mercury retrograde question - answer
Sep. 9th, 2010 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
summer_lotusMercury rules EVERYTHING that has to do with communication, travel, and the smooth running of normal processes, up to and including low current electricity. If something is due for maintenance, or maybe was due to be fixed a few months ago but it got forgotten, it will frequently make itself known during a mercury retrograde period.
Anything having to do with communicating with people (in person, on the phone, on the internet, through the mail, etc.) can be affected. Things break, get lost, or people misspeak and misunderstand each other, maybe hearing intent instead of actual words -- or vice versa -- and finding themselves in conflict that could have been avoided.
Likewise with anything having to do with travel -- cars, planes, trains, buses, reservations, hotels, you name it.
The watchwords all start with RE. Redo, recheck, revise, remedy, remember, etc.
Interesting thing is stuff from your past shows up to be dealt with. Old friends get in touch. Old arguments/discussions surface. Old photographs or letters find their way to you (reminiscing). Etc.
One fabulous article I read years ago described Mercury as the genius superspeed personal assistant-entrepreneur-event planner to the stars, with him rushing around on rollerblades talking on four cellphones at once, giving constant orders to his entourage of assistants, and constantly being called on by the other planets to help resolve issues STAT!
Now, at a Mercury station, he screeches to a halt. During Retrograde, he has to rollerblade backwards through an obstacle course -- all while still attempting to maintain all of his responsibilities that he can handle easily during normal forward motion. Obviously, no way can he manage, so stuff falls through the cracks.
Mercury stations direct -- and hits that wall again -- and then it takes a bit of time (about a week) for it to regain its usual forward momentum. That's generally enough time for most things to be in the clear. There's still a bit of a cloud for as long as Mercury is retracing its steps to where he stationed retrograde the first time, and after that, it's all good.
Predicting what will happen to each of us individually depends largely on where transiting Mercury is when compared with our natal charts. If he's hitting degrees that are in a hard aspect to Saturn, for example, then we can find ourselves having to redo a bunch of stuff having to do with responsibility and regulations. OR if one of the Mercury stations happens in a degree that sets off a hard aspect in our natal charts. For example: let's say someone's natal chart has Saturn opposed Moon, with Mars squaring both of them, and the Mercury retrograde station happens on or square to one of the points of that T-square -- that person may spend the entire 3 1/2 weeks of the retrograde dealing with stuff connected to that very challenging natal aspect, all topped off with the usual communication & travel hurdles from Mercury Retrograde.
*laugh* Okay, so that was the long answer? Probably a bit more than you wanted to know, but I wanted to demonstrate the reasons why Merc Ret is given such a bad name. True, there's usually not complete catastrophe, but the incidence of tiny mistakes, misjudgments, and inconveniences can easily snowball into huge problems.
It's frustrating, but some extra alertness and proactive care, plus a lot of patience, go a long way. Kind of like yanking obstacles out of Mercury's way before he skates backwards into them because he's a little distracted yelling happily into one cellphone about finding long-lost grandbabies, yelling angrily into another about failing negotiations, and unconsciously shortcircuiting credit card systems all over town, all while people scream in fury at him because their wireless has gone down, or their tire's flat, or the car rental place lost their reservation despite confirming it yesterday.
(And then add in all the other Mercury duties I've left out.)
So, yes. Life with a malfunctioning Mercury can be HARD. Thank goodness it's only 25~ days three times a year. *g*
*stops typing now, really*
Anything having to do with communicating with people (in person, on the phone, on the internet, through the mail, etc.) can be affected. Things break, get lost, or people misspeak and misunderstand each other, maybe hearing intent instead of actual words -- or vice versa -- and finding themselves in conflict that could have been avoided.
Likewise with anything having to do with travel -- cars, planes, trains, buses, reservations, hotels, you name it.
The watchwords all start with RE. Redo, recheck, revise, remedy, remember, etc.
Interesting thing is stuff from your past shows up to be dealt with. Old friends get in touch. Old arguments/discussions surface. Old photographs or letters find their way to you (reminiscing). Etc.
One fabulous article I read years ago described Mercury as the genius superspeed personal assistant-entrepreneur-event planner to the stars, with him rushing around on rollerblades talking on four cellphones at once, giving constant orders to his entourage of assistants, and constantly being called on by the other planets to help resolve issues STAT!
Now, at a Mercury station, he screeches to a halt. During Retrograde, he has to rollerblade backwards through an obstacle course -- all while still attempting to maintain all of his responsibilities that he can handle easily during normal forward motion. Obviously, no way can he manage, so stuff falls through the cracks.
Mercury stations direct -- and hits that wall again -- and then it takes a bit of time (about a week) for it to regain its usual forward momentum. That's generally enough time for most things to be in the clear. There's still a bit of a cloud for as long as Mercury is retracing its steps to where he stationed retrograde the first time, and after that, it's all good.
Predicting what will happen to each of us individually depends largely on where transiting Mercury is when compared with our natal charts. If he's hitting degrees that are in a hard aspect to Saturn, for example, then we can find ourselves having to redo a bunch of stuff having to do with responsibility and regulations. OR if one of the Mercury stations happens in a degree that sets off a hard aspect in our natal charts. For example: let's say someone's natal chart has Saturn opposed Moon, with Mars squaring both of them, and the Mercury retrograde station happens on or square to one of the points of that T-square -- that person may spend the entire 3 1/2 weeks of the retrograde dealing with stuff connected to that very challenging natal aspect, all topped off with the usual communication & travel hurdles from Mercury Retrograde.
*laugh* Okay, so that was the long answer? Probably a bit more than you wanted to know, but I wanted to demonstrate the reasons why Merc Ret is given such a bad name. True, there's usually not complete catastrophe, but the incidence of tiny mistakes, misjudgments, and inconveniences can easily snowball into huge problems.
It's frustrating, but some extra alertness and proactive care, plus a lot of patience, go a long way. Kind of like yanking obstacles out of Mercury's way before he skates backwards into them because he's a little distracted yelling happily into one cellphone about finding long-lost grandbabies, yelling angrily into another about failing negotiations, and unconsciously shortcircuiting credit card systems all over town, all while people scream in fury at him because their wireless has gone down, or their tire's flat, or the car rental place lost their reservation despite confirming it yesterday.
(And then add in all the other Mercury duties I've left out.)
So, yes. Life with a malfunctioning Mercury can be HARD. Thank goodness it's only 25~ days three times a year. *g*
*stops typing now, really*
