Mercury-Saturn-Pluto Yod, Mercury Square Neptune and Chiron: Conversational Maya Remover

Mercury square Neptune: Where am I? What dimension is this? Got any Cheetos?

Photo: Willow (with no Photoshopping)

Communication and intelligence planet Mercury in Gemini is currently squaring Neptune and Chiron in Pisces, and we're attempting mightily to gain perspective on our "new era" positioning. Wrapping our minds around exactly where we are right now and exactly what it means is easier said than done, however.

We've just come out of the long, hard, and disorienting winter of 2012/2013 with a seven-body stellium in Pisces symbolically indicating both the end of the astrological Piscean era and the beginning of a new expression for the sign of Pisces. We've shed (or are shedding) the last bits of Piscean-era cocoon, opening into new love, new union, and new communion for a new astrological era. We're holding a place for Piscean sweetness, innocence, love, and togetherness in an era that preaches individuality, self-sufficiency, independence, and detachment, and this leaves us emotional and vulnerable in the process.

How we show and experience ultimate spiritual love and communion have changed, are changing. 

With Mercury in Gemini squaring Neptune (May 18) and Chiron (May 22), we're gaining perspective on where we are now and what it means one conversation, one exchange, one thought, one idea, one piece of information at a time. What we're learning may not be completely clear to us under this aspect, however. We can expect some confusion, some illusion, some mind fog, and some difficulty in expressing our points, continuing through next week. If you're experiencing conversations that circle around and seem to go nowhere, just make like a slippery fishy, and go with the flow.

Love, money, values, and relationship planet Venus is also in Gemini. It squared Neptune in Pisces May 13 and will square Chiron in Pisces May 20. This creates the possibility for some lingering disillusionment and disappointment in romance and relationship. The information we're receiving from others can deflate some of our hopes or dreams. Character weakness and inferior influences could rise to the surface in ourselves and others. Things are not exactly as we thought - a common Piscean/Neptunian theme - and we have to keep talking, keep interacting, keep gathering perspective, even when it's painful, to determine what's really going on.

The Venus and Mercury squares bring new dreams, fresh and potent, bubbling up into our conscious minds and mouths, along with new perspective on old ideals, particularly in love, relationship, and partnership. But this is also very confusing and potentially disheartening. We're wading through the old and the new at the same time, not completely sure which is which at times. We're trying to make up our minds about which long-cherished dreams and ideals have to be surrendered, morphed, re-jigged, and which ones move forward as guiding lights.

How much can we compromise, if at all? How fluid can we be? How can we move toward shared dreams when our dreams are in such a state of discombobulating morph?

The Uranus in Aries energy - forming its third of seven exact squares to Pluto in Capricorn May 20 - is driving us into extreme individualism. Survival. Independence. Self-sovereignty. Razing emotional attachments as we blaze new trails.

Pretty far from the Neptunian/Piscean ideal of loving union, communion, togetherness, compassion, unbreakable connection and inter-relation. One. Whole.

Uranus (uranium) and Pluto (plutonium) squaring off into 2015 are splitting Piscean-era atoms and Piscean-era communion. The way energy works is different now. What holds us together is different now. And it's a very steep learning curve as we put things together on the fly.

How much can we detach? How much detachment will kill us and other living things? How much will disconnect us from our souls? How much is pathological? These are questions we have to answer through Aquarian experimentation now, and this makes for some very unstable and unpredictable dynamics, especially in relationship.

With Mercury and Venus conjunct in Gemini and forming multiple aspects, love, money, values, beauty, and relationships are primary themes, as well as the talking and thinking (Mercury) about love, money, values, beauty, and relationship (Venus).

Both Venus and Mercury will conjunct the degree of last June's historic Venus Transit (15 Gemini) on May 21 and 22, increasing the "new era relationship" themes.

After the exterior conjunction of the Sun and Venus in Aries on March 28, also conjunct Mars and Uranus, we are truly in new relational territory. There is no protocol, no blueprint, going forward from here. We're learning as we go.

Mercury in its domicile of Gemini is a facile information collector. It gathers perspectives, thoughts, ideas, information, and messages that help put things in context. The influence of the squares to nebulous and filmy Pisces/Neptune at this time, though, makes grasping the full perspective elusive or impossible.

