Why are we compelled to make resolutions at the beginning of every year? Could it be that the stars have made their annual right alignment so we can take new steps?
Every year in January, the star cluster of the Pleiades sails across the zenith, or uppermost part, of the night sky. Pleiades is known as the Seven Sisters, and they are everywhere among the most noted objects in the history, poetry, and mythology of the stars.
The first-born and most beautiful of the Seven Sisters is Maia, who’s notable as the mother of Mercury, the swift-footed messenger and trickster god.
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun in our system, which means it also has the fastest orbit~only 88 days. And when Mercury becomes visible in the morning sky later this month, then all five naked-eye planets visible at once.
But right now, Mercury is in its retrograde loop, the motion it makes three times each year when it seems to move backward in its orbit. Astrologically, this motion of the trickster god can mean communications break downs, computer glitches, and bad timing for forging new contracts. This motion of Mercury even confounded the great astronomer Nicolas Copernicus, who wanted to dispel Ptolemy’s elaborate schemes of planetary motion around the Earth and describe how everything orbited the Sun, but he couldn't get a good ‘visual grip’ on Mercury.
The peak moment of every Mercury retrograde cycle is its meeting with the Sun, called the ‘inferior conjunction’, and it occurs this week on Thursday, January 14th.
So pay attention! With his mother Maia brilliantly on high, it just might be that Mercury, though a trickster god, is bringing a message to shed light on the whole year ahead. Mercury’s next inferior conjunction with the Sun will be during his mother’s month of May, when the planet will appear to move directly across the face of the Sun (this is called a 'transit'), a rare event that happens only a dozen times a century.
Until then, stay clever! Mercury’s messages take many tricky forms.