Talking to Gods…

…is as weird and awesome as you think it is.

At this point, I’ve developed actual relationships with the planets.

Some more than others, but still. It’s wild — wildly strange and humbling. Wildly personal. Often light but definitely pretty heavy at times. And in my experience, the most difficult aspect of figuring out how to interact with celestial energies is how incredibly alienating it can be. Just when you begin to feel truly connected to the cosmos, human ties seem to slip away.

And because of that side effect, I wanted to share a little of my experience in case it makes anyone else feel a little less lonely as they do this work.

Working with a planet can be equated to working with that planet’s energies as they already exist within you.

We’re all born with every single planet somewhere in our chart, no matter how it manifests. Every one of us is a child of the cosmos, with the signature of our natal charts to prove it.

Vintage sky map. We’ve been trying to figure it out for ages, you guys.

So how do you “work” with a planet?

In the context of planetary remediation, the goal is to strengthen and/or balance a planet in order to modify how it shows up in lived reality.

Let’s take, for example, a public figure with a debilitated Sun that imbues them with deep hatred towards being in the spotlight — a characteristic that can truly stymie anyone whose work requires them to be visible.

Visibility is one of the core astrological significations of the Sun, and that person has the option of engaging in solar activities with the express purpose of working through their discomfort to better integrate that aspect of themselves.

Most traditional methods of planetary remediation are deeply devotional, treating the planets as higher entities with the power to help or harm — and the only way to get them to help is through offerings, prayer, mantras…and that’s about it.

While I agree with that to a certain extent, there are innumerous benefits to remediation that are much more difficult to quantify.

Oh, you want to be in Zeus’ good favor?

Well, then you must be his supplicant.

Perhaps the best way to explain this is by describing some of the nuances of my personal remediation journeys, particularly while working on my fallen Venus.

I strengthened my self-love, self-worth, and self-confidence by intentionally connecting to Venus in a respectful and devotional way, which truly served to strengthen my actual relationships. (After all, a relationship is just a mirror, right?)

Yet the most powerful moments of this journey were much more subtle, nuanced, and difficult to put into words.

I became much better at connecting to close friends during a deep conversation. I learned how to actually listen. That wasn’t something I thought I needed to work on, but I guess I did. Through the practice of actually tasting my food as a way to foster bodily acceptance, I awakened senses I didn’t know were sleeping — I heard bass lines for the first time, sniffed honeysuckle, felt the scratchy crawl of a caterpillar inching across my hand. All of which I had simply…forgotten about. It’s the small pleasures that tend to evaporate, aren’t they?

I realized that since Venus was the only planet in an Earth sign in my chart, a big reason as to why I couldn’t keep any damn plants alive was that Venus was super busy, ruling the Midheaven and three Libra planets, including my chart ruler. Not only did she have to manage the relationships in my life, but she was also in charge of my career and quite a lot more — Venus had nothing left to spare to radiate any power towards plants. Or nature in general.

I caught myself thinking about how unfair it was that my relationships never seem to work out, since I can honestly say I’m really good at them — but before I even finished that thought, it hit me that actually, I was kind of…hard in all of my long-term partnerships.

As soon as I felt secure enough, I would drop the nurturing act and instead make them feel as if they would never be good enough. (There’s a reason Venus is in fall in the sign of Virgo…)

That was a tough thing to realize.

Remediating a planet brings you face-to-face with all the ways it has infiltrated your psyche.

Its inherent traits are native to you — they’ve been operating through you since birth — but as you move through life, racking up experiences, these basic, raw-boned characteristics branch out, sprouting new buds with new leaves. It’s an incredibly independent experience, and remediation provides a container for all of these little cuts and scars to latch onto. They find their voice and pipe up; they whisper through your shadow, and you have to hear them.

If you don’t, you’ll never heal this side of yourself.

I mentioned earlier that working with a planet is the same as working with yourself. That’s because each planet rules the things it rules for everyone and everything.

They each claim dominion over one seventh of our existence — including one seventh of you.

Get in the car, loser.

Every time you write in your journal or purchase a lottery ticket, you’re engaging with Mercury.

Romantic evenings belong to Venus; every competition you enter conjures the spirit of Mars. The Moon watches over you as you tend to home and hearth; the Sun’s rays beam out of your high school graduation photo.

Not only that, but all of the times anyone has bought a lottery ticket, sent an email, picked up the phone, bought something at a store, learned a new language, drove around town, or any other topic associated with the planet of the mind and communication…all of that belongs to Mercury.

Every competition is forged by Mars, every romantic evening by Venus. And so on.

And as you’re part of this world, a member of our wild collective human existence, and we all have each planet somewhere in our charts, it stands to say that engaging with them in a personal way absolutely honors the face they can only reveal through you.

So yeah, working with one planet means working with one seventh of yourself.

Accurate vintage depiction of working with Saturn.

Now, how do you approach actually working with a planet? Are they deities? What’s the difference?

I think the best answer to those last two questions is: I don’t know.

Humans have been entreating, praying to, and communicating with deities and spirits for eons. Untold legions of gods and goddesses have come and gone, making us wonder: what came first, the deity or the desire to pray?

Is a god a god because it already exists in its own right, or is it a god because our collective consciousness created them?

I truly do not know, and so I prefer to approach working with a planet using a semi-integrated model of astrology and myth. I make sure I remember that, even though a planet and associated deity share many characteristics and often a name, they are not the same entity. The Mercury/Hermes mythical archetype pairs very nicely with the significations of the planet Mercury, from ancient times to the present, but it’s still not the planet itself.

