Mercury Retrograde and Hydromancy

Or, things I think about on Saturday mornings

I should’ve fastened my emotional seatbelt. Oh, right. All these years and all this study and it’s still stuck between the seats despite my digging for it.

Mercury Retrograde is a real thing. I suppose especially for someone like me who was born on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer. It’s rough sometimes — there are a whole lot of conflicting personality traits with which to deal. Gemini is moody, unpredictable, impulsive, energetic, distracted, expressive, observant, connecting, curious, sometimes (often) viciously witty — and is also ruled by Mercury. Geminis feel this feeling of going backwards intensely. Cancer is emotional, cautious, sensitive, protective of others, a great dinner party host, nurturing, and sometimes a bit of a grump (did I say sensitive? Let me say it again — sensitive). Whether or not any of that is really true or even useful information — I often think that just like the Enneagram (we are all ALL of the types in one way or another), your zodiac sign is a box into which you shouldn’t be put — I’m certainly in the throes of this period’s volatility. The conflict, the unease, the emotional rollercoaster, the confusion about the sun shining one minute and a deluge the next (literally and metaphorically), the urge to throw the eighteen things I’m carrying into a pile, light a match, and find myself a white room that holds a white sofa upon which a white cat naps so I can hide there and therefore, be peaceful and safe (and everyone outside of it will be safe too) — it’s all upon me. It sounds extreme because it is. Gemini is an air sign. Cancer is a water sign. They are incompatible.

Or is that all just an excuse?

Am I really being pushed around by the solar system? Or am I just tussling with the business of being on earth? Though I think I’m getting better at it, sometimes I forget to allow all of my tendencies to live together peacefully and just go gently. Sometimes I forget that where I have been before is not where I am now. My life is full of blessings and comfort these days, but that doesn’t mean I can always rest easy. Sometimes my trauma still takes charge of me. In fact, it does so more often than I like to admit, especially in times of turmoil. Blessings and comforts don’t make one any less susceptible to outside forces. Or, more importantly, those forces that come from within. Sometimes I shake my head and ask myself when I’ll ever learn. I probably won’t, really. I’ll probably just have to keep at it. Unlike the study of the zodiac signs or the Enneagram or any of the tools on which we would rather rely to explain ourselves to ourselves, real emotional work is just that — work. It doesn’t feel magical and there are no answers to be found in the stars. It isn’t about planets or the tides or the day on which you were born. It just requires that you show up, look at yourself and where you’ve been and where you are and where you want to go, and keep trying.

But we’d rather be in the stars, wouldn’t we? I do. It’s frustrating and humiliating to work so hard on something only to realize it’s one step forward and two steps back. That’s not a magical feeling at all, but instead one that reminds us constantly that despite our occasional supernaturalness, we’re human. Just human.

What is a magical feeling is to watch my son play with the water in the birdbath in the front yard. He has a unique way of moving around it — he flicks his fingers just above the water’s surface before putting the back of his right hand just on top of it, then raises his fingers toward the air from their middle knuckles to the fingertips while he traces the perimeter of the bowl and then puts his left hand in, palm down. His right hand then goes palm down too and they move in tandem — forward, back, then he raises his palms and uses his fingertips to stir, to pat, to tap, all while staring at the ripples and drops he creates. The left forearm goes down into the water while the right one stays out of it except for the fingertips, then the heel of his hand. Flick, flick, flick — he tickles the water until finally the right forearm goes down too. His face gets nearer to the water, his knees are bent, then he ever so slightly dips the tips of his bangs in. Just a few drops to cool his forehead. He stands up, straight as an arrow, conducts the orchestra he has created with his right hand for a few bars, then raises his knee. The foot goes in for just a moment until I break the spell.

“Don’t put your foot in the birdbath, Baby. You’ll knock it over.”

I wonder what secret realizations I disrupt every time I send out a warning? Hydromancy is the ability to divine information from water’s appearance and movements. What’s he figuring out? Must be something.

Don’t we all have a bit of the stars in us? I guess that’s why we look for answers in them — it’s as good a place as any I suppose, as is the water. In any case, my hand is still in between the seats today. Maybe I’ll find that seatbelt.

AM/6.5.2021