Mercury in Sagittarius

You meant to look up one word and an hour later you know the history of the language it came from, the country it travelled through, and three places you now plan to visit.

Far sight

Mercury is the planet of detail and Sagittarius belongs to the horizon, and the tradition names this placement Mercury’s detriment: the planet sits opposite its own Gemini, where the small fact rules. Here the big picture rules instead. You see where an argument is going before it gets there, you grasp the meaning of a subject before you have learned its parts, and you would much rather understand why than memorise how.

This makes you a wonderful teacher of the first lesson and an impatient student of the fifth. You inspire people to learn a thing and then, sometimes, leave them to learn it.

Saying it straight

You say what you think. It rarely occurs to you that the truth could be a problem, because to you it is the obvious thing to say, and you say it with such good humour that people usually forgive you. Usually. A blunt sentence delivered cheerfully still lands, and you rarely see where.

Your stories are long and they are good, and they grow a little each time. Exaggeration is not lying to you; it is the story being told properly.

Jupiter’s sign

Jupiter is the ruler here, the planet that enlarges whatever it touches, and here it lends Mercury its appetite for more. Every fact you meet is a doorway to a larger one. You read the history to understand the news and the philosophy to understand the history, and you are happiest when a conversation has somewhere further to go.

The small print

The difficulty is the detail you skipped. You sign before reading, promise before checking, and land in a new city knowing the philosophy of the place and not the name of your hotel. You can hold opinions very firmly about subjects you have studied very briefly.

The friends who travel with you do the booking, and they still come back telling your version of the trip, because yours is the one worth hearing.