves the evening sky (May 28) to rendezvous with the Sun before reappearing in the morning sky (June 10) – is that the way our lives look on the outside is a reflection of the promises we’ve made to ourselves and whether or not we’ve kept them.
Over the next two weeks, run if you must… but run inward, and not away.
An examination of initiates
At this week’s First Quarter Moon (May 29, 2020, 8:30 pm PDT), the Sun and Moon each occupy one of the signs ruled by Mercury. The fact that they’re in a relationship of natural tension with each other tells the story of Mercury’s two faces. Gemini is the witty, charming linguist, the traveler, the trickster Mercury. The other is the businessperson, the shopkeeper or merchant. The Sun in Gemini shines with Mercury’s wit, charm, and love of wordplay and ideas; the Moon in Virgo longs to roll up its sleeves, rent a retail space, and make those ideas a reality.
The Sabian Symbol for the First Quarter Moon’s degree is Two heads looking out and beyond the shadows. Let’s call them the two heads, the two faces, of Mercury – the idea man and the businessman. And the Sun is on the ominous-sounding degree, An airplane falling. It might look to you now as though your ideas are likely to fail. Especially in business, you may doubt your viability in a time of extraordinary economic instability. But the two sides of Mercury are with you in the shadows, looking out toward a wide open sky. They know that you have what you need to succeed – both intelligence and practical ability. And they know that what looks like an airplane falling might be just another of Mercury’s tricks, like a stunt pilot only pretending to fall before he pulls the nose up at the last minute, to wild cheers.
At the First Quarter, both the Sun and Moon are in aspect to Mars in Pisces at 11.27 Pisces, on the Sabian symbol, An examination of initiates. As we move toward a critical six week period, with three eclipses and Venus retrograde, then Mercury – do you have the faith in yourself, and the compassion for others, to make something helpful out of your ideas?
Writing and collages © 2020 April Elliott Kent
Jen and I dig deep into all the week’s highlights
in our latest podcast episode,
27| The Amazing Disappearing Venus,
& Cancer’s “Flavor of the Day”
