If you’ve been tracking these eclipses closely, looking at all the charts, seeing where they fall in your own, and entertaining what I’ve been writing about with the Saros series, you may have stumbled across an interesting alignment that also occurs on this upcoming lunar eclipse. That is Mercury’s cazimi! It might be hard to comprehend that Mercury is already at the midpoint of his synodic cycle, zipping through the underside, on the other side of the Sun, yet here we are. It seems like the retrograde was just yesterday, but this is the speed of Mercury, well over 108x the speed of sound.
In the days before and after this eclipse, Mercury does three things:
moves into Virgo (exalted) on the 25th
crosses the south node of the moon same day
makes a series of meaningful aspects to planets involved in the Barbault Basket, most interestingly creating a bit of a yod with Pluto and Neptune
There are two cazimis in every cycle with Mercury and Venus: the retrograde one and the one that is direct-inferior and superior or inner and outer. Only the inner planets do this.
When retrograde, it’s the beginning of the cycle and happened on July 12th/13th. When direct, it’s the midpoint of the cycle, when Mercury is on the other side of the Sun moving at his fastest. It’s not the seed of the big Idea at this juncture; it’s the accounting of where he has brought us and what he has taught so far. Since we are in this particular Cancer cycle, we could consider it to be Lethe’s ledger. All the themes summoned since June, which constellate around memory, are now being rethought, edited, and fast-tracked for better storage. The way we tell their stories is changing, too.
One bit of data on Lethe’s ledger is the understanding of the Mercury cycle within the mythic context Erin Sullivan talks about, where the first half is Promethean and the second half is Epimethean. To understand it, we need to be familiar with this creation story somewhere around the beginning of time.
When dealing with Titans, it’s not dissimilar from contemplating the origins of the universe. These are titanic foundational stories that lay out all of the programming for what has come into this world, and what may pass.
The Titan brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus, find themselves in a bit of a pickle. It all started when Zeus (♃) became enraged after being tricked during a sacrifice and punished Prometheus for helping with the gag. Fire also plays a role, as you may know.
Zeus not only chains Prometheus to the rock, but also has Hephaestus build Pandora, an all-gifted beauty who, in our world, would be an AI-infused robot that would trick anyone into thinking she was a real looker. Think: Ex Machina. Zeus sends her to Epimetheus, not with a box- that’s a mistranslation- but with a pithos, an old jar filled with everything the world has not yet seen, like sickness, toil, old age, envy, war, memecoins, and also: hope.
After the marriage, some time later, Pandora gets curious about what is in the pithos and opens it. Out of it comes all the troubles in this world, except for one thing that holds onto the lid. Elpis, or hope and expectation. There’s an eternal debate about what this means. Is hope left as a mercy for the world left behind, or is it more of an evil, a cruelty disguised as a gift? George Carlin would argue for the latter. The ambiguity is a part of the story, and the debate still goes on.
Hesiod relates Prometheus to forethought, and Epimetheus to afterthought. One of them can see things coming; the other cannot. Prometheus warned his brother never to trust Zeus, yet here he is, with a beautiful yet dangerous creation. They learn in two different ways and are punished accordingly. Just like us
Despite this reality of what floods into the world when Pandora’s ‘jar’ is opened, Epimetheus and Pandora have a daughter named Pyrrha, who marries Deucalion, Prometheus’ own son. When Zeus floods the earth to wipe out a corrupted humanity, these two survive and repopulate the world by throwing stones over their shoulders. So, the grandchildren of the primordial ways of thinking are the flood survivors and the seeds of the new world.
Yet another flood myth appears. Another Adam and Eve left to restart civilization. If only they had the forethought to see it coming, or the afterthoughts to learn from what has already occurred.
The lesson? Never get between a god and their sacrifices...
or: Never accept a gift from Zeus?
or maybe still: How to learn to think in more than one direction?
The idea is that from the retrograde cazimi (☿ ℞ ☌ ☉)-the beginning of the cycle-until the direct cazimi (☿ ☌ ☉)- the midpoint of the cycle-the energy embedded within our experience of Mercury is Promethean, or relates to this forethought. From the direct cazimi-the exterior conjunction-to the retrograde cazimi, we have the afterthought.
Now it’s an interesting way of thinking about it, but I don’t know if I fully agree. I like the myth. I think it’s helpful, but the way that I would modify it would be this: the Promethean phase, the first half of the cycle, is like baby Hermes, curious and mischievous, excited explorer of worlds. Greeting the day each morning before the Sun, we find him gutting turtles and making instruments, stealing his brother’s cattle, lying to his father (Zeus, again), and slipping back into bed without his mother even noticing; It’s in this phase where we are obsessively gathering information and learning everything we can about the Idea that grabbed us near the inception of the cycle.
I'd modify the Epimethean part by saying this is Hermes as the wise old sage, perhaps in the form of Hermes Trismegistus. This is where we have the capacity not just to learn after the event, but to have both the forethought because it’s been experienced and the afterthought because that’s just evening wisdom. It’s to be more deliberate in our thinking; it’s in the second half of the cycle, especially as an evening star, when we’ve established our own ideas around whatever it is that we’ve been chasing. We’ve been changed by it. New neural pathways have been formed, and so it’s not that the Promethean-Epimethean division is completely useless. I just think we need the hermetic modifications.
And naturally, the cazimi’s are the transition periods when Mercury is not in the sky. There are countless ways to divide up a cycle. For instance, I think of the Mercury cycle in quadrants: morning star, evening star, and two no stars at all. Gary Caton sees it in 6.
Note: Gary Caton has his own hermetic modifications coming out in Hermetica Triptycha Vol.II
And so, we have Mercury transitioning from morning to evening star, Promethean to Epimethean, a lunar eclipse in Pisces, Mercury square to Uranus, and also being at the tip of a bit of a yod. What does it all mean? Well, with the finger of god pointing right at him, it’s best we pay attention. This god has God’s attention, and it should have ours as well. Mercury work is all about learning and realizing our tongue is a wand. It’s remembering that energy flows with attention, and there are clear phases to how we experience it all every 116 days or so (a Mercury synodic cycle).
Don’t sleep on Mercury. If you come across these essays I write on Mercury or listen to me talk about it, and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s interesting, but I don’t need to pay attention or learn more about it.” That’s you sleeping on Mercury. He’s the closest to the Sun, the best at translating photons into our own symbolic understanding. He is the magician, and the one that you want to have your ears tuned to. That is, if you’re interested in learning...about anything.
With so much pointing at Mercury as we slide out of this dragon hole, it is my hope that he reveals something quite profound to you just by paying a little attention. Enjoy it. If you’d like to learn more, you can check out this class or this class to add deeper context.
Sources:
Retrograde Planets by Erin Sullivan
Hermetica Triptycha by Gary P. Caton
Hesiod, Theogony
even more context:
.: it begins :. (Mercury Cycle/Cancer)
·
Jul 12
It’s Cazimi Day! I just wanted to be your daily reminder and link you to a few things below that may help you keep up with the cycle we are moving into. And with the Mercury Journey, I have made it 50% off.
onwards,
~ Adam
....to support my work and learn astrology all at the same time
...and schedule a reading or learn from my classes
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