Happy Mercury Retrograde!
I’m not a professional astrologer, so I can’t give you all the tips and tricks of how to make the best of this Mercury (rx) in Libra. However, I’m happy to share what I plan to watch out for and the steps I’m taking to mitigate the aspects which I’m expecting to come up most.
Culturally, we’re afraid of Mercury retrograde because it is associated with unsavory things: miscommunications, broken technology, lost opportunity, arguments, fights, old wounds, etc. In other words, it’s a time when we don’t feel like we’re performing at our best, and we’re challenged to get our shit together. As other people are also experiencing this same energy, that adds more stress onto communications and makes it that much more likely for either parties involved to misunderstand, misspeak, or make a mistake.
That being said, none of this is actually bad if we can accept that there are still things we have to work on. All we have to do is create an environment where we can actively tinker with and integrate these problems, and we’ll come out on the other side better than we were before.
First of all, you can be born under Mercury retrograde. This means that your experience of it is fundamentally different than people who aren’t born under it. IME, it has meant that Mercury (rx) is a time of re-alignment instead of just being about everything in my life falling apart. I use Mercury (rx) like an oil change and tire rotation. What are my goals? What do I want? Where am I lacking? Who do I still have beef with? Realistically, this framing can probably work for people who aren’t born under Mercury (rx), they’d just have to be a bit more concrete in their efforts.
The next thing is to not resist change nor conflict. Mercury (rx) is happy to bring out all of the things we’ve kept bottled up inside. I imagine that its current placement in Libra will drive this home even further. If you’re in a situation where you aren’t getting your fair share, or you aren’t being treated equally or being given equal time/energy/etc, it’s going to come up this Mercury (rx). Don’t dissuade yourself from combat regarding these problems: they aren’t going to just go away.
At the same time, we’ll have to be careful not to let everything get under our skin. Even worse, we may even have to admit that some things just aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Whatever small trifles that we’ve been clinging to that cause us great annoyance may have to be let go completely in favor of the bigger picture, or even in favor of negotiating a generally better contract (metaphorically and literally). Yeah, your boss might chew with her mouth open, but she lets you go on your phone all day. Who cares?
This morning, my shoulder started acting up again. At first I was really pissed off about it, but once I remembered that Mercury (rx) began today I let all that annoyance fade. Why? Well, there’s a reason that it keeps hurting! I use it all the time and don’t take enough breaks. If I just took care of it properly, it would stop giving me trouble. If there’s a problem that you regularly encounter that can be easily fixed, by for example moving a bookcase you constantly run into or taking breaks while you’re on the computer, you should commit to making those changes ASAP!
When it comes to interpersonal communication, Mercury (rx) is infamous for causing extreme difficulties. Sometimes, it seems like you just can’t understand others and they can’t understand you, either! While it is worth it to consider whether or not it’s really your fault, you should relax a bit. Instead of getting heated over a miscommunication, just let it slide. Remember! OTHER PEOPLE ARE JUST AS ANXIOUS AS YOU ARE! Instead of holding it against them, or yourself for that matter, just fix the problem and let it go. Easy enough, right?
The final aspect, which I don’t have a solution for, is technological glitches and failures. Last night, a transformer exploded down the street, causing a blackout that only lasted a minute or two. I realize now that it was merely ringing in Mercury (rx)! So, what can we do to avoid breakdowns? Uhhh, take care of our equipment, I guess? Be gentle with it? But more than anything, just don’t freak out when your computer bluescreens. It’s ten years old anyway! What do you expect! (You should probably buy a phone case, though).
The hype-cycle of Mercury retrograde probably reached its peak about two or three years ago. Nowadays, people are starting to take it a bit less seriously, especially those who never bought into astrology much to begin with. Should we expect the fad to die out of popular consciousness? Perhaps, but it will continue to thrive in the folk-witchcraft circles that popularized it in the first place! Since we’re all adjacent to that, I wouldn’t expect the concept to go away anytime soon. So strap in and keep your arms & legs in the vehicle at all times!
Good luck out there, and share this article with your friends so that they can be just as prepared as you are!