mercury for makers - transitions and crossroads and the lessons of paying attention

the impatient patient locket

Now that Mercury has returned from the underworld things will start to feel like they are picking up steam for us.

When I first started looking at astrology charts, back in my banking days, it wasn't possible for me to know anyone's exact time of birth,

(although I once had a very odd, elderly client and I was strangely drawn to ask him - he must have thought it a very thorough file I was putting together for him - after I asked his date of birth and place, both standard questions, I asked him if he knew the time he was born, he knew almost down to the exact second as I knew he would)

so I didn't pay a lot of attention to the fast moving planets since they change too frequently. Mercury is one of those fast moving, inner planets, though, that was always on my radar.

In a Tarot deck Mercury is the Magician card - an archetype many makers are familiar with even if they have never heard of him.

The Magician is the alchemist - the great conjurer; the maker of something out of nothing - we channel this energy all the time.

The shadow of the magician is manipulation, disorganization, depression, lack of focus and lack of motivation. Personally, I have no ability to manipulate (at least not successfully); the other shadows I am familiar with.

"Working with Mercury means that we must cultivate the art of recognizing significant communications, knowing what is truth and what is falsehood or else the lessons of the crossroads - the point where doors open or close, where persons have to make decisions that may forever affect their lives - will be lost." - Robert Faris Thompson

Maybe that sounds a bit more dire than it needs to be, but truly we do not need hindsight to have 20/20 vision.

Seen close to the sun at dusk or before dawn - Mercury is the mysterious messenger of the Gods who presides over all times of transitions; all crossroads.

I can't see everyone's chart to check where his royal elusiveness was hanging out when you were born, although if you email me I can tell you -

but I will say that Mercury in a fire sign receives and transmits insight through fire - think get your fire started inspiration here, in an earth sign (like mine) it is about building something physical with those ideas, in an air sign ideas are used to connect people or to make things beautiful and in a water sign Mercury is about introspection.

There is no particularly challenging placements for artists - although some are better than others for tangible manifestations. It's all good though, as they say. The speed Mercury was moving when we drew that first breath has an impact, too (deep, solid thinker vs fast, quick wit).

Mercury represents communication. He is associated with the lungs (my acupuncturist tells me that ailments to the lungs are unexpressed grief), the wind, birds, the hands (by creating with our hands we can heal grief), he reminds us to be cool-headed (meaning clear and responsible as opposed to hot-headed meaning thick and irresponsible).

One ritual for getting in touch with Mercury's cool thinking at a juncture is to pour cool water at the crossroads - you can do this at the bathroom sink - set something on the left side of the sink representing the one path and something on the top of the sink near the faucets representing the other path, cross the things and place them in their opposite places (left to right and top to bottom) - pour cool water at the point where the paths have intersected and speak the intention to get clear on your decision.

(know that this ritual means that you have taken action, see what happens and how you feel about it)

Mercury always reminds us that we are leading a magical life - that thoughts are things, that what we turn our attention to expands. Mercury reminds us that it is important to intend what we say. We are reminded to think about how our thoughts make us feel.

Does the thought we are thinking make us stronger or make us weaker?

Next post - how thinking we want something and not really wanting it makes us weaker (yes, back to that one)

Part IV - Profit like a Prophet - Reclaiming our Authority with Saturn Energy

 

The shadow of working with this energy is the temptation to become too authoritarian.

(we are the authors of our own story but we are not here to write anyone else's - Saturn abhors ghost-writers)

Rigidity (in our thinking and bodies), insecurity, tyranny, taking ourselves too seriously are probably signs that we have moved into the shadow and need a reboot

(and some serious cutting-loose time).

Iron deficiencies (Saturn rules iron) often equal irony deficiencies. I would recommend spinach and Steve Carrell.

(I want to see his new movie this weekend - no cutting-loose in this one though)

James Hillman, who studied with Carl Jung, pointed out that silver (the Moon, creativity) and lead (Saturn, depression) are always found together in nature. He implied that depression is crucial to creativity. I'm not sure this is true, but depression can be a challenge for creatives. Loss of focus and inaction contribute.

Positive thinking is a great tool for working with Saturn's challenges.

The positive thinking that actually works though is the "positive" that means certain -

not the word "positive" that means "good". 

Being certain things are getting better and being certain our world is falling apart are both the kind of thinking that creates just that. 

It's the certainty that is powerful, not the goodness or badness of something we are thinking about. Life just demands expansion - it's up to us how that expansion happens.

