mercury stations rx in leo and creative chaos ensues...

it's time to talk about you and your fire.

"gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak...surrender to them. don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would it please your teachers or father or some god. you will ruin yourself if you do that."

- Hermann Hesse

the stars above:

artist: Sarah Jarrett

good morning, maybe afternoon? i have no idea when i will actually get this out but i have been very excited to tell you all the things about triplicities! and trigons! and mercury retrogrades and the chaotic magic they produce! for days i have collected little thoughts dangling from the aether like stars on strings, squirreled away quotes and invocations, set it all down to clear my head and let whatever wants to surface, surface. but after many days of this i am tired and it's all too much to sort through and perhaps it was a dumb thread to pull on in the first place and omg, it is so many words and i just want to go run in the woods and never stare at a screen again.

my "creative" process is an inelegant affair, especially when it ends up here. i will try to edit it, romanticize it, automate it or simply abandon it if i’m REALLY on one. "maybe i don't really want it." "it's not flowing, it's probably not meant to be." "let's write something else, maybe after we go to the gym, maybe next week, maybe maybe, maybe."

because the things i like to write the most come from somewhere irrational and unwieldy and without rock solid trust in the process i am easily overwhelmed by the archetypal material that floods in. it becomes incredibly demoralizing, tiring, and circular. but when i do trust in the prompts and the whispers and the primordial pulls, when i have accepted the assignment and managed to say whatever i thought needed to be said and actually hit publish…i walk away a little more myself, a little closer to my truest, most essential nature. it is Real. i can always feel when it is Real.

no one likes to admit it but it isn't always easy to be who you came here to be. in fact, the process of Becoming who you are and always were is one of the most famously difficult things to do with a life. as far as i can tell, almost all spiritual, magical, psychological or philosophical paths are all trying to coax reluctant mortals to the same conclusion - find your true nature, the one you may not be so fond of (yet), the one that scares you a bit with its capacity and range, the one that may not be well received by the world you know and just do…that.

but we do have our reasons for refusing the call. and one of those reasons might be that we've forgotten how to listen to the part of us that knows what we came here to create in the first place.

want to know what all this means for you? let’s find out!

mercury retrograde: medicine? magic? madness? yes.

artist: Sarah Jarrett

the first thing to know about hermes and his backwards travels is that they are anything but random. mercury retrogrades thru one triplicity (element: fire, earth, air, water) at a time, spending several years in each. through that time mercury will retrograde through all 3 signs in that element with a few crossover retrogrades mixed in (fire moving into water, water moving into air, etc). mercury first did his backward dip into the fire trigon in late 2023 with a retrograde that began in capricorn and ended in sagittarius, beginning the end of his earth era and ushering in the first sparks of the age of fire.

since then we have ventured thru 4 retrogrades with Hermes the Thrice Great:

• 04/01/24 - 04/25/24: 27 deg aries → 15 deg aries

• 08/04/24 - 08/28/24: 4 deg virgo → 21 deg leo (the final earth to fire transfer)

• 11/25/24 - 12/15/24: 22 deg sag → 6 deg sag

• 03/15/25 - 04/07/25: 9 deg aries → 26 deg pisces (the first of the fire to water transfers)

mercury’s retrograde thru leo represents the final full fire retrograde of this trigon. mercury has retrogressed into leo before, but the realm of fixed fire has not gotten the full mercury rx experience yet. the transformation is incomplete (but not for long). this is much, much more than a mercurial reimagining of whatever leo rules in your life and chart, this is a finishing stroke to a full cognitive renovation of all the fire, everywhere.

fire is the element of spirit in motion: energy, inspiration, will, creativity and the animating force of consciousness. astrologically and esoterically, it’s linked to divine spark, desire, transformation, and illumination, the impulse that inspires action, movement. fire is the element most closely associated with the link between psyche and soma, body and soul. the body is the vehicle for the soul after all, and a divinely inspired soul is an absolute necessity for any great work, creation, or undertaking.

in the zodiac the fire signs are active, they initiate movement. they are bright, they radiate heat that humanity needs. sometimes that is warmth and sometimes that is wrath but either way, fire is usually the most honest thing in the room. aries is cardinal fire; the initial spark that ignites action and begins new cycles of identity formation. leo is fixed fire; the sustained flame that stabilizes all that heat and channels it into radiance + authentic self-expression. sagittarius is mutable fire; the transformative flame that seeks expansion and higher understanding.

together these three create a complete cycle of how consciousness develops its capacity for creative will and meaning-making. when mercury (planet of mind, expression, thought, speech etc) is direct in any of these signs it signals a time of direct, outward facing expression of that fire. but mercury retrograde is a time of elemental energy being pulled inward and down. and fire turned inwards, that’s a tricky business.

fire likes to move and when it’s forced back on itself without clear channels it can come out sideways: restless, irritable, discontent, blocked. creative disruptions, revisions, false starts + initiatives, lack of clear direction/purpose, and in some cases actual malaise, or what Marsilio Ficino might call a melancholic temperament.

that divine, creative spark just can’t seem to find the form it wants to live in and that is a tremendously frustrating process. it is also a very, very necessary one.

