Okay, so who let the Grem­lins out…again?

Yes, that’s right it’s your favorite scape­goat for every­thing not going accord­ing to “plan”, (tech­nol­o­gy fails, com­mu­ni­ca­tions become gar­bled and mis­un­der­stand­ings mount), Mer­cury ret­ro­grades for over 3 weeks till August 26. This time it’s a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed as I not­ed ear­li­er, since it will start in Vir­go and then go back into Leo. There are oth­er chal­leng­ing align­ments along the way too, so this will be an August to remember…

It does seem evi­dent that things seem to go awry when Mer­cury turns around. But that real­ly is not the “fault” of Her­mes; you just need to align your­self with the ener­gies around you, which have shift­ed indeed. The ordi­nary flow of your men­tal­i­ty will now be direct­ed inward, becom­ing more reflec­tive, focused and intro­spec­tive. This is good news; you need these oppor­tu­ni­ties to cor­rect false assump­tions, flawed per­cep­tions and misunderstandings!

But if you pro­ceed as if every­thing is “nor­mal”, if you do not stay alert to the changed men­tal ener­gies, then you will stum­ble and fall into error in both your per­cep­tions and com­pre­hen­sions of your world. And, since most oth­er mor­tals are sim­i­lar­ly “afflict­ed” by this lack of aware­ness with regard to the shift­ing ener­gies, the mis­cues, errors and con­fu­sion mul­ti­ply expo­nen­tial­ly. No won­der every­one seems to see these peri­ods as “chal­leng­ing”.

Mer­cury gets the “blame”, but as the bard wrote in Julius Cae­sar:

“Men at some time are mas­ters of their fates: The fault, dear Bru­tus, is not in our stars, But in our­selves, that we are underlings.” 

What Shake­speare affirmed is that your exer­cise of your most pre­cious gift, your Free Will, is not lim­it­ed exter­nal­ly by the ener­gies around you, so much as it is by your lack of self-under­stand­ing (and so self-con­trol). The key to your spir­i­tu­al progress is self-aware­ness; it is that unfold­ment of your aware­ness which leads to self-knowl­edge and the resul­tant expan­sion of your Spir­i­tu­al Will. And this is why you should cel­e­brate Mer­cury’s gift now. Why?

Why, because this is pre­cise­ly what is offered up to you now, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for greater Illu­mi­na­tion is here, right now. Her­mes is the guide who will lead you inward. He is the mes­sen­ger of the gods who will take your hand as you seek to re-vis­it, review and revise what you have come to expe­ri­ence as your reality.

But you have to par­tic­i­pate; you have to be alert, adapt­able and will­ing to use your pow­ers of dis­cern­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion and self-crit­i­cism. It is always up to you how you will “dance your dance” with the ener­gies of the universe.

So you can com­plain about all the pet­ty annoy­ances of the next 3 weeks…Or, you can under­stand that the uni­verse is offer­ing you a gift, a most pre­cious gift of greater self-awareness.

What can you do? From now till August 8, Mer­cury will ret­ro­grade in Vir­go so the empha­sis is upon a re-work­ing of your pow­ers of crit­i­cal think­ing which should be applied reflec­tive­ly now…That means, yes, it is a time to be self-crit­i­cal and weed out false assump­tions and pet­ty attach­ments. Be care­ful about becom­ing over­ly annoyed by some­thing or some­one; instead turn that back on your­self and see why it upset you so much…then let it go. Use a lit­tle Pis­cean imag­i­na­tion and keep step­ping back so you can see the big­ger pic­ture; remem­ber to counter any attach­ment to minu­tia by assum­ing a more encom­pass­ing view­point, one that steps back so as to con­sid­er the for­est and so pre­vent you from becom­ing lost among the count­less trees.

Then from August 8 to 26, as Mer­cury ret­ro­grades in Leo, use this reflec­tive focus to reex­am­ine your ide­al­ism, ego and pride as regards your thought process­es. Be care­ful here about being over­ly upset by some­one who is ego­is­tic, demand­ing of atten­tion or bossy. Again, you must look with­in and see why this is so upset­ting to you; what are you too attached to or fear­ful of…then release it. Use the pow­er of Aquar­i­an detach­ment to bal­ance out the pas­sions of Leo. Remem­ber always, that the noble path is the Mid­dle Way; that extremes of emo­tion lead to regression…your way must be calm, cen­tered and self-crit­i­cal. If you real­ly want respect, live that truthway…stay on the path.

Okay sparks of the Divine, are you ready for some new music, are you ready to show some new steps? Her­mes is pip­ing, lead­ing you through the veil of appear­ances to a greater understanding.

Ready, Turn, Dance!