A friend of mine sent me an email containing her Mercury Rx story:

“There have been power outages and surges following me around. First the power went out here at home two nights ago, and then when we went to our favorite Mexican place for dinner 3 miles away the power surged there. Yesterday the internet was down all morning, and then the cable tv was out all afternoon!

Yesterday morning I drove out to [her client's office] with documents to be signed and was told that I couldn’t enter the premises because I had my dog in the car. When I did finally get to my client 20 minutes later, he apologized and said he had only had 15 minutes to meet with me and we’d have to reschedule!

I can’t wait to see what happens today. “

My friend is a good example of the manner in which Mercury Retrograde periods affect us more powerfully if they aspect something in our chart, or if something is already going on in our chart with Mercury. D has Mars at 23 Pisces which is exactly inconjunct (30 degrees) retrograde Mercury which creates pressure and irritation with no real means for relief. But perhaps more significant is the square of transiting Pluto to D’s progressed Mercury right now which is adding more power to her thoughts and potentially reducing her objectivity.

Sometimes we sail through Mercury Retrograde without a hitch; sometimes we need a little more discipline to maintain our focus. Regardless, keeping a sense of humor is invaluable!

Mars turned direct yesterday, and Mercury turned retrograde the day before. Part of us is looking back (Mercury), part of us is ready to move into the future once again (Mars).

Mercury is conjunct Neptune now in Aquarius, correlating to yesterday’s internet disruption (Mercury Rx) to Asia and the Mideast caused by damage to an underseas (Neptune) cable. In Aquarius, Mercury is idealistic and visionary, and because of the retrograde period Mercury will remain in Aquarius until mid-March. Aquarius, ruled by Uranus, seeks the disruption of the status quo and when Mercury entered Aquarius back on January 9, suddenly all of the US presidential candidates jumped on the CHANGE bandwagon.

Mars has been retrograde through the signs of Cancer and Gemini since mid-November, slowing things down for the holidays. Now Mars is ready to move forward, but with our attention turned backwards under Mercury retrograde, prepare to hunker down for a period of conceptualization (Mercury) before the actual action is taken under Mars.

Mercury will remain in conjunction with Neptune for about a week, blurring the boundaries (Neptune) of presidential speeches, war planning, and the state of the stock market and the global economy.

Mars will continue to move through chatty Gemini where there is likely to be an increase in the war of words that has marked so many areas of global experience lately, and in early March will enter Cancer where it will make its final opposition to Pluto. Mars in Gemini is ruled by Mercury Retrograde, so every step forward (Mars direct) will be affected by a need to step backwards (Mercury Rx) . The two are inextricably connected for the next month or so.

The National Ledger has my article on Ms. Young’s colorful life and the square from Scorpio Mars to Uranus that has a lot to do with her unpredictable behavior.

Image by Ellen Rixford

In the news today:

Not only is the mid-life crisis a bona-fide affliction but 40-somethings from Canada to Uzbekistan grapple with it every day, a groundbreaking new study has found.

Researchers examined the life satisfaction of two million people in 72 countries through several decades of survey results and found that happiness universally dips when people hit mid-life.

“The 40s, roughly speaking, are the low decade,” says co-author Andrew Oswald, an economics professor at the University of Warwick in Britain. “If you’re finding your 40s tough, it seems good to know this is completely usual across the rest of the world.”

This global pattern of mid-life misery holds true regardless of gender, education, marital status, number and age of children, occupation and income.

The 40s are the time of the midlife crisis transits that create difficulty for everyone at the same time. And lately, due to Pluto’s elliptical orbit, the midlife crisis transits begin in the mid- to late thirties as transiting Pluto makes a square to Pluto in the birthchart, the “Pluto Square.”

There is a fairly reliable set of transits between age 20 and age 60 that are similar for everyone, regardless of what is going on in the rest of their chart. At around age 20-21 we have the opening square of Uranus to natal Uranus, and the closing square of Saturn to natal Saturn. This creates the dual reactions of rebellion (Uranus) and restrictions (Saturn). Then the famous Saturn Return is well-known as the time when we have to face the limitations of our newly minted adulthood and move forward in our life.

For now, the Pluto square is happening in the mid-30s and will soon arrive later and later into the 40s. This is a time when our power base is challenged and we have to let go of anything that holds us back, whether we want to or not.

Then along comes the Uranus Opposition at age 39-42 or so, the most famous midlife crisis at all. This is the crisis that creates the restless that makes us want to quit our jobs and buy a sportscar and a trophy wife. At about the same time, the square of Neptune to our natal Neptune creates confusion and makes just about anything look better than what we have currently. We want to lead a more spiritual life, but have no idea how to do it.

