Mercury in Aquarius - Postcards from a Fantastic Mind

Diagram of The Prophet's Mosque in Medina. One of the thousands of ancient documents in Timbuktu.

On the 19th January 2013 Mercury moves from the mountainous terrain of Earthy Capricorn into the Air space of Aquarius, where it is exalted. We are all on the exciting flight path of the water carrier as it makes its fly pasts, takes it circuitous routes and leads it's trains and caravans from here to Timbuktu. In the middle of the desert, Timbuktu, a settlement on the caravan routes since the 12th century has always been associated with the concept of somewhere so far away the distance is incomprehensible but we can imagine all sorts of adventures getting there and all mystical, exotic and fantastic. Tuareg folklore suggests the name came from one of their slave women called, Timbuktu who was so trustworthy the Tuareg could leave their precious belongings in her care. 

Astronomy manuscripts, Timbuktu

Sadly, the historic town and World Heritage Site, has been in the grip of radical Islamists who have been destroying monuments and mausoleums and now nothing appears to be in safe hands. The UN Security Council gave its backing for an African-led military operation to help Mali's government retake the north of the country if no peaceful solution could be found.

Interim Mali President Dioncounda Traore has Mercury in Aquarius
He has already survived a mob lynching last year when his 'guards' allowed a murderous mob into his office in Bamako carrying a mock coffin with his name written on it, He was beaten punched and kicked then stripped naked, with members of the crowd carrying away pieces of his clothing some shouted triumphantly that he was dead and he could well have been as he wears a pacemaker and had to be treated and recouped in France for over two months - video posted by Jeune Afrique He has been talking tough by pledging to 'wage a total and relentless war' on the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali who have declared a state of Azawad but he is still searching for peace on shaky, volatile ground. 

As Mercury moved into Aquarius, negotiations were taking place (a Mercury skill) between the Algerian government and a terrorist Islamist group who had taken over a BP oil refinery in the settlement of In Amenas, in the Sahara desert. This group operated under the banner of the Signed-in Blood Battalion led by Algerian, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, known by his slang nom de guerre 'Belaouer', one-eye 'and the Belaouer' has eyes everywhere'. His al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM)  group who have been consistently kidnapping westerners since 2003 are affiliated with a terrorist organisation, Ansar Dine, already active in Mali, west Africa. Those responsible for the group in In Amenas reportedly confirmed their action of taking foreign hostages was in response to France's recent military intervention and prescence in Mali. 

President of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika has Mercury in Aquarius.
Of Berber descent, he has also survived an assassination attempt.

This month Mercury may have to act as a courier of aid, supplies and reinforcements as well as a messenger. Mercury in Aquarius will also 'bring it on' and carry or trade views in complex arguments, objective scientific thinking and some effective, cool rational thinking. Conversely and often, perversely, Aquarius can also herald some willful, stubborn, entrenched, bizarre or even autocratic communications and activities.

The roads in this land may sometimes seem quirky and unconventional and some may even take a sudden unpredictable turn but this can also make the exploration all the more necessary. This is a time that can generate more and more questions and most definitely will take us along the roads less travelled. It may take us to lawless, rebellious, unrestrained, ungovernable outlawed and vast spaces, exiled or at the outer reaches. We may find that it is from these marginalized unfamiliar lands that people are taking centre stage and doing the talking, trading and exchanging. This is their air space we in after all for these few weeks, and it is their language to which we must translate and the roads we must navigate.

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Actor Ray Bolger has Mercury in Aquarius famous forever as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz
who followed the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City in order to get a brain

Whenever Mercury changes sign, we need to learn a whole new language and adapt to completely different customs to the ones we have become used to and seem familiar. Mercury effects the way we process and deal with information, how we talk and chat, or tweet, blog, text, write, read, listen and learn and Aquarius is highly inventive, uniquely convinced, scientific and objective with the facts as well as being highly futuristic. 

The Father of Science Fiction Writer Jules Verne has Mercury in Aquarius
 he wrote the classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth
& Around the World in 80 days
'Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them...
the world does not need new continents but new men.'

