The Gift No One Asked for: Mercury Retrograde & Second Chances
Re-empowering the fuck out of this — and every — retrograde season.
Welcome Back, Witches!
I hope you all got some much needed downtime — or well paid overtime for those of you on the clock — this last weekend and that charged relative interactions were kept to a minimum.
Today, I’m delighted to welcome you to Substack, where I will be coming to you from now on each Tuesday (with a lil bonus in the Substack Notes every Thursday). The look is a bit different, but my hope is that the vibe remains very much the same.
This week, there are a lot of shenanigans in the sky we could cover, especially as everyone’s favorite zaddy, Saturn, seems hellbent on tweaking everyone’s noses all week long.
However, I want to take you all on a journey to get to know everyone’s favorite Astro-Boogeyman who will be haunting us this holiday season:
~~mErCurY reTrOgRadE~~
This weekend, we entered the shadow period for the upcoming Mercury retrograde which starts December 13th. And though everyone and their astrologer has published an explainer, a meme, or a snarky takedown of this panic-inducing transit, we’re gonna take a look through a slightly different lens.
What am I waiting for? Let’s get to it!
Shooting the Messenger
Move over Full Moons, Mercury Retrograde (or Rx) is the newest ‘it’ girl of chaos energy, especially when it comes to is it just me or do things seem really broken/weird/ unhinged? vibes.
Mercury has gone mainstream for its season of maximum chaos, retrograde. The once mysterious planet of the messenger now gets the blame every time Todd is late for a meeting he definitely didn’t forget about or Karen can’t get that .pdf to print even though you showed her step-by-step how to do it yesterday.
In short, when challenges spring up, Mercury Rx has become one of our many collective excuses to give up, go home and try again another day.
Move over Full Moons, Mercury Retrograde (or Rx) is the newest ‘it’ girl of chaos energy
(Finally) Getting the Message
Retrograde is an illusion (as Neil deGrasse Tyson will happily, haughtily tell you) caused by the difference in orbital speeds between different planets (yes, astrologers know science, too, Neil). Without getting into the math of it all, planets in retrograde only appear to be moving backwards through the sky.
And as astrology is a symbolic language, that illusion offers us a pretty fun playground to explore. For example, apparent the slowing down of the planet before it reverses is a great reminder that life is not all moving forward in a direct line. Sometimes we need to slow down and even pause forward progress.
Also, by the nature of backwards motion, planets in retrograde cover the same ground repeatedly, extending their stay in the sign of their retrograde and often coming into contact with other planets 2 or 3 times on their journeys. Regular readers might remember this very thing happening to Venus over the summer, when she spent 3 months in the sign of Leo (June-September), connecting with Uranus and Jupiter several times.
[Retrograde season] is a great reminder that life is not all moving forward in a direct line.
But when it comes down to it, you don’t have to understand the planetary motion or birth charts to appreciate the symbolism of having to try something a few times before it really sinks in.
It’s essentially a regularly scheduled breakdown in forward progress. And lack of forward motion for most folks is a reason to throw their hands up in defeat.
The Gap Between Surviving & Thriving Your Rx
For Mercury, this regularly scheduled maintenance time is especially regular: the little planet gets up to 4 retrogrades a year (an earth year, not a mercurial year).
And as the ruling planet of almost everything about our daily lives — from messages to medicine, (local) travel to technology, agreements to arrangements — its not especially surprising that Mercury’s retrogrades get such a ubiquitously bad rap. Particularly the one that comes this time of year, when we’re already in “just get through it” end-of-year mode.
So as much as we’re all tempted to just white-knuckle our way through through the end of 2023, we’d be missing out on the real gift of the season: Mercury, cordially inviting you to chill the fuck out, especially when things don’t go your way.
Put another way, think of Mercury Retrograde as the season of the mulligan, the chance to do something over. If only you have the patience to try again.
Reflective Incantations to Empower this Retrograde
Ok, so you’re sold on what you can get from embracing the lessons of the season, but how exactly do you go about actually doing that? If you’re finding it tricky to lean into the disruption of the season, try a little magical reflecting on the questions below:
What is something you’d like a do-over on? What would you do differently?
What are some areas in your life you’d like to cultivate more patience?
What does patience in practice look like is these areas?
How do you usually handle things not going ‘according to plan’? What are the thoughts, feelings, body sensations when things go “wrong”?
Who would you like to be when plans go awry?
Journal, meditate, go for a walk or simply think through your answers on your daily commute, and see what, if anything, shifts.
And that’s all she wrote!
She, of course, being me. I hope you enjoyed the read — I had a lot of fun writing it for you!
Reply to this email or leave a comment to let me know what you thought and these energies are showing up in your life. I love to hear your stories. 💜💜💜
See you all next Tuesday for more planetary fun and who knows what else!
