Wednesday is Mercury’s day, and as such, it is appropriate that we see a spotlight on the messenger planet. Not only is Mercury about to go retrograde, but Wednesday sees him embroiled in a powerful configuration known as a Grand Air Trine, together with the Moon in Aquarius and Mars in Gemini. With the air element strong, curiosity and freedom of thought are at a premium. This could be harnessed for study, creativity, conversation. This may also be a golden moment to attend to any last-minute administration, networking, or binding arrangement before Mercury’s backward movement renders those things a step or two more difficult. Just watch out for Mars’ influence adding a little spice into the mix. A friendly debate could escalate.

We also begin the week with the Sun in Virgo locking into a tight orb with Uranus and the North Node – in fact, the trine to the North Node will be exact on this day. While I have done a lot of talking-up of the volatility inherent in the Uranus-NN pairing, this aspect is a trine, and is thus more actively harmonious. That doesn’t mean that change or revelation will be less sudden, but it should mean that its violent and dramatic potentials are significantly reduced, and we are more likely left with conditions that may show us the ways in which we would like to change. Being that this is happening right before Mercury goes retrograde, and being that the Sun in Virgo takes its marching orders from Mercury, what we can surmise is that we may get the VISION of the end result, or the IDEAL we would like to make manifest, but we may not yet have the avenue to its realization. Or, perhaps the change is sudden but the adjustment to the change is gradual. In any event, the process of acclimating is just that: a process. It takes time and may not have a clear end in sight, but we can only step forward on the journey, even if it has us revisit old haunts with fresh eyes. The Sun also has an antiscial connection to Chiron here, inviting us to work through any old injuries to self-image.

Jupiter is also in a connection with Neptune this week, called a contra-antiscia. Jupiter is already retrograde itself, and thus reevaluating the best ways to assert a role in the collective, the ways in which we can take an active role in helping ourselves and others. Neptune’s influence makes things murkier, more opaque, but that diffusion may be a gift. Allowing current roles to melt away is a potential avenue to a new dream. More on this when we get to the full moon…

Lastly, Venus has made new ingress into Virgo, a boon to bargain-hunters and nit-pickers alike. She has certain gifts in granular Virgo, but is also said to perform most counter-productive to her function here. Remember that actual perfection is unattainable, and that well-executed aesthetic usually has an air of effortlessness. You can do 100 hours of obsessive research and dramaturgy on your production of Moliere, and people may still only remember an ingenue’s pretty face or a well-timed dick joke.

Not only will Mercury begin its retrograde on Friday (9/9,) we also get a full moon in Pisces. This punctuation mark on the retrograde highlights the axis between microcosm and macrocosm, the cerebral materialism of Virgo against the big-picture emotional intelligence of Pisces – which is also ruled by a retrograde planet, Jupiter in Aries. And so, this is a moon to reflect on the things that make us feel like small part of a much larger organism/universe/community, but also to feel rooted in having our specific place and function. A period of contemplation on these matters may follow.

The moon will then hit Neptune as it travels through the late degrees of Pisces on Saturday (9/10) before making contact with Jupiter on Sunday (9/11.) This will cast a dreamy, sedated pallor over the former and a feisty invigoration to the latter. It will also mean that the moon is making the rounds to players discussed previously in the week, likely spotlighting a lot of the same issues brought up around Jupiter’s connections to Neptune and then to Mercury. The earlier descriptions are about processes, not just one-off events. (Though they may, in fact, be both. Mileage may vary.) Speaking of which, the Sun locks into his exact trine to Uranus today, signaling potential for that positive volatility laid-out above.

Monday (9/12) sees Venus in Virgo moving into a tough relationship with Mars, which is sure to only be exacerbated by Mercury retrograde – the ruler of both of these planets. Good-natured jabs could give way to slug-fest here, especially if they involve affronts to someone’s aesthetic, their love life, their intelligence. On an internal level, the solutions we’re finding may run into conflict with our values in small, niggling, but ultimately important ways, which may impede accomplishment.

The week more or less peters out on this note, leaving us to work it out in the coming week. Tuesday’s Moon in Taurus may provide some cool-headed grounding and support to Venus in order to find compromise, but try to get it worked out before Wednesday, which the Moon will contact Uranus and make the ground shake again.

Until next Hump Day!