The Buzz of Thought

 

The rising and falling buzz of cicadas fills the air today. This spring has been cold, and for the last few days, we’ve had the heat on, and the cicadas have been dormant. Today it’s gone up to 79°F, and I can see them looping through the air in front of my window. Many of them are the size of hummingbirds, but their flight pattern is very different, wild and zany. They careen along from one tree to the next, in search of love, or fun, or maybe just a really great tree.

 

We humans in this house are also coming to life, after the stasis of the pandemic. Just a few days ago, my wife and I went out and had an unmasked visit with a friend, complete with hugs. It was just like the old days, when people weren’t afraid of each other.

 

It’s a good month to reclaim lost territory, since Mercury will be retrograde almost all of June. Even after it goes direct on June 22, it will amble along quite slowly for another week. This is a good time to go back and pick up all the pieces that you’ve dropped along the way. This could include the relationships you’ve ignored, the words you haven’t said, and the longings you’ve swatted down.

 

But I have to warn you that it will be very easy to get distracted this month. You may go back to pick up some shiny thing you’ve dropped, and then find yourself wandering around in somebody’s back garden for days. That’s because Mercury is in the very mercurial sign Gemini, and it stays within 7° of a square to Neptune the whole month.

 

So your mind can’t be roped down this month, but will take the long way through every maze you come across. This isn’t easy for those of you who just want to get from Point A to Point B, but you may sometimes find that the backwoods path will also take you to Point B, although you may have forgotten why you wanted to go there.  

 

Neptune is the planet of imagination, illusions, hypnosis, fascinations, glamours, and addictions. Neptune and Mercury vie for the title of Trickster planet, and with the two of them in aspect all month, you can’t believe everything you see or hear. You’ll need to keep your wits about you.

 

The new moon on June 10 brings an eclipse, and again, there’s a very mercurial focus, with Mercury in Gemini nestled in with the sun and moon. You can expect an explosion of ideas, brainstorms, verbal power. Words sometimes seem like the most transient thing in the universe, constantly vanishing in the air. Even written words are common as ants. But like ants, they can form structures and patterns that last a long time.

 

And so this is the essence of this eclipse: the burgeoning idea, passed from mind to mind. At the same time, with that square to Neptune – less than 3° away from Mercury at the new moon – there’s always somebody who’s going to take your idea and twist it around. There’s no piece of information that doesn’t spawn a hundred distortions.

 

But there are some ideas that are meant to burst forth at this time. With Mercury retrograde, these ideas don’t have to be brand-new. Some of them have lived among us for centuries, a low-key hum in our ears. Often knowledge emerges from the earth, like the ancestors found in the African Burial Grounds in the middle of New York City. Buried information dusts itself off and enters the village square.

 

This is the meaning of this month’s eclipse: to renew, to remember, and to pass along. It’s not altogether an easy month, with Saturn and Uranus again squaring each other in mid-June. There’s a continuing fixed battle between inertia and progress, and we definitely see this in Congress, as the Republicans steadily block everything that comes their way. But as frustrating as this is, it doesn’t signify that nothing is moving.

 

We are moving all the time. Reaching out towards each other, minds open, thoughts dancing, discovering and rediscovering what is beautiful and real. Learning how to clear away the cobwebs of illusion and see truly – into ourselves, each other, and our world.