Note: Mercury stops, and goes retrograde (moves backward) three times each year, for three weeks each time. Mercury went Rx on October 4 and will turn to go direct on October 25th. What follows is an example of the kind of thinking process that might go on within us as we turn back time, wrestle with old questions, or try to deepen our understanding.

I seem to have a number of questions rolling around in my psyche, the answer to each of which determines how I move into the future.

These questions are all centered on a long manuscript that I wrote in 1986, A Soul’s Journey: 1942-1972. I began to search for this manuscript in May, and finally unearthed it in August. For the miraculous recent herstory of that project, see this, this, and this, in that order).

Since that blessed day when, to my astonishment, my late husband Jeff unearthed the only copy of this manuscript (see this, again), and furthermore, did so on his own birthday, August 22, I sent a copy of the manuscript to Barry S-C, an editor in Indianapolis, with whom I had held a brief recent conversation and who I sensed, would not just edit it for punctuation and sense, but would actually understand what it was about, its thrust.

He returned the manuscript to me about three weeks ago, saying, in writing, that he was “privileged” to be the person chosen to edit it. I thought maybe that’s standard language for him when he edits a manuscript. But maybe not. More on that below.

For the past ten days or so, during this Mercury retrograde period, I have been spending an hour or two with his edited copy, going through the manuscript line by line, and once again, am astonished by how unusual it is, and possibly, what an addition it might make to the world’s corpus of understanding the 20th and early 21st centurys’ thrust of western philosophy and culture. I know that’s a huge claim to make, and I don’t want to make it, however, half-way through the manuscript, I see Barry has pencilled in what amounts to a testimonial. Here it is:

This section puts me especially in mind of two other contemporaneous expressions of the circa-1970 zeitgeist: Robert M. Pirsig’s struggles with defining and implementing an ideal of “quality” in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Alvin Toffler’s attempt to articulste the dislocation of social cohesion and continuity catalyzed by technological culture (Future Shock, 1970). To be sure, both are by white males of the “educated” class, and should be understood within that frame. Your account depicts (in part) the effects of that zeitgeist on a specifically female consciousness with high levels of autonomy as well as education, a story that the ’70s themselves were only beginning to see as possible. Although that story seems “ahead of its time,” I think the operant question is not so much when it emerged as whether (as you affirm) it was necessary: Clearly it was. — B C-H

Interesting that I would see this commentary that Barry offered now, today, only three days before Mercury turns to go Direct, and during the late late old Moon prior to tomorrow’s New Moon in Scorpio (conjunct Venus, sextile Mars) which, I contend (see this and this, in that order), heralds a revisioning of both Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine and their integration.

Interesting that I would see that commentary now when I am wrestling with questions as to just how to (finally) publish this manuscript. As an e-book? As a printed book? Self-publish? Find an agent and send to a publisher?

These questions remain unanswered, but the testimonial is interesting. I wonder what Barry will have to say by the end of his journey with it. I’d rush through his edited copy myself, to see if there is any more commentary, but I prefer to continue to read it line by line, this remarkable document of a young woman’s physical/emotional/intellectual/spiritual process of unearthing the assumptions of the western psyche in her own body/feelings/mind/spirit and how they have crippled her. Even more remarkable, how she moved on through to the other side, how she burst through the bubble of the matrix, we would say now, and never looked back.

So now I’m looking back. And is the person here, now, at 71, the same “me” as that young woman in her late 20s who was so impelled by massive unconscious forces to destroy her conditioning, to wake up? And to do so during the very years when she was completing her doctorate in philosophy, writing and presenting her dissertation for their “approval,” by asking them, as my major professor commented, “to certify you as one of us while kicking us in the shins!”!

Who was, who is this young woman? I so admire her courage and tenacity. Then I realize. My god and goddess, it IS me! The same woman who woke up is still awake, despite many sidetracks and setbacks since, and still growing, still being blessed by endless miracles.

I have a sense that when Mercury turns, decisions as to how to “treat” this herstorical and psychological, feminist, philosophical, spiritual treasure, this “A Soul’s Journey,” will begin to jell within me — and that by the time Mercury moves out of its retrograde shadow, November 10th, I will be able to articulate and act on these recognitions.

Here, once again, for your possible consideration:

A Soul’s Journey, 1942-1972: Preface and Initial Scene

BTW: How I answer my questions may also effect whether or not I continue with this blog. While it’s fascinating for me to spend three to five hours of my precious time each day presenting my evolving perspective on current events both personal and collective, this looking back further into the deep personal past may be what I’m specifically called to do as a soul. I know that lots of people think that we shouldn’t look back. The past is done and gone! Just move on! The NOW is all we’ve got! But we know it’s not. Not until we stop repeating ourselves. Not until we stop killing each other and our planetary home.

I do seem to be quite equipped for, one might say, the job of comprehending, in detail, multiple dimensions of my own herstory in ways that may help to reveal the, unfortunately, still largely unconscious Zeitgeist of this crux time in human history.