Burning Peacock’s Blog of Magick

Thanks to the spin of the world, and where exactly a planet is in its “year,” and all of that manner of trivia, people on Earth perceive said planets as going in reverse, an effect called “retrograde.” “Retrograde” kind of obviously translates into “moving backward” (retro+gredire). Mercury’s the planet that seems to most often fly into retrograde motion, as its year goes by very fast. But, what does that action represent? Let’s give you an account of a typical, and true Mercury Retrograde moment and work from there.

So, I’m sick, with a dried up caked inside of the head and fevers coming on and off like a pouncing cat. Seeing as I was to be bed-ridden for an entire day, I decided to venture out into the perilously hot, thick, wretched Crock Pot weather. With me, I took the game Final Fantasy 12, which I was looking to trade in for being a pretty, yet ultimately boring game. I see that the sequel to one of my favorite childhood video games, Secret of Mana, had come out. I’m not sure that I can describe to you in full the effect that SoM had on me at that age, but beyond even then, it was a damned fine game. So, I go in for the sequel, and the person behind the counter mentions that they have a used one; I take it, and trade in FF12 for it. Well, I get back home, happy as a clam, and start playing. The game mechanics are terrible, simplistic, and the control is awful, but the game is pretty. So, I traded in the previous game for a game that had exactly the same problem, lost $35 in the process, and can’t return it because it’s a used game.

Now, I should have done my research and checked on the elements of gameplay before buying it, but I didn’t because I was so wrapped up in the memory of the original. Now, the Retrograde thing symbolizes things that “return” in the psyche, in terms of memories, like songs that get stuck in your head. Mercury resetting like this also symbolizes the functions of language (and thus motor skill; The two parts are connected in the brain) and logic, so a person’s ability to move and communicate is beginning to re-evaluate itself. In short, a lot of people do stupid things because of their memories of things that came before, and often end up making really stupid choices when it comes to commercial ventures, too. It’s not a great time to make a decision without a plan, or without research, especially since our usual immediate skeptical responses aren’t as sharp. Bird out.

Hey, it’s the Bird. The Summer Solstice popped up a few days ago. In Philly, the weather’s been uncharacteristically breezy and cool. I mean, I’m not complainin’ or anything. The thing is, the weather in Philadelphia tends towards extremes of Crock Pot and Freezer Burn. Either way, it leaves most everyone feeling like old turkey leftovers.But that’s all just talk. The deal is, the Peacock just got some stones and some incense, finished writing a treatment for a comic, and began this blog all within a really short while of the Solstice. Some of these seem to be indicative of the solar event, yet the stones and incense seem to be a biiiit more cued into the beginning of the month of the Lunar-ruled Cancer.Cancer’s mundane rulership of the Moon, and with Neptune ruling both its esoteric and hierarchic spheres, lends the sign towards matters that are more towards essences of inactivity. Its associations with home are tied into the concept of where someone or something seems at its most inactive state, or what Einstein described as the zero-point energy state. The zero-point energy state is when a system is at the lowest point of energy in which it can sustain itself. Any lower, and the system dissipates. We can see this as sleep, on a total scale, and we can see it in the diffusive consciousness states where an individual works on tasks that don’t require much intense thought, such as household chores, meditation, listening to music, or just relaxing. This is the height of the childhood summer, when school isn’t much of a consideration, and the weather’s just warm enough that basking like lizards isn’t a bad idea.

That said, what goes along with that state are all of the thoughts and feelings that don’t always rise to awareness when we’re active. Not all of them are big gleaming grins, or Hallmark card, The Secret-esque wisdom. Sometimes, things like secret emotional wounds, soul-longings, and painful realizations creep up on us while in this state. It’s why some people seem so tense all of the time, or unable to relax; when it’s not clinical mania, the person’s just afraid of what comes out during that period of inactivity.As ugly as it is, that state’s where consciousness gets all of its juice. The better that it learns how to calm down and listen to those weird whale-songs that hum in the deep, secret lobes and folds in the cerebrum, the better equipped it is to understanding itself in totality, to move forward with a clearer sense of its own actions.I can’t say how that state’s going to affect any single person in particular. I’m not going to say “Cancers are this or that.” As far as I know, cancer can be benign or malignant, and start anywhere. A person is a person, just as any other, who happens to have been born when the planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and stars happened to be in a particular position. So, I’d recommend just taking a look at that whole idea of getting to a zero-point state, and if it’s tough, perhaps asking yourself why, what’s making you itchy, and what’s do damn scary about yourself? You’ve been there the whole time.