Mercury Retrograde

Podcast Episode #9 Transcripts

Hello and welcome to the Astrology and Ancient Arts podcast.

I'm your host, Kai de Lune.

Hi everyone.

Today we are going to talk about the Mercury Retrograde cycle that we are in right now.

But before we get started and dive into all of this really good, rich, juicy Mercury Retrograde things, let's go through really quickly all of the things that are coming up.

All right, if you are local to the Boise Valley, we have the Virgo season workshop and sound bath that is going to be held on August 23 from 5:00 to 07:00 p.m. at Zen Riot.

If you're not able to make that event in person, but you still want to know everything that's happening during Virgo season, I will be hosting the online workshop on August 24 at noon, MST.

If you're not able to join in person, I will be sending out a replay for anybody that likes to watch workshops in their own time.

I know that I'm like that.

Usually when I sign up for an online workshop, I very rarely attend live in person because I like to be able to kind of go at my own pace, pause, take notes, walk away, come back and not miss anything.

So if you are somebody like me that enjoys moving through online workshops in that way, go ahead and sign up and I will send you the replay after the live portion is done.

Now, we are still within Leo season.

Right now I do have the Leo season replay live on my store.

So if you're interested in watching the replay of the Leo season workshop so that you can kind of get a feel for what is going to be happening over the next two weeks - we’re about halfway through Leo season right now, that is still available.

If you are interested in that, I will post a link to my online store in the show notes as well as a link to the events.

And as always, my books are open.

So if you're interested in receiving a natal chart, reading, exploring your personal astrology, or taking a peek into your year ahead, these are the solar return readings.

I really love doing them.

They give you a glimpse of what the coming, you know, twelve month cycle is going to look like for you personally.

I find it really helpful to be able to have an overarching understanding of what the themes of the year are going to be so that I can prepare and do what I need to do to help center and ground myself physically, mentally and emotionally as I'm walking through some of these transits.

So if you're interested in learning about what what's going to be happening for your personal year ahead.

Or if you just want to know about your own personal astrology, my books are open, and there's a link to sign up in the show notes.

All right, well, let's get to it.

So this Mercury Retrograde cycle is one that will transit over two different signs.

So Mercury is going to station retrograde in the sign of Virgo on August 5, and then it's going to change.

It's going to go from early Virgo, and it's going to move into Leo, and it'll move through several degrees of Leo before it stations direct again on August 29.

So let's talk about everything that's going to be happening during this window when Mercury is retrograde.

But before we do that, let's talk about the symbolic representation of Mercury.

You know, I've spent a lot of time getting to know Mercury and learning about the mythology that is really intertwined with this really, actually fascinating planet.

Mercury is the innermost planet in our solar system.

It's the closest to the sun, and it's the fastest moving planet in our solar system outside of the moon.

Now, in Greek mythology, Mercury was known as Hermes, and Hermes was a psychopomp and considered to be the messenger to the gods.

Now, a psychopomp is somebody that is able to move in and out of the underworld or death realms, and oftentimes will help transfer or transport souls that were once living into the afterlife.

And this is a really important facet of Mercury and the Hermes archetype, because aside from an Underworld God or Goddesses like Hades, Hecate and Persephone, Hermes, who is not an underworld God, is the only one that's able to go in and out of the underworld realms without getting stuck there, without having to die first, and also without having to have a guide to help bring him back out.

Right. Like, he can just go in and out as he desires, pleases, wants to.

Which is a really important aspect of the psychological symbolism of Mercury when we're thinking about astrology in sort of a psychological context.

In mythology, Mercury or Hermes wore magical winged sandals known as the Talaria.

These magical sandals allowed him to fly as swiftly as the fastest bird.

So he's super, super fast, which, again, is a representation of how quickly the planet Mercury moves around the Sun.

And he also carried his staff in the shape of the caduceus, which is like the staff with the intertwining snakes that are wrapped around the shaft in the shape of sort of like a double helix.

We often see this symbol in medicine today.

This staff, the caduceus, was known to carry the traits of magic, alchemy and regeneration, which are key Mercury themes, right?