Combine, blend and mix up a potion or two and sometimes create science-fiction in fact.

When Mercury passes through such an offbeat and 'going its own way regardless' sign such as Aquarius, things can get interesting and quite challenging. There is strangeness here, a curious blending of ancient and sci-fi futuristic thinking sometimes occupying the same time and space. Rather like mixing the Medieval with Star Trek the result will always be surprising and sometimes fantastic.

                                         
Actor Christopher Ecclestone has Mercury in Aquarius plus Sun, Saturn and Mars 
'I left Doctor Who because I could not get along with the senior people. I left because of politics. I did not see eye-to-eye with them. I didn’t agree with the way things were being run. I didn’t like the culture that had grown up around the series. So I left, I felt, over a principle...think it's more important to be your own man than be successful, so I left. But the most important thing is that I did it, not that I left. I really feel that, because it kind of broke the mould and it helped to reinvent it'

Mercury is about travel, trade, exchange, communications and busy activity and here in ‘odd-one-out’ Aquarius it can all get a bit – well, weird. We see the way ahead, the path in our minds eye is clear, we must and will press on along it route, except that other people might just not see it the same way. In fact they could view it in ways that may even be the polar opposite. In fact, if the majority ‘find against you’ then you will automatically find yourself in the minority. This does not deter you probably quite the opposite in fact, it may just serve to propel you further down your unique pathway.

Child Protege Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has Mercury in Aquarius
A study conducted at University of California called 'The Mozart Effect'  linked classical music to memory  improvement. College students listen to 10 minutes of either a Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major, a relaxation tape, or just silence. Immediately afterward the students took a spatial reasoning test (taken from the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale). Those who listened to the Mozart tape showed improved scores, compared to the other students. This turned out to be a popular phenomenon, even though the effects were temporary, and lasted 10-15 minutes.(Andrea Maria Dusl image)

It is possible that while Mercury was in a lot more traditional and cautious Capricorn, many of us noticed we had to switch our mental tuning in order to getting to grips with practicalities, the nitty gritty and face a hard reality check. (Mercury in Capricorn - Postcards from a Profound Mind). We may have had to rethink previous wild, ambitious and wide ranging plans, schemes or visions and tailor them to the hair-shirt of reality. (Mercury in Sagittarius - Postcards from an Optimistic Mind). With Capricorn we had to learn things by learning the hard way, accepting what others could teach us, listening to authorities or those who ‘knew better’. Journeys and communications could have been largely for business or purely practical reasons, some may have been burdensome or taken out of a sense of duty or responsibility, willingly taken but under some obligation all the same. However, just as we have got halfway used to this style of speaking and thinking we will suddenly find ourselves in what appears to be another foreign country where everyone appears to ask us to speak more conceptually. Here we can explore new regions and use abstractions to go where no one has dared go before. Think outside the box, travel the path less travelled ‘go where no-one has gone before’.

French Film Director Francoise Truffaut has Mercury in Aquarius
 a leading exponent of 'La Nouvelle Vague' (New Wave) radical experiments using social & political themes
'I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job'

When zig-zagging its way through Aquarius, Mercury will want us to employ our hearts and minds in order to get to somewhere different. We will be encouraged to shake up existing paradigms and also to be true to ourselves, even if at times it means being isolated, marginalised or ridiculed. 
                  
Theoretical Physicist Michio Kaku has Mercury in Aquarius ' a futurist and communicator of popular science'
We will know our own minds and also tend to stick to our guns. Being adaptable is also easy for Mercury, it will adjust to this new terrain, we will all have to adjust and find interest in the new angles. With Mercury in Aquarius new pathways will inevitably be found, the unusual or rare will come to light and we may well learn from both ancient and modern texts while we are at it.You will notice the difference here soon enough as you understand the difference between earth and sky. 

French Philosopher Simone Weil Mercury and Sun in Aquarius

A precocious student, she learnt ancient Greek by 12 and later, Sanskrit  after reading the Bhagavad Gita. 

