Mitigatory Magic Part 4

October 20th to 26th: Cleanup time and the Mitigation Cycle

Finally, the astro-weather starts to ease just a little. With Venus happier in Sagittarius and the Sun moving into Scorpio, we’re looking at a bit more planetary energy. It’s not great (and frankly, it’s not going to be great through the end of the year) but at least it’s not terrible.

This gives us the opportunity to do a little cleanup. For example, next week Monday is a great day for dealing with your shadow. Consider some shadow work followed by a cleansing bath (with nurturing Lunar materia) as a balm for your battered soul. Other days are for wisdom, empowerment, hex breaking, and boundary setting. Again, not massively auspicious, but better than it’s been.

Part of mitigation is this kind of cleanup, followed by leaning into proactive enchantment when things get better in order to fortify against future trouble.

Let’s say that a nasty Mercury retrograde is straining your relationships and your car and computer are barely functioning. Your immediate goal is to mitigate. This means a magical and mundane approach to your contacts that’s gentle and forgiving, while working to keep your mechanical and electronic devices going while identifying workarounds just in case. Lots of magic for protection and prayers to your spirit posse for help. Rescheduling a long car trip and backing up your files. Asking around for an affordable and reliable mechanic. Enchanting for the best while preparing for the worst.

Once Mercury stations direct, you can start to look at a cleanup phase. You make time to reconnect with people in your life, apologizing where necessary and taking the high road. You also look at how to make sure your devices can continue as a part of your life with some diagnosis and repair (does your computer just need a factory reset? what’s up with your car?).

Finally, you consider being more proactive, strengthening your connections, getting your car some regular maintenance, and maybe starting to save up for a new computer. This is the fortification phase, where you reduce your risk for the next time Mercury is in retrograde.

Naturally it’s better to be prepared and not get into crisis/mitigation mode to begin with. If your relationships are already strong, they will do better through the miscommunication and misunderstanding born of the Mercury retrograde. And if you already were saving up for a new laptop, then if it died, you will have a next step ready to go.

But what if you aren’t prepared? What if it’s already a crisis? This is the power of the mitigation cycle. Because if you think about this as an ongoing cyclical process as opposed to a linear one, you can start at any point in the cycle and improve things now and for the future. No matter which step you are working on, keep the next step in mind.

This tri-part model can work with anything. Let’s say you are concerned that you aren’t prepared for a financial downturn. You might start cutting expenses and putting aside a little cushion - you are in fortify mode (and this is the most fortunate place to be). But also keep in mind practical mitigations. What would you do if something went wrong? Like if you lost your primary source of income? Trust me that proactive and magical risk planning will not make risks happen and in fact can even sometimes avert them. But whether it happens or not, you will be more prepared for it.

Or maybe it’s too late to fortify because the wrong thing already happened. Maybe you were laid off. Now you are mitigating: slashing expenses, looking at income opportunities, doing all the job hunting magic and going HAM on all the miracles. Even as you do that, start running list of how you will change things to cleanup after the rough patch passes. If you don’t feel like you have the energy to do that, just keep in mind that thinking about what you will change after the crisis has ended is a constant and positive reminder that it will end.

Finally, maybe your own personal financial recession is just passing (you just found a new job, yay!) and this is the first you’ve ever thought about mitigation. You’re in cleanup mode now (paying back bills, doing deferred maintenance, and making yourself indispensable at work). Now is the time to look ahead to how you will fortify yourself for the future.

This fits neatly into my Cycle Method (my ongoing series of courses for goal setting, habit formation, and getting shit done) and has really clarified how I think and talk about mitigation.

A few more references for you:

From the blog: How do Thing Suck for You

Risky Business, which has an essay on specifically what to do if you find yourself constantly in crisis mode

And remember, if you want to know what every day is good - or bad - for, join the Inner Circle and get the magical planners (printable and digital) every week!