Let’s get one thing straight. Despite people telling you otherwise, Mercury is not in retrograde orbit right now–nor has it ever been. Mercury retrograde is an optical illusion. It’s based on the now-debunked belief that the Earth is in the center of the Universe.
Hipparchus’s and Ptolemy’s view of the universe had other planets rotating around a central point as they orbited Earth. Astrologers at the time used this phenomenon, known as an “epicycle.” to explain the changing speeds and apparent retrograde motion in their orbit. Later astronomers This was ultimately debunked once these irregularities were explained by Earth itself being a planet orbiting the Sun.
Mercury retrograde in the mainstream
I have found it astounding the degree to which information about Mercury in retrograde is prominent on the internet. Even mainstream outlets like Yahoo! News will print sincere articles about how to get through this month’s planetary alignment. Mercury reportedly goes retrograde three to four times per year for three weeks. Some astrologers will offer warnings about doing anything the two weeks before and the two weeks after the astrological phenomenon. So at the very least, that’s 21 out of 52 weeks where you have to be careful about signing contracts, traveling or making travel plans, or bracing yourself for that printer going haywire again.
A wide swath of Pagans believe in astrology. It feels like it has almost become an unwritten tenet of Pagan practice. But like any practice, this one deserves a critical look.
What is that big hunk of rock, anyway?
The first thing to realize is that the names assigned to the planets are human-derived. The ancient Romans named them for their gods about 2,500 years ago. They assigned characteristics to these planets based on the characteristics of the deities they named them after. The ancients gave Mercury the characteristics of communication, luck, commerce, travelers, boundaries, eloquence, financial gain, languages, thieves, and trickery. As such, astrologers believe Mercury going retrograde brings about negative outcomes and mishaps in these areas.
Those who put a lot of faith in this system of astrology need to ask themselves the following question, though: Did the planet we now call Mercury have the same effect on the lives of humans before ancient Romans named it?
Two thousand five hundred years is a little more than 1/2,000,000th of the entire existence of the planet. This means that for 1,999,999/2,000,000th of its existence, this planet was not known by the name Mercury. Sometimes I imagine a conversation between the planet we called Mercury and a human being. The human makes reference to the name and the deity it’s name after. The human talks about the planet’s impact on communication and travel on these creatures two planets away. The planet responds by saying, “Wait, what?”
Astrology as a mapping process
When I talk about astrology, though, I like to point out that the field historically has had two aspects. The first is mapping the solar system. The second predicting the future based on how planets are aligned within the solar system.
The way astrologers map the solar system is in fact somewhat useful . Western and Vedic astrologers divide the solar system into twelve pie-shaped sections. Astrologers named the the pie-piece after the constellation it pointed to. But Hipparchus’s discovery of the phenomenon of axial precession in the 2nd century BCE–demonstrated that those pie slices wouldn’t always point to the same constellation. Hipparchus and Ptolemy decided that the position of the planets was the most relevant for astrology. They kept those zodiac signs assigned to the same section of the Solar system. Vedic astrology, by contrast, evolved to focus on the actual position of the constellations. For example, we are in what Western astrologers refer to as the month of Cancer. But relative to Earth, the Sun is pointing in the direction of the Gemini constellation. So that’s the month we are in the month of Gemini according to Vedic astrology.
People might be surprised to learn that the Solar Hijri calendar, a solar Muslim calendar, actually bases it’s months on the signs of the zodiac. And it is the official calendar of Iran as well as in widespread use in other (mostly non-Arab) Muslim countries. It’s not because Muslims believe in astrology’s ability to predict the future. Instead, they value the way that astrology maps the heavens. This is an academic subject many Muslims actually contributed to during the religion’s first few centuries.
However, neither most Muslims nor I believe in astrology’s ability to predict the future. Attestations to its accuracy can be attributed to confirmation bias. For example, when I think about communication mishaps that occur during Mercury retrograde, I am reminded that many such mishaps–perhaps even the worst ones in my life–have occurred outside of Mercury retrograde.
I do believe that the Mercury retrograde phenomenon has some power and that humans, not the planet, give it that power. I suspect that much of the energy that people put into worrying about and planning for the planetary alignment might be the primary driver of the phenomenon.
Astrology as a divination process
Many people go to a lot of trouble people to avoid the worst aspects of Mercury retrograde. In my view, not much different than from the way people read the book of Revelations in the Bible. In both cases, people put a lot of literal stock in it when the medium isn’t intended to be used for that purpose.
Revelations is widely interpreted to predict the future and while the book itself says that no one knows when the events described will come to pass, millions of Christians think that time is somehow now. Some have recently gone as far as to cheer on the war in Iran. But the tradition of interpreting Revelations as a predictor of the future only goes back to Protestant movements in early 19th century Britain and America. Most Bible scholars put the book in the context of the time it was written, when persecution of Christians was common and the writing was designed to encourage Christians to hold on to their faith.
Astrology started out with Babylonian priests meticulously recording the movements of the stars and planets. They did try to elicit meaning out of it, certainly. Greek thinkers developed it further, with Ptolemy developing the first horoscope systems in an attempt to understand the character of people. There are a wide variety of styles and schools of astrology.
Divination has been present in every civilization. In agrarian societies where survival was bound to natural cycles, people naturally sought signs and meaning in everything in sometimes desperate efforts to ensure positive outcomes.
Healthy approaches to divination
While it’s natural to want predictability in life, over-reliance on divination can be counter-productive. Letting an imaginary orbital cycle dictate when you should make a major purchase is a step too far.
Controlled studies have repeatedly established that astrologers are no better at making predictions from astrology than people making random guesses. There are also many different schools of astrology and even among people looking at the same chart, astrologers can come up with different interpretations. In this day and age, we can get better predictions about the weather than we can with predictions from astrologers.
I think divination efforts such as tarot and astrology are more useful for looking at a situation from a different angle than using these tools for actual prediction. Once, I did a tarot reading looking at a specific situation and it unexpectedly painted the situation in the brightest way possible. I didn’t literally believe it but I realized it was making me ask the question, “What if everything went well and I stopped worrying about failure?” The situation is ongoing and I can’t say whether the reading is “right” or “wrong.” I don’t know if such a conclusion will ever be possible. But I can say with certainty that the viewpoint offered by the reading was nevertheless useful and helpful.
If there’s a healthy approach to Mercury Retrograde it might be in the aspect of it being reportedly a good time to turn inward and reflect on oneself. There’s probably no harm in using the period of Mercury Retrograde to do that as long as it doesn’t get in the way of other things.
In any case, the best advice I have for Mercury retrograde is to enjoy it.