To reiterate: it’s important to understand that the planets themselves are not their associated deities.

So when working with a planet, keep that in mind. That’s not to say the deity is less important — it’s just not the planet! Some people prefer to keep them entirely separate, but the beauty of mythical archetypes is their sheer usefulness in understanding planetary significations on a deeper, more human level. Hermes is fleshed out, a divinity with a human face — this enables us to personify a planet, give it character traits that help us feel what it means, even if our minds already “get” it.

And, if the situation calls for it, I will work with a deity on its own, without correlating them to astrology in any way.

The best way to work with a planet is your way.

What feels right for you? One very simple reason I love working with Greek myths in my astrology practice is that I am Greek. I feel very connected to those myths, that pantheon, and the land it came from. It feels right.  

You can do your own research and develop a system that integrates your beliefs while staying respectful and devotional.

You can attempt this in a variety of ways. You can treat a planet like an actual deity, aiming your devotion towards the sky. If that’s too out there for you, another option is connecting to one of its associated deities. For example, if you want to work with the Moon, you can call upon Diana or Selene or one of many, many other lunar goddesses you have to choose from. You can even simply engage with its significations. Whether you devote your weekly rejuvenating salt bath to the Moon or choose not to, you’re still participating in a lunar activity and, as a result, strengthening your Moon.

In my experience, the best time to start a new planetary practice is when the planet is strong.

When a planet is in its domicile, or home sign, it’s in a rare position to allow for remediation. For example, when Jupiter is in Sagittarius or Pisces, the two signs it rules, the collective Jupiterian energy is potent, at its greatest power, and — this is important — pure. By pure I mean that its expression is the closest it’s ever going to get to what it’s supposed to do.

We just experienced Jupiter in Pisces, and in fact, the Greater Benefic is retrograding in Aries right now, on its way back to its water domicile for a little while longer. Once it moves back into Aries, Jupiter won’t be in Pisces again until 2033.

When Jupiter is in Pisces, it basks in an ideal environment in which to express its qualities of spiritual expansion and beneficence.

Pisces is uniquely supportive to these topics because it actually gets many of its characteristics from its relationship to Jupiter, its planetary ruler. When you’re in your own home, furnished and decorated to your liking, you’re comfortable enough to do your thing. It’s that simple.

Vintage NASA photo from 1979 of Jupiter and its four largest planet-sized moons.

When a planet is strong, you’re better able to get a sense of its purest expression.

It’s not sullied by the influence of other planets, nor does it have to answer to them — as it must when residing in one of their signs. When Jupiter was in Pisces, all of my friends had spiritual awakenings. Many of them fell in love, went on decadent binges, traveled to distant places, and several even — as Pisces is Jupiter’s water domicile — literally moved to be close to water. Jupiter was sitting pretty in the sky, pulling strings with abandon. Yeah, he had challenges but when you’re at full strength, they’re much easier to deal with.

If you start a spiritual practice when Jupiter is in one of its home signs, the energy around you supports it. You’ll also have a better, easier experience with the associated topics.

Then there’s Mercury.

One of the weirdest things I’ve experienced during my Mercury journey is how much this planet just kind of likes to fucks with you.

When remediating Mars or Saturn, remembering to approach them with a light touch is much easier. Too much Martial or Saturnian energy is easy to recognize, especially within this context. (It’s also safe to assume that, if you’re remediating a planet, it’s likely not very well-placed in your chart.)

When I was knee-deep in Mars remediation, I had to learn how to properly express all of my suppressed anger. I caught myself snapping at people and almost ran myself ragged with my newfound Martial energy a few times. Yet that’s the point of it — to acclimate yourself to those aspects of your psyche you’re not comfortable with.

In traditional astrology however, Mercury can be categorized as benefic or malefic depending on what else is going on.

And of course, we have the Mercurial trickster archetype. The planet itself isn’t actually the god Hermes (Mercury in the Roman pantheon), but something happens when you conflate the two. (Which is also interesting due to the symbolic duality of both planet and god.)

Hermes is my boy.

I’m not sure whether trickster energy accompanies Mercury remediation because I chose to personify it as Hermes or the other way around, but there was no mistaking it.

For me, the first step in working with a planet is to create an altar.

So when I decided to connect to Mercury, I began working on some designs (kamea & planetary sigils) to print out and add to my altar, when the program I was using kept doing…weird things. It felt different somehow from normal technological snafus. It felt like something was communicating with me. It didn’t feel entirely malevolent, nor did it feel entirely benevolent. The best way I can describe it is that it was like a “hello.” A “thank you for letting me come out and play.” An “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into!”

Like I said, it wasn’t good or evil, it just was. That’s trickster energy — it’s just the essence of the entity I was working with. (I won’t even get into how Mercury messes with us during the Planetarium parties…)

In that way, I learned that working with a god or spirit or any kind of mysterious being/energy is pretty much the same as interacting with humans.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “normal,” but when you consider that in any kind of healthy two-way relationship, you should make room for the thoughts & emotions of whoever (or whatever) you’re in relationship with in order to preserve the balance of true relationship, it begins to dawn on you that this is a two-way street, and you’re just as integral to the dynamic as they are.

I have many more thoughts on Hermes/Mercury, and perhaps I’ll write more on him, but if you’re interested in the trickster god archetype at all, you need to read Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde.

I cannot recommend it enough.

Keep on being tricky.