I took the kids to the movies Sunday. There weren’t a lot of other people in the theater, and most of them came in after the previews started. Before the lights came back up I decided to give myself an exercise in memory and perception. Without looking around I made mental notes of how many groups, how many in each and the genders and ages I suspected. I’ve been thinking a lot about Mercury placement and the senses lately. With Mercury in Pisces I figured I’d be pretty good at subconscious memory if I really let it flow.
I had just finished reading on the limits of perception and the importance of being “present.” One article cited a study where participants were asked to count passes between multiple basketball players in a video. Participants counted the passes but failed to note the person in a gorilla suit who ran through the frame. I also read excerpts from a book on concepts for training bodyguards, focusing heavily on state of mind and perception. I consider myself smarter than the average bear and grinned smugly when the lights came up and my intuitive perceptions were confirmed, to a tee.
Score one for Pisces Mercury! Then I turned to my Saturn-Neptune opposing Mercury son and asked him if he had noted the same. “Nah,” said, clearly impressed with my powers of discernment, “But I was really glad when that noisy group of kids behind us left,” a group of kids I had not seen AT ALL. Damn you, Invisible Gorilla!
What is the astrology of your perception? What aspects your Mercury and how does it manifest for you? Are you sure?
My Mercury is in Cap in H4 and the only aspects are a square to Neptune (!!) and an inconjunct with my Moon. In spite of this I’m very observant especially visually – I used to have a more or less photographic memory, partly self-trained as much of my job as a picture editor and later writer about art depended on it. I’m not good about memorising quotations or poems though.
I pick up on things and inuit things about people fairly easily, esp from facial expression, body language and intonations etc – also from what and how they write. At least I think I do (and I’m often proved right) – though with a square to Neptune, who knows?
I also read and write a great deal – I’m very good with language. I’m not musical at all though
Awareness Test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
I’m horribly oblivious to people around me but I have a good memory for names, facts, etc. It would never occur to me to check out the other folks in an theatre. It would feel like an invasion of their privacy–of course I’m projecting my own privacy issues in this case. Ask me what any member of my family was wearing at Christmas dinner and I wouldn’t be able to tell you but I would be able to recite, word for word, an entire conversation that took place between my brothers and their wives that night. That sort of thing. My mercury tightly squares Pluto–words more important than visuals? And yet I took that visual awareness test online months ago and saw the gorilla right away.
My sister (8th House Moon/Mercury in Gemini) told me a super freaky story today about bad feelings at her work (she worked as a seamstress and alone). She felt she was being watched, so she called her husband down to the shop to keep her feeling safe until closing time. Next day she went to open up shop and the place had been robbed blind. She wasn’t surprised, she was just happy nothing happened to her, too.
yikes! and that is EXACTLY why I try to fine tune my perception.
No kidding, eh?! BTW I find my Mercury (in relation to perception) incredibly difficult to descibe. I hide what I know–a lot. Not from myself, but from others. I don’t show everything I know. Mercury opposes Uranus/Midheaven.
I have Sag Merc. conj Uran. and Sun, in the 11th house that happens to square my moon. I guess I will notice the invisible gorilla but nothing else because it was funny.
I have Mercury in the 9th in sextile mars in the 7th with Scorpio. I’m always looking for the mystery..what lies beneath or the intrique. Reading, reading, reading people to an extent that I miss the main topic I should probably be focusing on. As for the gorilla, I would have probably seen him but would have been too distracted trying to disect the ppl throwing the ball to count the passes.
I read that this aspect also says I should have naturally strong math skils…HA! That is soo not the case.
I also have Merc square my AC