MERCURY RETROGRADE IN CANCER [JUNE 18-JULY 12] — Arthouse Astrology
MERCURY RETROGRADE IN CANCER [JUNE 18-JULY 12]
“if you think you can leave / the past behind / you must be out of your mind” — The Magnetic Fields
“We need not destroy the past. It is gone.” — John Cage
“I don’t count birthdays which stops me from counting days which stops me from counting time….” — Prince
How do we relate to time? How are we time? How do we do time? Recordtime? Feel time? Avoid time? Use time? What about forward motion? Backward? Speed? Elliptical? Memory, reflections, relinquishing of control? What does it mean to be moving forward? When a planet retrogrades, the ancients said it was “unfavorable for action” or “disobedient.”
I must admit I love the cold cosmos of the ancients. We lose out when we coddle ourselves into thinking that the universe is (to reverse a Carl Sagan quote) “required to be in harmony with our ambitions.” You already know this.
Why does time sometimes feel linear and other times not at all? What is a time jump? What happens to time when we fall asleep? When we edit? When we die? When we do drugs? When we watch an entire season of a TV show in three days? When we scroll, click, drag? When we dream? When we are falling in love? When we are home? When we do art? When we yearn? When we reminisce? Haunt? Return? Pause? When we linger? When we are silent. When we “do nothing?”
“Time stands still / all I can feel is the time standing still / as you pick up your keys / and say ‘don’t call me please.’” — The Magnetic Fields
I Think I Need a New HeartThe Magnetic Fields
These are smooth digital days. You are reading this on a slippery screen. I’m composing this with the light streaming in, still in the betweenness of sleeping and waking life, trying to figure in real-time what I think of the heart of Mercury retrograde, what I feel when I feel Mercury Rxing through the waters of the womb, Cancer, the birth of the cosmos, the origin….
When we are missing something and we cannot for the life of us figure out what or whom. When we are missing from the source. When the source misses us. Mercury Rx in Cancer.
When Mercury goes retrograde, we get fearful about communication speed slowing, about upload-download glitches, pauses — emails left unread or worse: read, and never returned. Emails hanging in limbo. Words halfway out of our mouths, love muffled by the rewind feature. Text messages rotting. We are now living in a time when we can literally watch people watch us. We know who is looking at our posts, we are always on camera. What does it mean to drop away, to go retrograde, to find silence in these times?
Fragments of Time (feat. Todd Edwards)Daft Punk, Todd Edwards
How does Mercury suffer? How do we suffer? Mercury carries out the messages. When we pick up our phones, Mercury is there. When we email. When we refresh the feed.
Are feelings retro? Mercury Rx in Cancer.
How do we phone home? Mercury Rx in Cancer.
How do we speak into/from HOME?
How do we recharge?
What are our most primal communicative impulses?
What language nourishes us?
Zoe Leonard, “Century” (from the Analogue Series):
Do you remember the rewind feature on a cassette tape? Remember cassette tapes? They were just on their way out when I was very young. I nearly drove my babysitter insane rewinding her Ace of Base tape over and over again. Remember how you could hear the sound of the tape doubling back on itself? Remember how you yearned along with the eeriness of backward momentum?
Mercury is always already about memory. When Mercury goes retrograde — our minds and everything else that Mercury presides over (heavy and light tech, communication, language, poetry, travel….) get access to other memories and intel — ones that lie behind and adjacent to the loud ones.
Mercury drops down into the darkness, goes invisible, meets with the sun, and then comes back. Mercury is a psychopomp and is responsible for guiding souls to their place of rest, whether heaven or hell or somewhere betwixt. Mercury retrograde in Cancer has access to Moon’s fuel and wanderings. Those reels and feels. Mercury retrograde in Cancer is something to do feeling the emotions and memories that we avoid because of 21st-century pace. “General View of Paradise” (Dante):
General view of paradise.
Mercury is tired.
We are met with so much Mercury all day long, all night long. We sleep near our devices, we talk into them. Mercury delivers our texts and sexts and travels.
How does the body communicate? What are the fathomless truths that lie dormant at the bottom of our skies? What lies have we been telling ourselves?
Astrology is about time and astrology is ruled by Mercury. When we enter the cosmos we are handling Mercury, Mercury is handling us. Why? Because we need a guide.
Time is of the essence.
