Special When Lit
Summer of Wands Day 54 of 93
Summer of Wands comes to you from solstice to equinox. Start here for more about the Summer of Wands.
We open each day by following the light of the Sun and/or Moon out there, and close it by noticing our own fire in here.
Follow the light ☀️🌙
The Sun is in Leo and the Moon has moved into Virgo after yesterday’s total solar eclipse.
Virgo is ruled by Mercury, and Mercury who is currently in Leo, has been lighting up the aspects this week. Yesterday’s eclipse deserved center stage, so we skipped one of Leo’s costars: the pinball wizard playing for fun.
Today we head to the arcade with our quarters.
Daily astrology
Yesterday Mercury in Leo connected with Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, three outer planets associated with forces much larger and slower than our everyday lives. Uranus disrupts the circuitry. Neptune dissolves ordinary boundaries. Pluto takes us underground and changes what it touches. Mercury is nimble enough to move among all three, carrying messages between different layers of experience.
The chart even looks a little like a star, with Mercury bouncing through its angles. And what is pinball if not the art of the angle?
You launch the ball and then play what happens. A ricochet sends you somewhere unexpected. Hit the right spot and something lights up. A hidden passage opens. A multiplier kicks in. The game changes because of where you landed along the way.
Mercury is particularly good at this. The mythological Mercury could move between the realms of gods, humans, and the underworld. As psychopomp, he/she could cross boundaries unavailable to everyone else and return carrying information. Put Mercury in Leo and there is room for some play in the process. Curiosity can follow the flashing lights simply to see what they activate.
Maybe Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are the cheat codes here, offering Mercury access to possibilities, imagination, memory, unconscious material, and perspectives that stretch beyond the immediate moment. Mercury can move backward and forward through stories and timelines, connecting something remembered to something happening now, or an old idea to a possibility we could not have imagined when we first had it.
Today, Mercury makes an exact sextile to Venus in Libra, and suddenly this game has another player.
Venus brings relationship into the picture. Friends, lovers, collaborators, creative partners, the person at the other end of the text thread, the conversation across the table. Libra is particularly interested in what happens between us, and the sextile gives Mercury an opening to make contact.
Who are you bouncing ideas off?
Because some of our best ricochets come from other people. Someone says something that sends your mind somewhere completely unexpected. A friend remembers a version of the story you had forgotten. A lover asks the question that opens another door. Two people start joking and accidentally invent something. You send someone a song, an article, a photograph, a sentence, and suddenly the ball is moving again. Like the game tells us, we are special when lit.
Mercury-Venus can make that exchange especially pleasurable. Words can carry affection. Conversation can become flirtation, collaboration, appreciation, art, or simply a really good time. Venus in Libra knows how much possibility exists in the space between two people, while Mercury knows how to keep the ball moving.
Yesterday Mercury was ricocheting among planets that can feel almost mythic in scale. Today Venus brings the game back to the people we actually get to play with.
Daily prompt
Who do you love bouncing ideas off, and where have your conversations taken you lately?
Daily tarot
Today’s cards give us Mercury in Leo at 6° and Venus in Libra at 6°, with each planet arriving alongside the cards of its sign and archetype.
Mercury in Leo gives us the Five of Wands, Strength, and the Magician.
The Five of Wands looks wonderfully pinball-like today. Five Wands coming from different directions, crossing paths, making contact, creating movement. Strength gives us Leo and its lion. The Magician gives us Mercury, with all four elemental tools on the table and the dexterity to move among them. Wand, cup, sword, pentacle. Different inputs, different possibilities, plenty to play with.
Then Venus answers.
The Two of Swords, the Empress, and Justice give us Venus in Libra. The Empress is Venus herself, while Justice belongs to Libra. And sitting between them is the Two of Swords: two sides facing the same question, the awareness that another perspective exists alongside our own.
That feels especially important today. The Magician can do plenty alone at the table, but Mercury’s sextile to Venus asks what becomes possible through exchange.
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