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| The late lamented Heath Ledger as the Joker in Batman. Mercury's dark side is on show now. |
I was lying in bed thinking about how often the word chaos has been in the news in the last couple of days. Some guests at a party have decided to break a few rules, just to see what's going to happen. George Papandreou, the Greek Prime Minister, for example.
Papandreou, like a lot of comedians, is a Gemini, ruled by the trickster planet, Mercury. Currently, Mercury is moving through the heavens hand in hand with Venus, known sometimes as the laughing goddess.
They have just escaped from the gloom and doom of Scorpio where poor Venus was in fall, into jolly Sagittarius.
So I decided the title of this post was going to be Merry Mayhem.
But something made me change my mind.
I came downstairs to find my loved one flipping pancakes surrounded by total chaos, since we have been moving furniture, pictures, plants, pets, books in the last few days. (Mercury plus Venus through the 4th House here.)
He turned around and said: "There's been a terrible pile up on the M5. Apparently, it's mayhem."
Not so merry then.
It's Mercury at work. He rules roads. He's trining the god of shock Uranus, semi-sextile death head Pluto and quincunx Jupiter Rx in Taurus. That backwards Jupiter is supposed to be ruling Mercury as he travels through Sagittarius, but he's not doing his job.
In the sign of the centaur, Mercury traditionally behaves badly. Think of talking a lot of hot air, but also just plain rudeness. The two signs where Mercury is at his worst (Pisces is the other one) are both mutable and rather unconfined. Mercury really needs rules to follow otherwise he's likely to go off the rails. Sometimes this is a minor thing, like failing to edit your writing, but sometimes the consequences are terrible - like a pile up on the M5.
Right now, the king (Jupiter) is going backwards (out of commission), so Mercury is free to wreak havoc. Think of the fool and the king in a medieval court. There you have Jupiter and Mercury. But what happens if the king doesn't keep the fool in check?
This is the beginning of Mercury's "shadow" period, before he goes retrograde on the 24th. I think he's going to spend some time really messing with us.
When the gods laugh, we humans sometimes just don't think it's very funny.
