Mercury and Venus are subtly and profoundly charging reality with a precise and specialized form of power today. It’s not the power to do. That comes in a few days. Today, we have the power to become aware and to choose. All summer we’ve been absorbing the backdrop of some truly extraordinary cosmic events we’ve experienced.

Now Mercury has turned direct, just as Venus changes signs for the first time since early April. She’s in.the first, pivotal degree of Cancer’s deep and nurturing waters.  This is the sign of her exaltation.  We’re about to feel her resonant power anew.

Right now, though, Mercury is moving so slowly it’s barely perceptible. In just a couple of days, when he picks up speed, we should have our bearings. By then we’ll be only a week away from a New Moon in Leo. It’s not a moment too soon to ask Venus and Mercury help us shape the intentions to plant in the fiery creation zone that’s just ahead.

Venus’ tour through Gemini, which began on April 4, was an unusually long and important one.  During it she went on a 6-week retrograde vision quest, passed across the face of the Sun, and was reborn from Evening Star to Morning Star.  While all that was happening, we also had a solar eclipse that was precisely aligned with the central star of the fabled Pleiades, known by ancients from the Maya to the Egyptians as the most magical part of the sky, and a lunar eclipe aligned with the Great Attractor, far beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.  Capping it all off was the first of Uranus’ seven world-changing squares to Pluto.  The whole time, the Cosmic Feminine was reprocessing the way we use our mind to create reality. From the deep interior, she was bringing us what we’d forgotten, neglected, lost–and badly needed.

On June 27, three days after the Uranus-Pluto square, Venus turned direct.  But she’s remained in Gemini until late last night (EDT in the US), helping us connect the multitude of dots from the tumultuous experiences of this summer.  Now she’s moving on.  The degree where she sits today–0 Cancer–is a pivotal one.  Seminal astrologer Dane Rudhyar, in An Astrological Mandala, calls it “a point of no return.”  It’s the point where we make a very basic decision about what we value, and what we’re committing ourselves to.  Really, everything depends on that.

And Mercury? He entered  Leo 24 hours before Venus left her vision quest–almost as if he was beckoning her back into the present.  (The love between these two goes back into the Deep Time.)  Just a couple of weeks later,  Mercury went on his own vision quest. There was a lot to process.

Finally, today, these two are lovers from way back are both heading forward.  And so can we.  Be ready!