Mercury Retrograde - Jan. 30 to Feb. 21, 2021
Merry Mercury Retrograde!
Mercury begins his apparent backward motion today, the first for 2021, kicking off three Mercury retrograde cycles for this year in Tropical air signs. Prepare for the usual delays and minor headaches, faulty components, bad information and computer glitches. But that is the stuff every astrologer will be writing about, and I want to go in a different direction, looking at the deeper meaning of this Mercury retrograde and how it fits into the large cycles at play.
To begin, Mercury will spend the entire retrograde cycle in the Tropical zodiacal sign of Aquarius, where it is joined by Sun, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, and of course, the Moon will make a transit of Aquarius while Mercury is retrograde there. As well, astroid Pallas and Centaur Chariklo are also in Tropical Aquarius, making for 7 to 8 celestial bodies in this short stretch of the sky at any one time. There is considerable energy focused into this Tropical Zodiac sign and this segment of the Winter Quadrant of the chart. However, the Tropical zodiacal sign is only half of the story, and so to get a full picture, we will want to consider the True Constellation Sidereal Zodiac (TCS) placement, as well.
As with many astrological cycles, Mercury retrogrades shift through the elements in a fairly regular order. For the last couple of years, Mercury retrogrades have occurred in predominantly Tropical water signs. For about a year before that they were in Tropical fire, and before that they were in Tropical earth signs. There was a period of considerable overlap between the fire and earth elements. In some instances, Mercury will go retrograde in a given sign and then move backward into the previous sign (of the preceding element). This year, 2021, will not see any of the three Mercury retrogrades of the year cross back into earth signs. They are all purely in the Tropical air element. This means that on the surface, all our 're-think' in 2021 will be about our thinking, knowledge and information, but the Tropical zodiac is not alone or singular, and so it combines with the True Constellational placements to further cycles of deeper meaning.
As I stated previously, the Tropical Zodiac is just half the story because in our time-period the Tropical zodiac and the True Constellational zodiac are out of synch by about one sign, with the TCS being almost one full sign previous to the Tropical zodiac (give or take, the real constellations are not each 30 degrees, after all). This means that when a planet transits a Tropical air sign, it is also (generally speaking) in a TCS earth sign, and so this year will see a layering of air and earth - a reevaluation of how we think about the earth, resources, ownership, values, those things that we attach value to and the thoughts and beliefs we hold about what possession means and how we distribute goods across our species and how that effects the natural world.
In the previous Mercury retrograde cycle, when there was a Tropical emphasis on water, there was a TCS focus on air, and so during those retrogrades we rethought our emotional reactions and feelings about information, misinformation, beliefs, communication and communications systems, news, hearsay and propaganda. As each cycle flows into the next the themes overlap, and how we deal with them evolves based upon the element that shifts. For instance, the element that will remain constant from the last cycle to this cycle is air (information and thought processes) though it changes from the more subtle TCS level to the more obvious Tropical level, while the shift is from water at the more obvious Tropical level (emotions, feelings) to earth at the more subtle TCS level (the physical and things we value). So we now move beyond the emotional, and look at the real, the grounded, the earth-based, but these are not big, obvious shifts, because the Tropical zodiacal level has shifted, and it tends to be the more obvious, surface level of reality. In this way, the subtle, underground movements of the previous cycle burst out into conscious awareness, while a new subtle level emerges that will become obvious and surface-level when the cycle shifts the next time... As someone in some famous old book once said, truly, "...wheels within wheels..."
So my surmise is that this particularly year of Mercury retrogrades is quite important, and that this first retrograde of the year is especially important. The massive array of planets in Tropical Aquarius is very important, and especially so as both Saturn and Jupiter are there, having started both their new 20-year cycle, as well as their new 200-year cycle there only a month previous, and leading all the other planets into this area of the chart where they all meet up to declare Aquarian/Saturnian energies to the world. As Saturn is the ancient, long-term ruler of Aquarius, that planet in its own sign greatly empowers the entire grouping. But even when we look at all of these planets in the TCS zodiac, they are also all in TCS Capricorn and STILL ruled by Saturn, so Saturn for the win! The message is all Saturn. And Saturn's message is 'get real' and 'reign it in'! (Or else...)
As Uranus is in Tropical earth, while the Tropical Aquarian pile-up is in Tropical air and TCS earth, and all the Mercury retrogrades of 2021 are in Tropical air and TCS earth, with the Aquarians all squaring Uranus by sign, you can bet that we are in for surprises, shocks, shapeups, revelations and realizations to come, and specifically about our thinking and ideas concerning earth and our treatment of it. And while it is easy to say that this is about the political level, and it is, we may be tempted to remain glued to individual themes or incidents at the expense of the bigger picture. Saturn, for all his ability to restrict, is in the end really about the bigger picture, and especially so in Aquarius. Saturn will be in Tropical Aquarius for three years and then TCS Aquarius for the next three years, and Pluto, lurking behind in Tropical Capricorn for the next four years (but still being ruled by Saturn...) will move into Tropical Aquarius where it will stay for over two decades and then moves into TCS Aquarius where it will also stay for over two decades. By the time Pluto has finished up its long movement across both Tropical and TCS Aquarius, we will be well into the 2060s. 2021 is the first year of this new cycle, and while it is not "The Age of Aquarius", because Precessional Ages are determined by the Precession of the Equinox and not planetary transits, we are absolutely moving into an Aquarian/air period that will be very strong through the next 40 plus years and will have influence throughout the next two centuries.