“the apparent lack of direction that often accompanies a repeated transit of the fire trigon in your chart is mercury's way of breaking up old patterns of expectations of your creative function. when mercury is retrograde in the fire element you may make a lot of haphazard attempts to ‘start something’, a poor substitute for true inspiration. this angst about the future is necessary for creativity. reaching a ‘stuck’ place in development brings pressure to bursting-point, forcing growth and allowing undeveloped potential to flow from the unconscious. it is essential to recognize that there are times when one has to go through a period of spiritual entropy to alert oneself to a need for change in creative production.”

-Erin Sullivan, Retrograde Planets (a literal must read for anyone serious about the craft)

future lore:

artist: Sarah Jarrett

when life is no longer art, when a True Creative (as all humans are, we’ve been over this) wanders too far off the path and starts producing what is expected, safe or easily rewarded - the Divine Fire is being denied its due. what is seeking to be expressed, created, brought to form can’t get a signal. the airwaves are overwhelmed with imaginary deadlines, vicious inner critics, limiting beliefs or just a loss of interest altogether. and there are usually built in rewards for following these tired scripts. we all know these traps and how seductive they can be.

this is exactly what mercury seeks to burn away with all of these flaming retrogrades. stale ambitions, misaligned motivations, timid initiatives that will only distract from something more radiant and true. in the fire trigon, mercury wants us to REMEMBER that we are not only made by our past, we are forever being magnetized, drawn forth by our desires and the future they seek to create. creative identity can’t just be based on what we've already done or who we think we are. it must always be the north star, pointed in the direction of what we're Becoming, what wants to be created through us, what the future is asking us to birth into being.

how utterly terrifying.

paralysis sets in when we start taking it all too seriously, when the Divine Play stops being playful and we forget that this is supposed to be the joyful, energizing part. believe it or not, these retrogrades ARE the remedy. every time mercury stations direct and we emerge from the flames, what felt like creative destruction is usually revealed to be the preparation of something far more beautiful and true. the projects that survived the retrograde fire are the ones that want to live. the visions that remained clear through the chaos are the ones worth following.

trust, play, experimentation, risks, a few free falls, some medicinal failures: these will all serve you very well in the weeks to come. in honor of mercury’s final bonfire, these forecasts are grouped via rising elements - so we can get a look at the Big Picture, the whole triad that’s been under siege from Hermes, Art Therapist Extraordinaire. something beautiful is about to assume it’s final form. you want to help ease it’s passage into being? GO PLAY.

(and if you’re curious: after three or four long winded but half hearted attempts at a weekly forecast, a full moon report, and some weird thing about asteroids that i will have to circle back to, this one came out in a HURRY. there were messages for me too, and i am so proud of myself for sitting down to deliver them.)

exciting things ahead my friends, and in the meantime, enjoy the forecasts. see you for the next round of soulcraft <3

-emilie

***musings, for you***

fire risings (aries, leo, sagittarius)

1H/5H/9H

this eighteen month cycle of mercury retrogressing through the fire signs has touched the very structure of your conscious self: the image you hold of your identity (1H), the ways in which you externalize that identity creatively (5H), and the philosophical or ideological frameworks that give your life direction (9H). these are not superficial arenas; they are the scaffolding of selfhood.

the retrogrades may have expressed as a series of internal disruptions—periods in which clarity around purpose, expression, and belief systems faltered, sometimes dramatically. in classical terms, fire is the element of intuition: the capacity to synthesize experience and see its telos. with mercury retrograde in fire, intuition itself is often called into question. one may feel uncharacteristically disoriented in direction, unable to project into the future with certainty. this can bring a spiritual unease, even a fear of meaninglessness.

yet the destabilization of vision is part of a larger organic process. during this cycle, you have been engaged in a creative reorganization of the ego’s orientation toward becoming. mercury’s task here was not to rob you of direction, but to loosen your grip on prematurely crystallized identity patterns. inspiration, when it comes now, may be deeper—less reactive, more authentic. more resistant to manipulation by external validation.

as mercury shifts into water for its next series of retrogrades, the focus moves from the solar-egoic to the lunar-receptive.

your attention will be drawn inward, toward emotional security (4th house), unconscious attachments and shared vulnerabilities (8th), and the symbolic or ancestral dimensions of the psyche (12th). this represents a descent—an imaginal and emotional consolidation of the transformations set in motion by the fire cycle. the challenge will no longer be inspiration, but containment. psychic digestion. returning to a center that feels no need to prove itself.

