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How Do You Like the Truth?


  • Amanda Painter

Mercury is still retrograde in Gemini, but take heart: Saturday’s Sun-Mercury conjunction signals the official halfway mark. You’re almost there. Now as you head into the weekend, try asking yourself what you do when you find out the truth.

You might have some very recent experience in this, thanks to the Mercury-Mars conjunction in Gemini, which has been square Neptune in Pisces this week. If you’re not sure that the themes of truth, deception or misunderstanding have been terribly present for you, keep your antennae up through the weekend. As the Sun moves into the aspect pattern, your conscious awareness may pick up a few more signals than before.

As you read this, Mercury is making its square to Neptune, exact Friday at 3:00 am EDT (as Mars drifts out of the pattern). This is the second of three Mercury-Neptune squares related to this retrograde phase.

The Sun joins the act Saturday into Sunday. Sun conjunct Mercury is exact at 12:56 pm EDT May 30; Sun square Neptune is exact at 9:08 am EDT May 31.

These aspects might only be exact briefly, but their effect extends out on either side by a few days. And since all the moving parts are coming into contact with each other fairly close together, it’s all basically one event. The themes involved may shift in emphasis, tone or expression for you, but you can think of the story being woven as a unified whole.

As mentioned, one form this story is likely to take has to do with truth, deception and misunderstanding, and how you react to each.

For example, do you actually like the truth? As in, do you feel strongest and most secure in yourself when you’re being honest, no matter how uncertain you are of another person’s reaction to it? Or are you in the habit of locating a sense of ease— identified as "freedom" or as "making people happy"—with so-called white lies and "spin"?

Then there’s how you react when you encounter truth from or about another person. You might receive that truth after having been in the dark (at nobody’s intentional fault). Or you might be disabused of long-held illusions of your own making or co-creation. Or perhaps you uncover a lie perpetrated by someone who had no intention of ever coming clean.

What do you do when you find out the truth? Does it vary greatly according to the specific person, situation, and context?

Or imagine that someone close to you admits to thinking about doing something on the sly that they’ve claimed they would not do, just as a thought experiment to understand where they’re truly at with their reasons for not doing it. That is, they’re checking their honesty with themselves, and by extension with you. Would you be angry that they went there even mentally? Or afraid that they’re closer to slipping up and lying about it than you wanted to believe?

The thought experiment and their telling you of it might actually be a sign of true intimacy and trust. Yet plenty of people are terrified of what that much intimacy and trust might mean for them, and for their own behavior, introspection, and honesty.

In other words, this weekend’s astrology could be read as very slippery and negative, a huge neon sign that deception (and self-deception) waits around every corner. But if we flip the astrology on its ear, you might see the solution to an intractable (or seemingly so) problem. The thought experiment I mentioned is just one example of what that could look like.

In the end, it comes down to keeping your feet planted in reality. Confusion, idealism and reflective introspection are keywords for the next few days. You’ll want to proceed methodically and stay aware of external contexts and any tugs of intuition with each choice you’re faced with. You might be surprised with what you discover, and how you respond.

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