Next the Chiron Return at age 50-51 unlocks any gates we have built between ourselves and our emotions to evoke the healing crisis, leading to the second Saturn return at age 56-58.

The closing Uranus square occurs at age 61, and then there is a long break without any major crises until we are in our 80s. No wonder midlife is difficult!!

Heather Walden has posted this down-to-earth guide for managing Mercury retrograde. Look to see where Mercury in Aquarius falls in your chart, and follow her sage advice:

1st house – personal identity

Follow the bouncing fire ball. Remember those old battles, imagined and real. Where do you still have armor that may be dragging you down? Does the mind have the tape player on permanent repeat. Listen closely and erase the parts that don’t serve you or your colleagues. You’ll feel a lot lighter. Don’t burn all the rubber off your tires waiting at the starting gate. You’ve got about three weeks from yesterday.

2nd house – possessions and values

Get your assets lined up. If your worried about the bottom line make sure you know what it is. Go through your old bank statements and find out what there is to declare. You can find that note you wrote so you wouldn’t forget what you forgot. But remember you are your greatest asset. Take care of what you think. It is creating your future.

3rd house – communication and learning

Get out your old notes and reread them. Kept a diary; now is a good time to look over the last three months. What were you doing that you meant to do more of. Look through pictures. Sort out the ones that didn’t capture your essence. Walk it off. Peace through fast moving meditation. Update your profile to reflect your new thoughts about your life.

4th house – home and inner life

Clean out the closets. Like fast. Get those network cables checked out and untangle those cords that bind. Feng shui hates a cluttered room. See what eccentric ideas for home décor add just the right flavor for an innovative backdrop to your life. Use a bit of wild color somewhere to inspire the genius in you. Your lunar landscape needs to be your muse.

5th house – creativity and children

Take a walk with your child or inner child somewhere that elicits memories from the past. Use the memories to build the future. Separate the now from the right now and breathe. Your Heart is telling you where you need to put your mental energy.

6th house – health and work

If things have been making you angry, upsetting your digestion or causing pain in your innards find that mountain top and scream or try a kickboxing class and think about who it is that needs a good swift kick to the head. Then let it go after you have broken a good sweat. Forgiveness frees the mind for other, more important things. Resentment breaks down the body and we lose the ability to see things clearly as our large intestine fills up with bad ideas for revenge that eat away any chance for redemption. Nothing helps you break out of bad spell better than service to others who are worse off.

7th house – relationships

Partner problems or no, rewrite that love note and this time send it come Feb 18. Think about the action you need to take after Valentine’s Day has passed you by again. Think about what it feels like to hold someone’s hand for the first time. What you take time to visualize now will be the seeds for the future.

8th house – sex, death and other people’s money

Investigate your investments. Are they working for you or are you working for them? Your time and money have a way of escaping from conscious control. Make a plan that puts you in charge. Is there something with a green, ecological attitude that might help others you could put some energy toward.

9th house – travel and philosophy

You might want to explore your life concepts and rewrite the script of your life based on new inspirations rather than past programming. Consider the quality and equality of your relationships and your vision for the future. Write down the good, the bad and the ugly. Purify with fire and watch your ideas release. Expect Mary Poppins any day.

10th house – career and public life

Make a career chart and fill it with dates, jobs, and duties. What did you like and dislike? Were your peers supportive or do you still nurse old knife wounds? Were you supportive or do you have a little blood on your hands? Focus on the type of environment you want to create with your career. Is it green and clean, friendly and supportive? Do you enjoy waking up to work with your cohorts? Your life energy depends on it.

11th house – social groups

This is the easy part. Your friends are important right now. Make time to take an introspective journey here. Make dinner and talk about your hopes and dreams. Have them over to make a collage with all the things you envision for the here and now. Or re-commit to your blog and see what flows at the keyboard. Inspire others and see how your life changes.

12th house – the spiritual and unconscious life

Dream baby dream. Go there deep in the shadows and see what is transpiring while you are asleep. Here’s a trick. Drink lots of water before bed and when you wake up train yourself to ask, “What was I dreaming about?” Keep a notebook nearby and maybe a flashlight so when this happens you are ready. The subconscious is so ready to speak. The more you know about what it is churning over every night the more clear the daylight hours will be. And then too maybe your nights will be lucid.

Mercury is just about to go retrograde as I write this. Mercury is in Aquarius where it rules technology, innovation and electricity, and it will remain in Aquarius throughout the retrograde period. Mercury retrograding back through Aquarius could make it difficult to move forward with implementing new technologies, so keep that in mind as you begin new projects. Make sure that you and all parties involve are clear and understand all aspects of what is needed!

