Mercury went Retrograde yesterday. Anyone who really cares already knows what the implications of that particular astrological happening are. If you need a gentle reminder, Hecate and Cafe Astrology offer two great articles on the subject. (And if you need any proof, just look at the flights from JFK that were cancelled yesterday - but I digress.) I thought that, rather than repeat or regurgitate other sources of information on Mercury Retrograde, I'd have a little bit of fun with it.

A basic explanation of what it means when Mercury is in a Retrograde phase is that for a few times during the year an optical illusion based on the relative speeds and orbits of the Earth and Mercury around the Sun makes it appear that Mercury turns around and goes backwards. Let's think about this for a minute. What would happen if Mercury really did go backwards?

Remember that scene from the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie when he found Lois Lane's lifeless body after the earthquake and he was so agonized and enraged that he flew around the Earth to turn its rotation backwards, causing time to reverse and allowing him an opportunity to save his lady love? Well, knowing that Mercury rules areas of communication, what communications that have happened lately would you be happy to see erased by winding back time to before they happened? If Mercury Retrograde meant that you could turn back the clock to take something back, or change something you said or wrote or emailed or text messaged, what would that something be? One of the concepts we learned in my beginning witchcraft class was neutralization, the practice of taking back a thought or utterance that you really didn't mean. There is some energy that we just don't want to put out there but sometimes a slip of the Id gets through our normally functioning editing process. Could we look at Mercury Retrograde as a three-week opportunity to neutralize on a grander scale?

We all know from studying mythology in, what, the 7th grade, that Mercury/Hermes is the messenger. What if the messenger stopped mid-way through his route and decided to retrace his steps? What do you think he would find? The aftermath of messages delivered perhaps? In this case, although much like the scenario painted above wherein we might be given an opportunity to make amends for messages that did some harm, we also might have opportunities to revisit happy deliveries, or to discover the outcomes of messages we were too much in a hurry to see through to their conclusion the first time around. A business proposal delivered that didn't come to fruition? Maybe knocking on the door on the way back through you might just get the deal. An indecisive sweetheart more ready to commit after some time to think about it? There are any number of ways we can imagine communications that came to naught, that given another chance, may produce a different result. Could it be that Mercury on his backwards route could help us to realize some missed opportunities?

A dear friend of mine used to refer to these times of the year as "Mercury Retrofuck" and believe me there have been moments when that couldn't have been more accurate for what I experienced. Yes, computers and other electronics go haywire (I moved into a new apartment during a Mercury Retrograde and the cable guy had to come three times to get my system working). Travel can be a mess - leave yourself plenty of time to get through insane security lines. But isn't it more productive to imagine Mercury Retrograde as a time of reclaiming than one when we should just hide in bed until it's over?

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 6:18 PM