Tip of the Week:
In the waxing light of last week’s powerful Scorpio New Moon, many will be relieved to learn that Mercury turns direct on November 29 at 20 Scorpio 45. This Mercury Retrograde cycle has been particularly complex. While the influence is often mechanical, electronic, technological, or generally associated with miscommunications and so on, this one has reached more deeply.
Due to Mercury in Scorpio, the sign of depth psychology, its influences can be identified as causing psychological and psychic disturbances, doubts, confusions and various levels of neurosis.
While in Sagittarius initially, the disruptions could be described as spiritual, as with feeling lost and fearful. Its final push through Scorpio ends on December 11, when it re-enters Sagittarius, and while direct, it stands to resolve these disturbances.
Of course, the experience of these influences is ever subjective and therefore relative. But, the Horoscopes narrow down tendencies and can offer some clues.
Mercury will be in its post-shadow phase for the next 3 weeks, but it will not officially be retrograde until its next destined retrograde cycle starting on February 25, 2026.
Saturn also turned direct on November 27, the day of U.S. Thanksgiving at 25 Pisces 09. While it does not get the same attention, its influence can prove much more powerful than the disturbances caused by Mercury.
Saturn will re-enter Aries on February 13, 2026. Anyone with planets or angles in their Natal or Progressed charts, at or within a degree or two, will experience the full weight of Saturn. This is especially true of the Mutable Signs – Pisces, Gemini, Virgo and Sagittarius, Leo and Libra.
Saturn’s weight often produces delays, restrictions, and feelings of depression. The anecdote is to be patient, deliberate, and determined to make extra efforts to work cooperatively with things as opposed to lapsing into depression or despair.
When planets turn retrograde by transit, and if while retrograde it cross back over the degree of a specific planet or angle (Ascendant/Descendant, Midheaven/Nadir), it activates a deep process based on the themes of the sign and degree where the retrograde planet is situated, and those associated with the planet or angle it is influencing based on the sign and house it occupies.
So, the deep part of the entire transit begins while the planet is direct. But if it stations and turns retrograde and crosses back over that degree, it constitutes the deepening of the destined, evolutionary process that began with the first contact while the transiting planet was direct. Then, the resolution phase, the end of the process, when the transiting planet is again direct and crosses over that degree one more time while in direct motion again.
In rare instances, Neptune or Pluto can repeat the 3-step process twice! This is especially true of Pluto. If it does so, the entire process can be interpreted as ‘deeply necessary’ to bring about changes associated with the planet or angle involved. When Pluto is involved, processes of death and rebirth are activated, effectively producing some mode of regeneration or renewal.
Negatively, people often get dragged down by the death or ending part, which is understandable. However, often the issue is one of fear and resistance, accordingly, based on the comfortable, familiar, and secure attachment of the ego. Ironically, people will resist, even when the pattern that is destined to be regenerated no longer serves a genuine purpose, or has even become negative, affecting health issues of any kind, whether physical, mental, or emotional, and sometimes a combination of all the above.
This is where the insight and guidance afforded by Astrology can prove very helpful. Better understanding that the apparently ‘random’ events of life are actually woven with purpose can prove invaluable. The deeper scope of this purpose includes the fact that life itself is ‘on purpose’, and that we are souls incarnate evolving through the Earth School, adds to the depth of reassurance that it is all indeed meaningful.
The more this understanding is nurtured and cultivated, the more we can shift from survival consciousness to one of purposeful co-creation and cooperation, which are foundational principles of a truly spiritual life.
Have a great week.
