Mercury Retrograde in Virgo: The Empathic Enigma
By Felina Lune Kavi
To tune it out or to tune it up? That is the question many empaths struggle with daily. This Mercury Retrograde seems to be calling upon those of us who feel the emotional turmoil in our environments so strongly…and it teaches us not only to set boundaries but also to know when your gifts of energetic attunement are appropriate to employ.
During the shadow period of this retrograde (from August 10th to August 29th), many of us may have been emotionally triggered by the inconsistent, draining, or agitating energies of those around us. We sometimes fail to separate these disruptive energies from our own, as we are strong conduits for all energy. The perceived failures come from attachments…we let the harmful energy stick to us when we care about a person…and, let’s face it, empathic people are a mess when we react from the lower energies that were never our own to begin with. It’s difficult to deal in the dissonance. (To be clear, if it is our own lower frequency mess we’re dealing with, we’re more inclined to call it out and rise above…if it’s entangled with someone else’s vibrational vortex…things get confusing and difficult to differentiate).
The first thing we tend to learn along the ‘Path of the Empath’ is how to block out an onslaught of negative energy. If you are just beginning to understand this particular energetic sensitivity in yourself, then shielding, blocking, warding, or protecting yourself from such things is often at the top of your priority list. You hear it’s a ‘blessing and a curse’ to be so energetically sensitive, but you can’t yet see the gift within the wounds you’ve endured.
But what if I told you that your gift, the blessing that actually outweighs the supposed curse, is to know when to block and when to allow the energy to flow through you to be transformed?
Mercury Retrograde in Virgo 30 (August 30th)
The Sabian Symbol for this degree is ‘An urgent task to complete, a man does not look to distractions’. The keyword for this degree is ‘safeguard’…but the meaning has much to do with discerning what our truest priorities are, and what distracts us from giving those priorities our necessary focus. Along Mercury’s path from our view point, we are mentally backtracking from this degree (to return to it on October 6th, when Mercury leaves the shadow zone) because we need to clearly define and set up some personal boundaries that may have gotten a bit skewed or lost in the shadows around the time of the eclipse this month. During the retrograde period, we backtrack (or, more specifically, introspect) along the path of the last few weeks in order to pick up some of the pieces we left behind that are important to our ability to move ahead (on September 22nd, when Mercury goes direct).
So first, what are your priorities? Second, where do you draw the line between a distraction and an urgent task to take on? And third, how do you get back on track once you deal with whatever comes your way? Let’s look to the cosmic energies that quickly followed this shift for more clarification.
Ceres Retrograde in Taurus 6 (August 31st)
The Sabian Symbol for this degree is “A bridge being built across a gorge”. While the Mercury Retrograde can be likened to a review of our mental state, a Ceres Retrograde is more like a review of what needs to be nurtured. We are currently reviewing both. The nurturing mother energy of our planet is calling us to bridge the gaps between us, and work together on urgent goals that affect all of us.
Mother Earth holds the frequency of pure, transformative empathy, and it is that frequency that those of us who are sensitive to the dissonant energies of others must constantly attune to in order to tune up those around us who are struggling. That is, if the other is receptive. This is a key point for any empath to understand. We can’t be energy alchemists for everyone. Some are so addicted to lower vibrations that even when they ask for help, they won’t do the maintenance it takes to help themselves. A healer is a conduit, not a savior and not a rescuer. We can’t ‘fix’ anyone who is addicted to being ‘broken’ until that person is truly ready to take on the healing path themselves. Sad but true, some have to be left behind while our focus is needed elsewhere. Mother Earth laments this same awareness, but for our human race as a whole. And yet she continues her work, and she connects the people with the same abilities for attunement to each other to help her heal and grow as she teaches us the same.
Why would someone who’s hurting so badly, and often hurting others in the process, be addicted to that state of being? It’s not that they enjoy it. It has much to do with fear. At least in that environment of addiction, they know what to expect…they can navigate that world easily, no matter how far down they eventually spiral. They can even navigate the fears they feel in that addiction, because they’ve felt them before. But pull them out of it before they’re ready, before they’ve learned whatever lessons they haven’t fully grasped yet…and they only know how to respond with the primitive brain functions of ‘fight, flight, or freeze’…and they will fall back, again and again, on the crutches of their addictions.
So while we’re building these bridges together, we can’t be distracted with such people…not until the work is done and they can see that what we’re building for everyone is safe and structurally sound. We can invite them over the gorge after that if they’re still waiting on the other side. It’s not our responsibility to wait for them, it’s our responsibility to move forward and build.
This bridge building is the urgent task we are trying to complete, as Mercury focused upon during its shift, in order to nurture ourselves and those important to us. We needed help from both sides in order to do so…and those who weren’t helping, well they became distractions instead. In some cases, such interruptions of our good intentions had to be ignored or blocked out. Perhaps they fell, by their own aggravated actions, into the gorge when upholding the divide instead of helping the rest of us work to bridge the gap. Perhaps some just stood there frozen in fear, talking about the gorge, watching the rest of us who were doing the work to bridge it. Either way, if they weren’t nurturing the active energy of this focused effort, they were not worth the time they were taking from our efforts. They were not part of the solution…so in many cases, we had to either tune them out or let them fall. For a nurturer, as most empaths tend to be, this is a difficult realization and seems counterintuitive. The truth is though, you can’t nurture those who don’t nurture you in return…in fact, it tends to have worse effects when you try. Sometimes you have to release those attachments to those who are not nurturing your highest good so you can focus on working with those who do provide the same nurturance you are giving.
