Mercury stations Retrograde
Mercury stations Retrograde
23rd PDT 12:59 / 24th AEST 5:59
Just a few hours after our solar luminary enters Virgo, Mercury begins its backspin in the same sign, to last through September 15/16. When Mercury transits Virgo, we place a high premium on logic and reason. Our outlook on trends are analytical. Intellectual precision isn’t just a means of legitimizing ourselves in the eyes of others - it is literally our framework for communication. If we don’t cite our sources, if we don’t represent ourselves clearly, if we don’t converse with finesse, then we have done it "wrong”. Or so we think…
As much as Mercury feels at home in Virgo, the shame spiral that can be induced by inaccuracy and error is humbling indeed. So, what happens when the messenger planet reverses through a sign oriented to perfectionism? What happens when circumstances not only neglect to meet our standards; they get flat-out *messy*? This may wind up being our most stressful retrograde of the year, but it is also one where upsets compound in our minds more than in our external reality.
Let’s face it: you send an embarrassing text. Your schedule gets botched. You forget an appointment. These are all annoying situations, but they can generally be rectified with an apology or a series of sticky note reminders. But it’s not the mistake itself that will vex us now, but the idea that we should be *above* making mistakes in the first place. The more we fixate on our failures, the more liable we are to slip up, because our attention is consumed with solving the wrong problem. The medicine for this retrograde is to do the opposite of the thing we are most likely to do, which is to berate ourselves for events which are out of our control. Self-criticism must be met with a healthy dose of patience. Blame must be replaced with grace. This is no easy task when haunted by “should’ves” and “could’ves”. Yet, refusing to take our frustrations out on others, and moreover, refusing to take the impersonal personally is our homework for the next three weeks.
Written by Nyssa Grazda
