If any part of today rendered this expression on your face, you have Merc's inferior conjunction to thank for it. A crucial part of his merry dance around the sun and the fulcrum of his confounding retrograde, Mercury today passed directly in front of the sun. Literally projecting his rx-on-roids death rays our way, supercharged by our solar ruler. As though we needed Merc, already on acid, squared.

Trust your life.
Trust the wait.
Trust your soul.
Trust yourself.

Every year in a row Pisces season schools us in the art of illusion. Its deep waters distort our senses and pool our assumptions. The whirlpool of our emotions, particularly those feelings that will not submit to sense or reason, breach the surface of our lives and we find ourselves all at sea.

This is my niece Liv on her way to score a try in her first game of girls rugby last week. Warms the cockles, I tell ya. Rugby tragic that I am, when I was at school girls weren't allowed to play. Now Liv can take her love of the game to the world stage if she wants to - but at the moment she will only be paid if she reaches the national level or attracts her own sponsors.

With our dark moon rudely disrupted yesterday by Urania's cataclysmic shift and Mercury's confounding retrograde, our little ol' new moon in Pisces has been somewhat obscured. She rose quietly overnight in a blue haze, her infant crescent not visible to mortal eyes but her rippling mood felt by many a heaving heart.

If Eclipsia was the agitation cycle and Pisces season was rinse and spin then we can consider the Sun Neptune conjunction of the next few days the deep rinse yet required. Just add Chiron in eye wateringly close proximity to ensure that those old wounds with the tops freshly knocked off 'em get the flushing their healing demands.

Deep in the dark of the moon before our world quakes with change, we occupy a curious confounding space. It will not answer our constant questions or petitions for mercy and grace. It ignores our demands and discomfort. It offers little beyond its balming void. It is without boundaries, an unknowable abyss that asks only for our surrender.

Cue the circus music and don your snorkel darklings because Mercury retrograde is here. I am a rabid fan of these all too regular transits for the insight, movement and creative boon they offer. Hysterical naysayers and astrodoomsday prophets, pipe down. Your control freakery is now a relic and your panic aids nothing. This entire year is built on discovering new ways to see and be and these cosmic curve balls are all part of the plan.

Dig in darklings for this is likely to be the deepest dark moon of the year. It is the deep breath in and the pause prior to the revolution. It is built on solitude and surrender and gently sifting through the detritus of the last eight years on a quest for uncommon wisdom.

Once more the anaretic degrees of fate in a curious choreography forced the break: up, down or through.

Venus leapt first, into the fresh air of Aquaria where she will remain throughout Mercury's retrograde next door. Here she stares through the lens of objectivity, a boon for tragic romantics and rose coloured fantasists everywhere. She trades her wishbone for a stronger spine and her delusions for a grandeur borne of her own heart.

The anaretic degree is the transformative portal of any sign and we're in it right now. When you see that magical 29 in a chart - of anyone or anything - you have unearthed a turning point, a harbinger of fate and an indicator of large lumpy change.

As we peer down the barrel of this week, the cosmic waves continue rolling in thick and deep and fast. Their power and beauty is cataclysmic in its execution of our new natural state. The evolution is here, darklings. This is more than a chorus. It is a no holds barred imperative.

With changeling as our default setting these heady evolutionary days, we are becoming adepts with zero time for naysayers and non believers. Today again holds quite the shift, all the better to prove our nonplussed adaptability and maintain momentum. Both of our cosmic luminaries now take centre stage. Together they glide through the powerful anaretic degree of the sign they depart, to stand tall at our next initiation point.

The icing on this week's cosmic layer cake is our impending full moon on the rise, and it's not even Wednesday yet. Her blazing gaze, magnified by proximity and purpose, peaks at the begin-again point in the house of the divine feminine healer. Initiation and medicine for a new life finding its feet.

Having spent years wailing and fighting, surrendering and accepting, the matrix is already rippling with your healing. In 2010/11 when our greatest cosmic teacher moved into Pisces, we were forced into deeper water and given little choice but to begin our life's greatest education. Today we graduate from Chiron University, with our sights on dancing post grad horizons.

That thing. Dangerous, they cry. That doing something different and strange and right like it hasn't been before. Versus everything you think you know up until now. Doing it anyway, your future a greater lure than your past.

The waxing moon in Cancer and the final day of my year whispered to me that today was the right time to harvest my mugwort. Artemisia is a plant of the moon, whose astrological home is Cancer. And I just so happened to have co-opted my kin for a day up this way, so harvest we did. Giant bundles of my dearest plant ally have been hung in my apothecary to dry out of the sun for use in smudge sticks, dreaming bundles and of course my Mugwort Magic anointing oil.

In just about every culture and tradition humankind has crafted, fire is a powerful transformer. Beyond an elemental requirement for life, fire is a cornerstone of ritual and rebirth. Fire creates and destroys, cleanses and purifies, balances and reclaims us as sacred. Smoke from flames carries our sacrifices and desires to the gods themselves. Fire is mesmerising and consuming, demanding our attention and respect.