This is a month of much water…

All the Mercury Retrogrades this year are in water signs, which makes them a little different that usual. They’re much more emotional than mental or physical. So, if you’ve been working on your emotional authenticity, or you’ve been doing a lot of emotional work, you may very well be gliding through more smoothly than usual. If, ont he other hand, there’s an emotional issue you have been letting sit in the depths, it has probably come to rear its head for you. This has been an especially good retrograde for resolving and releasing old karmic patterns.

We are under the influence of a Grand Water Trine that peaks three times this month. The first time, it helps us see the connection between the social and the cosmic like a small community – big community mirror. The second time (tonight) it makes the social personal and points to our karma, so we become the microcosm reflected by the community, and we have a chance to resolve issues we’ve been working for many lifetimes. The third time (at the Full Moon on the 22nd) will be an opportunity to not only heal all our relationships, past and present, but to learn enough from that healing to help others.

The energy of Cancer, where the Sun sits for a few more weeks, and where the moon is tonight, when combined with the energy of the Mercury Retrograde, offers us an excellent opportunity to do some shadow work. We all have aspects of ourselves we try not to acknowledge. These get tied to the Negative Ego, also known as your Resistance or, in some traditions, the Dark Mother. She is Lilith, the creator who makes form without force, and then seeks to co-opt force from other parts of you to feed and empower those forms. It is the part in all of us that kept us from getting eaten by sabre-tooth tigers, by getting us to stay safe and avoid change. It is the manifestation of the Pull polarity, that part of us that gives us something to choose against and, in doing so, affords us Free Will.

So take a moment tonight to do some contemplation of those aspects of your character that you consider to be flaws. Pull them into the light. What fears are they tied to? How to they disempower you? And what are the strengths that they can give you if you let them stay in the light?

When you acknowledge those bits of you, you take your power back from the shadows, you re-integrate yourself with your purpose, and you become more effective in everything you do. When you let those things fester in the shadows, you don’t really know yourself, and you can’t maintain alignment of purpose, and you’re going to have a hard time getting things done, energetically and physically. It’s a recipe for self-sabotage.

So go into the silence, go into the depths tonight. Call on Whale to help you, if you want a guide and a friend. Or call on the Goddess Derceto. If you’re more comfortable with Abrahamic tradition, call on the whale that swallowed Jonah, who helped him wrestle with his doubts and his darkness.

Once you have found those parts of you that you’ve been unwilling to look at, and you’ve looked at them, let them stay in the light. Write them down, so you can return to them and examine them, one by one, from every angle. Find how they can actually serve you, instead of draining your power through fear. Make friends with them, get them to help you move toward your goals.

And then soothe your spirit. Soothe your entire being. If you have that luxury, take a bath or sit in a hot tub or a body of water. Under the stars is better, but you can dim the lights if you have to be inside. Let the water soothe you. Let is wash away that which no longer serves you. Give it to the Great Mother, so it can be recycled into something more useful.

Blessed Be the Great Mother
Without beginning and without ending
Blessed be her temple of pure black marble
Blessed be the stillness of her holy place
Blessed be the wave that caresses the shore for her
Blessed be the sand the succumbs to its embrace
Blessed be the shell that is cast up from her
Blessed be she, the Mother of Pearl
Blessed be she
Blessed be.

Flowing with the waters of life, allowing them to bring you to where you need to be, is far preferable to fighting the current. Let go. Float. Relax.