Category: mercury

2024, astrology, jupiter, mercury, retrograde, taurus, uranus

Jupiter & Uranus in Taurus – Out with the Old!

Karena

I have been reading so much about the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction that is coming later this week. Astrologers are going a little crazy over it, and I will be honest – I am going crazy too! After a lot of heavy energy, starting with the Saturn/Pluto/Jupiter/Mars conjunctions that kicked off the pandemic through the frightfully long Saturn/Uranus square that basically continued for a year and a half, we are all feeling ready for some “easier” times! In some ways, the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction will deliver on this, but it likely won’t be the one-stop-shop solution to all of life’s problems that we may be hoping it is.

Just so that we get the facts down first: This conjunction is exact on Saturday, 4/20, around 7pm PT. This occurs while Mercury is still retrograde and just after the Sun also moves into Taurus (just in time for the “lucky” fireworks caused by this conjunction)!

Every person will feel this conjunction pretty intensely, but it will feel especially life-altering for those with planets around 21 degrees of the fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius).

Uranus

Uranus heightens our sense of rebellion against anything in our lives that doesn’t resonate with us. It is extremely difficult to conform to the status quo and “do what we’re told” when Uranus gets involved.

However, breaking out of the status quo can be incredibly scary and destabilizing! Our job, partner, living location, etc may not be working well for us, but at least it is a known! Uranus asks us to burn everything down and rebuild. Burning down the part that isn’t working feels intensely satisfying, but when that dust clears, we are left with nothing. Not something that works for us, and not something that doesn’t. It is up to us to rebuild!

Because of this, I view Uranus transits as positive in the long term – they keep us from staying stuck! And generally the changes they provoke are necessarily ones. However, in the short-term they can feel very destabilizing. Yes, we got rid of the stuck feeling, but now we have nothing at all!

Jupiter

This is where Jupiter really shines and makes this conjunction significantly more “short term positive” than Uranus transits are by themselves. Historically viewed as the greater benefic planet, Jupiter won’t let us stay paralyzed by fear after the Uranus explosion. Jupiter gives us the optimism and the “luck” to land on our feet and to start rebuilding immediately.

However, as is always true with planetary alignments, there is no perfect silver bullet. There are always challenges to overcome with even the most “positive feeling” aspect. In this case, if we don’t do deep enough work with Uranus to understand exactly what is causing a lack of resonance in our lives, we may wind up rebelling against the wrong thing.

For example, imagine a person who hates their boss. They use this Uranus energy to tell their boss off and quit their job. Only when they quit their job do they realize that the things they hated about their boss weren’t unique to that individual person; they were side effects of the industry itself. Now the individual, rather than feeling liberated from their boss, faces the choice to get a similar job in a similar field working for a similar boss, or they have to change careers entirely. They didn’t do their Uranus work first to understand exactly what they were rebelling against, and projected their problems onto a specific person rather than correctly identifying their industry as the problem.

The caution for Jupiter is: don’t be blindly optimistic! Jupiter may make us feel like we have the world by the tail. We may tell ourselves that if we quit our non-resonant job, we can quickly be making a huge salary starting our own business. We neglect to inject reality into the situation. Starting a business is incredibly time-consuming and typically takes a long time to become profitable. If we rashly quit a job without a full plan and instead rely on Jupiter’s “luck” and optimism to get our salary back quickly, we may be disappointed.

Retrograde Mercury

Both the shadow sides of Uranus and Jupiter are especially worth considering for this conjunction, because Mercury is retrograde during this time. Whenever Mercury is retrograde, it is more important to double check what we are doing. Unless we double check now, we are likely to have to revisit later!

Retrograde Mercury makes it more likely that we will quit our job in a blaze of glory on Friday afternoon, realize over the weekend that starting a new business is more difficult than we thought, and then sheepishly ask to “un-quit” our job the following Monday. Retrograde Mercury encourages us to measure twice and cut once. If we methodically think through (Mercury) our urge to make changes (Uranus), and carefully consider the alternatives we want to pursue (Jupiter), we are well on our way to using this conjunction well! In its best form, if our souls have wandered off of our best path, this conjunction is about making much-needed, likely scary pivots in our life back toward our authentic path. In its worth form, this conjunction is about blowing things up in our lives and then belatedly wondering if we put the dynamite on the correct target.

