The Dance between Mercury and Jupiter: NORWAC Reflections
The Northwest Astrology Conference, commonly known as NORWAC, was a formative educational experience. I received a scholarship to attend and was afforded four days of morning to night lectures from some of the country’s foremost astrologers. My mind is still swimming in all of the new approaches, perspectives, and techniques I was introduced to, much of which I’ve already begun practicing. Moreover, the conference was an opportunity to deepen my bonds with my colleagues– astrology is very much a language, and like any other, it is strengthened and honed in immersive conversation.
Astrologically speaking, there are two planets most associated with education: Mercury, responsible for how we think and process information, and Jupiter, the great seeker of deep knowledge. While Mercury collects and analyzes data, Jupiter, makes meaning through integration and experience. Where Mercury finds expertise, Jupiter finds wisdom. If NORWAC was a Mercurial environment, a rapid exchange of ideas, then my time spent on the Olympic Peninsula in the days following was of Jupiter.
As I sat on the edge of a bluff overlooking the Salish Sea, watching brilliant Sol set on the water, I ruminated on all I had learned throughout the conference and how blessed I was to be given such an opportunity, the scholarship that made it possible. Blessings, opportunities, scholarship, gratitude: these are the joys of Jupiter, and as I contemplated them in the presence of the great sea, a bald eagle flew right past my smiling, tear-strewn face. These two expansive creatures, the sea and the eagle, carry with them the wisdom of ages, of the natural world, of Jupiter. They teach through their very being, their existence, their nature, and symbolic correspondences. I recognize these correspondences as I’ve learned through books and lectures, it is intel I have gathered Mercurially. Yet, learning and knowing are two different things: I know them now as I have felt them wholly, I have experienced them viscerally, there in that synchronistic moment, what I had learned became embodied. This is where I sit as an astrologer, in between the collection and discrimination of newly gathered information and the meaning made through its integration and experience: the dance between Mercury and Jupiter.
Thank you for being a part of this journey, for every consultation is an opportunity to dance.
