Wednesday’s Wisdom: Mercury Invites Us to Explore a Smorgasbord of Ideas

Written by Jamie Epstein

EAT AT THE SMORGASBORD OF IDEAS

It’s Wednesday, July 3, & Moon is in Taurus, in the starspace or Nakshatra called Rohini. Taurus is our comfort zone. It’s Moon’s happy place, which means our mind feels most settled, most comfortable, here. If you’re not feeling it, you might take counsel from sage Patanjali, who in the first chapter of his yoga sutra, says: “To preserve the innate serenity of the mind, we should be happy for those who are happy, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, delighted for those who are virtuous & indifferent toward those who are wicked.” Try it & let me know how it goes!

Rohini means “reddish one” or “growing one” & is ruled by brahma, the creator of all that is, including rohini, his daughter, who, um, fell in love with her, fomenting some backlash! This asterism gives us the power to create whatever we want—& reminds us to perhaps not fall too much in love with what we do.

It’s the thirteenth lunar day (tithi), the thirteenth phase of the waning moon, which is said to remove all shortcomings & increase auspiciousness. This tithi is ruled by Kamadeva, the Hindu cupid, so it’s a good day for relationships, especially for upleveling them with forgiveness & compassion.

Wednesday is ruled by Mercury, who gives us the capacity to think, & likes having choice, a smorgasbord of ideas from which to pick. In his 2005 commencement speech, titled “this is water,” to Kenyon college’s graduating class, the late-great genius David Foster Wallace posited that the purpose of college isn’t to teach students what to think but HOW to think, to turn out free thinkers. Free thinking is dependent on the free flow of information, of unrestricted access to it. It cannot thrive when information is culled, when the river of it is dammed (or damned!) or subverted or rerouted. When choice is limited to the chef’s choice, there is no choice.

“The really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this [i.e., Kenyon college] isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.”—David Foster Wallace

Bonus Track: Rohini + thirteenth tithi + Wednesday = a combo called Amrita Yoga. “Amrita” means “nectar,” as in satisfaction, as in the juicy juice our actions will yield today. INjoy!

And that’s your daily bliss! Which is a sort of lunar weather report. May it allow you to align with the day’s cosmic energy so you can find & create a little more bliss.