Hey so here’s a few words about Mercury Retrograde this July. I started this post weeks ago but it was never ‘perfect,’ so I’m trying to just go with ‘done.’

Retrograde is when a planet seems to slow down in its journey from east to west in the southern sky (northern hemisphere folks), and then move backwards for awhile. It then slows and stops again, and then proceeds forward through the same area of the sky that it had before. This process is caused by our relative orbit. The planet doesn’t actually change in its orbit. There are a bunch of interpretations for this retrograde motion, mainly that the energy of the planet goes inward/underworld for a time while we go over that area of our chart with a fine-toothed comb.

This time Mercury will back up from 4° Leo to 23° Cancer. Mercury is the ruler of intellect, expression, and communication; and is associated with the signs of air-talk Gemini and earth-action Virgo. This means that from casual conversations to big decision making, our intellectual ability to process is colored by Leo and mostly Cancer energy. We will tend to intellectualize our emotions at this time. We will wonder why we are having so many feelings. We will spend a lot of time processing how we are investing our emotional energy.

We entered the shadow zone at 23° ♋ on June 20. Mercury slowed through the first week of July and stationed retrograde on the 7th. It stationed direct late on the 31st, and we will exit the shadow zone on August 15. So while the worst is over, we will still have the next few weeks to get our house in order while Mercury picks up speed and emerges from the underworld.

A few summers ago, I wrote about Mercury Retrograde in Leo. This will have the same effect of making you ask if your heart is in what you’re doing, but then it will transition into deeper, more internal Cancer. This Retrograde will ask you to feel deeply and not shy away from what comes up from within. Are you being true to yourself? Are you able to feel what others are feeling as if it were your own feelings? Are you able to trust your own gut?

I made a video a week or two ago talking/ranting about this Mercury Retrograde in more detail. As you can see, I was in my slept-in hair, at home, soaking up the 4th house energy:

Also here’s the dates for the one later this fall:

Cheers,
Will

P.S. Used my ephemeris, Buddha Board, astro.com, and my own memes to make this post.