WTF is Mercury Retrograde?
Mercury retrogrades about 3 times a year with each cycle lasting about 3 weeks. Mercury retrograde is a time of slowing down, reflection and review. It’s about giving yourself lots of time to make room for obstacles, errors, and blockages.
Wondering if Mercury is in Retrograde?
Retrograde means to “step back” and this happens when planets slow down their speed to make an elliptical turn around the Sun. As they slow down, they appear to be moving backward. It was an optical illusion to early astronomers who made note of these changes in the Heavens. What was really happening was as the planet in retrograde was appearing to slow down because other planets not in retrograde motion, were moving faster.
The experience of this optical illusion is completely real! Pretty much everyone knows about Mercury retrograde! Especially when electronics go haywire and relationships can get frazzled from misunderstandings.
Mercury rules the signs of Gemini (The Twin Thinkers) and Virgo (The Master Analyzer). Both signs are mental signs having to do with the way you think and process information. It presents us with the opportunity to reflect and review, to re-visit issues about which we thought we had made up our minds. It’s an ideal time to finish unfinished business (like paperwork that’s been sitting around a while or photos that need to go into albums or onto a disk). We often end up re-doing something that wasn’t done right the first time. Unfortunately, it’s also a time when we’re more likely to make mistakes, necessitating re-doing things later – maybe during the next Mercury retrograde!
Wisdom says do not sign contracts during a Mercury Retrograde to start new projects and ideas. If you have to and there is no way out, reread, review and get a second set of eyes to see what possibly could go wrong. Read the fine print. Renegotiate is a more powerful energy to align with.
How does a Mercury Retrograde work?
In Astrology, the planetary movement is tracked and measured by degrees. Each Zodiac sign is 30 degrees in the sky. Mercury has 3-weeks timing of when He is in retrograde motion. We are so lucky that he moves so fast, as some of the other planets are 5 months! – cue Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto!
But Mercury, as well as all planets, has a Retrograde Shadow. This is the degree that Mercury retrograde retraces his step to and when he goes beyond. This actually opens up your Mercury retrograde experience to 6+ weeks! But knowing this is your super-intelligent, advanced way of living. Lucky you!
2020 Dates:
Mercury goes retrograde next from June 17 to July 2020 and again on October 14 to November 2, 2020. His retrograde path in June will be 21 to 5 degrees Cancer. To find the shadow zone, go to when Mercury was 5 degrees Cancer: June 2, 2020 and when he leaves 21 degrees Cancer: August 1, 2020. This is your complete Mercury Retrograde period including the Shadow Zone: June 2 – August 1, 2020. For the second Mercury retrograde on October 14th, Mercury moves from 11 degrees Scorpio to 25 degrees Libra. The shadow zone is from September 25 to November 20, 2020. When you track your experiences using this space of time, you learn so much more about yourself and your life. This carries the true energy of Mercury’s Messages of the Gods for you. Isn’t that cool?!
Why does Mercury Retrograde get a bad rap?
Mercury is the Trickster who, like Coyote, likes to play games with communication, electronics, and time. Mercury is the “Messenger of the Gods” and has wings on his feet. He is a super fast energy whose domain is communications and transportation. Mercury’s transit around the Sun is 88 days – whereas Earth’s transit is 365 days. Keep that in mind as communications and packages get lost, confused, and delayed.
But it is really “spa-time” for the mind. This is the time when your awareness is invited to hang out in your Right Brain. It’s Soul time to be creative, artistic, musical, and poetic. Revisit the ways you learn. Are you audio, visual, text, or a combination? Mercury rules the hands, so use your hands to doodle, draw, paint, sculpt. If you are attracted to linguistics and language, learn a language by using right-brain techniques. Learn through elementary books, like a child would, as Mercury rules this early time in life when our neurological pathways were formulating their grooves. Collaging is great for visual learners. Listening to books for audio learners. Putting your hands to work with artisanal craftwork like knitting, crocheting and embroidery also put your mind at ease and open up to be rejuvenated and rebooted. Just like a computer! Mercury Rx is the ultimate “defrag” for your mental hard drive!
Since Mercury Retrograde is happiest in your Right Brain, I love to use the Sabian Symbols to help guide me through this luxurious vacation. The Sabian Symbols are channeled images from 1925 for every degree in the Zodiac (360). Entering into the world of the symbols for the degrees of where Mercury is traveling through is a powerful and fun way to understand what the journey is all about. When you have your chart and can find where Mercury is during the retrograde really empowers you to personally understand your journey, what to do and not do and how to accelerate your personal growth by reviewing what needs to be shifted. Mercury Retrogrades are one of my favorite times of the year!
What if I was born during a Mercury Retrograde?
Mercury retrogrades from 3-4 times every year, so that can make many of you born during a Mercury retrograde cycle. Don’t worry! This makes you appear proverbially very youthful throughout your lifetime. And you think much differently, too. You are more inside out and upside down. I have Mercury Rx in Gemini 1 degree from my Gemini Ascendant and Gemini Moon! My mom, always said that I had no “common sense” and she was right. I don’t think in ways that are considered normal. I think and communicate very differently because I think very quickly and consider many angles all at once. Mercury retrograde people are the ultimate multi-taskers – mentally – and they probably have no idea they are doing it. Because doesn’t everyone think that way, muses a Mercury Rx person?!
