WHAT NEEDS TWEAKING? | MERCURY RETROGRADE
SEPTEMBER 10TH - OCTOBER 1ST
Welcome to September, everyone! What a month we have to experience. As we begin to enter the last several months of 2022, there are only a couple more intense transits to move through before we are ready to flow forward into 2023. If all goes well, September is going to gift us time. It may feel like a slight pause in momentum or a continued waiting period. Please don’t be discouraged by the slow pace of the second half of the year. There are actually a lot of changes being made to our lifestyle which can make us restless if we are feeling too stagnant. However, we need this time to slow down and pay close attention to the choices we are currently making. Beginning in 2023, we will enter an entirely new world. We need this last stretch of time in the old world to bring our focus to the tiny details that will make our transition that much smoother. We don’t want to rush through significant lifestyle changes. We want to get the most out of our character development and September gives us the room to do exactly this.
We will be experiencing a few more retrogrades which will guide us in reflection of what happened this past year and, even more so, what has occurred over our entire lives up until this point. The first of these last three retrogrades of the year will be from Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods and the Planet of Communication. Taking flight in the Air sign Libra, this tiny planet will make its way all the way back into the Earth sign Virgo and then bounce back into Libra again throughout the whole month. These two energies are actually both quite analytical. They help us to organize our minds, cut down on the frivolous chatter and find stillness.
Libra, symbolized by the Scales, will be guiding us through weighing out our ideas and options. We can use this period to consider what we need to add into our lives to feel more complete. Libra is often described as the peacemaker or the one creating a sense of balance. What balance means to me is a feeling of completion, wholeness and centeredness-removing any sense of anxiety caused by feelings of lack, yearning or incompleteness. There will be a few weeks in the early part of this month to think more deeply about what we could possibly add to our lives to even out our current experiences, how to ease the stress and inner turmoil, and how we can feel more complete and less unfinished or off-kilter.
The second half of September, Mercury will move into the Mutable energy of Virgo. This energy will help us organize our thoughts between useful/helpful thoughts and useless/harmful thoughts. I’d like to add that this isn’t limited to our minds, but also applies to our daily activities in general. What parts of our day are healthy and what parts of our day are overall harmful or too stressful? Virgo energy represents cleanliness and purification. It is not so much about releasing or discarding but instead taking what is and cleaning it up a bit. Cleansing a space! Just because our homes get a little messy, doesn’t mean we have to move into a brand new place. We clean, organize and freshen up. This is what we can do with our mind, as well as our body, especially when we are surrounded by Virgo energy. This Mercury Retrograde is designed to help us figure out how to start relieving tension within our daily life.
Crystal Recommendations: Fluorite, Clear Quartz
Questions To Ask
What can I give myself in order to relieve tension?
How can I distinguish between helpful and harmful thought patterns and daily habits?
How can I freshen up and cleanse my space without feeling the need to throw-away or get rid of any parts of myself?
How can I find stillness in small moments to create more space for stress-free and judgment-free ideas/thoughts to flow through me?
How can I make my life a little bit easier?
ARE YOU MAKING ROOM FOR RELIEF?
| FULL MOON IN PISCES ~SEPTEMBER 10TH~
Pisces is an incredibly beautiful energy when we can tap into it in a healthy way. Pisces is the Mutable Water Sign of the zodiac. It represents unconditional love, acceptance and finding spiritual meaning in every single thing that exists. It is the invisible energy that connects each one of us. It is whatever lies beyond and all that lies within. Most importantly, it is forgiveness. As with every full lunation, we tend to receive downloads, insights, make connections we could not see before and stumble upon answers that clear up anything that has been out-of-focus for the last several months.
The Full Moon in Pisces is a time where we can recognize how much grace we have given ourselves and shown to others in the last six months since the New Moon in Pisces. We can consider the results of that attempt of relieving ourselves of scrutiny, judgment and harshness. Have we been able to go easier on ourselves and others? Has having a more compassionate outlook improved our well-being in any way? The energy of Mutable Water adapts and flows in response to whatever touches it. Rather than being rigid, Pisces asks us to accept everything as it is and find meaning behind all of our experiences. We don’t have to enjoy everything that has happened and we do not have to find the silver lining in every moment. What this lunation may help us with, is making room for the existence of all the possible angles and perspectives that could be taken from one event in our history. Removing judgment and allowing all truths to be acknowledged for what they are is what Pisces is here to do, give grace.
