You’ll probably have seen quite a few articles or comments about Mercury going retrograde at the weekend and may be wondering what all the fuss is about.
Retrograde just means backwards. All planets have periods where they appear to move backwards across the sky as seen from the Earth. It’s a geocentric phenomenon – that’s an optical illusion caused by the fact that we’re on a planet orbiting the Sun, not on the Sun itself.
Mercury – the planet symbolising communication – has three retrograde periods a year, each of three weeks, and they will be in signs of the same element; this time it’s earth. The Capricorn period was from just after Christmas to mid January. This period is in Taurus and the Virgo period is in August. The element in question usually underlies other active themes. Currently Saturn has popped back into Virgo and will oppose Uranus on 26th April. Pluto is also in Capricorn underlining the need to pay attention to reality. We’re not talking about ideas (air), feelings (water) or vision (fire); we’re talking about real, material things – earth. And money. Of course.
Periods when Mercury is retrograde have a terrible. In fact some astrologers use them as a catch all excuse for things going wrong, and for putting off starting something new. Some would have you believe that astrologers of old would not start anything during a Mercury retrograde. While all Mercury ruled actions – such as signing contracts – should be treated with extreme caution, the three weeks when Mercury appears to be going backwards provides us with a period where we can deepen our understanding, revise our opinions and review projects which need adjusting. Communications rarely go smoothly but there is usually something which gets discovered or uncovered which aids and enhances our understanding.
Computers, being particularly Mercurial, do suffer during a Mercury retrograde, so make sure you’ve got your backup plan in place. In 15 years of working with computer systems I’ve never known a project not hurtle towards the next Mercury retrograde period. It just keeps us on our toes.
