The Cosmic Storyteller: Mercury Retrograde in Sagittarius
Remembering Our Collective Back Story
With Mercury going retrograde on Monday November 25, 2024, it’s a time to reflect on where we’ve been and where we are now, so we can begin to imagine a different future for ourselves and the world.
Mercury goes retrograde at 23*Sagittarius, the last of this year’s fire sign retrogrades for our messenger God. Mercury brings us messages up from the Underworld/Innerworld and down from the Heavens/Spirit World. Since Mercury is out of bounds at the moment, expect the unexpected message. And then please ponder it!
Where does 23* Sagittarius lie in your chart, and what planets are connected to that degree? When Mercury stops and turns around, he delivers a message we have to think about for the next 3 weeks - until he stops and turns around again with another message for us to contemplate as he moves forward again.
The Star Sparks for 23* Sagittarius is: A Woman wearing many tiny bells. Bells have been used to call to other worlds, or to announce their presence – such as the fairy bells woven into the mane of the Queen of Faerie’s horse. This is the Divine Feminine calling in all dimensions of life.
Here’s how Star Sparks describes her:
She keeps her world delicately poised on an edge that . . . takes everything she’s got to hang in that space. She is aware that everything depends on being the juggler, the fool, the magician, the one who performs, and the one who looks on from a great distance. (We live in this world but can see the big picture!)
Her links are alive with every realm she has ever explored or will explore. The task is to give specific weight and authority to each one in turn, yet remain open to the multiple possibilities stretching out at every hand.
With the United States in the hands of conservative, ultra-right wing ideology which wants to keep us stuck in the past, it’s up to each of us to undergo the evolution that Pluto in Aquarius is bringing our way. The work is to free our Minds from the past so we can let the Creative Imagination play with a new story of the future.
But before we can do that, we need to understand what unconscious story is fueling the war frenzy and corporate take-over of the world.
It is a story of fear which leads to greed and domination. It is the fear of death. The only way to face that fear is to understand where it comes from and banish it to the past.
I just re-watched a fantastic movie called THE FOUNTAIN by Darren Aronofsky, about the fear of death which MEN especially have to face. You can read about it in my blog THE BARD’S GROVE. It’s worth reading the blog and seeing the movie.
We Are Living in The Story of The End Times
While all cultures have stories of both the Creation of the World and the End of the World, they all tell the same story of the End. The World/Nation/Tribe at some point will die. Then usually there is a new world born after that death.
The chaos of modern times embodies the end of our modern culture as we know it. With Donald Trump planning to demolish the structure of the US government, we can either bemoan it or re-imagine how this chaos can give birth to a new government that is actually ‘by the people, for the people and of the people’. We don’t have to stay stuck in the past as his MAGA movement wants to. We can take this time to go within ourselves and discover who we are and what we value and then reconnect to our place in Mother Earth’s biosphere. Because that’s what will save us in The End.
While different religions have their own End Time stories, the most prevalent one in our modern society is the Christian End Time Story (I’ll be telling you some others in the future). Even as people are leaving the churches, mosques and synagogues when not forced to attend them (as in Afghanistan now), we forget that these religious stories have been ingrained in our ancestor’s psyches for generations. And so they are also ingrained in our psyches. They are like the complexes I spoke of last time, energy force fields that shape how we experience life. Most of the time we don’t even realize how strongly our complexes are at play in our beliefs and actions.
Let’s take a look at the Christian End Time story, which seems to be the story many people are consciously or unconsciously living in.
The following are excepts from my book, Wisdom’s Daughters: How Women Can Change the World.
Christianity's End Time Story: The Book of Revelation
Christianity has given us its vision of The End Times in the Book of Revelation. The Revelation of St. John the Divine is written in the tradition of Jewish apocalyptic thought, which has its roots in the conquest of the Israelites in 586 B.C, when the Babylonians, under the famous King Nebuchadnezzar, conquered the city of Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon's Temple. This Babylonian Exile made the Jewish people rethink their religious and political history for all time. Following in this tradition, both Jesus and John the Baptist believed they were living in the End Times and expected the manifestation of the kingdom of God.
The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, speaks to that belief. Believed to have been written by Jesus’ disciple, John, the son of Zebedee, while he was exiled by the Romans on the island of Patmos in the last years of the 1st Century, it is a visionary book full of astrological symbols and Jewish apocalyptic prophecies that speaks of the end of the age and God’s judgment of the world.
The images and symbols have fascinated and terrified people throughout the ages. The images of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are well known to most of us - for war, plague, famine and death are most definitely part of our world. A literal reading of the book shows a vision of judgment and punishments and destruction except for the chosen few. A symbolic reading can be a guide to self-understanding and transformation, for this book can be understood as a story of our collective Christian shadow as well as the possibility of evolving to a higher state of conscious spirituality.
The American Christian fundamentalist version of the End Times has a very powerful influence on American politics today. Besides a literal belief in the events described in the Book of Revelation, these fundamentalists believe in a doctrine called dispensationalism, formulated by two 19th Century American preachers. This doctrine states that Israel must exist as a nation to play a key role in bringing about the end of the present age, the ‘rapture’ of the chosen ones and the second coming of Christ. Bill Moyers, in a January 30, 20059 article, describes the essence of their beliefs. “Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.”
Mr. Moyers has reported that these Christian fundamentalists “are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed -- an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 -- just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.”
The Christian End Time story can give rise to fanaticism, for not everyone is called to be one of the 'righteous remnant’, those who are chosen to live in the New Jerusalem with God as their constant companion.
In other End Time stories, everyone goes through the change together. To avert disaster, people have to take responsibility for saving the world. In the Christian version, if you are not one of the saved, you will die painfully and burn in hell for eternity. Is it any wonder that, after all these centuries of hearing this story preached to us, we fear death?
There is more to this End Time story that the Christians seem to have forgotten. More on that next time.
Cathy