Mars, the planet of self-defense, in Gemini- the Mutable Air sign, may have us getting angry over the little frustrations and agitations of our circumstances. Fighting over what was said, should have been said, or should have been done. This energy can have us getting so wrapped up in the irksome nuances of every uncomfortable part of an argument or disagreement or sour memory. However, this Full Moon can serve to guide us towards understanding the frailty of human beings and the sensitivity we all have towards being abandoned, unwanted, misunderstood and neglected. This sensitivity is what causes defensiveness, stubbornness and endless petty back and forth. Pisces can teach us that by broadening our ability to understand both ourselves and others, the small irritants within an argument become that much smaller when we can really see each other. If we can create an atmosphere of safety for each other, we can experience relief and then actually get to the root of the issue. That is what this Full Moon invites us to consider.
Crystal Recommendations: Rose Quartz, Pink Opal, Blue Lace Agate
Questions To Ask
What does forgiveness feel like in your body?
What does resentment feel like in your body?
What does grace mean to you?
If every single perspective could be acknowledged as one truth, how could that ease conflict in your life or the inner turmoil you may feel within yourself?
Whose story or what part of your story are you silencing, judging and treating with harshness?
BE OPEN TO RESPECTFULLY EMPATHETIC SOLUTIONS
| NEW MOON IN LIBRA ~SEPTEMBER 25TH~
We finish off the month of September by learning new techniques for getting along with others and resolving conflict. When the moon disappears from the night sky and leaves us in the dark, we are left to embrace the unknown lessons and themes of the coming lunar cycle without having any other guidance but our own intuition and openness. On September 25th, we will experience this year’s New Moon in Libra. As I described above, Libra is the sign associated with balance and equilibrium. When the Sun and the Moon come together in this sign, it is an opportunity to resolve conflicts whether it be internal or external.
Now, we are not going to ease the tension overnight. We have at the very least six-months until the full lunation in Libra shows us the results of our efforts. This round is simply an opening we can take to consider how we might ease the tension in our current environment. I find that when we try to balance the scales, it benefits us more to add something onto our lives than to try to remove something from our “scale.” We can ease the heaviness of our lives by engaging in something of a completely opposite nature to achieve balance.
Venus is the ruler of this lunation. Venus is the planet of love, appreciation and relating. It is the planet that wants to establish a good rapport with every perspective that it encounters. It rules over attraction and also disgust. During this New Moon, Venus will be in the discerning sign of Virgo standing on the opposite side of Neptune in the all-consuming sign of Pisces. Neptune is the planet of Universal Love, acceptance and also deception and illusion. As these two planets sit across from each other, we will have a clearer vision of what empathetic relating may look like. Even though this is a Libra New Moon, which brings into focus conflict, comparison and the act of gracefully relieving tension between opponents, we have this influence of the Virgo/Pisces polarity that will help us become more comfortable with the act of forgiving.
Aries and Libra can catch themselves in a competitive back and forth argument between self-interest and fairness. A mentality can develop that relies on the need to have a winner and a loser- a victim and a villain. The Aries/Libra polarity can be quite political and social justice is a main theme that shows up in these signs. This is the polarity that strives to find a balance between self-respect and respect for others. Because of that objective, both signs can get caught up in petty conflict about what is and is not a fair way to handle matters that affect opposing parties. For example, “if they get this, then it is only fair that I have that!”
I have noticed that there is such a strong criticism happening towards people who struggle to admit when they are wrong. We call them defensive and accuse them of doubling-down and being stubborn. We shame them for being too weak or prideful to move through the discomfort of being wrong. However, the issue I take with this, is the fact that there does not seem to be a focus on creating a space that is accepting and forgiving of “wrongness.” What I mean is that so many times that I have felt hesitant to admit that I made a mistake, I was engaging with a person that consistently responded to my mistakes with contempt. They belittled me and made fun of me for messing up or being misinformed. Sometimes they tore a part my character or intelligence. This type of harsh response did not present me with much incentive to admit when I messed up the next time.
What this New Moon is asking of us, is to consider how we can start to show both ourselves and others more kindness when mistakes are made or when we are proven to have had the wrong information or not enough information. These next six-months can be spent figuring out how we can learn from the Virgo/Pisces polarity of humility and unconditional love. We can take this time to start forgiving ourselves and others for being wrong, misled, and or being certain about something only to be proven misinformed. Rather than revel in the embarrassment of someone else’s mishap, we can focus on creating environments that show people grace and even appreciation for altering their opinion or actions after realizing their mistake. We can choose to make it easier and safer for everyone to be wrong and reduce a lot of unnecessary and lengthy disputes. Libra wants peace and unity. Hopefully, this lunation will help us develop the skills to better cooperate with our fellow humans.
Crystal Recommendations: Rose Quartz, Pink Calcite, Sodalite
Questions To Ask
How can we make more room for grace?
What do we need to add onto our ‘scale’ to even out the current tension in our lives and lighten up our heavier experiences?
How can we ease the conflicting energies we feel within ourselves?
How can you respect your own contradicting nature and find reasons to appreciate all parts of you even if they cause internal friction?