Retrograde

If you watched the planet Mercury’s movement across the sky each night this summer, you would have seen it hesitate on the eve of September 9^th, 2022. In the following nights, Mercury would appear to redirect and go backwards. In the following days you would begin to hear people curse Mercury and his retrograde and blame it for inconveniences big and small.

Mercury retrograde is one of my favorite phenomena and topics of conversation for many reasons. The very concept of something in retrograde seems uniquely emblematic of our present moment. The idea of going backward feels very right now in the most anxiety-inducing way. The fact that we have a literal image of that idea on display in our night sky, and that we utilize that image in our culture to express awareness of and feelings about negative energy, coincidental inconveniences, miscommunications and mistakes, and even something as nebulous as feeling ‘off’—that’s pretty fucking cool.

Another thing I love to think about because it paints such a rich mental image, and something that adds a bit of magic and mystery to the whole conversation around Mercury retrograde is the idea that

*we are all made of stardust*

That makes humans sound like heavenly creatures. Like we’re the children of stars forged in righteous, primordial flames in the beginnings of the universe. That’s so much more rad and awesome than how I’ve been feeling about humans lately.

I think all of this has something to do with why we, particularly Millennials and Gen-Z kids, love talking about things like Mercury retrograde, and what’s your sign? and of course he’s like that, he’s a Gemini. I think that looking to the stars for help understanding and communicating is perhaps one of the most human things there is. And the ripe, juicy, delicious cherry on top of all of this is that in the realm of astrology, Mercury rules communication.

The planet of communication is itself a tool that is useful in our communication. *Chef’s kiss*

Meaning is never inherent. It is only ever—what? Say it with me: ascribed. All meaning is ascribed, which means that every reason, description, explanation or justification that has ever existed has only existed because a human constructed it. There is nothing qualitative about a tree falling in a forest. There are events that led up to the tree’s falling, but the fact that it fell does not mean anything about the tree. It means nothing about anything, except that the tree did indeed fall in that goddamn forest!

Money is not real, yet it drives us crazy and rules the world. At the very least, astrology is rooted in the same thing we are—the stars! What’s more, if we were really gonna base our world and our logic and our way of life on things that are real, then we would all agree that climate change is real and we should have a hell of a lot more respect for our planet, as well as systems in place to ensure our continued survival and ability to evolve with it…

Record-scratch. SKRRR. Beep-boop. Re-Loading…

My point is: Every human has their own mental architecture for conceiving of the world and being alive in it. We all need symbols and frameworks, values and belief systems. I think perhaps misery thrives in their absence, and none is inherently any better than any other. (Meaning! Is! Only! Ascribed!)

Mercury retrograde gives ideas like serendipity and synchronicity a shape we can look at. It opens our minds to patterns, alignments, or if not, maybe just to the cosmic randomness of it all. Sometimes it just tells us that it’s okay to have bad days. They’re gonna happen, but you’re gonna live on. No matter how you spin it Mercury retrograde, and other astrological phenomena provide us with an impetus to think and communicate a little differently than we might if we never had the privilege of gazing at the stars. These things invite us to expand our thoughts out into the cosmos. They encourage us to bring whatever meanings we might find out there back with us to our corner of Earth and share them. They open a door. They provide a lens. And linking ourselves to the stars also just plain feels cool.

Is astrology real because Mercury retrograde made me spill coffee in my lap? Is it real because I found, in the apparent backward motion of a star in the night sky, a way to conceive of myself, of others, of my world? Is it real because I my sign is Libra, and this year is the first Libra season where Mercury will not be in retrograde since 2019, and it’s also the beginning of my Saturn return period, and also there was a New Moon a few days ago, and Jupiter was the closest it’s been to Earth in 59 years the day after that, which perfectly coincided with Jupiter in opposition, meaning you could draw a straight line between the center of it and the Earth and the Sun all in alignment, and I think I can feel all of that in my bones?

Astrology is real in the same way other concepts and systems and structures are real: because it was constructed in the human psyche, and because the impact it has on our lives is real. 

If you ask me, retrograde is something that’s palpable on many levels right now. Everything has the energy of slipping backward, and not in a good or nostalgic way. Shit’s stressful. Can’t you feel it?

This current period of Mercury retrograde ends this Saturday, which is supposed to be a beautiful, warm day in the Pacific Northwest. Saturday is October 1, so Mercury is going direct just in time for my birth month, and doesn’t reenter retrograde until December 29, just in time for the New Year. What does that mean?

With the stars as our guides, here’s hoping we’ll find our own ways to go direct, to go back if we need to, to align, to find the wonder in coincidences and to weather the storms.