Astrology Jan. 11th-17th: Master of the Maze

This week the Moon waxes through its first quarter while Mars creeps inexorably through Scorpio, and Mercury dances backwards, leading us deeper into the maze.  Meanwhile, Venus makes a liberatory trine with Uranus on Monday, but continues into a complicated arrangement with Jupiter later in the week.  Thursday wins first prize this week for friendliest configuration, while Sunday’s Moon-Mars opposition could easily get a little ugly.

Though not without challenges, this week is of a more positive character than the pair which preceded it.  While Mercury is still quite retrograde, he has departed from the bloody-minded square with Mars, which stained his station early last week a grisly crimson. This week is much more concerned with fixes, solutions and redesigns, though to do so we will have to confront the master of the labyrinth.

The Heart of the Labyrinth

This Thursday, the 14^th, Mercury conjoins the Sun in late Capricorn.  This conjunction marks the mid point of Mercury’s retrograde motion, and is more specifically called the “inferior” conjunction, because it sees Mercury between the Sun and the Earth.  These inferior conjunctions are the heart of every Mercury retrograde.  The other type, the “superior” conjunction, see Mercury on the far side of the Sun from the Earth.

Mercury’s retrograde motion and close proximity to the Sun are both considered to be afflictions to the planet’s action in traditional astrology.  Yet this moment in the middle of the retrograde, the inferior conjunction, qualifies as a very positive condition- a “cazimi.”  Cazimi translates roughly to “in the heart” and it occurs whenever a planet is extremely tightly conjoined the Sun, though astrologers have been known to argue about its exact parameters.  Planets attain a fleeting potency when placed in such a tight line with both the Sun and Earth.  Mercury’s cazimi early on the 14^th thus provides a point of greater clarity about the internal and/or external transitions afoot.

Mercury’s retrograde movement, during which he disappears from visibility for several weeks, is often analogized to a journey through the Underworld- a function to which the Greek Hermes was especially fitted in his role as Hermes Cthonios, the guide of souls.  The inferior conjunction with the Sun, at the heart of Mercury’s retrograde cycle, can thus be paralleled to the discovery of the underworld’s innermost sanctum.  Here, a Chthonian Mercury confers with the midnight Sun.

The Stygian conference occurs within the stony labyrinth deep beneath castle Capricorn. The maze contains, protects, and imprisons.  Though born of the will to order, it hosts chaos. After tracing its winding lines and dead ends, we come to its unexpected center and here encounter its menacing and eccentric architect.

The master of the maze, its mysterious demiurge, is often cast in our stories as a devil of one sort or another.  Whether it’s a
charming one, like Labyrinth’s David Bowie, or an ominous and inscrutable intelligence, like Leviathan from the Hellraiser series, our human tendency to demonize the architect is consistent. Yet this demiurge is none other than the brilliant, flawed Daedulus, creator of the Cretan minotaur’s stony underworld.

While we cannot be blamed for all that occurs in the maze of the material, we are far more responsible for the geometry of the tunnels we dwell within than we regularly admit to.  Born of order and chaos, this labyrinth is our reality construct, and its minotaurs, cenobites and goblins all monsters we hoped to confine.  The labyrinth is our attempt to stabilize, limit and control our world.  Yet having wandered it so long, it is easy to forget who is responsible for its design.

The meeting between the Sun and Mercury at the center of the maze serves to remind us, for when we come face to face with its demonic master, we are likely to find that he is no great devil, but merely our faithful Daedalus, doing his best to design in accordance with our badly communicated wishes.  We are not the monsters trapped within its walls, but co-creators of its sprawling design. We thus come to this meeting as an absent prime mover in order to chat with our errant demiurge about the broken linkages between our intentions and the resultant patterns.

This chthonian meeting is also attended by Jupiter, to whom both the Sun and Mercury make perfect trines.  This is significant, as Jupiter is in a Mercury ruled sign and currently rides with Rahu, the Head of the Dragon.  He is thus in a position to contribute plans for cunning redesigns and thoughtful expansions to our world-system.  This triadic meeting, which takes plan on the 13^th and 14^th, thus provides an opportunity to contemplate the deep structure of our world, and what of its design you would, and could, change.

Yet after our conclave with the master of the maze, we must begin the trudge out of the underworld’s twisting terrain.  The excellence a planet is treated to during a cazimi disappears quickly as the two bodies depart one another. We thus go back to retrograde and combust Mercury, with all of the standard afflictions to the travel, electronics, communications and scheduling entailed therein, for the pathway out of the underworld is as long and strange as the journey to its hidden heart.