November's energies are very BIG, maybe especially mid-month, but almost right out of the gate Mercury retrograde reaches his/her backward rendezvous with the Sun on November 4th.
We talked about this Mercury retrograde HERE and this week we reach the mid-point of this transit. Happening with Venus retrograde (back in Libra now) and Mars starting to walk the degrees he will retrograde in early 2027 - there is alot of re-views and re-veals and re-minisces and re-peats and basically looking BACKWARD going on.
The old school interpretation of Mercury in the heart of the Sun, which is called Mercury Cazimi - is that this is the moment the fog lifts or the moment we finally understand what this retrograde has been trying to show us ie we have some CLARITY. This is fundamentally right, of course, but I think with so much going on right now and being that we are talking about SCORPIO here - the stuff we have stuffed - it will pay off for us to process this at a deeper level.
Sometimes at the cazimi point A MESSENGER SHOWS UP (maybe not a divine one, but who know), so pay attention to conversations, news, information/emails, etc that shows up near WEDNESDAY. And in Scorpio, the message can be through what isn't said. Also, if you are the Scorpio you might be the one doing the sayin', so keep that in mind, too.
I don't think I have ever paid enough attention to the Mercury Cazimi point. But when we stop and think about it - and that's what Mercury retrograde is for, it's the stop-and-think-about-it time - there is something extraordinary about Mercury being swallowed by the Sun and then emerging again. Disappearance, surrender, transformation and return.
What had to die, change form or be relinquished before we could see more clearly NOW?
We will keep in mind this week the - "here is where we see what this retrograde has been about", but let's go a little deeper with the cazimi energy.
1. Mercury doesn't find the answer. Mercury BECOMES the answer. We understand the word clarity as we SEE SOMETHING/we acquire information/the pictures tightens up - something was hidden and now it is revealed. And sometimes an answer does show up now, but often the cazimi is less about receiving an answer and more about undergoing a change in perspective.
Before the Cazimi, Mercury is working through the underworld of Scorpio. He is revisiting conversations, memories, suspicions, attachments, unfinished business and the THINGS WE DON'T REALLY WANT TO KNOW. Old emails are opened/bills that have piled up. Voicemails and conversations from the past.
What if the information hasn't necessarily changed, but how we are interpreting it has? We may have been asking the wrong question. We may have been looking at something through an old emotional story. We may discover that what we thought we wanted to understand isn't actually what we needed to understand.
2. The death of an old narrative. Mercury is/governs the stories we tell ourselves. Not just the words we say or think, but the internal explanations we construct to make sense of our experiences. Scorpio is interested in what lies beneath those explanations. What motivates us? What are we protecting? What are we afraid to admit? Where are we confusing attachment with truth?
During the retrograde, Mercury may have been dismantling an old idea/fact/story that has outlived its usefulness. Maybe the cazimi becomes a moment when that narrative reaches its end. This doesn't mean it was entire bullsh*t (maybe it was and maybe it wasn't) but it is no longer capable of containing the truth.
This could be about - a story we've told ourselves about another person, an old explanation for why something happened, a belief about what we deserve or what we can expect, a secret we've kept, even from ourselves, an emotional bargain we've been making without realizing it.
There is a difference between discovering that someone has deceived us and discovering that we have been participating in a deception of our own! Scorpio can take us into both territories.
3. Mercury has an audience with the king. The word cazimi comes from an Arabic term meaning "in the heart." In traditional astrology, a planet very close to the Sun is usually considered combust, overwhelmed by the Sun's rays. Weak. BUT a planet within the very narrow cazimi orb is given a different condition - it is said to be in the heart of the Sun, almost as though it has been admitted into the king's presence.
Combustion is a loss of visibility, but CAZIMI is an extraordinary kind of access. This can show up quite literally in the form of someone/something with authority/power. But many times, it means Mercury, the messenger, is no longer operating independently. He (we) is brought into the presence of the source of light, authority, consciousness and PURPOSE.
