We have just passed the magical midpoint of Mercury's merry retrograde, he and the sun fist bumping as they sauntered in opposite directions through the Taurean gate. This hallowed tipping point is always a lightbulb moment: something drops in, pops up, turns around, makes sudden sense. The light switches on and the chaotic disordering of the first part of our comm planet's backwards two step begins to make faint sense.

As we begin today to come up for air after a typically torrid saison d'eclipsia, not for me the new moon intention setting or break neck fast track to my brave new world. I am wary of any kind of bring-me-this magic woven under eclipsing skies. We know eclipses to be portents of change, unpredictable beasts who do not bow to our attempts to tame or harness their peculiar magic. We know too that they ripple: across astrological and emotional axes, across years, pinging our past and future alike.