In the next few days, Mercury will start in its first retrograde movement for the year at 10° Aquarius and it doesn’t go direct until February 3. This doesn’t mean that everything is about to stop. In fact, in the 2022 Starcycles Cheat Sheet (https://starcycles.com/downloads/2022-starcycles-calendar/) I speak extensively about how that might affect each of the signs. Mercury retrograde in Aquarius happens in the natural zodiac in the 11th house of goals, friends in community, and stepchildren…just to name a few of the general things that we all may re-evaluate as we tease out a new way to positively interact with these individuals in a new and different way while gaining new insight from listening more than talking. This could be a time where we re-evaluate how many community commitments we have and if we really have enough time to spread ourselves so thin that we don’t have time to do what is the essence of our work or lifestyle. In other words, what is most important right now?
The early part of the week begins with Mars, the planet of action, in a challenging aspect to Neptune, which can seem like there is confusion regarding one’s direction – and, of course, this is correct, since Mercury is beginning to slow down as well. Sometimes confusion is good. It is like daydreaming, which we were always told ‘not’ to do in school. I just remember a very funny story (at the time it wasn’t so funny) but I was only 11 years old and in an advanced accelerated class in the 8th grade. (Yes, they used to push us through if we tested smart, but they didn’t think about our emotional development, but that is for another day). Anyway, we had a teacher, a very smart man who had just finished teaching in a military school. I was in a public middle school on the South side of Chicago – there is a difference right there! He would give us these VAST histories of the world and this unit was the history of Russia which was spread all over the board. He was a big man and a very loud one and he had a way of calling on students in the Socratic method (like in law school) and it was a lot for 8th graders to take in – especially those of us who had skipped a couple grades.
I remember he was fully engaged in a lecture one long afternoon about the importance of the Georgia region in the Caucasus region of Russia. As a very young Pisces, I was bored, frankly, and so I remedied that by daydreaming and looking out the window – completely disconnected from all the noise. But then–I heard the word, Georgia (the name of the region and not my name), I suddenly snapped out of my daydream and said, “Excuse me Mr. Koss can you repeat that?” I suddenly realized that he wasn’t calling on me and I was so embarrassed, but… I never forgot about the name of that part of the world again. The point of this story is that sometimes we just must step out of the noise, get away from it and do something that allows the other parts of our brain to function. Mr. Koss turned out to be one of the best teachers I ever had, because his teaching methods, though a little severe for a too young 8th grader, taught me to quantify vast amounts of information and put concepts together. So, thanks Mr. Koss….just in case you’re reading this.
