A young messenger darts quickly through dark and tangled alleys. With a light step he confidently goes through hidden passages in the night, a lantern lighting his way. In his hands a golden key has the power to open all the doors before him. There is no place dark enough or deep enough he can’t reach. Not even the realm of Hades.
Mercury is the only god allowed to come and go from the Underworld. In Scorpio he expresses exactly this powerful signification, especially then the planet turns retrograde. In fact in a general sense Mercury retrograde is about the mind turning its attention within. The psyche becomes the object of observation. And Immediately the alchemical motto of the V.I.T.R.I.O.L.V.M. is evoked.
Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem Veram Medicinam. Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying you will find the hidden stone which is the true medicine. The black dirt of Egypt (al-Kemia) contains vital forces hiding in the mud.
Working on our shadow side isn’t easy, and sometimes not event desirable. It’s the soul’s journey into the underworld, the place keeping in secret everything we do not want to see. Most of the times we would rather turn our back to the unpleasant parts of us than facing them. Confronting our fears is hard. Still, this is what this transit is all about. And I believe that all the shadows that emerged during the lockdown—which was a forced social Nigredo—are going to come back during Mercury retrograde in Scorpio.
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I consider myself a free researcher in western spiritual disciplines, in particular Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy and the Neoplatonic Hermetic tradition. I have a three-year training in Astrology at the CIDA delegation of Trieste, the Italian Center for Astrological Disciplines. I graduated in Computer Engineering from the University of Trieste.
