At some point in every learning journey, you reach a threshold where more information won’t help.
Every masters and doctoral student reaches a point where they must stop researching and present their thesis.
You have to put your work out into the world, articulate your perspective, and share your point of view.
That moment marks a crucial threshold, where you go from the safety of information gathering and investigation to the vulnerability of sharing your perspective.
As Mercury re-enters Sagittarius after its retrograde back into Scorpio, it is our signal that we’ve reached the threshold: it’s time to come out of the deep wells where we’ve been gathering intel and step out into the world with our perspective and opinion.
Mercury in Sagittarius: Finding Truth Through Lived Experience
Mercury is the planet of communication, learning, data, and details. Its job is to gather and disseminate information and data.
Sagittarius is the sign of adventure and exploration. In the body, it is associated with the hips, which are literally how we move forward in life and step out into the world. The hips relate to mobility, momentum, and direction, our ability to move forward in life, explore new paths, and formulate our own beliefs and opinions.
Sagittarius is a place of synthesis, meaning making, and philosophy. In Sagittarius, we venture out into the world to acquire embodied knowledge and wisdom. Ruled by Jupiter, Sagittarius is about seeing the big picture and cultivating a point of view based on lived experience. It doesn’t care about gathering or sorting details.
This can be uncomfortable for Mercury. It is logical and analytical, and it seeks truth through verifiable facts and data.
Sagittarius reminds us that a focus on the facts and details can distort the truth of your lived experience.
Your lived experience tells a truth that is more powerful than any data and analytics can provide.
The Risk of Cultivating a Point of View
Mercury is said to be in “exile” in Sagittarius, which is opposite its home in Gemini. When you’re on the other side of the world from your home, you might feel exposed and vulnerable — at risk of rejection and isolation.
That same feeling can come up when it’s time to share your opinions with the world.
Data Transmittal = Safe Zone
Data collection and information gathering are safe. You can be curious and open to multiple perspectives. In learning mode, you don’t have to formulate an opinion or state your own perspective.
And there can even be safety in sharing the facts and figures because that’s just data. You can’t argue with data. When you learn a particular process for something and you teach it to others, or if you teach someone else’s frameworks or ideas, there’s little at risk for you. Because it’s just a process. Or it’s someone else’s ideas.
In those contexts, you’re just passing on the information.
That’s Mercury in Gemini. Like a bee pollinating the flowers, it takes something from one place and brings it to another place. It transmits information. It’s not trying to change the information or formulate a narrative around it. It’s fact based:
Here’s what I learned. Here’s what this means. Here’s what this says.
There’s no risk in transmittal because you have nothing personal at stake.
Point of View = Risk Zone
Sagittarius is about venturing out into the world to attain wisdom and knowledge. Sagittarius doesn’t care much for regurgitating the bits and bytes of information. This is a place where you synthesize the information to formulate a philosophy and a perspective.
Sagittarius is associated with expansion, travel, and philosophy. It’s about venturing into the unknown and the realm of uncertainty. Facts and data give us certainty, but Sagittarius is the realm of the unknown.
The symbol of Sagittarius is archer’s arrow; it is directed toward a point.
Sagittarius demands you formulate a point of view.
That is inherently more risky, because people can disagree with you. They can reject your point of view. They can debate you on it.
Your Lived Experience Matters
Sagittarius ultimately teaches us that our lived experience is more important than the facts and data.
The most successful people in life are not the people who have gone to the best schools, gotten the highest marks on tests, or accumulated the most data or information, but the people who take their lived experience, earned wisdom, and point of view, and share it with others.
Each year, Mercury’s transit through Sagittarius reminds us that true knowledge is not attained through the collection of information and data, but through lived experience that creates wisdom — and it is the sharing of this earned wisdom that gives our lives purpose and meaning.
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