Reflection: Mercury’s Retrograde, Matriarchal Memories, Movement, Miraculous Moments & Mystical Metamorphosis … MARCH.
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March has seen some major moments but I’d be remiss not to mention that we started this month in a Mercury Retrograde + eclipse cycle. This celestial energetics ushered in some mischief. For those of you new to the impacts of the planet Mercury here’s a lil’ quick and dirty rundown (don’t worry it will weave back in, just you wait and see).
Mercury in Roman western astrology represents the archetypal energy of mental processing, technology, communication and commerce. In Vedic Astrology the planet Mercury (Budh) is associate with intellect, business acumen and communication. In Greek mythology Mercury is represented by the god Hermes, who was the only god that could travel all realms from the God’s home on high of Mt. Olympus to the under world and has been known to help guide mere mortals through travel, transformations even if means fucking with them (trickster type shit). All that to say that when “Mercury goes Retrograde” patterns dictate that the archetypal energy initiates in overdrive and our transformation gets active. So if you feel like March, had a little or a lot of mayhem in and that “The Gods Must be Crazy” you’re not wrong there a cosmic forces at work asking you to become more conscious of where there are holes in your daily practices or weak points in your communication style.
In the Philippine mythology there are mystical creatures called a dwende. These tiny dwarfs serve a similar archetypal purpose and if you clumsily pass through their realm without ritual or acknowledgement through the words “Tabi Tabi po.” THEY WILL FUCK WITH YOU! My grandmother used to tell stories about the dwende saying that they will pull your hair our while you sleep, hide your things or in extreme cases they can make you sick.
March for me was wild in this regard- a major metamorphosis is definitely afoot. I must have been high up on Mercury’s list or disrupted a dwende mound because at the beginning of the month I misplaced my car keys for almost 3 weeks, then all my phone chargers broke, and I misplaced my wallet like 10 times! At which point I thought I was loosing my mind and I sat paralyzed in the chaos. Luckily my friends all multi-cultural and well versed in their own mythology made suggestion to shake me free from the funk. My Mexican homegirls said that I needed to dance to find what is lost. My Irish homegirl told me to leave offerings, my Lao homegirl told me to light incense and get back on my ritual practices, clean up my space, all of then told me to tend to my alter replace the flowers. And for me I felt like my personal lesson of the chaos was to accept and ask for help without feeling burdensome. But I texted a new friend to check in and lamented about my keys. Surprisingly he offered help immediately with a timeline of addressing my lost keys. And I thought “fuck it it’s Women’s History Month just accept the help.” I said “yes,” but decided to keep trying to solve my own mini mayhem. I gave offering to dwendes and walked through nature reciting “Tabi Tabi po,” and as soon as I returned home, I got an urge to check a little treasure box on a forgotten shelf and BOOM! My spare key with 3 $2 bills.
I still can’t imagine where my keys are but, I’m taking the win! And at that point I felt the tides starts to shift.
Next major March moment is the liberation of Dolores Huerta and the emergence of her truth. For those of you unfamiliar with Dolores Huerta, she is an unsung matriarch of the United Farm Workers Association and Movement. The iconic leadership of the farm workers movement has long been held by Cesar Chavez. The celebration of his contribution have been upheld in murals, academic study, street names and parades of honor. Even though the inception of the movement started with the Filipino laborer’s in Delano, the cataclysmic unification of Chicano and Filipino’s meant that the land owners and couldn’t manipulate the two groups into breaking the picket lines. Their liberation from inhumane working conditions were connected . But this month Huerta’s reality of sexual assault by Cezar was exposed by a New York Times article that also found other women that had been living in silence of their abuse. Dolores’s story included two experiences of rape that resulted in pregnancies where the children were put up for adoption.
Dolores had always been a backbone of the movement and as community responded swiftly to erase Cezar’s hero status and began proposing that Dolores take his place in public veneration she refused that. Course correcting, reminding people that the movement of liberation shouldn’t sit on the shoulders of any one individual and that the cause it self is what people need to remember.
Phew! That’s a lot to digest. There are so many things I want to cover but I thing I’ll just write more frequently.
Topics I still want to cover:
Changes to California Cannabis laws
Status of Equity Programs
Home Economics
State of San Francisco’s budget fight
Food recipes
The journey to live more sustainably starting with my consumption habits.
What I learned from doing 75 hard 2x
Let me know if there are other topics you think should be covered here for the Higher US.