Starcodes April 3, 2020 Heather Roan Robbins

Let’s fact check all the stories we hear. We are at the height of a pandemic of potential permeability and misinformation this weekend. Our imagination can be strong, but that creativity can too easily flow into panic or denial, and we accidentally write fiction when we think we’re telling the truth. The reality is tough enough, but our anxiety can make it worse. This imagination is wonderful when we’re writing a novel or telling our children a story, but it can get dangerous under the present viral circumstances. Informational bulletins have too often been an exercise in fiction writing.

This overwhelming imagination peaks as Mercury, arbiter of our thinking and communication, in sensitive and creative Pisces, conjuncts magical Neptune this weekend. Mercury has been in and out of Pisces since early February, approached Neptune, backed off when it retrograded, and now, direct, perfect that conjunction. Mercury in Pisces is dreamy, sometimes inspired, but it’s opposite the sign it rules, Virgo and so it’s not particularly comfortable here. While it’s great for poetry and powerful for prayer, our information sources can be foggy or confused. our thinking can become an irrational echo chamber of feelings, and we can slip either into anxiety on one side or denial on the other unless we work with this imagination carefully.