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Debunking Mercury Retrograde by Donna Cunningham

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President's Message-Spring 2008 by Don Borkowski

Another Look At the Quintile by Gary Lorentzen
My View of Solar Returns by Don Borkowski
My take on Pluto's coming transit through Capricorn By Gary Lorentzen
Notes on Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions by Gary Lorentzen
Saturn's Reign in Leo: A Tale of Three Queens by Donna Cunningham
The Astrology of Portland, Oregon by Gary Lorentzen
The Debt Crisis and Pluto's Transition from Sagittarius to Capricorn by Donna Cunningham

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CURRENT ARTICLE

Debunking Mercury Retrograde¹

© 2005 by Donna Cunningham

Note: the following is an excerpt from the 2005 Edition of Donna Cunningham's classic, An Astrological Guide to Self-Awareness, revised and in ebook format. To order this or other of Donna's Ebooks, visit http://www.moonmavenpublications.com.

Pop astrology has created entirely too much hysteria about Mercury retrograde. I've had endless phone calls from clients and prospective clients hyperventilating over the fact that Mercury was about to turn retrograde. We are told to sign nothing, buy nothing, make no major purchases, and to expect cancellations, missed appointments, bank errors, and being stood up on social engagements. We are given reams of anecdotes and horror stories to back up this taboo. And yet, vast numbers of people buy cars, begin jobs, get married, and buy homes while Mercury is retrograde ² without experiencing any difficulty whatsoever. The world simply cannot come to a screeching halt for the three or four periods a year that Mercury is retrograde for three weeks at a stretch. Imagine the impact on the economy if it did!

Why, then, do so many followers of astrology find these periods troublesome? By well-known metaphysical principles, the power of belief can cause followers of astrology to manifest more Mercury retrograde difficulties than in the general population. By repeated negative suggestion, we can talk ourselves into making major blunders during this time, because we "know" they're going to happen. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and when the inevitable snafus of daily living do occur, devotees of astrology say, "I told you so," reinforcing the belief. It has also become a convenient excuse for sloppy thinking or incompetence, as well as a socially acceptable reason for not showing up for commitments. Then too, it's more dramatic to blame your mental vagaries on the stars than to confess that you've had a senior moment!

It would be interesting to conduct a research project in which a roomful of people who are interested in astrology but who are not astrology students are told that Mercury is retrograde. After a description of the pitfalls ascribed to it, they are asked to write down examples of how it has been operating in their lives over the past week or two. The only thing is, the experiment would be conducted at a time when Mercury was not retrograde at all, but direct and clipping right along. I'm willing to bet that, by power of suggestion, nearly every person in that room would come up several juicy textbook examples of Mercury retrograde situations.

That's not to say that there's nothing to it…there are things I simply could not be induced to do in those periods, like buy software or communications equipment. I'm cautious to check important communications and appointments and back up computer files. I double check all astrological data for my clients and advice column and add all totals twice where money is concerned. I back up important computer files before the retrograde starts and continue backing them up regularly. It is a good idea to do backups periodically anyway, but the impending event of Mercury going retrograde prompts me to tackle the job. (Whatever works!)

Still, the Mercury REtrograde periods are a natural and even helpful recurrent cycle, totaling no more than 70 days each year-it is part of the natural rhythm of life, just like the seasons. At these times, we get the opportunity to REthink, REview, and REvise our thinking and our written and spoken communication. If we use it to REexamine the flow of our work and our day-to-day lives, these little mishaps can teach us something about Right Action. They can be a valuable corrective that helps us prevent more serious and ongoing errors in our work that might otherwise be compounded over time. Used correctly, these intervals can enhance our productivity and the quality of our work.

For instance, Mercury retrograde is a good time for revising and updating your procedures, mailing lists, and other systems, because during the retrograde, you tend to go over things from the past and find the glitches or dead wood. Sort out old files, catch up on correspondence, finish that backlog of paperwork, compile those tedious statistics the boss insists on every few months, get back in touch with associates and clients, and catch details that have fallen through the cracks. Reconcile your bank statements, adding all the figures twice for good measure. Deal with those stacks of mail and credit receipts. Go through that pile of magazines, newspapers, or journals that has accumulated, remove the articles you need to keep, and recycle the rest. You get the picture.