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earth risings (taurus, virgo, capricorn)

12H/4H/8H

for earth risings, mercury’s retrogrades through the fire signs have been operating in hidden territory, beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness. unlike the air or fire houses, which are externally visible, these are houses of concealment, gestation, and psychic inheritance. much of what has occurred during this cycle may not have taken shape in verbal form—but has instead been felt as a slow and persistent erosion of outdated patterns.

fire in these houses can burn too hot—agitating what needs containment. mercury’s movement through these zones may have precipitated mood disturbances, old memory activation, and unconscious pattern recognition. ancestral complexes may have been stirred. the sense of being “not quite yourself” may have lingered. but this is not dysfunction. it is the necessary ground clearing that precedes meaningful renewal.

retrogrades in these houses often coincide with transitional states: the dissolution of certain familial myths, the psychic release of guilt or emotional debt, the loss of interior maps that once offered direction but now obscure growth. mercury has been functioning here as a kind of psychopomp, ferrying aspects of your past to their proper resting place. it has not been comfortable—but it has been purifying.

when mercury shifts it’s retrogrades to your air houses (3rd, 7th, 11th), the process becomes interpersonal and linguistic.

what was previously veiled begins to seek articulation. inner insights demand relational context. this is a time to bring newly uncovered emotional truths into dialogue, not necessarily for resolution, but for recognition. you may find yourself revisiting conversations or connections that were left unfinished, not to reenter them as they were, but to speak from the person you have since become.

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air risings (gemini, libra, aquarius)

3H/7H/11H

this cycle has likely unfolded with external events that felt deeply personal. mercury’s retrogrades in your air houses—the house of immediate perception and language (3rd), the mirror of the other (7th), and your broader network and ideals (11th)—have brought challenges to communication, contact, and relational clarity. in this configuration, mercury is highly activated. his domain is speech, mediation, cognition, and when retrograde in these sectors, he often draws attention to the unspoken undercurrents in what appears mundane.

themes of projection and reflection may have intensified. situations in which you’ve been misunderstood, misrepresented, or asked to re-express something repeatedly are not merely irritants. they are signals. mercury in these positions asks you to notice how you communicate, not just what you say. and more than that: whether the identity you’ve projected into your relational field still carries truth. the fire element complicates this by adding urgency, ego, and sometimes a compulsive need to assert or explain.

as mercury shifts into retrogrades through the earth-water axis (2nd, 6th, 10th), a quieter but no less important integration begins.

the challenge now is to embody what you’ve discovered. to allow emotion and intuition to enter your work, your sense of value, your relationship to time. it may become evident where performance has displaced presence, where productivity has silenced personal truth. this is an opportunity to cultivate forms of expression that are not just socially effective, but personally true.

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water risings (cancer, scorpio, pisces)

2H/6H/10H

for you, the fire retrogrades have been intensely focused on the structure of your contribution to the world. mercury’s movements here have agitated issues of value, labor, and visibility. at times you may have found yourself questioning your efficacy, your compensation, your public role, or even your right to rest. these are not superficial concerns for water risings, who often carry unconscious emotional weight in their relationship to usefulness. you may have overperformed—or underfunctioned—in ways that drew attention to a deeper misalignment between external output and internal need.

fire in these houses pushes hard. it demands productivity, ambition, recognition. but mercury’s retrogrades have intervened in that process. they may have created delays or reversals in work projects, confusion in career direction, or even changes in bodily rhythm or energy. the purpose was not sabotage. it was a correction: an attempt by the psyche to slow you down enough to notice where you were burning out on borrowed desire.

this cycle has, in effect, required a reevaluation of your own energetic economy. mercury’s disruptions have been teaching you that labor without emotional congruence is unsustainable. that value is not equivalent to output.

with the coming retrogrades through your 1st, 5th, and 9th houses, the work becomes more consciously self-reflective.

these are houses where the self reasserts its shape. you may find that inspiration returns, but not as it was. it carries memory now. there is a chance, here, to integrate emotion and vision. to bring the soul back into identity.