Oftentimes we think about Mercury in a specific context of the mind communication, how we gather information through our senses, from the world around us, and then how we process that information in our mind, in our brain, and how it's filtered through the rest of our body, through our nervous system or our electrical system.

Then whatever it is that we do with that information, once we have processed it, categorized it, usually that's in the context of, like, do we keep it to ourself?

Do we talk about it?

Do we communicate it in some way?

Is a communication that's verbal?

Is it a physical communication?

Is it an emotional communication?

All of these things are related to Mercury.

Mercury retrograde has a really important place in the overarching spiral of our mental growth, of the growth of our perceptions, right?

And it's this process of being allowed to move through any realm freely and with ease that allows us to connect with the magic and alchemy and regeneration of the higher realms and the lower realms and the middle realms.

So just as Mercury was able to travel in and out of the underworld, he was also able to travel in and out of the upper world.

That could be like Mount Olympus in Greek mythology.

It could be like the super conscious in psychology, and the underworld would be the subconscious in psychology.

It could be like the heaven realms.

It could be, however you want to think about it, it could even be considered to be the higher dimension realms.

I know a lot of people in some spiritual communities that talk a lot about being in the fifth dimension and higher, like 6th, 7th, 8th dimensions and existing in that plane, I don't know exactly how I feel about that.

But if we were to think about dimensions like that in context to the Mercurial cycle and what the retrograde phase does for us, we could potentially think about it as, like, you know, the everyday third dimensional realm is the middle world, like, where we exist in reality all the time.

Now, this is just my opinion, but I would probably associate the fourth dimension that is sort of holds all of the unseen things as a part of the underworld realm, right?

Because the fourth dimension, from what I understand, is like, if you are having, like, an out of body experience, if you're astral traveling, if you are connecting with spirits or with ghosts or with unseen entities of any kind, like, that is all happening in the fourth dimension from what I understand.

So I would equate that more with underworld realm, although I definitely don't think that it would encompass all of that sphere, and then the higher dimensions, like 5th, 6th, 7th, and higher, would be equivalent to the upper world or whatever.

I don't know.

That was a little bit of a tangent.

So I'm going to bring it back and sum it up with just saying that our mercurial functions, our mind, can travel to any place.

It can exist in the plane of reality.

It can exist in the unconscious or the subconscious.

It can exist in the super conscious.

We do have the ability to be able to tap into all of these different forms of experience and planes of consciousness.

How easy it is for us probably depends on a whole slew of things that we're not going to get into today.

But it is possible.

It is.

There is a potential here.

So just as mercury or Hermes is able to take the messages that he needs to deliver to gods or goddesses or humans in any of the realms, the upper realm, the middle realm, or the underworld realm, so too, does our mercurial function allow us the mental capacity to move information down from the superconscious or up from the subconscious into a space of awareness where our, you know, everyday consciousness can grasp ahold of it, where we can understand these little trickles of information.

Right?

So this is the kind of feeling of like when you have an epiphany or you have this aha moment where something clicks into place that you can then take that understanding and weave it into your everyday reality.

That's what I'm talking about here.

When I'm talking about information being transferred from the upper realms or the lower realm realms, the superconscious or the subconscious of our own psyche, so that we can get it to a place where we can see it clearly and integrate it into our daily life.

And this has the potential to happen in a really powerful and profound way during a retrograde cycle.

This is why Mercury retrogrades are so powerful.

It's because we're tapping into that alchemy.

We're tapping into that space of magic and regeneration through the process of transforming our thought processes.

When we change our thought processes, we change our actions.

When we change our actions, our life starts to change.

So because this planet that typically moves so fast has slowed way, way down from our vantage point on Earth, looking out, it looks like it has come to a stop when it is in a stationing phase.

So this provides us with the opportunity to receive these messages from our unconscious or from the ethereal realms and bring these messages into our conscious awareness so that we can recognize them and work with them or integrate them into our life in some way.

So really, Mercury retrogrades are a time for us to slow way down.

It's a time for us to take stock of the previous four months, which is when the last mercury retrograde cycle occurred.

Mercury retrograde is the time to review, reflect, catch up on things, clear out spaces.

Like, this is a great time to clear out your inbox, clear off your desk, go through your file cabinet, do whatever you need to do to reorganize your life a little bit.