As a writer, I cherish and rely on the Mercury retrograde weeks of the year. In fact, I'm not sure I would ever complete a large writing project if it weren't for this natural rhythm of retrograde and direct motion, for I always have many more ideas and inspirations than I can use while Mercury is direct. I schedule editing and revisions for the retrograde phase, because looking back over the material, I see places where my communication is unclear. I also seem to have more patience to check my data for accuracy, to catch errors and typos, do needed research to back up my conclusions, and do the really tedious pieces like footnotes, a bibliography, and a table of contents. In RETROspect and with a cooler head, I also see the places in the text where it would have been better to keep my opinions to myself! I chose to do most of the revisions for the new edition of this book during a three-week Mercury retrograde. The work went swiftly and well (apart from a tendency to moan, "what was I thinking" when confronted with the more opinionated pronouncements in the 1970s version.)

Those of you who are more advanced in your studies may be interested to know that not all Mercury retrograde spans are alike. Some are smooth, passing with hardly a ripple if one uses sensible precautions. Others are real bears, with nothing running smoothly, an epidemic of computer crashes, and great difficulty in getting paperwork finished or ironing out agreements. In my observation, Mercury's retrograde motion is not the deciding factor, but rather the aspects Mercury forms to other planets around the time it is stationary turning retrograde. From around the time it turns retrograde to the time it turns direct, it moves fairly slowly, so any difficult aspects Mercury forms will be in effect continuously for about three weeks.

What if your chart printout shows that you have Mercury retrograde natally? Does that mean you will always endure the kinds of mishaps and struggles that are attributed to Mercury's retrograde periods? There are many claims about what it means to have Mercury retrograde in the birth chart. Some books claim that the person's development is delayed in that area of life or that they are more introverted in that area or slower to take action or as if that planet were a bit of a dumb note. Frankly, I am not convinced that any of those theories would hold up if subjected to rigorous statistical study. With AstroDataBank, we have a wonderful tool for testing conclusions about any given astrological pattern.

One reader of my column who was concerned about this question had natal Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius conjunct the Sun, and I thought it would be fun to see who matched her Mercury and its aspects. Using AstroDatabank's search function to find individuals with Mercury Retrograde in Sagittarius, I came up with 103 examples, including quite a number of astrologers, authors, evangelists and artists. To belie the claim that Mercury in Sagittarius would be more introverted when retrograde, the group included such livewires as Better Middler, Tina Turner, and Sammy Davis, Jr. I next looked for people sharing that reader's conjunction of Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius to the Sun and narrowed it down to 54. They included billionaire J. Paul Getty, former House Speaker Tip O'Neal, mystery writer Rex Stout, and the wild and woolly entertainer Little Richard-hardly folks who are mentally backward or slow to take action.

One noticeable pattern is that when Mercury is retrograde in the birth chart, it does seem to reverse many of the "rules" about Mercury's retrograde periods. Many people with this placement seem to find it natural to sign contracts, buy cars, and make major decisions while Mercury is retrograde, and they do just fine. Especially if the aspects to Mercury in the natal chart are favorable ones, there seems to be little difficulty.

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¹This section was based on segments published in my Astrology at Work column for Dell Horoscope Magazine over the years.



²Retrograde motion is something that occurs at various times of the year with all of the planets in the solar system--excluding the sun and moon, since they are not, properly speaking, planets. In these periods, which can last several months at a time for the slower-moving outer planets, the planet appears to be moving backward from the point of view of the earth. This is strictly an illusion, based on the fact that they are on the opposite side of the sun from the earth and thus while we are moving forward, they appear to be moving in the opposite direction from us. Perhaps the simplest way of understanding why this is so is to draw a diagram of the solar system and place coins on the oval that represents the earth's orbit and on one or more of the other planet's orbits. As you move the coin representing the earth around its yearly orbit, you can see how the orbit of the other planet might appear to be retrograde from our perspective.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Donna Cunningham, an internationally respected astrologer with over 35 years experience, is the author of 17 books on metaphysical topics. Listed in several Who's Who volumes, she has given seminars on astrology around the world and won the prestigious Regulus Award at the 1998 UAC. She also has a Master's Degree in Social Work from Columbia University. She uses this combined approach in her "Dear Abby" type column in Dell Horoscope and her ongoing series of articles in The Mountain Astrologer. Donna has several ebooks through Moon Maven publications, at http://www.moonmavenpublications.com They include:


The Outer Planets and Inner Life, Volume 1: The Career Path of

The Exceptional Soul. Published 4/2004.

The Outer Planets and Inner Life, Volume 2: Exceptional Soul Seeks Same-Outer Planet Aspects to Venus and Mars. Expected early 2005.

The Outer Planets and Inner Life, Volume 3: Exceptional Souls and Their Peers-Outer Planets in Aspect to One Another. Expected 2005

Hotline to Heaven. An astrological/metaphysical mystery novel. 8/2004

Angel in Peril. An astrological/metaphysical mystery novel. 8/2004

Flower Remedies-How Plants' Energies Can Heal Us. 8/2004