angstoic.com Astrologer, Ang Stoic
For the third and final time this year, Mercury stations to retrograde in a water sign. In retrograde, the winged messenger of the gods contributes deep introspective perception into our most emotional realms. This ‘looking back’ process lets us reflect on past memories and dreams – ideas that are not necessarily logical or rational in form.
Sentiment is a wonderful thing. The articulative dexterity of Mercury proffers the language to describe who we are, both of ourselves and of others. Often our feelings remain nameless. Our sentiments, grouped together in their familiar forms, carry meanings which are only accessible to our capricious hearts. Yet, from time to time they must be articulated and processed, for sentiment without movement or flow can be the ruin of the soul.
Too often we see cases were people stuck on a feeling, drowning themselves in the toxicity of stagnant emotion. Whether internally or through their relationship to others, they hold fixated views, often negative and destructive. Society provides many outlets and portals of emotionality; a piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality, where we can languish in our times of insecurity and pain.
When emotions are held; ie not shared they can become poisonous. But how to share something which is largely invisible and, except to poets and liars, is impossible to narrate?
The toxic cult of sentimentality, bitterness and hatred can entrap us and delude us if we do not take the time to study our emotional selves and see, with clear, rational eyes where sometimes we get stuck and must release. If the world we see and hear is merely a process of our thoughts and ideas, then by changing the way we look at things, we can indeed change the world.
Mercury’s retro sojourns through each of the water signs, converts sentiments into mental images, helping us to articulate and communicate them. It is a service Mercury facilitates every 4-5 years, as he cycles through each of the zodiacal elements. The last time Mercury retrograded through the series of water signs was between November 2012 and February 2014.
Mercury’s standard retrograde period occurs every 4 months. Altogether, the 3-week retrograde includes his entry and release from his retrograde shadow – an 8-week season during which Mercury appears to traverse forwards-backwards-and-forwards-again over the same space of the zodiac belt.
It is a highly mental period, where thoughts are stimulated, reviewed and somehow communicated around themes implicit in the affected houses and aspected planets of this transit (see your horoscope below for a specific reading into how your life will be affected).
During this purposely pronounced mental activity, Mercury gives form and delivers messages intelligently. He hovers over piles of junk that collect in our minds, determining whether to share, throw out or mutate into higher forms. What we decide to keep and what to distribute (and how) is the true wonder of this amazing communicative service that Mercury, the dexterous and skilful magician provides, particularly since, in water signs, everything seems so wholly irrational and sentimental.
In this current retro episode, Mercury travels through the mid-late degrees of the fixed-water sign of Scorpio:
Mercury in Scorpio becomes sensitised to the sensuous, making us able to perceive hidden meanings with shrewdness and curiosity. Observe how minds tend to penetrate matters with intensity and suspiciousness. Of course, suspicions usually have a foundation in facts and reason. Mercury through Scorpio is supremely capable of unearthing and understanding the hidden motives and clever manipulations of each other’s resources, both deeply emotional (psychological) and financial.
We become particularly fascinated with sex, power, magic, shared finances, stock market trends; how and where to invest both money and emotional energy. During Mercury’s three-pronged retrograde period, we plot movements and draw charts in an effort to understand various fluctuations in our shared interests. We conduct deeper studies into how to appeal to the opposite sex; what compels us to stay in intimate bonds with one another and how to terminate those toxic sentimental ties and poor investments. We also come to see through false claims and become intensely determined to expose those who make them.
By the end of this period, we learn how best to overcome any fixations that tend to keep us stagnant into relationships for the sake of greater emotional security. By learning to see where it is we tend to worry and make ourselves miserable over little things, Mercury liberates us from obsessive people and ideas so that we are free to focus on more important matters.