New Moon Solar Eclipse in Virgo 10 (September 1st)
The Sabian Symbol for this degree is “Two heads looking out and beyond the shadows”. We often hear that two heads are better than one, right? Well, it’s very true in many cases…especially to give balanced perspective and a view from many different angles. This is what is needed. But there is a shadow side, heightened by the solar eclipse (which was the midpoint in the energy began at the previous lunar eclipse that ends at the next lunar eclipse this month) to the ‘two heads’ scenario as well. The two heads in the shadow see themselves as separate and at odds in their viewpoints. They argue about what is right and wrong, black or white, good or bad. And they repel from each other while still entangled in the shadows they have co-created. This is what is not needed. The symbol suggests looking out and beyond those shadows to get a clearer view of how to resolve what has happened.
The highest vibrations of Virgo energy often teach us in lessons of discernment, organizing the patterns of life in order to find solutions in moving forward, selfless service and attunement to Mother Earth, purification and detox, and how to heal the whole by tending to the root rather than only addressing the symptoms that stem from it.
The lower vibrations of Virgo energy often teach us the pitfalls of nit-picking away at perceived imperfections in ourselves or others, distracting ourselves in the details, helping others at the expense of our own well-being, and acerbic condescension when expectations are not met.
Our luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, are symbolic of these two heads. They are separate bodies, but they blend together in conjunction for a brief moment that illuminates the beginning of a new cycle. The energies present in that conjunction at the new moon (or, more appropriately, the dark moon) will color the energetic exchanges of the month that follows. Their powers of illumination combined in this specific degree of Virgo in order to teach us that even in our separate localities, we can share the same energetic information by the laws of entanglement.
Empaths intuitively understand the laws of entanglement of quantum mechanics, even if we can’t explain it in scientific terms or physical proof. We don’t have to…we feel it. It’s not an experimental curiosity for us…it’s just life. Empathic entanglement is a very common occurrence. So daily, for many of us, that we always come back to the same question when we realize what is happening…’tune it out or tune it up’? Essentially, we decide whether the energy that’s being shared is too volatile, damaging, or draining to hold within us in an attempt to recalibrate it to a higher frequency…or we decide we can hold our own frequency along with it and lift it up to a level of attunement with the earth herself. We either put up a shield to protect ourselves, or we allow ourselves to take it on to transform it to a higher frequency. This is, of course, if we remember to acknowledge what is happening at all. If we don’t, we run the very real…and probably more common…risk of allowing that energy to attach to us and sink us to that level.
So, learning to block is fairly simple. It’s an exercise in the power of visualization. Most learn shielding techniques such as visualizing a bubble surrounding you. The color and the consistency of the bubble add layers of strength to the protective energy surrounding you. The emotional arrows coming at you or the energetic suck pulling at you can’t penetrate the shield. If you’re new to this, don’t knock it till you try it. It’s more effective than you may think.
The problem is, you have to detach from them first. In a workplace situation, or out in public, this usually isn’t a problem…the people aren’t usually so important to you that your attachment to them is stronger than your own need for peace and well being. But in a situation where the person is family, or a friend you really care about…if it comes to needing to ward off their energy, you will need to cut the cord. This doesn’t mean everything is final and you’re done with them for good. It means they’re abusing your energetic relationship and you’re no longer going to feed that negativity with your own energy until they can resolve it within themselves to a point where it’s no longer a threat to you. Then you can choose to reconnect, or not, and resolve it the rest of the way together.
But then there’s the choice not to put up the shield…to allow that energetic information to flow through you to be transformed in your heart center. Let yourself acknowledge it and feel it, but don’t react from it. It’s not yours to use as is, but it’s now yours to tune because it’s entangled with your own. It’s hard to explain scientifically from such a feeling standpoint…so the best I can define it is that these entangled energies are ‘in love’ and the two become one through that relating. In that all-powerful love, communication is so immediate that it can’t be measured, it can only be felt. Communicate through feeling…the power of telepathy we all share…that we are working together because we are sharing that space of oneness that brought us all to being. This is instantaneous…you don’t need to hold it…you just let it go after you feel that attunement. And let it go, also, that the shift in the other may seem undetectable. You don’t need confirmation…all you need now is to focus on your own energy to recharge. Whether with that person or not, you will have to re-center afterwards because there is a certain amount of energy depletion that takes place in you during the process. Depending on the person or the situation, I might need to recharge in silence or I might need calm, heart-centered interaction. What the other needs is important too. They might need to talk about it, in which case you can guide the conversation in a way that soothes you both and reintegrates their tuned up energy while yours is recharging.
You are now two heads, in one conscious energetic exchange, looking out and beyond the shadows. The clarity that comes from such an exchange is nothing short of brilliant. These are the bridges we are here to build, and why we can’t waste our energy and focus on distractions.
Love and Gratitude,
Felina Lune Kavi
Mercury direct often deals with the conscious mind as well
as outward communication. When it goes
retrograde, we tend to delve into the unconscious or subconscious realms of the
mind to pick up pieces of memory or knowledge we will need for what is to come. The communication inward becomes enriched…and
sometimes, with that focus, we occasionally see that outward communication
becomes more difficult. You may notice
the usual scheduling snafus, communication breakdowns, electronic malfunctions,
or transportation issues as can be the norm during a particularly stressed
Mercury Retrograde transit. In those
setbacks, it is often because we need to take a step back and think something
through that we may have overlooked.
Revision is often the best mindset for such times.
This symbol has much to do with physical exercise, but also
with emotional enjoyment and social interaction. When you suit-up for something, you are
prepared to put forth the effort required…and when you are surrounded by others
who are doing the same, there is even more motivation. At first, though, there may be performance
anxieties…something about your physical body seems faulty. The paradox within feeling this feeling
though, is that the effort you put in is directly related to the amount you
improve upon not just your physical body but also your mind. You may not feel you can physically achieve
something, but of course you can’t unless you actually do it. 