I am so excited for this conjunction, and I can tell that other astrologers are too. Let’s just all make sure we make the most of this and don’t view it as a free pass that banishes our difficulties and showers us with abundance. As with every astrological event, we will get out of this conjunction what we put into it. Put in thoughtful, meditative, soul-level consideration, and you are likely to create changes in your life that will reverberate in the best way for years or decades. This may be a time you refer back to as an incredibly important turning point in your life.

Discounted reading

Unlike some other astrological events, this is an event where it actually is very important to understand what house it is in in your chart and how it impacts you specifically. There is a big difference between big changes in your career vs your love life vs your family! I am giving a 10% discount on all astrology and tarot readings purchased before the end of April to help people navigate this energy more effectively. If you want to take advantage of this, please use the code Jupiter2024 at checkout!

Photo by Alain Bonnardeaux on Unsplash

2024, astrology, capricorn, mars, mercury, retrograde

January 2024 – Undirected Speed

Karena

One of the things that is the most interesting to me about Mercury is its ephemeral (dare I say, “Mercurial”?) nature. It indicates matters related to travel, to messages, and to communication. Where people are concerned, it refers to a certain “magician” quality which makes someone a problem solver, a person who understands complex situations, and even a trickster (someone who understands a situation so deeply that they can prank it).

The core signification to me of Mercury is a sense of going from “here” to “there”. That could be physical (as with travel), it could be philosophical (in the way that communication helps us to arrive at different conclusions by gaining outside input), or it could be mental (in the way that messages notify us that something has occurred – like a bill being due!).

Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system (we are not counting the Moon as a planet in this case, since it is a satellite of Earth rather than a planet fully in its own right). But Mercury zips around the Sun every 88 days. That is a lot faster than our Earth year of ~365 days!

The thing Mercury hates more than anything is standing still. Stagnation. Not moving from “here” to “there” and instead moving “nowhere”!

Mercury moves most slowly around the time of its retrograde motion (there is a good reason why, but that is a topic for a different blog post and is focused on astronomy, not astrology!). Because Mercury was recently retrograde in December and early January, it has been moving more slowly than usual. As a result, rather than catching up with Mars in Capricorn and quickly overtaking it, they have been moving together for the past week or so and will continue to move together for the following week until Mercury starts picking up speed. This means Mercury and Mars are spending more time close to each other than usual. Against the backdrop of Pluto moving from Capricorn to Aquarius (see last month’s blog post), what does this extended Mercury/Mars co-mingling of energy look like?

Mars wants to “go”! A great catch-phrase for Mars would be the Nike slogan “Just do it!” (Interestingly, Nike was founded as Blue Ribbon Sports when Mars was conjunct the Sun in early Aquarius, and Mars was again in early Aquarius, this time Trine the Sun, when its name changed to Nike. Clearly Nike’s history is very intertwined with Mars in Aquarius!)

Mercury and Mars both agree on their desire to move! However, the manner of the movement is very different. Mars says “GO, GO, GO!”. Mercury says “Create a plan, and then execute it!” It can be difficult for Mars to be patient while Mercury comes up with a plan, and likewise, it can be difficult for Mercury to come up with a plan while Mars is breathing down its proverbial neck.

This results in a kind of frenzied energy to move but a struggle to figure out which direction to move in. Without Mercury there, we would feel passionate about moving and not worry too much about which direction we were headed in. But Mercury will feel stressed if there is too much happening without a plan. The best travel, communication, and notifications typically happen when there is some form of planning in place. Most of us don’t quickly type gibberish into an email, click “Send”, and expect something good to happen.

This is the energy of January – feeling torn between a desire to move instantly, but at the same time wishing we had time to get a clear plan in place first! One thing worth calling out is that Mars is exalted in Capricorn, meaning that it does good work there. Earthy Capricorn inherently lends some structure and discipline to Mars’ rash energy. So it’s possible that Mercury and Capricorn will help slow Mars down until we have a solid plan in place. However, it seems more likely that we will have just enough of a heads up of oncoming craziness to brace ourselves for the impact, but not enough of a heads up to actually make a proactive plan. If you have thoughts on how this energy has been playing out in your life, please feel free to add a comment! It’s definitely a dynamic energy to start the year!

Photo by Oscar Sutton on Unsplash