So what does that mean, here and now, today? Well, first and foremost, this is Saturn, so it means 'get your patience cap on'! Nothing is happening overnight. One presidential election isn't going to magically fix everything. Second, get your mind wrapped around the fact that while change is inevitable, Saturn it will require your active participation and a long-term commitment to working diligently and with effort to bring about the world you want to see. Saturn is not a "savior god", and doesn't do "hero", so roll up your sleeves and get ready to work, get in the dirt and bring your ideas into form through practical, realistic and pragmatic application of incremental goals, steady action and perseverance. Saturn demands of you personal responsibility. Nothing less will do. You either participate, or you don't get to bitch when it doesn't go your way. If you do, Saturn will tell you, "Tough luck". Saturn would remind you that you are responsible for the world, and that no excuses about powerlessness or apathy will suffice. You are the ones you have been waiting on, but you are welcome to keep waiting, if you don't really want real change, and just prefer to whine and bitch (either is fine with Saturn). I would point out though that throughout the entire Mercury retrograde, Saturn is in sextile to Chiron, offering a time when we might gain some rest and healing, and make ready to move forward, so Saturn isn't just offering hard lessons. As well, within a day of Mercury's direct motion in late February, Saturn will make his first square to Uranus, setting off the new 2021 cycle, so taking this time to rest and regroup, to heal and make ready for future movement, might be an excellent use of your time and the natural inward focus of the Mercury retrograde. Mercury will be reiterating Saturn's lessons during the retrograde, after all, so rethinking the last year, and our Saturnian experiences during the past year, might be well-rewarded.
In terms of the bigger picture, I do have some ideas to offer. While we occupy much of our time with human interactions; the mental jewelry of ideologies, beliefs, superstitions and fears - mental masturbation of the highest order, all - there lurches toward Bethlehem to be born a true beast of our own making through our rampant expansionism (Jupiter), narcissism (Jupiter) and greed (Jupiter). That beast is the destabilization of climate patterns and the balance of the natural world with its invaluable, irreplaceable ecosystems. Can you possibly look at the combination of the air and earth elements, combined with these long-term cycles, and not see that they are pointing to our pathological issues with our own planet and the potential harvest that we stand poised to reap due to our unhealthy preoccupations? Uranus in Tropical earth is the planet earth saying, "Surprise, motherfuckers!" (And she sounds just like Samuel L. Jackson in my head...) Or as Joan Crawford told Tina in the movie Mommie Dearest, "She's bigger than you, she's faster, and she'll always beat you"... Hers is the final word, because you are just a speck of dust on her back, and the entire human race is just an annoying ant's nest in comparison to the size, age and experience of the earth.
The current Saturnian/Aquarian clusterfuck, and the upcoming decades and centuries of its influence, is Saturn saying, "You can't expand forever. That which expands must contract, for that is the law of the Universe. But keep it up, and see what happens!" Wherever anything has gotten out of control, run amuck, moved beyond its boundaries, Saturn is there to restrain it, constrain it and force a contraction. Do you think a wildly fluctuating climate might just put a crimp on unabated human expansionism, and the philosophical delusions that underpin such actions? I do, and I know Saturn very well.
So my prediction for the first Mercury retrograde of this new year and new cycle is that we are probably going to see a reminder in the next three weeks that we have real (Saturn) issues dealing with the earth and air (weather/climate/planet) that are bigger than our self-created problems. That is not to say that we don't have real problems, ideological and self-created as they are. We do, and that will be a part of this Mercury retrograde, as well, of course. But, in the long run, we are liable to begin to see that ideology is really, at is fundamentalist core, just a way for the fear-based and the greedy to keep putting off the deep and systemic realignments that we need to make in terms of economics, energy-usage, human rights and equitable resource distribution, especially as we move into a more and more unstable (Uranus) earthly climate cycle. Who could possibly benefit from such a delay?
So in this current Mercury retrograde, it is important to keep abreast of what is happening, but it might be a time to remember that there are bigger issues that demand our attention, and so we may have to learn to multi-task, dealing with short-term problems while also beginning to tackle long term issues. Getting the US back into the Paris Climate Accord was a good first step, but it should be the first step in our journey of a thousand miles, for we truly have a long way to go. Luckily, Saturn can teach us patience and perseverance, and should we sincerely ask Saturn to teach us, he will happily oblige. Being ruler of all hidden knowledge, Saturn has so much to teach us, much that we can't even conceive. Every time that we pull away from Saturn in horror, rejecting his blunt truths, we invite delusion and disaster. Truly, it is time that we as a species rethink, begin to grow up and put away our childish mental jewelry. Fortunately, Saturn is the end of childish things and delusion. As the Bene Gesserit of Frank Herbert's Dune series say in shorthand for their much longer and more elaborate goals, "Grow up, humans!" Saturn couldn't agree more. Enjoy the Mercury retrograde! 😀
