The range of degrees (like those five blocks in the example above) are known as the retrograde’s “shadow,” a term coined by astrologer Roxana Muise. This phenomenon of three passes may be related to the idea that things happen in threes! You pass over that five-block range three times, twice forward and once backward. In the process, you traveled those five blocks away from home, backtracked those same five blocks, and traversed them forward again after retrieving your item and heading out again. You have to backtrack to pick it up and head out again. Thus, it traverses this area three times: forward, backward, forward.Īn easy way to understand this is to imagine that you leave home on an errand and five blocks from home, you realize you forgot something. For 2-3 weeks before and after this backward step, it moves forward through the section of the zodiac where the backtracking occurs. Each time it passes us, it appears to move backward for about three weeks. It circles the Sun (and the zodiac, from our viewpoint) about three times in one earth year, passing us about three times each year. Mercury retrograde affects lots of people in that arena, too.Īs the planet closest to the Sun, Mercury’s orbit is the quickest. Mercury is also associated with lower education (through grade school or junior high), where we learn the basics of communication and language(s). Those include anything and everything from commuting to skateboarding, affecting drivers, passengers and pedestrians. When Mercury is retrograde, we tend to have more problems with all forms of communication (verbal, written, electronic, postal, mental), and with local transportation matters. Mercury got around a lot and had a lot to say. The other is easy to see, too: transportation (the local variety) – think of his winged feet. As “messenger of the gods” (from Roman mythology), communication is an obvious one. Mercury wears a couple hats that strongly impact our daily lives. The retrograde phase of a planet’s motion seems to predispose us toward the more trying or negative expressions of whatever the planet represents, unless we’re actively trying to find the highest and best use of the planet’s energies. Activities connected to the planet begun during its retrograde often require adjustments or “going back to the drawing board” later. In between, progress is difficult in these concerns and we may have to re-learn lessons about the affected affairs or about behaviors related to the planet. Matters associated with the planet can seem to be at a standstill for a few days at the beginning and ending points of the retrograde period (called the “stations”) when the planet seems to screech to a halt. We experience this optical illusion’s influence as quite real. You’re both traveling forward, but because you’re quicker, the other car seems to you like it’s slipping backwards relative to you. To understand this, picture you’re passing a slower car in a lane next to you. It’s an optical illusion as a faster planet passes us or as we pass a slower planet. Retrograde comes from Latin for “backward step.” In astrology, it’s when a planet looks like it’s doing a slow zigzag in the sky. 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! We often end up re-doing something that wasn’t done right the first time. 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). Mercury retrograde can literally be translated as “think back.” It presents us with the opportunity to reflect and review, to re-visit issues about which we thought we had made up our minds. When things seem crazy, I get lots of phone calls asking me if Mercury is retrograde – and often, it is! Paying attention to Mercury retrograde can save you from headaches and costly mistakes. It’s even made its way into the mainstream public, perhaps more than any other technical term from the field of astrology. You hear this expression a lot in astrological circles. Janet’s Plan-its On a Page has free downloadable PDFs showing a table of a year’s retrogrades of all the planets, including the time frames and associated zodiac positions. Mercury is retrograde three times a year for approximately three weeks at a time.
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