With Mercury and Venus conjunct in Sagittarius from November 17 until November 28 this month presents a wonderful opportunity for you to transform your life with a little astrological alchemy. Mercury is the planet of knowledge and Venus is the planet of love. Sagittarius rules philosophy (a word that means, literally, love of wisdom). Whenever you are on a quest to increase your wisdom and to learn more about yourself, your journey in life, or your place in the world, then you are acting as a philosopher. If you want to go beyond that by making an effort to transform your life, then you are going one step further, which is when the concept of alchemy enters the picture.
In 1382, a French bookseller by the name of Nicolas Flamel, announced that he had delved into the ancient Hebrew books of the Kabbalah, a series of writings that describe the mystical beliefs of a section of the Judaic religion. In particular, he had been experimenting with the Kabbalah texts on alchemy, a process that focused on transmuting base metals such as copper, lead, and tin into precious metals such as gold and silver. Over the centuries that followed it began to be rumored that he had actually acquired a small fortune of gold and silver in this way, as if by magic, and by the 17th century those legends bloomed into a kind of gold fever that spread far and wide, at least for a while.
