mercury in retrograde

what it is and isn't (and could be)

Is Mercury already retrograde again?

Put away the technology! Don’t write any letters, sign any documents, or expect to keep any appointments! Thinking of making a commitment? – think again! Slow down, slow down, slow down!

To the point of stopping.

This panicked alert is what Mercury in retrograde has come to mean for most people. A symbol dictating when to act and when not to act. We begin to notice all the little slips in communication, the mixed messages, and all the ways that technologies somehow begin to fall apart through this period.

But could all this focus on communicative breakdown – and the fear and anxiety that comes along with that – actually be a mixed message, itself?

As I often share when someone’s booking a tarot reading with me for the first time, we can see the universe as something happening to us, or alternatively, we can see it as something that happens with us. And so, when Mercury enters retrograde, we can understand it as collaborating with us, not a force looking to impede our dreams, wishes, and mundane plans – this is what I believe to be true, both because I choose to and because that is what I have seen in my own practice. Wouldn’t it be quite disappointing if what this great energy most had to offer in these moments was getting in the way of our day-to-day lives?

In all that it does, Mercury resonates as a symbol of alchemy. Transformation. Shapeshifting. Magick. Transition between forms. The multiplicity of truth. Processes of becoming, while also knowing what could have been – what was.

And where we experience a retrograde (the perception of a planetary body slowing down or reversing, relative to the others), we are gifted an opportunity to return to things (we think) we’ve left behind.

In other words, the essential nature of Mercury in retrograde is actually time travel (!). The ability to step into another truth and experience it from within, however briefly. But wait- we were just talking about missed appointments and dropped phone calls and now we’re talking about time travel; how is any of this related?

Well, let’s go back for a moment. Mercury, the essence of communication (the concept of transfer, transience, transmutation – and all things queer) is the energy most closely associated with Gemini, the energy from which the sneaky, clever, and playful sign was born. If anyone’s going to be able to find a way to solve a puzzle like time or subvert the “rules”, this is the one. I suspect this is also why Mercury in retrograde has been cast in the role of trickster, someone who delights in stirring up confusion and playful misfortune in others’ lives. I can assure you, however, that Mercury as a symbol is both benevolent in its intent and – perhaps more compelling – easily bored of such simple games as mixing up documents and misplacing keys.

A puzzle like time is certainly more of interest to Mercury, and through the retrograde, it has found a way to let us experience time differently. Whichever way you imagine time to flow, when Mercury becomes retrograde, you can think of that flow as splitting into (at least) two separate channels, one river becoming two or many.

During retrograde, it isn’t that Mercury gets in the way of our plans, it’s that we are resistant to experiencing another way of moving forward; it’s that we persist in the idea that there’s only one way things can flow. It isn’t that we can’t make commitments, it’s that we are being asked to reconsider what that commitment would mean along another timeline. Mercury asks us to be creative. The question becomes: how can I still find what I’m working towards with a new set of circumstances, experiences, perspectives? How can I craft what I desire, but with different tools?

Mercury is a chance to skill up, and it hurts a lot less than other energies like heavy, serious Saturn or Pluto, who will ask you to give up everything in order to find anything. When Mercury becomes retrograde, playfully take on the role of detective. You can benefit from seeing everything as a puzzle, not taking things very seriously (Gemini certainly won’t) and allowing curiosity to flow. Your path forward will never be the one that looks most clearly forward, nor will it ever be a path that others handed down to you (sorry, Earth signs) or that you had sorted out before (nice try, Virgo).

This split in time also doesn’t mean that things won’t ever come back together; it means that they will and won’t and already did, and that you should be able to work with clarity from any of those places.

If your mind is feeling confused, then you are precisely where Mercury invites you to be during these moments. Though many will persist in doing things the ways that have always made sense to them, thus experiencing frustration and further confusion, you have the option to choose differently.

If there are words you said and wished you hadn’t, you are able to explore right now what it would have been like if you had not spoken them. If there are details you’ve been waiting on, you will be able to find ways of moving forward without them. Whatever you have been looking at in your life, you now are able to witness a mirror version of that experience, reality reconfigured.

This is the time to reshape.

Reform.

Rescind.

Refocus.

Reassess.

Redefine.

Renovate.

Replenish.

Renew.

Realign.

As Mercury aligns itself with another way of witnessing the world through retrograde, it opens a space for you to do the same; in this moment, you are gifted curiosity to pursue all that your mind is drawn to, liberation from boundaries imagined and manifest, and clarity unlike you have ever known before. Most of all, Mercury gifts you an awareness, a knowing, beyond what is and isn’t – towards what could be.

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Loosely, Mercury’s retrograde periods for 2018 are as follows:

March 22rd – April 15th

The current retrograde set firmly in Aries means that Mercury’s energy is likely to manifest as more impulsive and intense, implying a need to practice discernment and discipline. The changes in perspective that Mercury offers are likely to seem even sharper than they usually would, and the effects of any current choices felt more absolutely, more aggressively during this time. Some of the decisions that you make during this retrograde period will remain solid and immovable even after it passes, while some of the decisions and their impacts will fade immediately after (or even during). However, you should likely not expect to be able to simply step back out your choices after these moments; it is probably ideal to make choices as if they are the ones you will be living with moving forward, since Aries’ energy renders this a less experimental, try-it-out kind of retrograde.

July 26th – August 19th

November 17th – December 6th