Traditional astrology credited us humans with having two minds.

Mercury, the “lower mind,” is the kind of intelligence that governs automatic thinking. We use it to do rote tasks, collect and disseminate data. It asks the who/what/where/how questions of life.

Jupiter, the “higher mind,” governs philosophical ideation. More abstract and wide-ranging, this part of the mind asks Why?

Most of us have charts that favor one over the other. Either our Mercury reigns supreme, ideally conferring quick-mindedness and erudition, or our Jupiter dominates, ideally conferring the kind of perspective that perceives broad patterns and seeks broad answers.

Highly intelligence, astrologically speaking, is achieved by using both planets optimally, and maintaining a balance them.

Libra and Aries

When Mercury and Jupiter oppose each other, as they do this month, tensions arise from two different approaches to intelligence.

All oppositions require an opponent, either internal or external, which we often project onto the outside world. Check to see whether you’re projecting the Mercury function (facts-&- figures thinking) onto someone or something outside yourself, while identifying with the Jupiter function (big picture thinking). Or the other way around.

Through most of this month, Mercury is in Libra: a mental style that makes sense of things through cost analyses. It judiciously weighs the pros and cons. It tries to consider the evidence at hand from a rational distance, taking its time to arrive at a decision.

Opposing it, Jupiter in Aries rushes in where angels fear to tread. Its scope is far more ambitious than Mercury’s. In fire, Jupiter goads us to jump into the fray with an ideological position, and act upon what it believes to be true.

Knowledge vs understanding

September gives us several chances to achieve a balance between these two very different approaches to knowledge. Most obviously, the transit will have two exactitudes: the first when Mercury opposes Jupiter moving forward (9/2), and later as it moves retrograde (9/18).

But the transit will remain in the air for the whole the month. When the Sun and Venus enter its degree range, they’ll  trigger cosmic echoes that extend the orb of influence. It’s as if Mercury and Jupiter are testing us to see what we’ve learned. Pay particular attention at the Autumnal Equinox (9/22 6:05 pm PDT), then around 9/29 when Venus hits the equinoctial point.

As the month begins, try to perceive the way your sense of reason and your hunger for meaning are challenging each other. With each subsequent hit, events may arise that play out this tug-of-war.

Facts vs meaning

There’s also a collective lesson here. Jupiter (increase) + Mercury (data) addresses the TMI of the digital world. The transit is highlighting the stress involved, for all of us, amidst the onslaught of information we must slog through, and the need to stretch our frameworks of understanding to accommodate it all. However we have been dealing with it, we cannot continue in the way we have been.

The society we live in will have its own ways of navigating this opposition. As a rule, the mass mind acts with less awareness than we, as individuals, are capable of. But we can learn a lot about transits by watching the headlines.