Cazimi is the special word for conjunction with Sun. This happens often for Mercury, whose orbit is closest to our Luminary. Happening often doesn’t make the transit less special! The easiest way to understand it is that Mercury works on smaller and faster-paced projects than most of the other astrological deities.
Conjunction is when the astrological deities meet “in person” instead of communicating by phone, text, or email, so to speak. Meeting in the Zodiac gives them a more direct opportunity to catch up with each other, exchange notes from their time apart, and sometimes make plans for the future. Everyone has a different style with conjunctions, and Merc is usually very efficient. This will be a meeting we can digest easily.
Merc’s cazimis alternate between their direct season and their retrograde season. When they’re direct, we can consider the cazimi a planning meeting, looking toward the future. The last cazimi on 27 August (under the Lunar Eclipse) was one of these.
When they’re retrograde, it’s an editorial meeting, reviewing the past. Since Mercury is in retrograde at the moment we know this is a backwards-looking meeting, looking at where we have gone wrong and what needs correction.
More likely than not, what Merc is going over with Sun during this cazimi is the work they’ve done not only since the last cazimi, or since the pre-retrograde shadow began on 4 October, but actually during their entire direct season from 23 July through 24 October. We can never be sure exactly what the Gods are doing, but curious types may want to review their camera roll, story archives, notes app, or journal from that period to see what exposition was made and perhaps even identify some errors.
As we examine what this transit may mean for us, it’s important to remember that communication isn’t the whole of Mercury’s domain in astrology! It’s true that their personal role in the planetary group project is that of the secretary and Messenger. It’s a communication job. But we also need to remember that their domain encompasses our mindset and our mental systems – basically our neural wiring. We can also see this as the way we communicate with ourselves, or the ways our consciousness communicates with our higher self if you will.
There’s a lot of research supporting the idea that our worldview bias – the habitual assumptions that color our internal storytelling – has a massive impact on our lives. A negative worldview can influence the choices we make and whether those choices are self-nourishing, add complexity to interpersonal communication, and set the tone for our mental health or illness.
A lot of people don’t realize that worldview bias is something that you can change. You have agency over that! It’s a slow game, and hard work, but the reward is immense. All it takes is practice, persistence, and faith in the process.
During Mercury’s retrogrades, we have a prime opportunity to achieve awareness of a problem with the mental systems that act as the foundation of our perceptive worldview. The post-retrograde shadow puts the energy of the universe in alignment with our desire to overcome such a problem. Usually we get to work on one problem per retrograde, and the problem falls in the territory of the retrograde’s sign/s. In Scorpio we are likely to be working with the subject matter of repressed trauma, pulling up an anchor that’s been long held in deep water.
The cazimi marks the midpoint of the retrograde. Usually by the midpoint of any astrological season we are supposed to have a pretty clear, if incomplete, idea of what problem we are working on.
If we don’t enter the cazimi with awareness, just know that it’s difficult to exit the cazimi without awareness – so stand ready with your mind and your heart open, and try to be a good divine listener. Take the hints, notice moments of friction, notice moments of energetic emphasis. See the warnings. See the omens. Don’t question your intuitive interpretations.
As the central Luminary of our solar system, Sun is the primary light-shedding force in astrology. He sheds the light of conscious awareness. So when he comes together with Mercury, Merc gets to borrow that conscious awareness. This meeting sets us up with potential for finally understanding things we’ve been trying to figure out for veritable ages.
Remember, though, that the potential is not the thing itself. You have to put yourself in a position to experience epiphany by working proactively on your personal development, paying attention to what’s happening around you and inside you, and genuinely trying your best at whatever it is you’re working on in life right now. Get the help you need, do the things that need to be done, overcome the urge to repress and avoid, and you will achieve some form of enlightenment.
Epiphanies aren’t always melodramatic and instantly life-changing. Sometimes they are small and stupid. Sometimes you don’t even notice them until months later. Just because a planet is meeting Sun doesn’t mean anything symbolic or important is going to happen to you.
And it doesn’t mean that anything LOUD that happens to you under this transit is important! In my experience, loud things are decoys, keeping us distracted while the planets move things around behind us.
The things we don’t notice at the time are really where our lives change. So if this day seems to you like any other, still be faithful with your record keeping habit. You’ll be glad to have time stamped notes later on.
When Sun is involved, sometimes other people understand what is going on in our lives better than we do. If you have trusted friends, this is a good time for taking their advice. If you have a close enough relationship, this is a good time to ask what others think needs work in your attitude and mindset. It’s best to seek advice only from people who aren’t going to blindly praise you.
If you work with a mentor or coach and you have an ongoing message or email thread, this is a good time to review the subject matter of your messages since the beginning of the direct season on 23 July or the last cazimi on 27 August. If you want to be really thorough you can even go over all your meeting notes since those dates.
Contemplation questions for the inquisitive mind:
Notice which of your thoughts recur. Are there any vocal refrains or catch phrases that come up often? Do you have any inner voices that interrupt your other inner voices, telling them to shut up? Do any thoughts seem to repeatedly occur in automatic reaction to certain triggers?
Try to identify the baseline assumptions that color your worldview. For example, one of mine is “I have to act normal.” These assumptions are not unequivocally true. Try to figure out what you’re believing in; bring the beliefs out into the light of your conscious awareness.
Journal in a note on your phone throughout the day whenever you have a thought that makes you think, “later on I’ll want to know I was thinking about this under the Mercury cazimi.” Later on I’ll prompt you to review your notes app for stuff like this and you’ll discover it and find something you need to see.
Remediation:
Go through all your closets, cabinets, and other closed forms of storage. Reorganize things to suit the way you’re living right now, even if it changes the system. If you don’t have time to do all of this, prioritize what you access most often – personal wardrobe and kitchen pantry?
On the opposite end, if you have a lot of time on your hands, also go through piles, baskets, and areas of accumulated clutter. See how much you can unearth.
Take a look at the lighting in your home. Do you have both active and restful spaces, and if so, are they designated correctly? Do you have bright lighting in the areas where you want to be mentally alert? Is your bedroom dimly and warmly lit to make it easier to wind down at the end of each day? Can you relax in the bath and shower, or is it too bright? (Dare I suggest a pink salt night light for each bathroom?)
