Wednesday, July 25, 2018

A Little Mercury, A Little Mars

Keeping multiple diaries is a challenge.

Keeping a single diary is a challenge. Especially when it's the calendar/planner kind of diary. You don't even want to look in mine.

It'd probably be blank. Like most time-keeping intentions which collect and pile up in my life, languishing in disuse.

Embodying spontaneity has its challenges. And I do most things with immediacy.

In the moment.

Sight-reading.

Now.

For a man so interested in divination, I can be remarkably obtuse and occluded when it comes to the future.

It's almost as if it doesn't exist until it's right here.

But I am fascinated in the wheel's turning. I'll often ask Hermes to run around the curve and we'll talk about what's coming through the Tarot, but ask me to pay a bill on time and that's another story.

Well, really, isn't the future and all its allure more interesting than money? I guess I'm selective in Mercury's aspects. You'd think he'd make me better in the marketplace, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Well, Mercury's marketplace doesn't seem to work at all for me quite yet, and that's the point.

The ongoing retrogradation of Mars, which is also out of bounds, feels like the fuel on the fire spurring improvement, coherence, and power into embodiment. It feels like time for daring action that reaches for the best, that gets all the parts working together in support for a common goal.

In terms of the horoscope, it feels like the drive to put all the pieces of the circle together so that they're working at optimum capacity. A voice calls for the best possible expression of the horoscope, to "be all that you can be."

Mars' eyes look upward. He shares this with his king, the Sun. The two choleric bodies strive for greatness, for a higher level, a distillation of pure gold, a strong foundation, a muscular solar plexus.

I've learned that Mars needs to strive, to test itself. Our inner man with the club needs to move that iron, to tire itself out, to try.

Oh does that word cause quarrels! Try.

Because it can be used as an excuse.

But Mars handles no excuses. He does not accept them.

I think some part of us knows when we are truly trying and when we are using the word to substitute for its opposite: frustration.

And I can feel the martial hatred of inauthenticity.

BE WHO YOU ARE!

If you've "tried" with authenticity, you've succeeded. Mars doesn't "fail." He keeps going. (Put another way by Master Yoda, "Do or do not. There is no try.")

As I was told by a friend recently, there isn't hard work. If you've worked and its rewarding, it's not hard work, it's honest work.

(He's got Sun conjoined to Mars in Capricorn.)

So back to Mercury. Mars is putting me together in new, stronger ways. And that means making all of Mercury's capabilities and possibilities manifest in vessels. That means articulating, voicing, creating, playing, and sharing. It also means learning how to navigate the marketplace - hell, to show up to the marketplace.

But, I'm also hopeful and empowered to keep this blog, one of my multiple diaries, nourished with some attention. It'll be like catching lightning in a bottle, but then, this seems to be its time: