Question: How does Mercury Retrograde affect you? 

Mercury Retrograde is a funny one (literally) because during its recent backwards journey I had this strange train dream (Mercury rules transport) involving all kinds of mayhem. Anyhow, being serious, I have had computers go glitchy, deliveries lost in the post, along with other weird stuff.

One thing is for sure, we know Mercury’s trickster side is sniggering in the background, down some side street, when these bloody games are being played on us, probably mouthing to us to “lighten up” and laugh.

When people feel annoyance at Mercury Retrograde it pleases me a little. Others can experience some of what it feels like to have a difficult Mercury. On Mercury Retrograde days, we might kick drink machines that have stolen our money or take something completely the wrong way. Transport is always a BIGGIE during such periods and these stories happened during the last Mercury Retrograde. Let’s face it, Mercury must have had belly pains from howling so much. In the end, I am sure all of these scenarios bring plenty of satisfied sniggers from Mercury/Hermes, wherever this winged god has sneaked off. This god is always too smart to trace as the real culprit and too fast on those wings to pin down for all of this pandemonium.

 Erin Sullivan has written the most on this planetary event, detailing  fascinating occurrences happening in the actual element of Mercury whilst retrograding. Mercury Retrograde, for example, moving backwards through the water element is often the best time for psychological analysis of past patterns, essentially being a good time for dream analysis and sifting and sorting through all unconscious contents.

Anything beginning with ‘R’ is commonly used for these periods as in things going in reverse, re-doing, re-printing, re-formatting, reprising, rehashing, reprocessing forms, re-writing, or re-sending, and so forth. For some of us, this is the story of our life. For mortal beings, well, we might have to ‘suck it up’ and bear only a few days of chaos, joke playing, and mix-ups from our cosmic trickster in the sky.

The retrogression of Mercury is the instinctive mental ‘down time’. It is associated with re-doing, re-thinking, re-organizing, re-associating; anything that can be prefaced with re-will define this rest period. It is very much like the lateral shift that needs to take place for the emergence of a seed idea into a formulated concept. This process is natural as sleep is to waking. Imagine the state your mind would be in if it did not recognize the need for unconsciousness and dream time…Mercury is the guide during the journeys we make between ‘awake’ and ‘asleep’ and between consciousness  and unconsciousness. The Mercury retrograde cycle is the natural rhythm of the space between here and there, the liminal space of the journeyer on his way to discovery. Retrograde Planets: Traversing the Inner Landscape