MEETING OUR TIMES

Anthroposophy NYC Blog

Mercury and Uranus in Aries: New Thinking for the New Normal

Part 1

Author: Jonathan Hilton

As I begin this article on April 30th, I do so conscious of the fact that Mercury is conjunct Uranus in the stars of Aries, the Ram, at 36 degrees of the ecliptic, aligned with the star Hamal, which is the forehead of the Ram. One could even say, the “third eye” position in the Ram. In a few days, on May 4th, Mercury comes into exact superior conjunction with the Sun (behind the Sun from the Earth). Essentially, these few days bring us the superior conjunction of Mercury with the Sun with Uranus. Mercury picks up, so-to-speak, that which is offered from the sphere of Uranus and the stars of the Ram, even more specifically, the fixed star Hamal in the Ram. But to fully understand this event, we must now follow Mercury in its process when it will hand over to the Earth what it now takes up.

In astrosophy, the momentary events in the heavens must be considered in the context of the flow of time as a process, in which we can partake consciously and even answer out of our human higher consciousness. This is the new speaking to the stars. So, this event is only part of the full gesture of Mercury. It culminates on July 1st in the stars of the Twins when Mercury completes this cycle/gesture begun now, by coming around between the Sun and the Earth in inferior conjunction, and then handing over to the Earth in the stars of Twins what it has picked up in the superior conjunction with Uranus in the Ram. This will happen when Jupiter will be in exact conjunction with Pluto in Archer. These looping gestures of Mercury over time create the great six-pointed star or double hexagram in the heavens.

For those who want to further understand this Mercury time form created out of these loops, please see my video, specifically Course II: The Planetary Spheres, Session 2: The Mercury Sphere. Click here to register for a required password.

How can we understand this gesture in the context of the current world events, particularly since the culmination and the call to realization of this gesture occurs in the Twins, in which we have already so much significant activity (in Archer opposite Twins, but in this zodiacal axis)? This activity has been written about already in my previous articles in relation to the Twins/Archer line and the movements now of Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto. For more about this, see my two previous articles, The Corona World I and The Corona World II, by clicking on each of the two titles.

It does not suffice, as we progress in our desire for true understanding, to simply state that this conjunction means this, and this constellation means that, and combined together as ingredients we can bake a cake. For real knowledge, it is important to have a thorough picture of events and the forces that work behind and through them, and out of this, one can on one’s own arrive at a sense for its truth. Let us look now at these various planetary events together as a whole: the Uranus, Mercury, Sun conjunction in Aries, followed in July with Mercury conjunct Sun in Twins, across from Pluto conjunct Jupiter in Archer. How can we consciously meet this configuration?

In these starry imaginations, we have particularly to consider thinking. Mercury, Uranus, and Jupiter are all especially related to thought and consciousness. One of the great gifts of Rudolf Steiner is the light he sheds on this evolution of human consciousness, which helps us to understand the world—past, present, and future—and our place in this evolutionary process over time. (This is a vast and wondrous area of study, which Rudolf Steiner elaborates in numerous books and lecture cycles.) We have progressed or regressed, depending on one’s point of view, from ancient times when thought was not a personal experience but a dream-like picture experience of the divine guidance of life. The human being felt “at one” with the surrounding world, but experienced this at-oneness with a consciousness that was not separate but intimately united with a world of beings that lived in nature, in clouds and weather, in moon and stars. We still see glimpses of this earlier consciousness in many current indigenous tribal communities. Thoughts streamed into humans as pictures, not as concepts, as the language of the gods, who lived and revealed themselves in the world. As evolution moved on, particularly in western consciousness, the human being more and more experienced a dimming of this participatory consciousness as the experience of the separate self-developed, and with it, a growing independence from the gods. Thinking became a more personal, inner experience. We began to experience thought as created by us out of ourselves, not as existing outside us and brought into our thoughts. This culminated in modern times, which particularly began in the 15th century, with our emerging onlooker consciousness. We experience the self as a kind of centric point within, which looks out onto the world of nature as something separate, objectively observable as an “other.” From this egocentric experience, we have gained our individual freedom from the gods, but at a cost. The world is bereft of spiritual realities. Nature became no more than physical/material processes, which we analyze and use to serve our needs. Humans became higher animals living in little more than a Darwinian struggle for existence. Our cosmology, rather than reflecting a world of divine activity described by the ancients in tremendous mythologies of the stars, led us to the Big Bang and the vast empty void of dark matter space, where we are no more than meaningless specks of dust. It is no wonder that depression and emptiness are a serious mental health crisis in today’s world. It is out of this emptiness that polarization and division arise as humans desperately seek a sense of meaning within group identities, finding those “like me.” Identitarianism seems to be the new social form. This of course manifests in opposition against other identity groups who are not “like me.” There is no need to list the polarities of group identities that divide us. Within this crisis of existence, this crisis of egotism, of me-ness, we have achieved the freedom of the separated independent self, and yet out of that separation perhaps also there arises a deep yearning for meaning, for belonging to something greater. In spite of all the materialistic scientific “truths” stating otherwise, we want to understand who we are and why we are here on some transcendent level. We are each a voice crying in the wilderness of our aloneness. Where do we go from here?

Out of the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, we have been blessed with forced isolation and separation. I say blessed because out of this shut down, and perhaps only because of this forced isolation, are emerging many voices with a sense of urgency, asking the questions that need to be asked now. Who are we as human beings? What have we lost in our rush to consume and distract and feed the emptiness inside? Has our consumer society taken the Earth to the brink of sustainable life? What is our human community and our shared responsibility to each other? Why are we so divided? And perhaps most importantly, how do we change our thinking in order to build a better world, or as one thinker, Charles Eisenstein, calls it, a more beautiful world?

In the second part of this article, we will return to the starry picture and attempt an understanding out of a new cosmology, which does not further the current experience of separation, but unites our consciousness with the world consciousness expressed in the stars, out of a modern renewed experience of the ancient hermetic axiom: “As above so below.” The full statement given by the great initiate Hermes Trismegistus, is: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.”

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Jonathan Hilton
May 1, 2020

Jonathan Hilton is currently the President of the Council of New York City Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America. He has been working with anthroposophy in various ways for over 40 years. His work includes a new approach to star wisdom, arising out of anthroposophy, as developed by Willi Sucher, with a particular focus on the cycle of the year as a path to the new Sun mysteries. astrosophy.com