The Messenger of the Gods is in perpetual motion almost all the time.  Mercury, as astrologers call him, covers a lot of territory bringing you information and awareness from all over the Universe, making introductions, and arranging encounters, and delivering dreams while you sleep.

This week is one of the half-dozen times each year that Mercury is barely moving.  Astrologically, we say that he has “stationed.”  It means he’s come to the near-standstill that precedes his turning direct just an hour and forty minutes after midnight tomorrow in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone.

For seven days — from August 5 to August 11–the Guide of Souls is trolling the same degree–1 Leo– til Saturday.  This is the most potent portion of any retrograde vision quest by any planet–when it comes to a nearly complete standstill, at the beginning and the end of the transit.   This is when the planet’s energy is stirring the depths, bringing to the surface what we’ve overlooked, or forgotten, or lost.

Think of the Stations of the Cross and you’ll get the idea.

Every degree of the belt of stars that encircles our Sun carries the energy of a symbol. The degree of Mercury’s station is symbolized by “an epidemic of mumps.”   Look closely, the cosmos is telling you, to see how pathology becomes contagious.  Observe how toxic thoughts, ideas, feelings, and matter spread through families, groups of friends, workplaces, churches—through all of society. 

This crystallizes something very, very important that both Venus and Mercury have been showing us over the last 3 months.  Just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  Just because we’ve hidden it from our consciousness doesn’t mean it’s gone away.  Just because we’ve lost the awareness we need doesn’t mean we can’t find it.

Tonight, we get more information.  Mercury will exactly trine the Moon’s North Node, that point that astrologers from ancient Egypt to China have called “the dragon’s head.’  It’s the leading edge of the cosmic energy, the point of forward motion. It’s the direction to take when we don’t know which way to go.

From August 7 until August 18, the Moon’s North Node will be in the 2nd degree of Sagittarius (1 Sag, as those who love this expansive, free-wheeling, optimistic sign like to call it).  The symbol for its energy is “white-capped waves display[ing] the power of wind over the sea.”   Here’s what the legendary Dane Rudhyar has to say about it in An Astrological Mandala:

“Wind and sea are in constant interplay, and the results of that interplay are inspiring and beautiful.  In symbolism, the wind . . . is associated with spiritual dynamism; the stirring of deep energies this dynamism produces obeys cosmic or suprapersonal rhythms, the power of which is irresistible.”

These two degrees, which seem to challenge each other, are actually share the generous cosmic blessing called a trine. If we allow ourselves to be blown by the irresistible winds of spirit, the Universe is telling us, we can become deeply aware of the dangers of contagious infection.

The North Node and the future it represents is nearly always a point we resist, in our own chart and in the shifting energy patterns of the life of the Universe.  Often we resist because we don’t really know how to see the future and we don’t really trust its call.  So we stay with what we know.  Astrologically, that’s the South Node.  It’s our past, what we’ve already mastered, and the grooves that’s left in our own energy fields. We can draw on its experience, but we’re not meant to stay there.

“Innocence” is the energy the South Node carries this week–the innocence of childhood. We are very pointedly not being asked to return there. Instead, we’re being called to spiritual maturity–by consciously going with the flow.  That’s not an abdication of anything, in any way.  It’s simply a recognition that we’ve arrived at a point where it is Spirit, not us, who knows where we need to be going.  It’s time to let yourself be “blown” there.