Her mentor called 'The Red Virgin' and 'The Martian' because of her radical opinions but she also suggested the elite communist bureaucrats could be just as oppressive as the worst capitalist.

 She was very compassionate to the suffering of others and was involved in both the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance.

'when we come upon beautiful things they lift us...letting the ground rotate beneath us several inches so that when we land we find we are standing in a different relation to the world than we were a moment before'

We are all feeling Mercury’s shift towards what may seem something more eccentric, much more self willed and maverick. We may yet find a way for us all to express our inner genius in ways that respect social and cultural imperatives. In a world of oddballs, we all are oddballs together we are the same and so we must still ultimately find ways to live together and share the space we inhabit. 

Writer Virginia Woolf has Mercury in Aquarius
Part of the Dreadnaught Hoax of 1910 that drew attention to the newly formed  Bloomsbury Group .
The group dressed as dignitaries from Abyssinia and gained access to the British battleship Dreadnaught.
'For most of history, Anonymous was a woman'

If we all believe we know the truth, the best way forward for everyone that is just tyrannical and some people are going to rebel, welcome to Aquarius. During Mercury’s time in Aquarius all of us on this precious planet of ours will be mentally processing with more conviction, vision, and brilliance and lets just mention, we will also have to be alert to a bit more of an obstinate and perverse tendency.

Artist Norman Rockwell has Mercury in Aquarius
His work, dismissed by critics as being twee, sickly sweet, kitsch, sentimentalised versions of American life.
His brilliant technique gained power after he left the constraints of The Saturday Evening Post and resulted in The Problem We All Live With  a real event in the US Civil Rights Movement.
Painted in 1964 it was displayed in The White House in 2011 and shows US marshals escorting a 6 year old Ruby Bridges to an all-white elementary school for the first time.

Mercury in Aquarius takes us along the higgledy-piggeldy path of the ‘unknown and uncertain’. It presses us to processes in ways which are inventive and more experimental. 

Great so everyone will be a little more inventive and scientifically business minded. We will be happy to discuss outrageous ideas, unique agendas, cutting-edge business ideas and developments. Wow! Just remember with this Mercury our communications are also about to get more weird for good or bad. 

 Poet/Writer Founder of Surrealism Andre Breton has Mercury in Aquarius
'It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is everywhere...
beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all'

Well, the sign of Aquarius sits somewhere in your birth chart, even if you do not have any planets in this sign. You always have inventive Aquarian somewhere in your psyche. It is this Aquarius zone which is having Mercury as a house guest. If you know where your ‘Aquarius' is then your full attention will be here because it is here that you may be trying to exercise new and illuminating ideas. Take your time and respect the issues affected by this part of your chart. For instance, Aquarius may be in your 2nd house of ‘Money & Resources’, in which case Mercury will probably prompt you to think about and plan changes that will impact your bank balance. If Aquarius covers your 7th house, or zone, of ‘Partnerships’ your plans could be in for a major overhaul concerning your significant other, making these adjustments now will go smoothly. Maybe Aquarius is pulling at your Venus and if so these few weeks will get you thinking about deepening or severing your commitment to something you have previously valued.

Philosopher Sir Francis Bacon has Mercury in Aquarius
An early proto-science fiction contributor he wrote 'New Atlantis a vision of Utopia. He was also said to be the 'secret Shakespeare's' unable to hold high office if he openly wrote the works.
'It’s not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

Make the most of your facility to think outside the box and come up with new original solutions and ideas. Say what you need to say with courage and use your integrity. Don’t be afraid to go against the grain but also hark back to old wisdoms that proved valuable and that have worked before in other contexts. If we try to mix and blend our ways with the ways of others we may all find the new, unique pathways to travel down.

Jazz Guitarist Django Reinhardt has Mercury in Aquarius he was a pioneer, virtuoso musician developing a new guitar technique 
'hot jazz'. He was born into a Romany family and badly burnt in a caravan leaving him only two fingers to use on the guitar fretboard.
credits: brain athlete & wikipedia & lamourelectronic & national geographic
posted by pippa ponton & jphibbs