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WTH is Mercury doing anyway???
I always find it interesting how people react to Mercury when it's in retrograde.
Mercury is the planet that rules communications, travel over short distances, transportation, language, writing, and education. He also oversees contracts and commerce among several other things.
Mercury is a "neutral planet" it can be either an evening or morning star, meaning that the way mercury expresses its energy can shift according to these conditions.
By day Mercury is more expressive and extroverted. He likes to talk and read and pass messages from one party to another.
By night, as an evening star, Mercury can be more pensive, introspected, and loves to contemplate and strategize.
He is a complex character and his Airy nature can make him a little hard to keep up with because he wants it all done quickly and precisely.
I often think about Mercury as my natal chart is heavily influenced by his energy. As my Sun, Moon, and Mercury are all in one of the signs he rules, which is Virgo. I think about how all of that Mercurial energy is present in my personality and how his retrogrades affect me.
Because Mercury is our first PLANETARY neighbor (we aren't counting the Moon at the moment) he is very personal in all of our lives. Mercury is felt directly and his presence is quantifiable. Think about how you communicate. Do you speak with lots of hand gestures? Do you say your thoughts melodically? Do you tend to drone with a monotone? These are all hints as to how Mercury is present in your style of communication.
What about how you learn? Did you get all the math and science down easily? Did you find that reading was simple? Or did you struggle and have to redo a grade? Did you find that it was hard to integrate ideas and concepts the first time, needing to return to the subject at hand time and time again? The last one was me. But, Mercury is retrograde in my chart, and he is super close to the Sun, so that made it difficult for those things to be noticed.
I was a super social little girl. Chatting with my friends, painting pictures with my expansive vocabulary. That was easy for my teachers to see… that was the Sun shining on Mercury in my chart. But, sometimes when the light is TOO bright on a planet, it can also work to "blind" you from what some of the planets are doing in your life.
So in my chart, my Mercury is both super close to the Sun AND in retrograde, which makes the chatty, sociable, verbose aspects of my personality shine brightly. However, once you get to know me, you will learn that I'm dyslexic, I have to re-read things SEVERAL times in order to fully integrate even things I understand well.
So, get this! Every Mercury retrograde for me I feel it pretty intensely because of HOW it is in my natal chart. As mentioned, I was born with it in retrograde, so I often experience these periods as 1 part challenging and 1 part affirming. It's like I'm getting a little energy boost. My brain is ready to take in a TON of information and I always feel super poetic. But, I also know… I have to work TWICE as hard to communicate clearly.
So here's the clincher. When Mercury goes retrograde, it's not a BAD thing. Equally, it's not a good thing. It is just a shift in the energy that if you know how it affects you personally, you will know how to manage during that period.
That's why it's more important to know how YOUR Mercury is situated in your chart and what kind of condition he is in. Then you can anticipate what Mercury is going to activate in your chart.
If anything, just know that you shouldn't be fearful, or feel as though Mercury is a total dick trying to shit up your life. And, more often than not, if you are feeling the retrograde energy in a super negative way, there is more being activated in your chart than just Mercury.
Hope that helps!
All my love
Alysa
