It’s Great to Anticipate! Mercury Enters Aries.

After practicing the art of negative capability, Mercury, the planet of perception moves forward in Aries on Saturday, April 3rd.  Looking becomes forward looking.  A type of looking that generates excitement.  A perception that is fond of future and its yet-to-be contents.  When Mercury moves into Aries it becomes clear how great it is to anticipate. 

Numerous psychological studies performed in 2007 (professors, Leaf Van Boven and Laurence Ashworth) reported people feeling more intense feelings when contemplating future events than when reflecting on things that already happened.  Prospective holidays far outranked the levels of excitement and happiness than the reflected-upon past holidays, even the most satisfying ones. 

Anticipation underlies optimism and hope.  It provides momentum, and works wonders even in its most simple practices.  

To see through the eyes of the Ram is to see the future in lit-up pieces.

Plato saw vision as a a smooth and gentle outward-flowing fire that was emitted from the eye to fuse with ambient light and create a “body of vision.” Empedocles also believed this but added that the fire of the eye was lit by Venus herself.

While science agrees little with this theory of vision, psychologically there is something here. Venus, with her delights, “light” our visions of future events. There may in fact exist an outward-flow of fire when it comes to an important type of vision; the vision of looking forward, the fire of anticipation.

As Twin Peak’s special agent Dale Cooper muses, “It could be a new shirt at the men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot black coffee.”

Aries’ forward-fire is more alive when contemplating the future because it is only in the future that we can experience hope.  Jean Jacques-Rousseau said “anticipation and hope are natural born twins.”  The strength of the Ram is the strength of the Will, again connecting fire to future, as in “I will..”

Fire mixed with future is what nurtures the Japanese concept of “Ikigai (pronounced icky guy), which is seen to be a key to longevity. Ikigai translates most literally into “a reason to get out of bed every morning.”  It is a dynamic sense of well-being, one that hinges on a relationship to the immediate (and also faraway) future. 

The Sun and Venus have been relearning many active principles, and Mercury is the latest to join the springtime party.  The trickster looks forward to looking forward, and experiencing what Camus called “the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive.”

How will you ignite some anticipation in your life?

Mercury will anticipate in Aries until April 19th when it will embrace itself in Taurus.  

Happy anticipating and happy astro pondering!

Astro Art by Johnnie Day Durand.

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

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Weekly Astrology Metaphorcast 9/21-27, 2020

Sealed with a kiss, it is time to say goodbye to the summer.  Tuesday marks the first day of fall. The Sun goes into Libra the lover, with all the mystery of the other.  The equinox brings the phenomenon of equal day and night- will you try to stand an egg?  9:30 am is the official time for here in the  Eastern part of the US, if you care to give it a go.  Only during the equinox is the Earth’s axis not tilting toward or away from the Sun.  It is very bizarre to think of this only coming down to two moments of each passing year.  Egg or not it’s worth a pause of receptivity.  What will you notice during this rare World event?  Every other moment we stand upon a tilted Earth.  In her style of leaning, she blesses us with the Seasons!  In her spirit of duality she is leaning.  Instead of perfection there is a striving.

Fall has begun!  That “Second Spring” in the words of Albert Camus, “where every leaf is a flower.”  People are drawn from all over to get a literal peep.  Better get out those sweaters, and favor those flavors, of cinnamon, clove, apple and spice!  After all the primordial apple is wrapped up in the Fall- be it the fall of gravity on Newton’s dozing head, or the fall of innocence in a paradise garden.  Snow white took a fall when she bit her apple, into a deep slumber, only to be awakened by true loves kiss.  The crisp snap of an apple is the bold outline of Romantic Reality.  To acknowledge a Fall, and rise from it.  Falling down on the ground?  Well you must rise up again.  Falling asleep?  Well you must rise in the morning.  Falling in love?  Well, you must rise to cultivate that love and help it grow.  To Fall is to anticipate a rise.  Choose a course of action.  Make distinctions about what will and won’t work. This is the esoteric root of Libra’s freedom in decision-making.  Decision which means to “cut off” one route from another.  Perhaps that’s why King Arthur’s sword Excalibur was forged in Avalon, the island of apples.

Mercury the planet of perception in it’s final week of Libra- the apple of the eye used to mean the pupil; the zero-index blackness of in-drawing images.  A place where the world is translated upside-down. Cutting-edge and romantic.  Apples have always had a knack for being cutting edge, whether of the eye or the iphone.  As Cezanne declared, “give me an apple, and I will astonish Paris!”

Venus, the love Goddess, who makes pretty pentagrams in the sky, like the ones found in apples.  Wouldn’t it be she who took the first forbidden bite.  Now in Leo, the sign of the Sun, she imitates as a Morning Star. Rising like a true Romantic, who first had to acknowledge a fall.

Mars, the red hot planet in red hot aries and retrograde.  Fire.  The terror and the power.  Days of hazy skies.  The fire behind our appled eyes.  The principal of action, behind every moment of perception.   

Jupiter, the planet of heights, stationed direc in Capricorn, the sign of the world.  Serious-Saturn and Metamorphosis-Pluto also in Capricorn, its easy to feel as though the world really is upside-down.  Good thing the Fall favors Romance, which lives on heights, and chooses hope in spite of despair.  As Abraham Lincoln said, “Teach hope to all, despair to none.”

Uranus, the most leaning of all planets, in bountiful Taurus.  Leaning with awareness, and learning from the seasons of your own life.

Neptune in Pisces, the low-dose poison in the center of the apple rendering its beauty all the more sublime.

The Moon

The Moon will be in Scorpio for half of Monday the last day of Summer, sprinkling some last bit of secrets into the wide open air.  Look for mist and nature winking back at you.

By 3:30 and through most of Wednesday she will be waxing crescent in Sagittarius- the high flying horse.  Fond of apples, the Horsey Moon welcomes in the Autumn Equinox on Tuesday and the air contains the potential for major lift off.  Lift off of spirits that is, if the right perspective is gleaned.  Fall, with all of it’s associations with melancholy challenge our powers of optimism.  As Emerson said “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

By 7pm Wednesday and a new Season in full swing, the Moon waxes into it’s first quarter in Capricorn through Friday.  Learn to love those bold outlines of your life.  Those boundaries that allow you to create more freedom.  The crisp snap of apple otherness– that keeps you from sinking into too much subjective seawater! 

The weekend hosts a waxing gibbous Aquarius Moon, always potent for breakthrough as it is the sign of the times.  Strong winds are likely- crescendoing the song of the trees.  Changing in color, escalating in song, what can trees tell us that we’ve known all along, about our true nature, as artist and seer, evolving this way to be ever more freer.

As always, happy astro pondering!

https://www.happyastropondering.com/