Cosmic Fools of the Mercury Retrograde

So I don’t know about you, but if you’re into astrology at all, the phrase Mercury Retrograde might send a little shudder down your spine. Tomorrow, the 16th of October marks the end of this Mercury Retrograde and it won’t return until the 18th of December.

Few! I guess I can breathe a sigh of relief. There’s something about Mercury Retrogrades that everyone detests, it doesn’t matter what sign it’s transitioning through it seems to affect everyone, doesn’t it?

The most common effect seems to be when everything goes wrong like a domino effect. First, you’re late for work, then your pass won’t work, then there’s no room in the lift, on your way home you miss the train, it starts to torrentially rain and then an unexpected bill comes out of your bank- you get the picture.

We all have bad days, but during a Mercury retrograde, these events seem to amp up the volume and it seems to be happening to everybody simultaneously.

Those that believe in the power of astrology think you should avoid starting relationships during this time, signing contracts or even starting a new job, if you can help it. So why is this and why is the Mercury Retrograde so dreaded by many?

A Mercury retrograde happens three times a year. Each year it will transition through three signs in each of the elements air, water, fire or earth.

This year it’s been transitioning through the air signs Aquarius, Gemini and Libra.

A retrograde is when a planet in the sky appears to be travelling backwards, it’s kind of an optical illusion, but in astrology when this happens, they associate it with confusion, delay and frustration.

This is why everything is supposed to go wrong during this time, from technology to relationships, however, maybe there is a reason for this.

I listened to a fascinating talk last night about retrogrades and the idea was put to me that a retrograde makes us slow down. It makes us stop and face things we are avoiding, it also makes us heal things from the past.

In order to do this, we can’t possibly be charging ahead to live life at full speed whilst we’re also healing at the same time.

I guess the retrograde starts to throw obstacles in our way to slow down the pace of life. As frustrating as it is if we had the choice we’d probably keep going, refusing to come to terms with the past…

An amazing analogy for retrogrades that I heard recently was the idea of software updates. Like an iPhone, humans need to update too. Each retrograde is like a software update. Mercury after all rules the mind.

Slow down during the retrogrades, that's may only advice. You can thank me later.

I know this is difficult. It’s so hard to slow down the pace of life, we all have responsibilities, careers, children and rely heavily on technology. It’s just the way the world is these days, however, if we can anticipate the retrograde coming and try to free up more of our schedule it may not cause us such upset.

I want to try a positive spin on retrogrades and see them as more of downtime and a chance for us to heal.

We must update if we want to continue on our path before us. During a Mercury retrograde, we are able to make mistakes and take our time with things while we wait out delays.

I got sick during this retrograde, as did my daughter. At the time I was so annoyed, I didn’t have time to get ill, but from that, I got the chance to stop everything I was doing and spend time with my daughter. I realised she has missed me more than I had realised and that is kind of a beautiful thing, don’t you think?

I guess in terms of a soul path we are only partly here while our software updates. That’s why projects we start during this time usually won’t get finished or relationships won’t work out, because we are not showing up as our whole selves.

I liked this idea so I tried to capture my thoughts in photography, using light as a kind of symbol for the part of me that is updating.