We need to be thinking about what we are thinking about. We need to be paying attention to our emotions. We need to be taking action that feels good.

Saturn is about our responsibilities - all the things we signed up to do here - the relationships, the challenges, the work, the projects.

He makes a complete orbit of the zodiac every 28-30 years (called our Saturn return, he returns to his place in the skies at the time we were born and basically proceeds to take our inventory - hard work, self-questioning, nowhere to hide - think of it as Saturn hitting all your houses at once). 

Now that Saturn is direct again - take a look at the house this affects in your chart - you can probably look this up online or email me and I'll tell you. This is the house where you will not be allowed to procrastinate or be indecisive right now (and thru 2014) - this is the space that you will have much universal support when you step into your authority!

Next week, Mercury finally moves direct again and since Mercury is all about our voice in the world, communication and magic - we will take a look at how we can make her work with our businesses and lives, too.

Have a great weekend all! The heat is making all of us in Jersey mad-hatter hysterical.

And typing the word hysterical reminds me that the word hysteria comes from the word uterus - because hysteria was thought to originate in the uterus - I know. 

I think men could not imagine that being a woman living in a world defined by men could make someone appear mad - that going bat-shirt crazy at midlife was actually a totally healthy reaction to an unhealthy situation.

Now that we are all living in an undefined world and men are crashing about mad as hatters, too - maybe it's time for a new word.

Of course who knows how much hysterical was actually in the hysteria anyway.

Once, many years back I called hubs at work because I found a drowned squirrel in the pool. Now, I had already fished her out and done a proper burial with my daughter and her little friends in the backyard, but I think I just wanted to talk to a grown up about it.

Anyhoo, we were talking on the phone and someone at his job needed his attention and he said to this person, "Hold on a minute. My wife's on the phone and she's hysterical". And I said, "Huh, I'm not hysterical." and he said "Well, you sound pretty upset."

To this day he insists I called him sounding hysterical. Of course, I just called all the people of NJ hysterical (not just the ones in possession of a uterus) ... I think we might be though - it is pretty freakin' hot .... xo all

Part III - Profit like a Prophet - Reclaiming our Authority thru Systems

refuse to sink - nan lawson locket

Saturn energy supports us when we deliberately choose our focus.

Regardless of what we say is important to us, the truth of what we care about is what we spend our time on.

How are we spending our minutes, hours, days?

There is no right or wrong with this and if we are happy we should keep on keeping on, but if things are not going as well, this is one of the first things I always look at. 

When we don't consciously choose our focus our time gets stolen by Saturn's shadow called distraction - this is especially true when we have an online business.

When we set up systems for our business we work with this energy best and step into our authority.

Systems to value our time (Saturn was known to the ancient Greeks as Chronos or Time), secure our foundation, establish structure, take responsibility for the work we put out into the world, use self-discipline and create boundaries are the kind of systems Saturn can help us with. Saturn says everyone needs a job!

Setting aside specific chunks of time for specific tasks can be a great organizer for maker business owners.

We never had a job where we could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to and we haven't created one either.

We need structure to our days. We don't need the inflexible kind of structure that breaks because it can't bend, but we don't want to be bending so often that we break anyway.

Figure out what we need to do and schedule our week. My slowest days are at the end of the week, so I schedule non-essential business stuff for Thursdays and Fridays. I balance my books every month. I inventory my supplies every month.

I have a calendar with chunks of hours and I work with it as much as possible. Two hours for such and such - if it's not complete and I am out of time. I stop anyway. I schedule in another hour somewhere - that way I'm not thinking about such and such; that thing I have to do.

I'm not stressing because it is hanging over me and unfinished.

It's over for me until that time period on my calendar when I take it back out. When I started valuing my own time in this way, stuff hitting me out of the blue becomes much more rare. Saturn still throws me a curve ball- that's his job, but I am at least twice as likely to catch it now.

I am not perfect with this; I don't try to be. I get off-balance all the time and have to drag myself back to center.

When Saturn isn't honored he shows up as inertia, fear, depression - if we are off rhythm and out of balance, Saturn tells us to get back in touch with our rhythms - we can do deep breathing as a way to find our center.

Saturn also represents the father and the truth is that many of us were not honored and approved of by our fathers. Saturn invites us to let go of the yearning for this. Just let it go. We don't have to go through life passing this paternal torch to others in some misguided attempt to get an authority figure to validate us.

It's very powerful to ask ourselves "To whom did I give away my power to feel good about myself?" and then affirm "I take my power back." Breathe that power back in ... deeply.