Obviously we can’t put our lives on hold when Mercury turns retrograde, and not every project encounters difficulties. But there IS a tendency for contracts to require renegotiation when signed during Mercury Rx periods, and for travel plans to be disrupted when the commitments are made while Mercury is retrograde.

Mercury retrograde periods are terrific times for RE-search, to RE-vise your website or business plans, to RE-connect with old friends. Retrogradation turns our attention to the past and give us another chance to get things right.

We can’t put our lives on hold with Mercury’s change of direction, but preparation will help to defray our frustration when our telephone systems break down and travel plans go awry! “It’s just Mercury Retrograde,” we’ll say and smile knowingly.

I have just discovered Tina Malia and listened to her most of the day yesterday. Her voice and music is expansive and opens the heart and soul to the yearning for awakening and the hope that transformation is truly possible, for the planet and for all people. This video is to a snippet of the beautiful song Heal this Land.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLr4ZYoiKe8&rel=1]

Today, after the tremendous win for Barack Obama in South Carolina, I feel that hope really is alive and change is truly possible. The power of Obama is the power of intention and inspiration – the intention to create real change and reach across the many chasms that divide us, and the inspiration to make it happen. Focusing on the negative, in any situation, is the surest way to bring it about – taking hope and converting it to the certainty of success is the wizard’s work that is required to turn this country around.

I found this interesting article called “Leading with Vision and Trust” by Warren Bennis. He writes:

Why did India’s poor march to the sea with Gandhi against the salt tax? Because they trusted him. Trust is based on predictability: trusted leaders make themselves known and make their positions clear. Four leadership qualities together engender trust:

• Vision
• Empathy
• Consistency
• Integrity

Creating a vision

Leaders manage the dream: they have the capacity to create a compelling, over-arching vision that takes people to a new place.

A vision is a portrait of the future that grabs. Initially it grabs the leader, and then their magnetic intensity and commitment to it draw others in. Leaders love what they do. The passion that comes from knowing what they want, that is demonstrated by their unswerving commitment to a vision, communicates hope and inspiration.

Visions animate, inspire and transform purpose into action. Visions bring about confidence and a belief in others that they are capable of performing to their full potential.

Communicating the vision

Believing in one’s dreams is not enough. Without communication nothing can be realised.

Leadership is a transaction between leaders and followers. Neither could exist without the other. Leaders must understand their followers, and followers must understand those who lead. This interaction creates a unified focus that flows from the communication of a clear, compelling, vivid and exciting image of a desired state of affairs.

Communication creates meaning. Mismanagement of meaning and lack of clarity only lead to evasion of responsibility and guilt.

Leaders must be able to influence and organise meaning, and to focus more on thinking than “facts” or “knowing”, on the “know-why” before “know-how”. Shared meanings and interpretations of reality facilitate coordinated action. Unequivocal communication of the message is key to aligning any group behind an organisation’s goals.

I believe that this describes Barack Obama’s ability to lead the US out of the despair of the current time. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg agrees:

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama. . . .

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible. . . .

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process. . . .

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

Beth Owl’s Daughter has a wonderful article on the experience of the Kundalini awakening:

[T]he unplanned, or explosive kundalini awakening can be life-shattering and may result in years of difficulty, as we try to integrate and stabilize our changed sense of identity. This is why most yoga practices that work with this soul fire attempt to teach the seeker to gently raise the energy through meditation and awareness of the subtle energetic body.

Still, these awakenings may result in profoundly erratic behavior, speech, and emotional states in the individual experiencing them. Observers have noted that the subject may exhibit involuntary and spasmodic body movements and postures; pain; abnormal breathing patterns; paralysis; tickling itching; vibrating sensations; hot and cold sensations; inner sounds, such as roaring, music, whistling, and chirping; insomnia; hypersensitivity to environment; unusual or extremes of emotions; intensified sex drive; distortion of thought processes; detachment; disassociation; sensations of physical expansion; and out-of-body experiences (OBEs).

This article is part of a series Beth is doing on the three Graces, but an understanding of the way Kundalini energy operates within us is very linked to the Chironic process. I have come to see that Chiron rules the Kundalini energy that flows within our body, and many of us that were born between the mid 1950s and the mid 1980s have an opposition of Chiron to Uranus that accelerates the rising of Kundalini, sometimes in a way that is difficult to manage. Chiron’s goal in its rulership of this magical energy is to free us from the blocks that we place in our energy field to keep us safe, but which also keep us stuck. Sometimes the freeing of those blocks unleashes a flood of energy that we are not always ready for.