The current astro climate tells us in no uncertain terms, however, that we really do need to figure this out. We really do need to keep the conversation flowing, regardless of difficulty, even in meandering fits and starts.

Venus and Mercury in Gemini are also triggering the double Yod formations we experienced around the time of the Jupiter direct station in January 2013. The Sun in Gemini re-activates these configurations May 27 - June 1, and Mars follows suit June 7 - 15. The Yods were strongly in effect December 2012 through mid-April 2013, bringing about new understanding through some awkward exchanges. They helped us acclimatize to the oddness of Aquarius and also to the necessity of being around people who see things very differently from the ways in which we do. Now, we put some of that into active and immediate practise.

Saturn and Pluto are currently digging up the dirt and the suppressed muck in retrograde motion. Mercury in Gemini pushes into quincunxes to Saturn Rx in Scorpio and Pluto Rx in Capricorn May 18-20, and our conversations become alchemical, catalytic, dangerously potent, as Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn form their third structure-busting square.

Things we hear or say this upcoming week could bust things wide open. Don't be shocked if your words trigger reactions you had not intended. There are underlying feelings, psychological realities, and suppressed energies that must come to the surface in a controlled way now, spread around through bits of daily convo, and you just might be an agent for that.

Mercury in Gemini likes to keep it light and conversational. But with quincunxes to those hardcore brutes Saturn and Pluto, we're going to hear subtext in people's words and tones that potentially confirms our fears. Even the lightest of comments can hit us in the gut with the deeper understanding of what it really means under the sociability.

With Venus and Mercury transiting Gemini, we're forced to gather more information, to have further conversations, but we're scared of what we're going to hear. There's a very good likelihood under these aspects that we will hear something that displeases us, upsets us, threatens our security.

With the North Node and Saturn coming together in conjunction in Scorpio (exact September 18), the successful soul-driven path involves confronting and working through some of our deepest fears. We're looking down some very dark corridors, contemplating some very disturbing possibilities, walking the gut-churning razor's edge. And we have to feel it. We can't cut ourselves off from it or avoid it. Our emotional and psychological depth work is the only thing that can keep things on track now. One extrication at a time. No more dirt hidden under any more rugs. It won't stand.

Mercury in Gemini in Yod formation and squaring Neptune and Chiron in Pisces is the Conversational Maya Remover. This upcoming week, we're being asked to dig through the superficial layers and comments to get to the real, stone-cold reality. We're asked to honour the often-uncomfortable process of truth and reality rising to the surface. And we're asked to divine down deep for the courage to be true to that process, carrying it through to completion.

The Sun enters Gemini May 20, shining light on the Neptune and Chiron squares May 26 and June 3 and re-activating the Yods May 27 - June 1. These solar aspects should assist us with clarity of perspective, though there is also the possibility of painful personality or self-expression issues. An eroding feeling that we are not special, alone in our pain. This is transient.

Mars enters Gemini May 31, activating the same aspects June 7 - 15. Proactively dealing with anything that comes up now can head off anger, frustration, and fights during that time.

Mercury and Venus move from angsty Yod territory into a gorgeous triple conjunction with Jupiter on May 27/28 at 23 degrees Gemini. This triple conjunction of Mercury with the two benefic planets in Gemini brings us a dual scenario. There is the possibility for "peak experiences," so to speak. Conversations and information coming to us that will renew our faith in almost miraculous ways, releasing long-standing doubt, unease, and fear.

But there is also the wading through of the end-of-Pisces disappointment, desolation, weakness, and pain.

The frictional (yet potentially productive) squares between the bodies in Gemini and Neptune and Chiron in Pisces hold the pain we carry from dreams deferred, dreams disappointed, dreams unrealized. The perspective we're gaining now, heading into the Mercury-Venus-Jupiter conjunction, will be inspirational and exciting but also potentially painful and disappointing. Two twins. Two realities existing at once. Juggling this is our challenge.

We're being asked to remove the layers of maya, to see clearly where we are at this time, and it's through verbal and written interactions, through thoughts and realizations, through gathering more information, that we release the illusions that could hold us back and keep us down.

There are painful points here and over the next month related to communication, interaction, and perspective. But removing the last of the maya that could keep us from realizing our dreams in the new astrological era is worth the effort and the struggle now.