Mercury Rx: It’s That Time Again
If you haven’t backed up your hard drive, updated your stored passwords, filled the generator with petrol and postponed travel plans till late September, don’t panic.
Despite the plethora of mild to dire warnings of imminent communication breakdowns and transportation glitches, your life probably isn’t going to go off the rails for three weeks starting this Wednesday, August 23 (at 3:59pm EDT).
In other words, Chicken Little: The sky is not falling.
Now, while you probably should avoid signing important contacts and being ambiguous in all your interactions, there are plenty of benefits—yes, benefits—to the three weeks of Mercury spinning “backward.”
Making Sense of Mercury
Mercury is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Hermes, who these days we associate with communication and local travel. His mythological bailiwick was far vaster, however. Mercury comes from the Latin word for commerce and trade (think “mercantile” and “merchant”), and if you’re a grain tradesperson, well, Mercury’s definitely your deity because that was one of his special oversights.
Thanks to his winged feet and hat, Mercury could zip between realms, including the underworld, which he did in his role of escort for newly deceased souls. This is partly where the association with travel comes from. He delivered messages from the gods—and sleep from Morpheus to humans—earning him the appellation “messenger,” which we connote with Gemini. His Virgoan side relates to the magic wand that Apollo gave him and which became the caduceus, the symbol of medicine and healing.
Mercury was hugely popular in his day, especially in Britain and Gaul (France), and a cult grew up to honor him and the “practical magic” he became associated with. A great rabbit hole for a rainy day is Googling Mercury aka Hermes Trismegistus (or Thoth) and his connection to alchemy.
Another word for alchemy is transmutation, but the big secret is that it wasn’t really about turning base metals to gold. Alchemy is about self-transmutation: “dying” metaphorically and sacrificing whatever’s egoic or impure to be reborn as something new. The 20th-century spiritual author and teacher Samael Aun Weor wrote that “the wings of Mercury elevate us to the world of gods.” Mercury/Hermes was understood to be the deity who facilitates that transformational process.
Honoring Mercury
Astrologically, Mercury is a very personal planet, orbiting closest to the Sun and never more than one sign away from it in a chart. Many people are born with Sun-Mercury conjunct. The only other possible aspect is a 28º semi-sextile. So however you choose to maximize this brief retrograde, ideally it will resonate with you and your own life.
Because this reversal is in Virgo, there are certain archetypal energies you can tap into: It's the sign of precision, orderliness, efficiency, discernment, sacred service and health. Common negative associations—being critical, perfectionistic, hyper-rational, hypochondriacal and hard to please—reflect unhealed, unfulfilled or unintegrated Virgoan longings. Virgo’s “problem,” if you will, is that it sees how things could be, and when you catch a glimpse of that, trust me (and my Virgo Moon), it’s hard to settle for mediocrity.
Now find Virgo in your birth chart. Specifically you’re looking for the house(s) where 8º to 21º51’ fall, the degrees it’ll cover in reverse from Wednesday until September 15. (If you use Whole Sign or Equal house systems, it’ll be contained in just one house.) Those are the areas of life where you can benefit from doing all those famous “re” words that get bandied about every time Mercury goes retrograde: review, revisit, recapitulate, resurface, renegotiate, reunite, redo...and please don’t forget rest.
It can be helpful to think of this transit as a gift; an opportunity to use your mind, your nimble hands and your winged feet to go back to, or go deeper into areas you’ve been studying or training in—especially if there's anything remotely "alchemical" about it.
And seriously, enjoy your three weeks of metamorphosis!
