An article about Mercury Retrograde and a personal perspective on Mercury retrograde in Capricorn (Dec-Feb 2023).

So I intended to write this last week. Started it and everything and even now I am procrastinating on it! It makes me laugh because it is big Mercury retrograde energy for me.

I want to share a bit about what retrograde means and how it is interpreted aka how it might show up in the world and in people’s individual lives. I also want to share a bit about how I am experiencing in it right now, even though I sometimes don’t know exactly what I am experiencing until after the experience is over. It takes me some reflection time.

Retrograde – what does it mean?

Alrighty so this is the technical information about what retrograde means. For the sake of this article, I am going to stick to the 10 planetary bodies. This is the sun and moon, which are not actually planets by definition but are called luminaries, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

So out of these 10, every single one except for the luminaries (Sun and Moon) can be retrograde and in fact, some planets spend a lot of time each year in retrograde motion. I am going to list the planets out and their retrograde cycles. Then I’ll explain what retrograde actually means.

• Mercury 3 times a year for 3 weeks, 19.2% of the time
• Venus roughly every 18 months for 40 to 44 days, 7.3% of the time
• Mars roughly every 26 months for 60 to 80 days, 9.5% of the time
• Jupiter roughly every 13 months for about 4 months, 30.4% of the time
• Saturn roughly every 12 1/2 months for about 4 1/2 months, 36.6% of the time
• Uranus roughly every 12 months for about 5 months, 41.2% of the time
• Neptune roughly every 12 months for 5 months and 6 days, 43.1% of the time
• Pluto roughly every 12 months for 5 to 6 months, 43.4% of the time
• source: https://www.astro.com/astrowiki/en/Retrograde_Motion

So retrograde is a visual phenomenon, the motion is actually continuing in the forward direction, but appears to be moving backwards depending on it’s relationship to the earth at any given time.

Mercury and Venus are retrograde when they appear to be moving in front of the Sun, from our view on earth and the rest of the planets when the earth is moving more quickly than them.

Retrograde – what does it mean in an astrology chart interpretation?

In other words, how do we interpret this? When a planet is retrograde either in the sky or in our charts, it carries an interpretation of “re” words.

Review, restructure, repeat, reevaluate, reconsider, recognize, renew, reflect, recover and my favorite – REST.

Did you realize that rest is an ‘re’ word lol !?

Sometimes retrogrades get a bad rep, especially Mercury. My personal opinion is because the world we currently live in is not necessarily built to support ‘re’ words. Especially rest. So we see another ‘re’ word – resistance.

Resisting retrogrades is not really working for me. I’ll say more about that in a bit.

So sometimes things can happen, because essentially the quality of time that retrogrades bring is that of slowness and sometimes stillness.

Unless there’s resistance. Then it can bring missed meetings, typos, unexpected events that ruin your day because there wasn’t space. It’s a time for turning inward, specifically with the actions of that planet in your life and specifically where it falls in your chart aka the house it is in or moving through.

What does Mercury in retrograde signify?

So Mercury is the general signifier – aka in general we look to Mercury – when we want to understand more about communication, sharing, learning and commerce. There is actually so much more to be said about Mercury as well as about retrogrades but I want to distill it for the sake of sharing.

So Mercury, let’s pick communication. Retrograde, let’s pick reflect or review. A Mercury retrograde is a good time to reflect on communication in your life.

With who? Where? When? Great questions. First let’s look at the sign. We can take my chart for example and use the current Mercury retrograde that we are in right now (December 29, 2022- January 18, 2023).

Mercury is in Capricorn right now. So this is reflecting on communications in a Capricorn way – pragmatic, practical, stable, success-oriented, hard-work oriented (and much more… distilling again).

Capricorn is the first house in my chart, so identity, how other people see me, my approach to life, my body and health (and much more… you know the drill).

So once again I’ll pick one each – Mercury – communications, retrograde – review, Capricorn – pragmatic, first house – identity. From there I would say – this Mercury retrograde energy is asking me to slow down and review how pragmatically I have been communicating my identity in my life.

Personally, as I mentioned, if I resist these cycles and carry on with whatever, whenever with whoever, I usually end up noticing that or paying an unnecessary consequence for it. This time around I really have slowed down and a big part of my Mercury rx experience has been a daily writing practice on here, my website/blog. I am renewing my relationship to my self-expression. Another very Mercury retrograde description. And appropriate. So that’s me! What about you?

Contemplations on Mercury retrograde

Take a look at your chart and consider the following:

A reminder – a great resource to get your chart

What zodiac sign is Mercury in my chart?

What house is Mercury in?

What house is Capricorn in my chart?

What ‘re’ words am I being asked to consider?

What message does this Mercury retrograde have for me?

Can I slow down to embrace this energy? If so, how?

Would you like help figuring out the answers to these questions? Let’s take a look at your chart together. You’re invited to book a consult with me below.