Hermes – the messenger dude, Mercury
Yes, I realize that a lot of people think Mercury retrograde is silly, that it doesn’t apply to them, that it’s just some nutty designation astrologers create. Well, it’s not. If you pay attention to what’s going on in your life during the three Mercury retros each year, you’ll find that things don’t run as smoothly as you would like.
Computers go haywire, appliances break down, toilets back up and overflow, creating chaos in your basement. Relationships suffer from miscommunication, travel plans go awry, you get locked out of your house, your manuscript is rejected, your car breaks down on a highway at night, the bank errs and it’s not in your favor. For Geminis and Virgos, which are ruled by Mercury, these periods tend to be really annoying. But everyone experiences Mercury retrograde in a unique way and the first retro of 2016 starts on January 5 in Aquarius at 8:04 a.m., slips back into Capricorn, and turns direct again in that sign on January 25, at 4:50 p.m. eastern time.
To give you an idea of the global scale of a Mercury retro, look back to November 7, 2000. Mercury had been retrograde since mid-October – first in Scorpio, then it slipped back into Libra and at 9:20 p.m., it turned direct in that sign. When Mercury stations – which means it’s about to turn retrograde or direct – the potential for miscommunication is strong. But for that date, the station caused bedlam because it was election day in the U.S.
Astrologers were predicting chaos and, sure enough, at 7:49 p.m., NBC decided they had enough data from exit polls in Florida and Tom Brokaw called the state for Al Gore. With Florida’s 25 electoral votes, it meant he had won the election.
However, shortly after 10 p.m. – less than an hour after Mercury had turned direct – Brokaw backtracked and said that George W. Bush had won the state and the election. We all know what ensued after that – the endless dispute over the chads on Palm Beach County’s ballot and the eventual decision by the Supreme Court that Bush was the 43rd president of the U.S.
On a personal level, your best way to navigate this period is to follow the rule of the 3 Rs: revise, review, reconsider. Don’t start anything new, don’t sign contracts, don’t move or travel, don’t take anything for granted, don’t assume. In fact, if you can get away with it, just hang out at home for a few weeks, sleep and eat and indulge your fantasies. Yeah, sure. Like any of us can do that without feeling totally guilty and anxious about what we should be doing or must be doing or…well, something.
Our daughter, Megan, is going to be moving and when I was looking at charts for January, I suggested that she be moved into her new place before January 5, when Mercury turns retrograde. As a Virgo, she’s now well-versed enough in this Mercury retro business to know what it means. She readily agreed.
These periods, despite how they seem in the external world, really aren’t negative. They give us a chance to lay low, to mull over, to move within and rearrange the furniture of our inner lives. People we haven’t seen in years often resurface. Old opportunities surface with new faces and possibilities. If we happen to travel during these periods, then our itineraries change without rhyme or reason, but we will undoubtedly revisit our destination in the future.
Mercury is about communication, travel, our conscious mind, how we learn and absorb, the stuff of our daily life. It can be a trickster planet, for sure, but it’s also the messenger, our most immediate and direct conduit to our left brain, our reasoning self, our ego. It’s smart to honor the retro with a gesture, a ritual, an intention: I’m going to quit eating desserts, stop smoking, start a regular exercise regimen. And well, if your toilet backs up and floods, so it goes. Take a deep breath and understand that this, too, shall pass.
