I hope you are enjoying today's Venus sextile Neptune. Today our values and our spiritual consciousness are working together. Neptune is stationary in the sky and about to move direct on the weekend, which should bring some clarity to our visions and make it easier to manifest our dreams.
Mars however is turning retrograde in a couple of days, launching us into two months of reworking our warrior energy and our battle plans. Normally the need to do this manifests because of setbacks on the battlefield, so the more we can see these as learning experiences, the better our reworking will go. This next two months is not a time to launch new hostilities in any way, as these will only backfire.
Tomorrow we will reach the midpoint of the Mercury retrograde, with Mercury conjunct the Sun, which is known as Mercury cazimi. Traditionally not considered good for communication because the Sun overpowers Mercury, this time is best used to take stock of the rethinking we've been doing over the past week and a half, so we can double down on what's important for the remainder of the retrograde. We have to be more accepting in the second half, but keep double checking what's important to make sure communications are getting through.
The Sun Mercury conjunction is opposite Jupiter, and square our new planet of karmic consciousness, Orcus, at 17 degrees of Virgo. So this "taking stock" is balanced with the opportunity we are finding in the world, and this balance is enabled through an integrity and a self sufficiency that can turn any problem into an opportunity.
In myth Orcus dragged oath-breakers into the underworld. Oaths are contracts with the gods, and we call down a conditional curse on ourselves when we break them. So, Orcus is a straight talker, constantly delving beneath the surface to expose any corrupt dealing or two-faced activity that he discovers, holding us to account for our thoughts and actions.
We make oaths both to ourselves and to others, and we're coming up to the time of year when we make New Year's resolutions. These are the social manifestation of the oaths that we make to ourselves. We normally tell people our resolutions as a way of ensuring our own commitment because, while the oaths we make to others are policed and have real world consequences, it is the oaths we make to ourselves where we can easily fudge the line.
If you are the sort of person who keeps your New Year’s resolutions, you have an ability which doesn’t have to be limited to New Year. Choose a simple attainable goal, and make a deal with yourself to make it happen. This will be most effective if it is focused in the area of life indicated by the house which Orcus is transiting, or in which your natal Orcus is placed.
When we are straight with ourselves, Orcus gives us a self-sufficiency that nourishes us through the long and difficult work that we sometimes find necessary for personal evolution. We are able to marshal the energy, reserves and resources to assist this process, we just have to identify and activate them.
So, if in your "taking stock" over the next couple of days, you realise that there is a big work ahead, know that you have the reserves to do that work and the ability to turn that into an opportunity. Use this time to marshal your resources. Identify the area of your life which requires this persistence and endurance and then see what reserves you can marshal to assist this process. Take it step by step, and trust that you have what it takes, and that time is on your side.
Orcus gives us a capacity to deal with the shadow side of our lives, which is all of our repressed tendencies that have been labeled as bad and stored out of sight. But they do us no good stored there, and in fact often undermine, or poison our best efforts. As we engage and work with this shadow, we learn to transmute it into light. To turn it into energy that we can use constructively in our lives.
Orcus - Mercury Cazimi Special
To help you to find the reserves required for your personal evolution and develop the ability to turn problems into opportunities, I'm offering a one-off retrograde Mercury cazimi special on our Orcus course, enabling you to join this exploration by a friendly international group of astrology students, at an unbeatable price. Be quick to grab one!
We develop these new consciousness energies by exercising them, and a great way to do that is in the supportive environment of our Orcus course. Through the interaction in the Zooms and through the blog-posted assignments on Orcus in your chart, you experience how this karmic consciousness is operating in your life and you learn to work consciously with it. The ability to transmute shadow into light is an important part of our new emerging consciousness.
And remember, this course has our new structure with a choice of two Zoom times, giving the British and Europeans a new morning option which is proving very popular. This new Zoom time also gives those in Singapore and Perth an afternoon option, and other Aussies & Kiwis an early evening option.
Join us if you can on Orcus, and thanks for your work embracing these new aspects of consciousness.
Love and laughter
Alan
Alan Clay’s sensitive, cutting edge wisdom and the community sharing make the classes on the Dwarf Planets compelling and profound. They are as much an exploration as a revelation. Not only mentally stimulating, they are a deep dive into each of our psyche and growth experience. I love them and am looking forward to more. - Karen La Puma, Astrologer, Counselor, Speaker.
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