Monastery of the Mind

03. Jan, 2010 0 Comments

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Photo by José Luis Mieza (cc)

I’m the sort of person who is a fan of finding significance in events- surely this is part of why I’ve become an astrologer. For me the new year’s season has always been personally exciting in an intellectual way, since I find the experience of tying up loose ends and taking stock of things satisfying.

Unfortunately getting things down onto the page has proven to be far more difficult than normal lately, with even the simplest of topics taking a ridiculous amount of effort; my normal end-of-year roundup, which involves a trip to 43 things, cleaning up various online profiles, and generating a fair bit of writing, has been thoroughly disrupted. I did spend New Year’s Day working on a major facelift for my site here, which I’m pleased with (temporary banner notwithstanding).

I’ve still thought all the thoughts quite readily, it’s getting them down that has been vexing.

Astrologically, Pluto has moved on to 3° Cap so the trine to my moon is now waning; this was quite a productive transit for me so I’m a little sad to see it go. The detox stellium is still shuffling along opposite my Mars, which has proven to be quite an energy drain over the long term. Mars recently crossed my ascendant, and will retrograde over the top of it before going direct again (and directly into my Mars return) this spring. Natal Venus returned at the beginning of December, so it seems I’ll complete all my personal planet returns over a span of six months. It definitely feels like I’ve hit the reset button on things lately. The Mars and Mercury retrogrades have me on a tactical retreat overall, but Merc Rx is business as usual for me so I’m looking at the whole timeline as a regrouping strategy.

Since the eclipse in Cancer this summer, which fell at my north node in the 12th, I’ve been focusing a lot on moon/Neptune exchanges in my own chart and in the people around me. Neptune is one of the few planets whose energy I have yet to make peace with, if not resisting it at every turn. The colossal amounts of Piscean energy I’ve attracted in the last several years could possibly stem from this… just possibly. And so recently I have retreated, mostly by chance and by instinct, into not only a mental monastery, but a rather odd physical manifestation of my twelfth house as well. The outward version I’ll discuss later, but the shift in thinking that accompanied it is the main thing.

Normally I’m a very detail-oriented and logical thinker… an illustration of my brain would probably be some hulking piece of steampunk machinery, with extraneous gears and possibly a set of aviation goggles for style. But the sheer austerity of my thought processes over the last several months have been the most noticeable shift for me; it’s not that my thinking is dulled, but that I’m making connections in a very organic, rather than methodical, way. My brain has slowed from its racing, third-house pattern to a very unfamiliar info-dredging style.

In a lot of ways I feel that I have a lot to think, and a lot to read, but not yet a lot to say. Or that I have quite a lot to say, but the expression just isn’t quite coming yet. And so I’ll continue to ruminate in my little monastery until I can get it all out in a way that is more articulate. Is this what Mercury in Pisces feels like? It’s like being on another planet from my usual self.