It's a time to absolutely slow down.

We need to slow down our mind, how busy our mind is.

We live in a society and a culture where we are constantly being fed sensory input, right?

I don't know anybody that is not plugged into the Internet in some way, right?

Like, we either work on it, we play on it.

We spend our time, you know, on social media, and we're constantly being fed this informational input.

So if we think about our bodies are connected to nature and how nature is cyclical, everything moves in cycles.

This is a part of the Mercury cycle that's asking us to slow down.

It's asking us to step away from the constant sensory input and to turn inward into ourself and to take stock of what is happening in our internal experience.

When we get quiet, when we, you know, shut off all of the noise from the world, what is happening within our mind, what is happening within our body, these are signals and messages that we're being asked to slow down enough so that we can see them, so that we can acknowledge what it is that our inner world is trying to process or trying to understand or speak to us in some way.

Mercury retrogrades are a great time to rethink or reevaluate situations in your life or projects that you're working on or where you're spending your mental energy.

It's a great time to study, to edit, or to do research, or to pick up an old project that you might have previously started and then sat down for a little while.

It's a really great time to pick up that project and start working on it again.

So it's an energy of renewal.

The three weeks when Mercury is in retrograde is not a really great time to start big projects that are brand new, to make significant plans or to sign significant contracts.

So I'm talking about, like, booking a trip across the world, right?

Like, that's a big plan.

Signing on a house or buying a new car or something like that.

If you can avoid doing that during a Mercury retrograde cycle, I would suggest it just because, like, everybody's Mercurial functions are naturally trying to slow down.

So when we are pushing through, when we're trying to push through, when we're trying to continue to move fast, there is more space for error.

This is where we get confusion.

This is where we get miscommunication or mistakes happen on, you know, contracts or documents or whatever.

But if you do find yourself in a position where you have to, like, sign on a house or buy a car or something, because sometimes that happens during a Mercury retrograde cycle, and we don't really have the ability to, you know, put something off like that for several weeks, sometimes we find ourselves in a position where we have to get something fixed, and we need to do it now.

So if you are in a position like that, I don't want you to stress out about it.

I just want you to think about the fact that during a Mercury retrograde cycle, there is a high potential that mistakes will be made, right?

So if you have to sign a contract, if you have to make a binding agreement with somebody, just go really slowly, read through that contract with a fine tooth comb, maybe, you know, two, three times, and make sure that what you are signing is what you are intending to sign and that it is in your best interest.

Right?

Like, look for hidden stuff.

Look for, you know, hidden fees or whatever it is, and make sure that what you are agreeing to is really in your best interest.

And there's not anything in there that might, you know, turn around and come back to bite you later on down the road.

I've had to do things like that before during Mercury retrograde cycles, and as long as you're paying attention and you're being slow and thorough, it will be fine.

The first part of this Mercury retrograde cycle will be within Virgo.

So Mercury is going to station retrograde on August 5 at 4 degrees of Virgo.

Virgo is our mutable earth sign.

Virgo energy invites us to connect with the intellectual processes of analysis and observation.

Virgo is ruled by Mercury, so when Mercury stations retrograde in this sign, it's in its home place.

It's comfortable here.

That kind of gives us a little bit of a boost, a leg up.

Right now, Virgo's gift is held in the energy of craftsmanship.

It takes the time to pay attention to details, to put the work and energy into becoming a true artist of a craft.

Every Virgo person that I know is a legitimate craftsman in some way.

Like, they know how to tap into what it is that they love and what they're good at, and they hone in on that skill until they have almost perfected it, and they become such a wonderful craftsman of that thing that it's transformed into art in some way.

Virgo energy can be really beautiful in an expression like that.

It also is very much about sifting and categorizing our life experiences into groups of good or bad, helpful or unhelpful or useful, or something that is of no use to us.

This is where the mutability of Virgo comes in.

It's not as fixed or sedentary as some of the other earth signs can potentially be.

It's always moving.

It's always sorting.

It's always looking back and forth and moving through this inner process of sifting and categorizing and determining the value of something.

Sometimes that can be a really intense analysis, and sometimes it can be an intense judgment.