Psychoanalyst Stan Grof has a wonderful book called Spiritual Emergency which recognizes that many of these “midlife madness” episodes are actually an unfolding of our spiritual beings. Grof says,

The basic idea is that there exist spontaneous non-ordinary states that would in the west be seen and treated as psychosis, treated mostly by suppressive medication. But if we use the observations from the study of non-ordinary states, and also from other spiritual traditions, they should really be treated as crises of transformation, or crises of spiritual opening. Something that should really be supported rather than suppressed. If properly understood and properly supported, they are actually conducive to healing and transformation.

I have also seen where the Uranus opposition that occurs for most people in the 39-42 age group can bring about an acceleration of the Kundalini and create some mental instability as well as a fantastic spiritual opening to a different way of living a more authentic life.

I have always loved the idea that what we call “mental illness” is actually a spiritual problem that requires a spiritual solution. Certainly medication is useful to help stabilize the individual so that the underlying issues can be dealt with, but medication should be viewed as a temporary aid rather than a permanent cure.

As befits the waning days of Pluto’s reign in Sagittarius, optimism on Wall Street prevailed over the facts. “What has happened is the Fed is flooding the system with liquidity and eventually we should see some traction in the economy,” said Steve Goldman, chief market strategist at Weeden & Co. “And stocks tend to respond first.”

This strategy, which worked well while Pluto was in Sag and optimism drove the markets, will not work so well with the more pragmatic approach Pluto will take in Capricorn where facts and technicals rule over fantasy. After the cut in the Fed rate, investors’ optimism soared, only to be brought back to earth with the revelation that the US federal deficit has ballooned to 219 billion dollars.

I’m anticipating the next week to continue in this same fashion, but with Mercury’s retrograde turn on the 28th and Pluto’s entry into Capricorn that week, we are likely to see the contraction that has been a long time coming.

This is one I wasn’t expecting. Heath Ledger was found dead today in an apartment in the Soho district of Manhattan with an empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills by his bedside and pills strewn over his body and the bed.

Heath Ledger was determined to win fame through serious acting and not by capitalizing on his “pretty boy” looks. He won an Oscar nomination for his breakthrough performance in Brokeback Mountain, and won critical acclaim in his character performances in other films. He dated Naomi Watts for two years before apparently settling down with Michelle Willliams when their baby was born in 2005. They ended their relationship in 2007 and were often photographed by paparazzi in various arguments.

Although Ledger had a fiery Aries Sun, his astrological chart shows that he was an extremely sensitive individual. His Moon (emotional needs and nature) was in the sign of Cancer which rules emotions and moods. Mars (drive and aggressive instinct) was in Pisces where it tends to blur our desires and make it difficult to achieve them, and so was Mercury (mental functions) which shows an extremely empathic and delicate individual. Both of these planets have been stressed by cycles Pluto over the past two years, creating upheaval in his life and likely dredging up (Pluto rules the Underworld of the psyche) old emotions and thoughts that were problematic.

Venus in Ledger’s chart was also in Pisces, showing that he was a romantic and yearned for relationships (Venus) where he could connect totally with his mate. However, Venus was opposite the planet Saturn which can be cold and critical, indicating that he never felt that he was good enough for his partners. Saturn in his chart was retrograde which intensifies the effect even more and suggests that he was most critical of himself.

It is difficult for someone with a fiery Aries Sun to have so many planets in water signs in the birthchart since that fire is not able to be easily expressed. This sometimes leads to depression and an inner rage.

Ledger was in the middle of his Saturn Return at the time of his death. This is an event that happens to all of us when we’re about 28-30, and Saturn in the sky returns to the same degree as Saturn in our birth chart. This is a time of either great stress or great achievements, and sometimes both. For someone who is innately self-critical, the Saturn Return can be a very difficult time when all of our dreams and longings are blocked by the Lord of Time (Saturn). Saturn can be a severe taskmaster, and these two years are best spent in hard work and struggle for achievement which can then be rewarded. Some people experience their greatest success during these periods. But many others instead struggle against the Taskmaster’s pressure to grow up and face the next stage of our life, and for these people the Saturn Return is difficult indeed.

Because Ledger’s Venus made a tight aspect to Saturn in his chart, Saturn affected Venus during the Saturn Return which culminated in November of 2007 (he probably started feeling it in October as Saturn approached his Venus and natal Saturn), coinciding with the period immediately following his breakup with Michelle Williams in September of last year.

At the time of his death, transiting Mars made a square to Mars in his chart, perhaps the irritating influence that pushed him over the edge. It’s such a tragedy when someone so young takes their own life, never realizing that time is the greatest healer.

Updated 1/23: Initial news reports quoted police as saying that pills were “strewn about the apartment,” but later reports denied this. As of 8:am this morning, Ledger was reported to have been taking three types of sleeping pills including Ambien and a few reports suggest that he had pneumonia which would have interacted with the drug. The autopsy will be done today and then it will become clearer.