Mercury Retrograde - Proceed With Mental Caution

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Poor Mercury Retrograde, he gets such a bad rap.  Everything just fudges up big time the minute he starts "moonwalking" backwards in the sky...

Really though it's never all that bad, and even if we astrologers might joke about it there's a lot more to it than that...

First of all "retrograde" just refers to the "apparent backwards motion" of a planet to the human eye.  It's not really changed its movement but the implication even in an analogous form has meaning.

Typically there is a lot of ranting and raving about Mercury going retrograde.  People expect the worst and it seems everything just goes all sorts of haywire bananas.  But again that's just an apparent observation.  First off, things go haywire at any time - especially if you're familiar with Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong will).  Secondly, we often psychologically focus on the negative and of course as you can learn to a degree from watching The Number 23 when  you look for something you'll just start seeing it everywhere.

Here's what I think - any retrograde of any planet is a good time to take a step out of the action part of life and into the thoughtful mode.  It doesn't mean halt any and all action by any means.  But don't go rushing into anything new if you don't have to.  Rash action precludes a fall many times anyway.

Since Mercury deals with technology and communication, how we think and express ourselves it's a great time to be especially mindful of what we say and where we're spending our thoughts on.

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For me I've felt this deep urge to purge today.  As a Cancer I tend to collect things, and couple that with a tendency to put more on my plate than is humanly possible to get to in a short period of time I am often overloaded.  So I stopped procrastinating the sorting of some business papers (notes, lists, to dos, client files, plans, etc) and sat down and went through a bunch.  I threw away a nice little stack, organized some others and frankly put I'm on a roll with it with both of my businesses.

Already I can feel a lightening of my spirit and adding to the fact that I pulled The Topsie Turvets who urge you to shift your view point, I think this was a great time to do this!  It's also funny that I pulled The Lord of the Forest because he is all about decisive masculine energy too.

Images from Brian Froud's The Faeries Oracle (left) & Heart of Faery (right) decks.

So what's your take on Mercury Retrograde?  Do you curse this time period or recognize it as merely a need to shift your energetic direction?  Tell me in the comments below!