So what we want to do is we want to think about, like, whatever you're moving through mentally during this first part of the Mercury cycle.

Are you moving through a process of categorizing through analysis, or are you trying to categorize through judgment?

Because there is a difference there.

And I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other, but it is important that we understand where we are coming from when we're doing, when we're moving through a process like this.

So when Mercury retrogrades in Virgo, we are invited to review and reflect on what's working and what's not working in our personal world.

What needs some attention or might need some repair.

Maybe something needs to be fixed.

Maybe we have something that's not broken, but it could potentially, potentially be more effective if it had some attention or some care.

So when we're looking and thinking about something like a Mercury retrograde cycle, what we want to do is we want to look at where this is happening in our own personal chart.

So even if you don't have any Virgo planets or points, everybody does have Virgo somewhere.

We all have this energy within us somewhere.

We want to take a look at our natal chart and figure out where is Virgo, what house is Virgo representing in my chart?

And if you want to have a detailed understanding of what each of the house placements are, I did write a blog post on this, so you can check that out on my website.

But we want to look to the house where Virgo is in our charts, and then think about these things, these questions like what needs attention?

What could be made more effective, what is useful, what is nothing relation to the house topics where Virgo is at.

If we focus our awareness on this specific area, it means that we.

We might become aware of some potentially sticky spots in our life that are in need of some repair or some care or attention in some way.

If we can identify these areas again by looking to the Virgo house in your chart and put in the attention and care toward refining them and going about it with the intention of this process is a service to myself, and not necessarily like, this is something that I have to do, but something that I want to do because it is serving myself in some way, then we will absolutely reap the rewards of our efforts that we're doing now in the future.

Usually we see the rewards of the work that we do during a Mercury retrograde cycle.

When mercury is at the sort of full moon phase, several weeks after the retrograde cycle is done, the second part of the retrograde cycle, this time, will be within Leo.

So Mercury is going to move into Leo on August 14, and it'll stay in Leo until it stations direct again.

Leo is our fixed fire sign, and it invites us to connect with the intellectual processes of creativity and expression.

Leo's gift is held in the energy of childlike enthusiasm and takes energy, energy and passion to be able to express ourselves wholeheartedly.

Leo Energy has an abundance of this vitality that we can use to fuel our passions and our creativity and our self expressions.

Right.

Leo Energy is very much about learning how to connect with your creative side and expressing yourself in a way that is uniquely you.

Through that expression, the development of personality will just naturally occur, which is one of the top themes for any, you know, placement in Leo or wherever Leo is activating your chart.

Leo's known for its charisma and the ability to perform through the exchange of energy that occurs through this, you know, “performance”, both the Leo person and the receiving person are lit up.

And what I mean by that is that when Leo is in its element, when Leo is able to express itself fully, that light shines from the person expressing just like the light of the sun.

So the sun rules Leo, right?

So the light of the sun is shining.

And then the people that get to receive that pure creative expression, they become fueled by that light, just like the Sun fuels all life on this Earth.

It's the same sort of principle.

So there's an exchange of energy here that when engaged with authentically, can be a really powerful and beautiful expression of giving and receiving in really healthy ways.

Leo energy is also known for its ability to lead.

It's a natural leader.

And the fixed quality of this sign has the ability to bring focus to an otherwise creative situation.

This is why Leo energy is so good at being a leader.

It's because it can walk into a situation that feels very chaotic and it can ground it.

The ability for Leo energy to, like, walk into a space that feels very chaotic and to connect with the threads of vitality within that space and then, like, it almost feels like if you've ever spent time with a Leo person in a situation like this, it almost feels like they can gather up all of the frenetic energy or all of those, like, threads of chaos, and they just funnel it into a core that goes straight down into the earth.

That grounds that energy.

And then from that stabilizing quality, that doesn't snuff out the fire of, like, that pure creation, right?

Because chaos and creation are basically the same.

It doesn't snuff any of that out.

It just hones it.

It grounds it in a place where we can utilize it, which makes Leo such powerful and effective leaders.

So when we're thinking about a Mercury retrograde cycle that's connected to this sign that has the ability to function and behave in this way, we can start to ask ourselves again, looking at the Leo area of your chart and focusing these questions on that realm of life.

