So What Is Mercury Retrograde?

Aight so zoom out.  We’re on this planet Earth and it spins on an axis while also spinning in a big circle around the sun.  The other planets also spin on an axis while spinning in a big circle around the sun with their own unique paths.  That’s a lot of spinning.

So from our perspective here on earth while looking up at the sky it seems like Mercury’s path around the Sun is moving backwards at certain times of the year. It’s an optical illusion because we live on a giant sphere shaped dreidel. That backwards optical illusion is mercury retrograde— well the astronomy of it at least.  The astrology gets into the symbolism of that apparent reverse motion. Since it seems like Mercury’s moving backwards in the sky that means something symbolically.

Mercury the planet of communication, perception and thinking is moving backwards so it follows during Mercury’s retrograde all things involving messages, communication and perception are moving backwards. Which means it’s time for us to review all things involving communication, perception and thinking. But Mercury’s a trickster. In the greek myths when Mercury was a baby he stole Apollo’s cattle and when he got caught this dude said, “I’m just a baby! Don’t hate the player hate the game!” Zeus was like, “I love this kid, he’s got balls.” and Mercury got away with it! So ya the review process with this Mercury cat is anything but straightforward.

Cue Mercury retrograde’s reputation for being the chaos scapegoat. But there’s a point to all this. When Mercury is direct we’re usually doing things the way we always do them without giving much thought to whether this way actually suits us. Are we simply doing things this way because we’re accustomed to it or is there a more tailor made approach we could consider? When Mercury retrograde comes around we’ve got an opportunity to stumble upon ways to be more in line with ourselves. The catch is we usually do have to stumble to get there. So if we can take time to notice what went haywire during Mercury’s time doing the cha cha slide those are the very things Mercury is nudging us to reconsider, reevaluate and maybe try on a new approach that could be more fitting.