This Mercury retrograde has been a powerful one and it’s not over yet. He stations direct on the 23rd April and he won’t be out of the shadow until the 11th May when he reaches the degree in which he turned retrograde.
It seems like he cast a long shadow leading up to the retrograde. A week or so before the station, I woke up to find my computer had blue-screened in the night. A panicked restart found me sighing with relief to find out my pc was still working but mindful of Mercury it prompted a mass backup of all my work followed by a virus check, disc-clean-up and a 36 hour check disc utility which drive me nuts. Take away my PC and I’m not a happy [Easter] bunny. But once completed I breathed a sigh of relief feeling like I was prepared for whatever Mercury wanted to throw at me. It seems like he had plenty of ideas!
31st March – I had a parcel delivered to me. Imagine the disappointment on my face when I realised the parcel wasn’t for me. Back into the post it went…
1st April – Mercury sent me another letter which didn’t belong to me…
3rd April – after a week of fighting off a cold I suddenly developed the worst headache I think I’ve ever had. I could have cried with the pain. After two hours it disappeared as fast as it had come and the cold disappeared with it. It was literally like it burnt itself out.
12th April – Arrgh, hit by a computer virus! The specific virus was ‘fake virus warning’. It was late at night and I was very tired. I had just finished a post for Lua and suddenly my virus checker went mad screaming warnings regardless of which site I went on. I ran a quick virus check and it returned over a 1000 infected files. I felt my blood run cold. I ran a deep virus check through the night only to discover at the end that the virus was fake (but a virus in itself!). I didn’t get much sleep that night and my blood boiled at those who reek such havoc for some unknown pleasure.
In the first week of the retrograde, three people who don’t know anything about astrology asked me ‘what the hell is going on’? All of them commented that people seemed angrier than usual. One person had also witnessed an fight where one man injured his head. Thankfully it wasn’t a bad injury.
Meanwhile Mercury has been up to tricks on a wider scale. In Manchester, in the lead up to the FA cup semi-final today, tickets were stolen in transit – apparently a post office worker was arrested in connection to it. Then a fire at a scrap yard under the M1 motorway brought chaos to travellers making their way to the match in question as thousands travelled from North to South. In another interesting story, the US postal service is currently red faced after realising the statue of liberty printed on over a billion stamps is not the actual statue of liberty. (Thanks to my astrologer friend Jan for pointing out that link!).
Mercury retrograde in Aries really likes to turns things on their head. He forces us to confront problems in a new way. Sometimes it seems he asks us to backtrack and start again. Retrograde Mercury in Aries asks us to look at what motivates us, what inspires us. How do we envision our future?
As Mercury skips over the stellium of planets in my 9th house and lands on my MC, I have found myself re-thinking where I am going both metaphorically and physically. I’ve mentioned before that I want to write but the urge to focus solely on my writing has become an overwhelming force that I cannot ignore. Coupled with Saturn’s transit of my 3rd house and Jupiter’s transit of my 9th, it’s hardly surprising. To that end, I have removed the readings services I offered on this blog. It was a hard decision but I feel I have more to offer as a writer. By removing readings I am freeing up time to concentrate on writing my book about Black Moon Lilith. Lilith has been shrieking at me to just get this done!
I have also decided to bring Lua back to its original focus, namely astrology. At the beginning of the year I decided to start writing more about Tarot here but I have been feeling recently that this work would be best served on a separate blog so that Lua remains an astrology niche. I have enormously encouraged by the positive comments that some of you have made on Tuesday Tarot posts and I am sorry if you are disappointed that this feature will now end. But, a new blog will manifest in the future where we can explore Tarot together. I will be removing the Tuesday Tarot posts but I will possibly re-publish them on the new blog as an archive along with the comments that were made on them.
It feels a little strange to backtrack. With Mars in Taurus in the 10th I can be quite relentless when I decide to do something but along with everything else, Jupiter has just made a conjunction to my natal Saturn. I am feeling the need to explore my horizons but I need to do so in a realistic way.
As I write this post, retrograde Mercury is sitting on my MC in the 9th house (conjunct Venus). Before I’d realised this, I’d found myself writing ‘when I visualise my future, I see myself living in Lisbon and writing – ebooks, horoscopes, novels, blogs…Writing makes me happy”.
How eloquent astrology can be. For some time it has haunted me that I need to make a change or rather make room for what is important to me. The other night I dreamed of a circus elephant charging towards me. Oddly enough I wasn’t afraid and put out my hands to embrace him. The elephant has been in the room for a while but the only way he got me to notice him was by making a run at me! I think Mercury tipped him off…
I look forward to writing more for you all 🙂
Fabulous post Leah. And what a perfect use of Mercury retrograde to rethink and revisit what you want to concentrate on. This retrograde has felt particularly malicious, and my computer has been bluescreening regularly – luckily it just reboots itself. Usually when I’m in the middle of writing something!
Thank you Jan (for your comment and also the tip re the postage stamps!). Yes, Mercury does seemed to have been on fire this time round! I hope your computer starts behaving soon.