But how can we be more of a leader in our life?

How can we lead ourself?

How can we be our own sovereign?

Do we need to spend more time in creative expression?

Do you need to spend more time playing?

That's also a very Leo energy.

Ultimately, Leo Energy helps us to learn how to be more of ourselves.

When our Leo house is activated, like it is with this Mercury retrograde cycle, we're learning about how to be ourselves a little bit more without self judgment and with full acceptance.

So let's take note of the important dates and degrees of this cycle.

Mercury stations retrograde on August 4 at 4 degrees of Virgo.

So you'll want to take note of Virgo's ruling house in your chart.

We've already kind of discussed that, because this is the realm of life that's being activated and turned on by this Mercury retrograde cycle.

Also take notes of any planets or angles that are located near that four degrees of any of the mutable signs that's going to be Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces.

These planets or points will be in active conversation with Mercury during this cycle.

For example, if you have the moon at early degrees of any of these mutable signs, your emotional body is going to be in contact with the mental processes that are kind of going through this reevaluation process during this cycle.

So it's connecting and linking your mind with your body or your emotions in some way.

If you have Mars, it's going to be connecting your physical energy, your drive.

You might find yourself thinking about different ways that you can go about achieving things or getting things done, maybe making your actions more effective or something along those lines.

If you have the sun in an early degree of immutable sign, it could be like your identity or how you think about yourself.

So you take whatever the meaning of the planet is and sort of combine it with the Mercury functions that we've already been talking about today.

Mercury is going to enter Leo on August 14.

And then on August 18, at 26 degrees of Leo, Mercury retrograde is going to move into conjunction with the Sun.

Now, this conjunction is important because it's the beginning of the new Mercurial cycle.

This is like the new moon phase of the Mercury cycle.

Mercury is going to station direct on August 27 at 21 degrees of Leo, and because this is a stationing degree, you're also going to want to take note of any planets or angles that are located near that 21 degree of any of the fixed signs this time.

So the fixed signs are going to be Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius.

These planets or points will be in active conversation with Mercury at the end of the retrograde cycle.

So once Mercury starts moving direct again, it's going to re enter Virgo on September 9.

When this happens, we'll probably get a little bit of a revisit of any of the themes that we experienced when Mercury retrograde was in Virgo in those first degrees.

Then on September 29, at seven degrees Libra, Mercury, which is direct now, is going to move into conjunction again with the Sun.

This conjunction is important because it's the culmination of the mercury cycle.

It's kind of like the full moon phase.

So anything that we have experienced or began to work on or work through during this Mercury retrograde is going to move into fruition or culmination during the full moon phase of this Mercury cycle.

At the very end of September, when Mercury stations retrograde, we experience sort of a reversal within our mental functions and nervous system.

Right?

Like this is when our senses and our perception, which are usually very externally focused, begin to slow down and turn inward.

We start to become more internally focused.

This slowing down and sort of reversal of perspective opens the door for us to be able to work with our own internal Mercury energy consciously if we choose to.

So this is a time of letting go, a time to surrender to the process of mental reflection and revision, so that what's unfolding for us or what's trying to fall away may be consciously released.

Or if we identify something that needs some attention or care, that we can consciously begin to put our energy toward that thing.

If we fight against what's not working for us, then we're not creating the space for the seeding to happen at the inferior conjunction, which is kind of that new moon phase, part of the Mercury cycle.

So before Mercury moves into conjunction with the sun, when it is retrograde and we move into that sort of new moon phase, it is going to make two aspects with other planets during that time.

The first is going to be a conjunction with Venus that happens very quickly after Mercury stations retrograde.

So Venus and Mercury are going to come together in conjunction at 3 degrees of Virgo only three days after the station retrograde, which happens on August 7.

And anytime Mercury and Venus are connected in this way, it's a merging of our mind and our heart.

This is a blend between thinking and feeling, of beauty and practicality, of art and of craftsmanship.

Then as Mercury is moving backwards through the zodiac, it's going to enter Leo, and then it's going to move a couple more degrees.

When it hits 27 degrees of Leo, it's going to move into a square with Uranus.

This is going to be happening on August 17.