You are offbeat if you were born under a Mercury retrograde.
You’re a quick thinker, and there may be more than one voice processing information since Mercury represents the Cosmic Twins. Your commentary and the jokes you crack aren’t always understood at first because they come from another field of awareness. You probably aren’t the most outgoing person in the room, but when you do take the lead, you lead others in a very unconventional way that can have brilliant outcomes.
As a child, you may be been the ultimate Daydreamer, too. This may not have gone over so well in school when one is supposed to be paying attention. Usually, daydreaming energy is a result of boredom. All those daydreams to faraway places in your imagination help you develop a quirky sense of humor, imaginative creativity, and effervescent charm.
Retrogrades are indications of unresolved issues from past lives. Mercury heralds issues around communication. This lifetime, you are desiring to make yourself heard, be clear in your narrative and share information that may have been repressed and/or too dangerous to share with the mainstream consciousness of that historical time.
How do you survive Mercury Retrograde?
It’s time to get Mercury Retrograde back on track so that it can help you in your life – POWERFULLY! Here is the Ultimate Survival Guide for you.
As Mercury retrogrades three times per year, it will be in different Zodiac signs. First, get your date down when Mercury is in retrograde and the shadow zone period. Then see what Zodiac signs Mercury will be in (sometimes the same sign and sometimes two signs). This will give you the energy of that particular Mercury Rx experience.
Tune in to the energy of that Zodiac sign: What Element? What Quality? Who is the ruling planet of that sign? There are four Elements in the Zodiac: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Each Element has its own set of rules in the way that it can connect with you. For example, if Mercury is retrograding through a WATER element sign, then your experience will be more about emotions, feelings, unconsciousness, and transformation. Whereas, a FIRE element sign will be about direction, passion, creativity, and movement. The QUALITY is important, too. Quality is energetic of the sign and how it connects to universal energy. There are 3 Quality forms: Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. Cardinal is leadership and creation, Fixed is rooting and attraction and Mutable is flexible, changing, and adaptability. Knowing the Quality of the Zodiac sign will define how you understand the nature of the energy and how to play with it in your life.
Check how other planets are relating to Mercury RX. Now that you have a handle on the energetic dynamics of the Mercury RX vibration, next is to see what planets are playing a role in how Mercury shapes itself in your life. Planets can create relationships through conjunction (same sign within 10 degrees), sextile (60 degrees), square (90 degrees), trine (120 degrees), yod (150 degrees), and opposition (180 degrees). These relationships are called “Aspects”. Each one carries its own way of assisting in your growth.
Conjunction = Intensifying
Sextile = Harmonizing
Square = Building energy to breakthrough
Trine = Synchronizing and flowing
Yod = Spiritually grounding instability
Opposition = Two sides of the spectrum lead to becoming one
Here comes the fun part. Once you have dialed yourself into the Zodiac sign, element, quality, and aspects with other planets, you can use all that information to see how that affects you by finding it in your personal Natal birth chart. What you will discover is the House where Mercury is journeying through that will tell you what part of your life is up for review. For example, if your 3rd House is ruled by Sagittarius and Mercury RX is in Sagittarius, it will be helping you review the bigger picture of sibling relationships, communication of spiritual ideals, and childhood experiences with religion and education (just to name a few things). When you look at your own Natal chart, you may see Natal planets in that house which will also help you see what exactly you can be working on to help your Soul during this lifetime. If other transiting or natal planets are in Aspect, that will also help you see what planetary allies are available to move you through any old, stuck patterns and a more in-depth and detailed message from the Gods.
If you are like most people, you may not have all the time in the world to figure this out and plan ahead. That is completely normal! Astrology is a science, an art, and another language. Lunar Ladies has come to your rescue and has done the work for you! In this easy to read the guide, you can see all the upcoming Mercury Rx cycles, transiting planets making aspects and shadow zone periods so you will be on top of the world enjoying these most wonderful times of the year. (Instead of dreading when Mercury comes knocking, or worse – be feeling “why is this happening to me? And why is my life upside down?”
In order to gain the most out of this…
Have your Natal chart handy and the Planetary, Houses, and Zodiac cheatsheets to help make this complex information easy to understand. Mark out the dates and begin to plan ahead how you will engage with the energy via your Right Brain spa vacation awareness. Look to see what House in your chart each Mercury is retrograding through. See what natal planets are up for your review. Look to see how you will play with the other planetary alignments or be aware of what to watch out for.
If this seems too hard, that is when you make the best decision of your life – to join the Lunar Ladies Lifestyle Club.
Your Club membership includes all this information plus your personal natal chart with monthly masterclasses to get you sailing on smooth waters. You have your trusted captain at the helm of this fantastic cosmic voyage, Shannon Murray, reading the star maps and navigating you through. She is especially adept at calming wild seas and troubled waters. Plus you have an entire community of wise women to be shipmates with who love waking up each day knowing the temperature of the energy outside. The Lunar Ladies Lifestyle Club takes all the guesswork out of trying to figure out these fast-changing, modern times. And as we head towards 2020 and 2024, the energetic weather is only getting faster, wilder and intensified. Enjoy this wonderful acceleration from your lounge chair aboard the USS Goodship Lollypop! The view is great and the oceans are smooth!