Oh Mercury Retrograde, what are we to do with you?
The astrologers guide us thusly: It’s a time to review and possibly to redo. Don’t sign a contract. Double check your travel plans. I bought an air fryer and regret it already. I knew better!
But I want to show you another way to look at Mercury Retrograde and step away from how we usually think about it.
Also, in case you don’t already know, the Mercury Retrograde rules have to do with all the things that Mercury is associated with in modern day astrology, like traveling and communication. During the retrograde, these things may go awry.
Mercury Retrograde, though, doesn’t have to be all mishaps and bungles and bad air fryers. It’s also a time for dreaming, for the unconsicous, for laying low, for meditation, for free association.
Now, the unconscious never takes a vacation, but when Mercury (your mind, your thoughts) appears to be going backwards, which is what the retrograde is, we can choose to become more aware of what is usually beneath the surface, hidden from our day to day activities and lives and thinking!
Do you remember your dreams? Do you keep a dream journal?
Sigmund Freud believed that dreams were the royal road to the unconscious. The history of psychoanalysis (and I’m going on year four of my analytic training!) is also a history of looking at dreams in new ways, less as divination or fortune telling and more the idea that your dreams say something about you, about your personal unconscious. (My book coming out next year has more to say on this topic).
So, dear friend, fear not Mercury Retrograde and its faulty wires. Instead, think of it as The Hermit card, as a time to go within. Yes, you may need to stop and to redo or renew, but you may also regenerate.
Is it time to return to your dreams? And not just your nighttime dreams but the waking dreams as well, and I use dream here as a metaphor for your goals. Are you afraid to see them, to know them? “Open your eyes,” says Mercury Retrograde, “The eyes of the heart.”
Freud wrote that dreams were our wishes, disguised, and the dream itself was their fulfillment. Are you ready to unmask your dream? To take it out of the shadows? Hmm!
And, of course, we can talk about it all. Look here if you want to share with me your dreams, and more, in a private personal reading. And if you want to talk about politics, or Freud, that’s fine too xo