Remember when doing exercises like this that you have the energy of generations of magic makers behind your intention. This is not something to take lightly. Once you take that power back - you own it. Blaming someone else for something that isn't working in your life will no longer work for you.

The Chinese art of Chi Gong shows us the coordinates of Saturn. Imagine a vertical line from the base of our spine to the crown of our head then imagine a horizontal line from the small of our back straight to just below our belly button.

This is the place of our true center, Saturn's energy rests here - it is a place where fear does not exist.

Many years ago I had uterine surgery in this area that left me with scar tissue and numbness and a couple years later I had another surgery that removed the scar tissue. Looking back on it I could see that during this time I had lost my center emotionally and spiritually and so my physical body lost its center, too.

Women who have pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions, hysterectomies, etc - usually need to work to get back to center.

Next Post Part IV -Profit like a Prophet - Reclaiming our Authority

Part III - Profit like a Prophet - Reclaiming our Authority thru Ritual

the elephant never forgets ring

I am not particularly interested in who says something as much as I am in,

"does this message mirror my feelings".

My mother was very trusting of authority - if a doctor said to her, "do this" - she did it and it very often worked for her, but it was always her belief as much as the doctor's wisdom that created the healing.

She trusted politicians to run the world, the church to teach us about God, the schools to teach us everything else and the police to protect us.

What she saw as safety, I eyed with distrust and one hand on the doorknob.

We were both looking at what was true to us, but because none of this stuff was actual truth, we could only see what we were looking for.

When we read advice for our business we have to be thinking about this.

For example many business coaches advise makers to 'get their work out there - don't wait until everything is 100% ready' - a just do it philosophy right out of the old Nike ads. Now, this is really great advice for perfectionists and procrastinators. And many makers are perfectionists and need to hear this. But other makers need to put many, many hours into their skill set and get clear with their intention and focus before launching anything. There is no one shoe fits everyone with any of this stuff.

(I do a lot of study with north nodes in astrology charts and for every chart that shows someone needing to release that Virgo perfectionism there is someone else who really needs to embrace just that)

None of this stuff is actually truth - it is only what is true for us.

My friend had a job she really, really wanted to quit. She tried an Etsy shop for a year, but it wasn't taking off and it began to feel as heavy to her as her oppressive job. She decided to close the shop. She was just too scattered.

(many makers have these half-assed, empty for months and even years, Etsy shops cluttering up their life - spaces they have moved on from - if this is you, unless you have some really good reason for keeping it open and "maybe I will get back to this some day" probably doesn't count with this, you might want to close it - save the pics first - no one is going to clean up these loose ends for us, we have to do it ourselves - and if you are the kind of person who leaves cabinet doors open after you have grabbed a glass, left checking accounts open with $2.00 in them - which then proceeded to rack up service charges - you especially need to close that empty shop)

When she closed it, she did a release ritual I told her about and she said for the first time ever - she felt like she left something cleanly.

She celebrated the stuff it had brought into her life and released any need to look back at her shop with any unfinished emotions. It didn't become something in her past she had failed at (which it never was, but the subconscious is a tricky thing) or something she is going to get back to when she has more time (she may one day open another shop - who knows - but if she does, it will be opened with the enthusiastic energy of new creation it deserves).

She set her intention for her life to improve in very specific ways. She didn't worry about how any of this is going to happen - the "how's" are life's job, not ours - she just sets her intention, meditates to clear her mind, eats cleaner to clear her body, looks at emotions that come up to see where she is over-reacting, acts on things that make her feel good and ... well, I will report back - this is a process after all.

Our beliefs really do create our reality (what is true for us) but even most people who believe this think in terms of the big things, but the little things create the big things. We leave these little doors ajar here and there as we go through life ... just in case we need them, little escape hatches whose very presence (picture little open doors into the space you are now occupying) tells ourselves that we need an escape hatch - they suck the oxygen from the current moment and take up space.

There are centuries worth of unbinding and cord cutting rituals and the very simple paper release I talked about it in the last post that I always recommend (which she did on a full moon - she said she felt totally crazy and had to resist the urge to start howling - a very good sign I told her. I only wish she had actually howled).

Now cord cutting and unbinding (some tribes will imbue a cord with the symbolism of some restraint you wish to release, tie it loosely around your waist - I did this once with one of hub's neckties - raise your arms and let the cord drop to the ground) are not like "don't burn your bridges" - this isn't about releasing anything good; the good stuff is the stuff we get to keep.

Next Up Part IV- Profit like a Prophet - Reclaiming our Authority thru Ritual