There are many essences of time in the sky.
When Mercury goes retrograde, we slow.
We access that which could not otherwise be accessed.
You Must Be out of Your MindThe Magnetic Fields
The past is gone, according to John Cage. And also/always we are crazy to think we can leave it behind. And still, time does not exist but for our construction.
Chris Kraus quoting Ezekial 8 in her book Video Green writes that the Bible predicted a dark time, a time when we would all be alone in the dark: “each man in his room of pictures.”
Or, for social media times: “Each man in his hand of pictures.”
What does it mean to go back, to have memories flood us, to pause?
All the dormant appliances getting wheeled away. Zoe Leonard, “TV Wheelbarrow”:
In horror movies, demons walk backward. We know someone is possessed if they are not moving forward. We know that something unnatural has taken hold. The TV wheeled away backward. The movie reversed. The wheelbarrow broke.
Reversals are freaky. They are so freaky that modern astrology doesn’t talk about retrogrades being associated with reversals and undoings. It is instead an “internalization” of the energy of Mercury. But, the fact that all the planets (save for Sun and Moon) go retrograde means that there is something nutritive, normal, necessary about reversals, undoings. Linearity is a myth. I will tell you something here at the center of this email. I have epilepsy. Just before a seizure, I often walk backward. I take a few steps in “the wrong” direction…I go away. I drift. It is a very different way of relating to time. It is a terror and a gift. But that’s for another time and also I wrote about lots of it here.
What do we lose when we try to paint the sky super pretty? When we don’t recognize backward motion into the night, the moments where we drift from our natures, where in fact we must drift far from our natures, in order to live? It is frightening. I don’t think astrology is meant to tell us that things aren’t frightening. I think it’s a way to figure the fright, to look into it, to let Mercury glimmer into what moves darkly through us.
What if Mercury retrograde is about wasting time? About the wisdom of reversals? About “going astray?” About “nothingness?” About accessing that which gets edited out, noticing the silences around words.
Someone I love was going through a difficult time. Was not being “productive.” Was doing “nothing.” Was “wasting time and potential.” A woman said to me about this person — “they’re good, but they’ve strayed from their path.” This hit me like a dart, like a physical blow to the stomach.
What is a path and why should we not stray from it? Who tells us what our path is? How do we know if we are on it? Who says? When we are “wasting time”, who loses? When we are “productive”, who wins? What do these words even mean and how might they be inhibiting imagination, Mercury?
Mercury retrograde reminds, rewinds, walks backward, disintegrates, wastes, disobeys. Which is cool. Which is good. Which is how art happens. Revolution. Progress of a different caliber. The fluffy sorrow of Zoe Leonard’s Analogue Series:
Certain immediately nostalgic light. No words. Mercury Rx in Cancer. A sadness, a tugging, a desire to “just go home.” A question of what is home? All the strange mansions in the sky offering different sorts of homes.
Mercury/Hermes has a job to do, though. We know from myths that Mercury does this job imperfectly. They crack inappropriate jokes, lust after those they’re supposed to be swiftly delivering to Hades, etc. SKY HUMOR. NECESSARY DIGRESSIONS.
“You can’t go ‘round just sayin’ stuff because it’s pretty.” — The Magnetic Fields
Digressions, tangents, non-sequiturs, fragments, poems, spaces — these are ways to waste time, right? But it’s when we don’t “stick firmly to the point” that we discover, that we become human. That our language gets freed from the net of “productivity” and even “meaning.” Sticking to the point is a way to lie.
Mercury rules stealing, too. How do we steal from ourselves?
It’s not like Mercury just travels a straight path up and down, up and down — regimented, steady, unwavering. Boticelli’’s “Map of Hell” shows how wild the underworld can be — IT IS A COMPLEX LABRYNTHINE THING which requires dexterity. Mercury is a funny guide, a guide with allegiance to knowledge and information.
DOWN THERE, which is also here. Which is also everywhere and nowhere….
Astrology teaches us ways of doing, being, seeing TIME & so ourselves. Maybe Mercury Rx retrieves the silences and nothingness by which we’re most freaked out. Because therein lies everything. Mallarme: “It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.”
Mercury stations direct in Cancer on July 12.
ON THAT NOTE….
MUCH LOVE AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.
<HAPPY RETROGRADING>
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