Illustration of a decaying Higgs-Boson. Can you spot the muons? Photo courtesy CERN.

Mercury goes retrograde this Saturday at 12°33′ Leo, and he’ll return to 1°26′ before returning direct on August 8. Among other things, Leo is the sign of entertainment and fun. Mercury in Leo loves a practical joke, but when he’s retrograde, the intended effect could backfire. Standup comedians take note.

For the rest of us, all the usual caveats apply. You know the drill by now. Back up your computer, get big purchases out of the way, sign the contract to sell your house now (actually, it’s a bit late for that already), and wrap up as much as you can on projects under way. On the positive side – and this definitely applies to me – this Mercury retrograde period will be beneficial for editing, rewriting, revising, repair, and revisiting old issues in general. If you’d like to know more about how Mercury retrograde could play out in your life, check out the StarGuide Summer 2012 forecast. Although we’re already well into the season, there’s a ton of useful information in this report, and for anyone who orders now, I’ll extend the transit section until the end of September.

Nonetheless, there are a couple of unique and interesting things happening with this retrograde period. First, at the moment Mercury stations – when he appears to stop moving in the sky from one day to the next – he is in a near-exact sextile with Venus in Gemini. Venus herself recently went retrograde, and on her reverse path crossed the face of the Sun. The astrological implications of the Venus transit aren’t entirely known yet, but intuitively, I think it has something to do with reconnecting opposites on all levels. For many people, communications and connections with a person or situation had to be severed in order to reboot relationships, including our relationship with the various aspects of ourselves. Outwardly, you may have re-established contact with someone, perhaps a romantic partner, but not necessarily. At the highest level, we have been able reconnect with our energetic bodies, what some call the “higher self.” Although you can’t see or measure this connection, it is a very big deal.

With Mercury stationing at a close, positive angle with Venus in the sign he rules, there is another wide open door for meaningful communications to take place within relationships, especially those renewed after a period of distance. Communications are fundamental to strong relationships. I once read a book written for men about how to have better sex, and the first half was all about communicating. Amen to that.

The second interesting factor about this Mercury retrograde, and by far the more volatile one, lies in the simultaneous retrograde of Uranus on Friday. On a collective scale, this reverse is more significant than Mercury’s phase shift, especially since Uranus and Pluto are still within a degree of an exact square. Unless transiting Uranus is sitting on a personal planet or sensitive point in your chart, you’re not likely to feel this one personally. But combined with Mercury’s retrograde on the following day, the reversal of Uranus could manifest as major mischief … as though there hasn’t been plenty already.

We know about the fires, power outages (Uranus rules electricity), and other Uranus-related trends, including financial surprises. In his column this week, Ray Merriman writes about Uranus-Pluto and the Barclay’s Bank scandal. But there was another big event in the news last week that I believe could be the sleeper hit of the Uranus-Pluto cycle.

Last Wednesday, while fireworks were going off in most of the United States, scientists from around the world gathered at CERN in Geneva for a big announcement that they’d found the Higgs-Boson – the so-called “God particle.” Well, at least, they found something like it. It’s unclear at this point exactly what they discovered, but scientists were all jubilant and teary eyed over the possibility that after decades of searching and billions of public money spent, they’d finally found a critical piece of the Standard Model of Physics – the current theory about how the material universe forms.

Astrologers are plenty interested in this development, because part of our job is predicting possible ways that energy patterns in a horoscope might manifest into material reality. Long before I was aware of the Higgs-Boson or any scientific evidence of energy manifesting as physical matter, I knew intuitively that it does, and that astrology is a tool for predicting how and when material results might show up, either in an individual’s life or as global trends.

There were so many ironies in last week’s announcement, starting with the fact that researchers aren’t claiming to have found the Higgs-Boson, but may have accidentally stumbled on something else. That “something else” may be key to understanding the 96 percent of the universe that currently is invisible. That alone boggles the mind. Take a good look around you, and then try to wrap your head around the idea that you’re seeing only 4 percent of what’s actually there (if you’re exceptionally psychic, you may see more).

Another irony is that the announcement and the media attention it generated, including trending on the social media, was very similar to the “news” in January 2011 about the alleged 13th sign of the zodiac. The media got a lot of details wrong, and the public got all excited about something that didn’t happen. Still, scientists were surprised to have something as geeky as the Higgs-Boson trending on the Internet – just as astrologers were shocked that a bizarrely named and little-known constellation got so much attention amid the latest rock videos, celebrity breakups, and political scandals.

The biggest irony, though, lies in the public perception of what this announcement could mean. Faster computers? Smarter cell phones? Zero-gravity trains? In other words, all most people can see in a discovery of this magnitude is that it will somehow translate into new inventions – something material, like, say, space-based weapons or Cheez-It. Because so few people grasp the concept of energy manifesting into matter, the implications are beyond the imagination of most people – scientists included.

Just as scientific discoveries of the past took years to translate to applications in the mainstream, and just as the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the sixties continued to manifest for many years afterward, this new discovery of how matter is formed likely will take years to produce any noticeable effects. One thing is sure, though: how we see ourselves in the universe and how we interact with the world and each other is going to go through a massive overhaul. Meanwhile, if you need any further convincing that the Higgs-Boson is related to the Uranus-Pluto square, check out the CERN article titled, “The Higgs-Boson: Evolution or Revolution? ” Anyone familiar with astrology knows that “evolution” and “revolution” are keywords for Pluto and Uranus.

There is one other aspect this week worth mentioning, and that’s the Sun’s square to Saturn on Sunday (late Saturday in Western time zones). Difficult Sun-Saturn aspects typically manifest as power struggles, especially those involving ego and social structures. The structures could be within your family, ethnic group, company, or government. Fortunately, it’s a short influence that doesn’t last more than a few days, but it could have longer-range implications for you if the Sun and Saturn are transiting a sensitive point in your natal chart.

Wishing you all unlimited energy, love and courage,
Pat