Mercury in Pisces, Planets in Detriment
Today is my Birthday!
Having Mercury in Pisces I struggle with words. I have become reasonably good at using them, but they remain insufficient for the sea of images, impressions, emotions, and sensations that swim voluminously under the surface of intellect in my psyche, just out of reach of the pen or keyboard or tongue; it may as well all be glossolalia. But I think we are all a little bit like this aren’t we?
My retrograde Piscean Mercury can’t be fished out by Jupiter, who is in an equally difficult position; stranded in Virgo, untangling all the neat rows of knots in the nets. Yes, I have the ‘two drunks propping each other up on the way home’ in my chart! Mercury and Jupiter in both in detriment and fall in each other’s sign. I also have confusing Neptune on my Ascendant for good measure.
The detriment of a planet is opposite the sign it rules. It is where their nature struggles because the ruling planet of that sign is most opposite in nature, such as Venus in Aries or Mars in Taurus. When planets are in detriment it means that they do not function efficiently at what they signify. They are in the world as fish out of water, or rather, as people of the sea trying to live on land. I’m more at home with the mythical Finns.
Everybody has planets in their chart that are in detriment. These are areas of life that need more work, more attending to, to get them to flow. Things don’t come easily, but you get to master them with great effort. You are likely to feel called to these knotty areas of life and view them in others with jealousy or awe while you learn to grapple with them.
Mythically they may be the ‘tynged’ on all of us. The gods laughing at their game of life. A ‘tynged’ is a doom, fate or destiny in Welsh mythology, difficulty or challenge created by a vow, curse or spell. This sounds horribly negative and pessimistic, but that is not how people of the past saw a ‘doom’; it is understood as a magical challenge that one must meet as a gift, not a burden, or else it would become one. All cursed Heroes face them and win, and it is the making of them.
In the Mabinogion, King Math requires a foot holder who is a virgin. Women will be tested magically to see if they are indeed virgins. When Arianrhod fails the test she spontaneously gives birth to a boy whom Gwydion hides and raises. He takes the boy to her, and she is shamed by this reminder of her loss of virginity, and in anger, she places a tynged on the boy: that only she can give him a name, that he shall receive arms from no one but Arianrhod herself, and that he shall never have a human wife. Gwydion is instrumental in tricking Arianrhod into giving him the first two, before creating and bringing to life a bride made from the flowers of Broom, Meadowsweet, and Oak, whom they name Blodeuwedd.
This is a great way of seeing how debilitated (in detriment) planets struggle to find their place in the world and must learn to overcome. You have been given a sacred burden, a fairy-tale impossible task.
Artwork: Moonfish by Shaun Tan
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Astrology Imaginarium 