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November '12
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by Terry Lamb

November leads us toward sweet release, perhaps beckoning but not quite delivering. We have to be patient. We’ve been working on a process for nearly two years (since February 2011), and the tension has periodically been intense—most recently in April, May-June, late August-early September, and the first half of October. It takes time to untangle the knots that we’ve co-created in two years’ time. This is the realm of healing at the deepest levels of consciousness, where the wounds and habits gained over multiple lifetimes are accessible, open to healing. Now we experience a loosening, even deliverance from our past as this healing process wells to the surface, then overflows into our visible world in an ongoing expression of clearing.

This does not come without its delays. In this case, the delays have to do with a story of truth and communication, as Mercury talks to us loud and clear through its newest retrograde. By the time November opens, Mercury will be slow, almost at its station, which comes on November 6 at 4°16' Sagittarius. This takes us on a journey up the steps from the shadow lands we’ve been inhabiting, into the clear light of day.

Mercury’s retrograde always lasts for 21–24 days, during which a New Mercury cycle (like a New Moon) of about 3½ months commences halfway through the retrograde, when Mercury conjoins the Sun (the Inferior Conjunction). The power of the experience lies not in enduring yet another Mercury retrograde, waiting for it to expire before we do anything “important”.

Instead, it lies in being sensitive to the fact that one three-month cycle is ending and another beginning. We are better off focusing on completions and setting our intention for what we want to accomplish in the new cycle. It is a time of power, a time when daring (but centered) actions bear fruits over the coming three months, a time when we may find that waiting is better than action, but not always. It is always a time for going inside and listening to the messages sent from the gods—the planets that Mercury contacts during the retrograde. These color the coming cycle and establish the themes we are to fulfill.

In this Mercury retrograde, echoes from the past reach forward, and we travel through time, recapturing past experiences like hair in a comb, straightening and smoothing our path forward. We simply cannot go on without the truth being known—a truth that has been building for so long, only now fully understood.

Mercury carries energy packets to us from the invisible realms via Neptune, and opens the nexus of the North Node to reveal what we can do with our fate—our current circumstances—to create our destiny. This is underscored with great power and grandeur by the fact that Mercury is riding the wave of two eclipses and two planetary stations, all of which occur in November. This will indeed be a time of equalization where there has been imbalance, of truth where there has been obscurity, of transformation and transcendence where there have been obstructions.

When these events occur during a Mercury retrograde, their energies are often submerged, in abeyance, until after Mercury returns to forward motion. This intensifies the release that comes once Mercury stations direct, which this time comes on November 26. This is two days prior to the Lunar Eclipse at 6°47' Sagittarius, close enough to Mercury’s earlier stationary point to catch hold and carry its energy forward into the next eclipse cycle, which lasts 6–18 months or more.

As Mercury moves back into Scorpio, where it stations direct at 18°10', it connects with the North Node, the engine of destiny. The Nodes are void points, like black holes, that pull us in a direction that unfolds fate (South Node) and destiny (North Node), a ship at whose helm sits the soul, not the ego, in each person’s life. This is what we connect with during an eclipse—little wonder that we feel so deeply moved during these times.

What comes on this Mercury retrograde is significant, since it ties to both past and future. It is a fulcrum of destiny, a movable feast of possibilities that will cast a light forward in time, long and broad. The eclipses straddle the same divide as Mercury, inhabiting both Scorpio (11/13) and Sagittarius (11/28), with the Sun-Mercury Inferior Conjunction/New Mercury on November 17 at 25°42' Scorpio, still in the shadow of the New Moon Eclipse.

Packed into this point of perfect potential are Neptune’s station direct on November 10 at 0°22' Pisces and Chiron’s on November 14 at 4°59' Pisces. The stations of these planets time our healing process—hence the theme of this month’s experiences. Now we are released to complete whatever processes of growth and integration we have been working on since late February. We know what we need to know, have worked long and hard at building our health in a new way, and now it’s reward time!

There’s one more shoe to drop once November closes, and that’s to do with Uranus. Uranus is a sleeper this month, still retrograde, but getting ready to station direct December 14. Mercury flirts with Uranus, almost connecting before its station, but stopping short of contact in a process called “refranation”. When a planet refrains, something we expect to happen doesn’t come about—not in the form and timing we expect. There is a delay, and during that delay a series of steps are taken that adjust our perspective so that a better outcome is created—not that we like it at the time we’re having to wait.

So November may feel more like waiting than achieving, but we’re working the soil of the rich inner landscape, feeling the light of truth on our back, and listening to the thought of the heart, to which we now have a clear channel. We need to go to the Source to get the core realization that will lead us forward. When the thunderclap comes, we have a lot of adjustments to make. We are engaging in a yin process, a journey of small steps that accumulate great power, not recognized in Western culture and so, often hard to follow.

What comes to the surface, and when, is relative to our own readiness. It’s a good time to remember the Zen saying, “when you are headed straight toward it, you are moving away from it”.

Venus just into Libra and Mars moving from Sagittarius to Capricorn take us on another track that presages our experiences of December-January, requiring us to have a foot in both worlds. The worlds connect through us, and their process is not to be ignored as they connect with the forces of change that come to us through Uranus and Pluto, now fully in their epic square. Water their garden now to create good outcomes over the winter months. These planets are headed into harmony with each other, a process which culminates with the emergence of hidden power on November 29, as Venus sextiles Mars as it conjoins Pluto. Relationships reach toward true harmony.

What remains bound up in November will curve toward release in the first half of December, as Mercury moves out of its retrograde zone, finally reaching Uranus on December 14and untying the knots that remain.

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