We’re traveling now through the last half of the sign of Sagittarius, a portion of the sky where the milestones are the biggest mysteries in the entire Universe. Wherever the sign of Sagittarius falls in our inner sky, the radiant light of our star is bringing us face to face with the Great Mystery. We’ve encountered them all week, and there’s more to come.  First, the Messenger and the Cosmic Feminine have some information for us.  They’re bringing it today.

Your Evolutionary Edge: The Cosmic Messenger Visits the North Node

As the Sun travels through the expansive Sagittarian territory above us and within us, Mercury the Messenger follows behind.  As always, the Messenger of the Gods is our cosmic translator. Until Monday, he’s still in Scorpio. Today what he ‘s translating is about as important as anything we need to know.  Mercury is in the same degree as the Moon’s North Node.

The North Node is not something you could find with your backyard telescope.  The information it gives us is nonetheless invaluable.  The Node is a point in the Moon’s orbital axis that astrologers from across the globe have regarded for millenia as describing the leading edge of evolution.  In your one-of-a-kind birth chart, the Moon’s North Node illumines the purpose underlying your life.

What Mercury’s come to reveal, though, isn’t your personal Node.  It’s the Node that we share, the Node of the moment.  Like everything else in the Universe–including you and me–the Node is in constant motion.  Its location in the sky on any given day tells us where the evolutionary edge is for this moment.  And as sages and seers from time immemorial, there is only one moment, and it is where all creative power resides:  the Now Moment.

The degree that the North Node inhabits today, when Mercury comes to visit, is described by the Sabian symbol of “native American setting up camp in new territory.”  Dane Rudhyar tells us in An Astrological Mandala that this degree carries the ability to respond swiftly to new situations.  Seems a very apt message to be receiving two weeks before the 2012 Winter Solstice occurs, in a war-torn world that’s straining under crises of climate, resource inequality, hunger, species extinction–a dying world that is being bombarded with cosmic energies of rebirth, expansion, and transformation. Are we prepared to respond swiftly to new situations, the ones that are already developing around us?

Enter Venus With Your Invitation to Cosmic Magic and Mystery

You’re probably not ready to answer that yet.  Few of us are–as the world around us bears abundant evidence.  That’s where Venus, the Cosmic Feminine, comes into today’s picture.  As Mercury embraces the Node, Venus moves into the degree where the Messenger began his retrograde vision quest, just over a month ago.  She’s come to help us understand, on a deep and personal level, the value of what’s been happening in our lives and our world over the last six months. 

As the U.S. polls began to close on the East Coast, Mercury set off in search of something that’s been lost, overlooked, or forgotten by all of us, and each of us.  Almost immediately, as the election returns came in, we learned how great the divide is between the perceptions of mainstream American culture and the reality of the majority of the American people.

Since then we’ve learned about other gaps between official cultural perception and reality.  In an interesting display of timing, The Huffington Post today published an article discussing research that shows the ancient world’s drawings of animals were much more realistic than those drawn by Western artists, including such “masters of realism” as Leonardo da Vinci. We’re realizing that our culture depictions of reality actually leave out quite a bit.  What’s left out for you?  What part of your reality do you not see in the culture around you? 

Turns out that it’s the Cosmic Feminine who holds the cards.  Today, she’s bringing them to each one of us, in the same part of our lives where Mercury vision quested and the Heart of the Serpent Eclipse planted its powerfully transformative energy.

Embodied Wisdom: Venus Revisits the Mercury Vision Quest

The degree Venus inhabits today, where Mercury began his vision quest, is symbolized by an owl. All over the world, the owl has been a symbol of wisdom for millenia.

Mercury ended his quest in a degree symbolized by another bird–a parrot, able to repeat what it hears but cannot fully ccomprehend.  Bird are symbols of spirit, and on this vision quest, Mercury was seeking what we’ve lost and badly need that can reconnect us to spiritual wisdom.  He’s trying to help us understand the difference between the owl and the parrot. 

In his masterwork, Animal-Speak, Ted Andrews says that “the owl is a symbol of the feminine, the moon, and the night . . . It is the bird of magic and darkness, of prophecy and wisdom.”  As a bird of the night, the owl can see in the darkness within as well as without.  Its yellow eyes, observes Andrews, evoke “the light of the sun, alive in the dark of the night.”  Because of this, “owls are the eyes of thenight and they see what is not in the open.  They have secret knowledge that they can share.” 

The powerful, indeed, extraordinary cosmic events of 2012 have had the same purpose.  This is what the  May 20 solar eclipse in the heart of the Pleiades’ and its energy of “undersea wonders” was all about.  This is what last week’s lunar eclipse with a yod in its heart was awakening us to, with its energy of liberation from the ghosts of the pasts sot hat we can drink again from the sacred well, we’r ebeing told the same thing over and over again

Ground your lives in the energy of the Source, the Cosmos is saying to us at every turn this year. See how you are part of a much bigger picture. Open yourself to its magic. See the secrets that reside in the dark of intuition, dreams, and visions. Connect yourselves to their wisdom.

It’s Friday–Venus’ day.  The weekend is coming up.  What better time to catch the wave of evolution and tune in to the information that Mercury and Venus are bringing you? Track down some secrets.  Explore some dreams.  Evoke some magic.