In Scorpio, this meeting could be particularly uncompromising. The Sun doesn't necessarily illuminate what we want to see. HE ILLUMINATES WHAT IS THERE. And maybe Mercury's time in the heart of the Sun is an opportunity to bring our thinking into alignment with something more fundamental than our immediate reactions, fears or desires.
4. A seed moment. Just like a New Moon any planet meeting the Sun is a seed monet. Something is starting. When Mercury does this retrograde, it is an inferior conjunction, occurring with Mercury between the Earth and Sun. It marks the midpoint of the retrograde cycle.
Mercury is at the heart of the Sun while still moving backward. That is symbolically important. We have a new beginning taking place in the middle of a process of re-consideration. The new Mercury cycle is being seeded, but Mercury has not yet completed hsi/her backward journey.
This is why clarity can arrive without an immediate sense of direction. A seed doesn't look like a tree. It doesn't even look like it's alive and that's because it is and it isn't. It's POTENTIAL.
The cazimi might be the moment when we recognize what the next chapter is about, without yet knowing how to write it. There is a difference between receiving the revelation and being ready to act on it. We can see clearly what is wrong/needs to change but not how to change it.
We can know what has changed or needs to - before we know what to do about it.
5. The underworld messenger returns with something. Mercury is Hermes and not simply the god of communication. He is also the psychopomp, the guide who travels between worlds, escorting souls into and out of the underworld. And in Scorpio we are dealing with the literal underworld.
Sometimes this is quite literal and we FACE DEATH in some way. Maybe even actual death. We revisit things we thought were finished. We encounter old memories, buried feelings, unresolved conversations and pieces of ourselves we have left behind.
And then comes the Cazimi.
Hermes/Mercury meets the Sun and he carries something with him from his underworld journey - a message, an object, a truth, a realization. In mythology, the messenger's value isn't just that he travels between worlds. It's that he can bring something back from a place others cannot easily reach.
Maybe the cazimi is a moment of re-trieval. We go into the underworld looking for answers and sometimes re-turn with ourselves.
6. The power of what remains unsaid. Zipping it. Here is another Scorpio interpretation that I think is worth thinking about. Mercury is associated with words/language/the explanation and the need to make things intelligible. We tend to believe that understanding something means being able to explain it.
And actually, I just had someone say to me that if "you can't explain it, you don't understand it" and I could see what he was really saying to me was that if I couldn't make him understand it then I didn't either. Which isn't true of course, and seemed obvious to me, but not so much to him.
But what if the cazimi is a moment when we discover that we no longer need to explain? Scorpio is a fixed water sign. It holds things/contains things/protects things. Not every truth is ready to be spoken. Not everything we know/think needs to be shared. Not every discovery requires an immediate conversation.
Sometimes clarity changes our relationship to SILENCE. We may realize that a conversation is no longer necessary or that an explanation we've been waiting for isn't coming. We don't need another person's acknowledgment to validate what we already know.
Or maybe we realize that we have been talking around something for a very long time because we just aren't ready to say it plainly.
There is a difference between keeping a secret because we are afraid and choosing privacy because we understand the value of what we know.
7. Mercury has changed. We might revisit an old relationship and finally understand the dynamics. But the revelation is also that we are no longer the person who entered that relationship. So, maybe something happens that has us re-visiting a decision/situation and recognize where we went wrong. We aren't finding out something we didn't know so much as just looking at things through different eyes. We are returning to familiar territory with a different consciousness. The landscape hasn't necessarily changed. We have.
We want to keep in mind at the cazimi that Mercury (we) still have work to do. This is why we shouldn't rush to interpret the cazimi as an immediate solution or a green light to move forward. We still have nine days before Mercury (and Venus) turn around. Second chances abound.
xo all - back with the weekly tomorrow. NOTE - Venus sextiles Jupiter at the Mercury cazimi and our Mars/Leo longer story - last August to next spring - is in play now, too. And I know I still owe that political post and the U.S. election is breathing down our throats like a drunk dragon ...
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