It’s exciting to roll out your maps and papers and see that the planets are lining up like they will this week! It’s like this: the Moon is waning toward New Phase, when it stands between Earth and Sun; Mercury is retrograde and also about to stand between Earth and Sun; and Uranus is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun, and on Thursday this week, that means the order of things is Uranus, Earth, Moon, Mercury, Sun ~ a veritable gathering of the gods.
The name Uranus comes from the Ancient Greek and is concerned with the whole sky beyond Saturn, or beyond what’s visible to the naked eye.
The Moon is a guardian of earthly affairs, forever embracing us in its orbit.
Mercury is the messenger of the gods, and at retrograde inferior conjunction, it’s between Earth and Sun, as though gathering up what humanity has to speak to the stars.
This kind of line up creates a dynamic energy, and given that it’s during New Moon, there’s a mood of anticipation and forward momentum in it.
Looking further into it, we can imagine that the Moon is like the guardian of the Earth as its closest (and only) orbiting body. Mercury serves the same guardian-like function with the Sun, as its closest orbiting body. And on Thursday, November 20th, with New Moon and Mercury at retrograde conjunction, it’s like these two guardians are coming face-to-face for a cosmic negotiation. With Uranus on the other side of the Earth at the same time, the deal they make may have an element of surprise, as though coming from out of nowhere.
So how to prepare? I always turn to the poets, because a true poet lives in that liminal space, striving to give word to the utterances of the gods. In this case, I looked to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote:
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. So this is an assignment for this week, and especially overnight Wednesday the 19th and Thursday the 20th.
From watching that gleam of light which flashes across the mind from within, Emerson acknowledges that we may dismiss without notice our own thought, because it is our own. Which leads to the experience that in every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
So let’s watch for flashes of insight and genius this week, and seek to detect that gleam of light that flashes across the mind from within. Here is where our answers are and where the necessary inspiration to meet our time will arise.
And be on the look out for the fallen stars of the Leonids, also this week!
Mary
Hear this episode of The Storyteller’s Night Sky on podcast here, and wherever you listen. Cover image from Sky&Telescope.