During a Mercury Retrograde, it’s common to feel as if something strange is happening. You may feel a shift coming on but it’s hard to know how the shift will turn out: good or bad? You feel uncomfortable and want to know what the universe is saying to you.

Here’s what you need to know about Mercury Retrograde.

The Messenger Planet

Mercury Retrograde invites us to go more deeply into our patterns of communication and sharing information. Mercury is the messenger planet, influencing the ways we think, use words, and share those thoughts with words.

Because Mercury is such a deeply-woven part of our everyday experience (when are you not thinking or talking?), when it goes Retrograde your life can feel like it’s turned inside out or ground to a halt.

Don’t Blame Electronic Snafus on Mercury

The mythos around Mercury Retrogrades suggests electronic communication snafus and other disruptive activities involving communication devices (phones, etc) occur during times of Mercury Retrograde.

And while certainly there are many anecdotal incidents connecting these events to Mercury, they may be influenced by the larger Retrograde energies but are more likely brought about from the expectations of the individuals involved — if you expect your phone to go on the blink during a common (three-times-a-year) astrological occurrence, then it’s more likely affected by the power of your expectation rather than Mercury itself.

In other words, if you expect something to go wrong, you’re sending energy to that outcome. So stop doing that and then see how you feel about Mercury, who is here to HELP us make our communication better!

Invitation To Go Deep

Remember, Retrograde energies are an invitation to go more deeply into the aspects ruled by that planet. Since Mercury is all about thought, words, and hence communication, this is the perfect time to evaluate your communication skills.

Are your words landing the way you want them to? Do people “get” you, or do you find yourself explaining things way more than you think you should need to?

It’s All About Communication

Communication is a two-way street — it’s 100% of the responsibility of the speaker to ensure they are understood by the listener, AND it is 100% of the responsibility of the listener to make sure they understand what is being communicated to them.

Mercury invites us to see our patterns of communication and learn from them.

Opportunity To Improve Communication!

Mercury retrograde invites a closer inspection on both sides, the speaker and the listener. During these three weeks we get the opportunity to hone our speaking and listening skills, because we get more feedback than usual.

So, during a Merc Retro your words probably won’t land well sometimes. Consequently, you may anger or alienate someone you wanted to express, say, appreciation to. Your friend Merc Retro threw a wrench into the works. A loving wrench that gives you the opportunity to fine tune your message and learn from the experience.

Does this kind of thing happen often? Then you have the opportunity now to use the energies of your friend Mercury to learn what you did and how to do it better next time so your words land the way you intend.

Conversely, you may completely misunderstand what a friend says to you, blowing the whole thing out of proportion. It wasn’t the words so much as how you received them, but here is our friend Mercury again with his wrench.

So delve deeply and ferret out what you said to yourself in your head when you heard your friend’s words that changed the meaning of the actual words said. Chances are, this is a pattern for you. Mercury invites us to see our patterns of communication and learn from them.

Merc Retro Affects Us Globally

On a wider scale, Mercury Retrograde affects us globally. If you’ve got some little communication snafus happening in your sphere, imagine what can occur on a world stage. The players on that stage are playing for high stakes — the future of the entire planet — and are unconscious to the astrological factors and influences that cause either ease or discord in their communication.

If you’re sensing foreboding or unease about world affairs, it’s because you are aptly tuned in to Retrograde energies and the power they have to help us go within and learn from our foibles.

World players for the most part do not honor their foibles and instead resist them, which builds up increased energy ready to support further errors and huge misunderstandings. Obviously, huge misunderstandings in high-level negotiations can result in multiple devastating effects including sanctions, economic punishments, and warfare.

Global Unease

If you’re feeling global unease right now, it is because we walk a precarious path at this time, and this period of Mercury Retrograde may be the catalyst to send the world into greater formal armed conflict (“war”, though it won’t be formally called that so as to obfuscate its intention).

Relax and breathe. You’re going to be fine.

Ease Your Unease Two Ways

Connect to Nature. A way to ease your unease is to connect with nature. Just being outdoors among plants, breathing and appreciating their beauty and the contribution to life can help. It gets you closer to a feeling of interconnection.

Breath meditation. Another way is a breathing meditation where you imagine you are drawing your breath from a huge beautiful and powerful crystal at the center of the earth. You bring this energy/breath up through the soles of your feet and then into your heart. You’ll need to do at least 7 breaths like this, while imagining the radiant loving crystal and that you are breathing breath up from it into your heart. Powerful and relaxing.

Love and wishing you ease,
Talyaa