Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio: See, Hear and Feel Your Limits (and/or Dead People)

Tonight I went to my second spirit rescue circle. The opportunity came up last month for the first time after a couple of years of scattered personal experiences in assisting earth-bound spirits leave this plane (and other general psychic wackiness that I wanted to understand and learn more about). At the time, I thought it would be good exercise for my channeling/intuitive skills, as practice connecting with spirit in an environment other than my work.

What I’ve found is something so entirely rad that I kind of can’t describe it in human language well enough to give it justice.

But since I’m determined to stay on track with this post, I offer this: Mercury retrograding can bring us ideas and information, and memories, to which we normally don’t have access, for whatever reason. In a water sign, these can be of an emotional nature and, you might have deduced from your living this week, can affect us emotionally. In Scorpio, these can be of a difficult nature that can frighten us, and this is totally normal - Scorpio energy contains a lot of what we’re afraid to see.

The opportunity for people on the planet during this retrograde period includes being willing to look at some scary stuff. Finding one’s limits in this area is a prime topic for exploration. Not just seeing but experiencing our limits in fresh ways tells us where we are. Being honest with ourselves about why we have these limits is important, and represents the next step for the proactive earth-bound human interested in seeing life as a series of growth opportunities (hey, lookie! - you can bring a dash of Southern California to your state!).

So, here’s what a spirit rescue circle is: A group of people assemble to provide a place of light/love to help disembodied spirits cross over into the next place, or phase of existence. There are those who have died suddenly and traumatically who may not even know they’re dead, and others who don’t believe that there is another place, or that they don’t belong there/deserve to go. Others are hanging around in order to accomplish something specific, and are bent on remaining here until it’s done. The stories are endlessly variable, but the point is that being here after death in this way can be disorienting, uncomfortable, and can contain a measure of unnecessary suffering (not to mention the connection-with-living-people attempts that can mess with the living and create tension all around).

These circles pick a place where a tragedy of some sort or other has occurred, and focuses on that place, scanning it to see if there are spirits stuck there that could be helped to cross over. Tonight, the circle was focused on a place where a gruesome crime occurred, and it was difficult for a number of us to tune into the feeling of dark energy that is associated with the scene and the folks who committed the crime.

I sometimes admit to being a Scorpio…and to having Pluto in the 12th house. This stuff fascinates me, almost endlessly. I happen not to believe that I’m in danger when I sense dark energy, and so I’m willing to look. My curiosity (my, um, Mercury is with Neptune in Sagittarius, on the cusp of the 3rd) runs deep, and I want to know how things work. In this case, before the spirits there could be helped to cross, a situation involving them being kept there would need to be changed. And this brought up some objections from some in the group, who emphasized that being intentional in doing such things is important. But what I heard in the main, between the lines, was this: “This makes me uncomfortable. I’m afraid of doing this. I’ve never done it before and that darkness that’s accessible, that I can see and feel, frightens me. I’m afraid of being hurt and getting damaged.”

One person in particular had met her limits, and openly stated them to the group. The Scorpio in me wanted to roll up sleeves and investigate just what was going on behind the scenes, and gather as much info as possible. The rest of me accepted that there was real fear in the room (and resolved to write this post as an educational offering). In my work and travels in these spirit-based circles I often meet people who had psychic experiences as children and shut their faculties down because of negative, painful experiences. Many times this kind of seeing and knowing isn’t supported by our family or social environments, and so here’s the time in the post when I invite you and everyone to just go ahead and lose the religious and societal conditioning that you use to keep you from yourself. There’s nothing wrong with you! The way you’re wired is no accident!

It could be said it’s natural to fear the dark, but I offer that it’s natural to be the dark. As long as we’re afraid to look at the dark, we’ll be creating shadows and stuffing parts of ourselves into them, fear of which we can use to run our lives. And I seem to be here to remind you that you are both light and dark, you are every energy. We need Scorpios and other Plutonian types to remind us to look into the dark, and we need Mercury retrograding in Scorpio to show us the hows and whys of our resistance to the dark.

In short, when Mercury is retro in this sign, everyone gets the chance to see and think like a Scorpio. Mercury’s transits are in general an opportunity to try on other ways of thinking (other than our own natal Mercury placements/configurations), and this time in general can be useful if:

1. you’re willing to look in the dark, or

2. you’re willing to look at why you don’t want to look in the dark.

Either way, you gain something from it. Anyone willing to share what they’ve been seeing about the dark or their limits in willingness to look?

And when Mercury retros into Libra…I’ll be sure to write here about the old-school manners lessons I get from disembodied spirits.

Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.

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October 19, 2007 By Tom Jacobs