This is also very, very close to the full moon.

In fact, the full moon is going to be happening just two days later on August 19.

Uranus is considered to be the higher octave of Mercury.

Their energies blend very well together, like they're very similar, but they are also very different as well.

When Mercury squares Uranus, it can lead toward some discomfort or tension within our mental spheres.

We can find either ourselves becoming a little bit less tactful.

We might be receiving that from other people.

We might find that we are a little bit more brusque with our words, or our communication can feel affronting to others.

This energy does not lead to patience.

Right?

Like Mercury and Uranus, when they come together, it stimulates our mind in a way that has potential to really drive us towards an energy that can lead to significant breakthrough, like mental breakthroughs where we can gain information that we haven't really had access to before or that can stimulate these really profound moments of epiphany.

But it can also feel very frenetic.

It can feel like anxiety, it can feel very impatient or just staticky.

So if you're feeling this energy as static or as frenetic energy, really, again, slow down, carve out some time for yourself to do anything that will help to soothe your body and your mind, that body mind connection.

Sometimes when we engage in activities that are calming to our nervous system, it is helpful.

Sometimes this energy, especially with Uranus in a square, sometimes it's just something that we have to ride out, you know, like, sometimes it's just an uncomfortable energy that we just have to move through and we can try to support ourselves the best that we can.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, doing self care type things is going to make it go away, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Sometimes we just have to live through it.

And then right after that, the sun moves into conjunction with Mercury retrograde.

And this is sparking that new moon phase of the Mercurial cycle.

It is called the inferior conjunction, if you are using astrological terminology.

Symbolically, this is the darkest period of the Mercury cycle.

We have now merged with the sun.

Mercury is being infused with this solar light and vitality.

But while this is happening, Mercury is hidden from our view.

We cannot see it in the sky.

Mercury is usually a planet that we can see with a naked eye.

If you go outside on a clear day, we can usually see it, but when it is conjunct the Sun, we cannot.

It's gone dark.

This is symbolically a seeding time.

It's not a time for a lot of action, but a time for germination of future developments, of all of these changes that have been brought into our awareness by the retrograde cycle so far.

It's time to start letting those things marinate, to letting those things sit within our psyche, within our mind, within our body, so that we can eventually do something with them.

But this is not the time to start acting on them.

This is just a time to allow those things to settle.

Now, the time between the inferior conjunction, when Mercury retrograde is conjunct the sun and when Mercury will station direct, is a time of revelation.

This is the very beginning of the Mercury cycle.

So we have started a brand new cycle at this moment, and we're still in a liminal space here.

Mercury is still merged with the Sun, which means our mental functions are still kind of blending with this solar vitality.

And as mercury retrograde moves past the Sun, it's symbolically like the mind is emerging from the experience of an initiation of sorts.

Like the Sun is initiating us into something new, and we're being invited into a new realm of being.

No matter how big or how small this might feel.

You know, it could be a change in perspective that might seem really small or insignificant, but to you, it could be the very beginning or the very first seed of something that will develop and grow and be significant later on.

We might not be aware of this shift and we might not be fully conscious of what it is that's going on.

Or alternatively, we might get insight about what is changing within us, but we're still sort of standing in the threshold of a closing cycle and an opening cycle.

So we can't fully embody those changes yet.

We're in this sort of, like, liminal space still.

And during this portion of the Mercury retrograde cycle, Mercury retrograde is going to move into a trine with Chiron, and it's going to sextile Mars on August 22.

This is going to be happening at 22 and 23 degrees of Leo.

This three way communication between Mercury, Chiron and Mars is creating what we call a talent triangle.

This potentially can bring us a healing breakthrough.

Or potentially we could see actions that we need to take that could lead to further healing of our belief systems, of our mental processes, of how we perceive the world, or of how we perceive things that have happened to us in our past.

This looks like the receiving of new thoughts, ideas or perspectives that once we can put them into action, can potentially be very healing.

Now, Mercury is going to station direct on August 27 at 21 degrees Leo.

And this is the time when most of us view the Mercury cycle to be concluded.

But really it's just the beginning.

It's only been nine days since the new moon phase, when we began the Mercury retrograde cycle, when the Sun and Mercury retrograde came into conjunction.

