Mercury Retrograde | What to Do when Things Go Haywire

Mercury turns retrograde approximately three times a year. Each of these periods gives you a time that when all that can happen, will happen – like a cosmic Murphy’s Law campaign has been given the go ahead! Cars start acting up, mail gets delivered to other addresses, “the check’s in the mail” takes three times as long to get there, computers will blowout and people will change their minds half way down the road! You start to wonder what to do when things go haywire!

Misunderstandings are par for the course and making sure you reiterate every spoken agreement as you will find that people are not hearing what you are saying. Crossing you “t’s” and dotting your “i’s” is de rigeur. If you are in legal court proceedings, you may find that the other party asks for a continuance or doesn’t show up at all!

What is a Mercury retrograde? If you are of the planetary type, a simple explanation is that all the planets seem to “march” across the sky. When a planet goes”retrograde” it would appear in your telescope to move backwards from the forward progression it was making previously. Since Mercury is the planet of communication, the blame for so much confusion falls on its’ shoulders.

From a metaphysical perspective, these three times in the year when Mercury is retrograde is to rebalance or regulate what is going on. The big Dow Stock Exchange in the Fall of 2008 came during a Mercury retrograde in Libra, whose symbols is the Scales. Interesting, don’t you think? The retrograde times is to reflect, rethink and re-adjust. It helps us step back and watch the football game from the sidelines to get a better perspective of the whole game and its’ many moving parts. Things will fall in place when it is time for them to and it also helps us make clear decisions of what we really want in life.

Years ago, I was delivering flowers in one of my many job incarnations, and in late January and early February, the rule of thumb is to prepare for Valentine’s Day. Well, along comes about that time a Mercury retrograde, of which I announced to the assembled designers, manager and boss, and within a couple of days, the wire transfer system, FTD, had “gone down” and couldn’t be connected to our computer. More importantly, the golden winged dude carrying the flowers as a trademark of FTD is the winged god Mercury, and the message transport system is dubbed “the Mercury’ or “Merc” for short! Needless to say, the boss told me to never let him know when there is another Mercury retrograde after he got the system reconnected to his computers right before February 14th.

Because we as humans expect things to run in a straight line for us, when Mercury goes retrograde, we get upset and short tempered with people because of this could of confusion that seems to be permeating everywhere. The easiest way to deal with life during Mercury retrograde times is just know that something, somewhere is bound to go haywire and even if you fix the problem, expect to revisit the issue again once the planet is moving forward again. HINT: Do no, I mean, DO NOT get any car repairs done during a Mercury retrograde. You might get the wrong sized tires put on your car (like me once), or the mechanic will have to “re-do” the work – and you pay twice! Whatever you do – DO NOT sign contracts, buy cars, appliances, upgrade your software, break up with your mate, or conquer a country – you’ll have egg on your face and have a “re-do” to make up.

Purchase a  Farmers’ Almanac or a Year-at-a-Glace Astrology book and mark the Mercury retrograde times for each year. Then you will be a half step of the game when it comes around and you’ll be spending that time to reflect on your future as the computer is on the fritz and the checks get lost. You can just say in a la-ti-da tone of voice, “Of course the check’s in the mail! Mercury is handling it all!”

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