People are just about as superstitious about Mercury retrogrades as they are about Eclipses. Let me be the first to tell you that everything negative you hear about a Mercury retrograde comes from the specific mindset and attitude of emotionally immature people who are blind to their responsibility for the inevitable consequences of their actions and choices.
Everything that people blame on Mercury retrograde is actually a human-created problem. Traffic? Technical difficulties? Communication problems? Misunderstandings? Navigation mistakes? Delays? Very few things that actually happen in reality are the result of divine intervention. Ironically, if you openly blame Mercury for things that are not actually within their realm of control, they do tend to go out of their way to fuck with you in revenge, because the Old Gods are famously petty and vengeful and Merc has a trickster reputation to uphold.
What is actually happening during a retrograde? It’s not complicated: when a planet is moving backwards (retrograde), their work is editorial. When they are moving forwards (direct), their work is expository.
Since 04 October, Mercury has been moving direct through Scorpio in what we call the “pre-retrograde shadow.” During this period we can expect to make mistakes in Mercury’s domains of communication and mindset.
From now until 14 November, Mercury will be moving retrograde through that same part of Scorpio. During this phase their work will be editorial. That means they will be revealing and discovering their (and our) mistakes. At this time, however, they are not yet correcting the mistakes. So we have to sit with a period of mistake-awareness. This is, of course, uncomfortable. People who avoid and repress this awareness instead of taking it forward don’t get to grow or heal through the retrograde.
From 14 November until 30 November, Mercury will be in the post-retrograde shadow. This is the corrections period, when Mercury is once again moving in an expository direction through the same part of the chart they’ve just reviewed. By this point you should have resolved the problems you became aware of during the retrograde. You are supposed to resolve the problems through the application of self-effort, not through waiting for issues to go away magically or through waiting passively and praying for divine intervention without investing your own energy.
Some people are born with a Mercury retrograde on the natal chart. During a Mercury Rx, these people tend to feel like the whole world is on their page during a retrograde. A lot of us are neurodivergent, folks. This is a time when we come into our power because most of the world struggles to function on our natural built-in terms. We alone have the skill to handle it.
Other people are born with Mercury direct, and during a Mercury Rx these people often feel like they simply do not have their shit together. I think these people benefit from being told this: Your lifestyle baseline is supposed to support you on your lowest functionality days, not only your highest functionality days. If your baseline isn’t there, this is a good time to get it there. Otherwise what you’re treating as a supporting structure is not actually supporting you. It’s actually doing the opposite.
What does it mean that this Mercury Rx is in Scorpio? It means it touches the fixed water parts of our lives. Fixed water is likethe bottom of the ocean, where strange beings live secret lives in darkness. It’s where shadow work happens. To access the shadow work potential of Scorpio, we need to be able to tolerate the intense emotional pressure. Resilience to that pressure is really just a mindset thing. People with weak personalities who don’t like to exercise willpower tend to repress, avoid, or reassign the Scorpio parts of their charts instead of spending time processing their trauma.
During this retrograde it’s likely to be really obvious when you observe another person repressing the Scorpio problems that are being brought to their attention. Retrogrades are more aggressive with people who avoid and repress. You can be sure someone is living well out of their personal alignment if everything is going wrong for them during the retrograde. These are the people who blame the Gods for their problems instead of owning them. It’s best to take the cue and fade into the ether, instead of continuing to invest your energy in these people’s well-being. You can’t help someone who is diehard committed to being their own problem.