It's only been a little bit over a week since that happened.

Now Mercury is at its second stationing degree at 21 Leo, and it's preparing to move direct again.

So there is a power that is accumulating here in the station, and this power holds an enormous amount of possibility and potential within it.

This is a new cycle that we're now actively moving into.

And I want you to pay particular attention to the things that you're experiencing, the thoughts that you're having the things that are happening when Mercury is in the Leo part of this retrograde cycle, because it's not the last time that Mercury is going to retrograde in Leo.

In mid July of 2025, Mercury is going to station retrograde again in Leo.

And when that happens, we're going to be revisiting the themes that were living through right now.

So because these cycles overlap, there’s this feeling of weaving that’s happening, right?

Like we are interconnecting these different cycles together over a longer period of time than what it is that were moving through in this moment.

And this is how mental evolution and growth builds on its itself over time.

If you think about it from a practical perspective, it's highly likely that you don't still think about things in the same way that you did, you know, 5,10,15,20 years ago.

And that's because of these processes of experiential evolution, right?

We move through these moments where we experience new things, where we slow our mental processes down enough to be able to integrate and think through.

Like, what did I just experience over the last few months?

Are these things that are helpful and beneficial to my overall growth, to my mental health, to the health of my nervous system?

Because if we have an imbalanced or unhealthy nervous system, how are we supposed to move throughout the world?

Right now we're getting a little bit of a taste of that.

And then next year, when Mercury retrogrades in Leo again, we're going to be revisiting this in some way.

So once Mercury stations direct, we really start to feel this change in our mental energy and momentum really palpably.

It almost feels like the last two and a half, three weeks where we have been moving really slowly and internally, the switch gets flipped and all of that energy and action is ready to move.

It's ready to burst forward, and it does so with momentum.

So when our minds and our mental capacities re emerge from the work that we've done in the underworld or subconscious realms during these last three weeks, we get to take what we've learned, we get to take the jewel or the treasure that we have extracted from the underworld, and we get to start to realize what it is that we can do with that treasure.

So in the coming days and weeks after the station direct, we really can start to put energy and action towards the things that we experienced during the retrograde season, where we're going to start to begin to see, you know, the little sprouts of the seeds that we planted during this time, and to see how our perspectives have actually shifted and changed.

And once we can clearly see that, we can begin to nurture and nourish the growth of these new thought patterns and perspectives that are trying to grow and flourish.

And this is going to carry us all the way through until the next time Mercury stations retrograde, which is going to be towards the end of November.

So for the next couple of weeks, go slow.

Allow yourself more mental space.

I usually take a break from social media.

Sometimes I take a break from social media and tv just to really, like, tune out a lot of that extra sensory input.

I usually read a lot more.

I usually journal a lot more.

This helps me to shift my perspective from being externally focused to being internally focused.

Right, and this is one way that we can actively work with a Mercury retrograde cycle in addition to focusing specifically on where these two signs are in our chart and the realms of life that are represented by those two houses.

As you're moving through this retrograde cycle, if you find that you're being tripped up a lot, if you find that things are going wrong, things are not going your way, if you're having accidents, if you are experiencing things that are feeling disruptive to your flow, that is a sure sign that you are moving too quickly.

So if you're finding yourself frustrated with this Mercury retrograde cycle, it's likely that you're trying to go at the same pace mentally and maybe even physically, as you do when mercury is direct and moving very quickly.

If that frustration is hitting you, slow down, especially when Mercury is in that range where it's going to be squaring Uranus around the full moon, we are going to want to get real still during that time.

If you struggle with stillness, if you struggle with feeling like rest is unproductive, that is something that you can work on deconstructing during this Mercury retrograde cycle.

Because Leo, again, is telling us that we can express ourselves in any way that we want to.

And that expression is helpful and supportive because it develops who we are.

Sometimes that expression is rest.

Right?

Sometimes it is allowing ourselves time to slow down, time to rest, time to do creative projects just for the sake of doing something creative.

So there you have it.

I hope that this Mercury retrograde cycle is helpful for you, and I hope that this information is helpful for you, too.

All right, until next time.

Bye.