Why Mercury’s Upcoming Retrograde Is Going To Be So Helpful

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology Happy Friday everybody. Today we're going to take a look at Mercury's upcoming retrograde in the sign of Virgo, and we're going to talk about three reasons that this Mercury Retrograde is probably going to be a very helpful and positive retrograde for most people or why there are some features of this retrograde that suggests, at the very least this is not a Mercury retrograde that looks disastrous, or that has like signatures of like real difficulty around it.

In fact, there are a lot of very positive signatures around this Mercury retrograde. I want to show you what some of those are and get you ready for the retrograde coming up. Next week I think we'll do horoscopes where we take a look at where Mercury's landing in all 12 whole sign houses. You get a feel for where that retrograde might be showing up, but for now, I want to start with some basics here. So that is our agenda for today.

Don't forget to like and subscribe. Tell us your stories; share with us your stories or your comments in the comment section. That helps the channel to grow, and we really appreciate it. As always, a transcript of today's talk can be found on the website nightlightastrology.com.

When you are over there at the website nightlightastrology.com, be sure to check out the flash sale, which is going from the 14th to the 21st. So you have until Monday to take advantage of this sale on all of my upcoming courses.

So you have the Masterclass series that starts in January, and Roots and Spheres also starts in January; these are two popular classes that we offer. The Masterclass series is for the intermediate students of ancient astrology, Hellenistic astrology, and we have four different seminar series, one in the winter, spring, summer, and fall, and each on different advanced topics that I teach.

You can check those out. The new classes are listed under the Masterclass tab and on the courses page, and you can also check out Roots and Spheres, our monthly Moon circle; we meet before new and full moons; we diet plants and work with plant teachers alongside the astrology of every month. It's a really deep, immersive way of getting to know the astrology and getting bringing in plant allies to work with those energies.

Ashley and I lead that program every month that starts again in January, you can get both of those for sale and then my first-year program starts in November. Of course, the second year and horary classes start in June every year. But you could pick those up for next year if you wanted to get a good deal on them and plan on taking one or both of them.

Reading and Passages is an advanced practice group that meets to discuss charts and also work with live clients, and we workshop those readings together. That also starts in January. So all of my classes are on sale until Monday. If you like to take advantage of that, hit the Flash Sale tab when you go to the website nightlightastrology.com any questions that you have about any of our courses or the sale itself, email us at info@nightlightastrology.com.

Okay, so let's turn our attention to the real time clock so that we can look at Mercury's upcoming retrograde, and here we have it. So August 18. Here we are, and Mercury is at about 20 degrees of Virgo, and we'll turn retrograde shortly. So if we advance this just a little bit, you're going to see that it's by about next Wednesday, the 23rd, that Mercury is stationing and between Thursday or Wednesday and Friday of next week, but the 23rd through the 25th is really the period of time where you will experience that classic station to retrograde moment, which is often very chaotic or brings up the unexpected twists and turns that Mercury provides when stationing and turning retrograde. That's usually the part that people really notice about Mercury Retrogrades. But then, the rest of the cycle plays out over the course of the next three weeks.

So if we take this forward, you're going to see there's Mercury you can see sort of hanging out in the 12th house in Virgo. Let's move this, and you'll see that Mercury's retrograde is going to go down and find that cazimi moment around September 6, and then the station to direct is about September 15, and there are some features about this retrograde that I want to talk about with you guys that I think make this one a little bit more positive, constructive, helpful, or at the very least nondisastrous.

There are always going to be exceptions; some people get hit hard by Retrogrades, kind of no matter what, depends on where it's active in your chart, right the reason that I like this retrograde is there are three of them.

Number one is that Mercury's dignity is very good, and what is dignity and dignity is a category that of it's an ancient way of classifying or categorizing planets according to which signs they occupy. When Mercury is in Virgo, it is in its own home temple, and it is also the exalted guest or host of the same temple.

Now Mercury having rulership and exultation in the same sign is a unique feature of Mercury, and it's something that takes me the better part of a, you know, two hours two to two to three-hour lecture in my first-year program to really unpack for people because people will always ask the question, Why does Mercury get both domicile and exultation rulership in Virgo?

It's a lengthy explanation that I don't want to get into because, in order to do it correctly, we have to; it's a really deep and sort of elaborate, esoteric explanation. So you'll just have to trust me when I say that in ancient astrology, Mercury's position in Virgo was a very strong one, and one that grants Mercury a very constructive ability to be itself and do all of the things that it is best at and to do them most effectively.

Venus acts similarly when she's in, say, Taurus Libra or Pisces, where she has rulership or exultation, Mars in Aries, Capricorn, or Scorpio, and so on for all the planets. A dignity essentially is a way of saying that a planet is at home and can behave and act like itself.

So you know, when Venus is in Taurus, it's like you or me being in our own home or our own bedroom or something, our own apartment, there's a sense of being able to act like it be ours that we can be ourselves most easily and now it comes natural to us being in your own home. If you're if you have guests over in your home, they rely on you, so planets that are not in their own signs that are in another planet's sign rely on the host of that sign in the same way that you or I would rely on the host if we were staying at like an air b&b or something that air they give us the keys or the to the lockbox or whatever.

So, first of all, the feature of this upcoming retrograde that is most promising is that Mercury is going to be a very effective Mercury. It's not having to work or act through the lens of a different planet. When Mercury is retrograde in Taurus, as Mercury was earlier in the spring, it is Mercury's in Venus's sign and the moon's sign and has to operate through it has to try to be Mercury, but also, it's doing so in a space that is very Venusian and lunar, and that's Taurus.

It's not that Mercury can't do that. But it's that it has to, in a sense, it's like when in Rome, you know, I have to act and behave like Venus and the moon because I'm in their sphere, and I have to act according to the customs of their temple, and that will compromise something of Mercury's ability to be itself, and so it has to be Venusian, it has to be lunar.

In some places, the compromise will be much more difficult. For example, when you place Mercury into Jupiter-ruled signs like Sagittarius or Gemini, Mercury really struggles there. Because there is something contrary about Mercury and Jupiter like an archetypal dyad that forms a kind of polarity so Mercury in Gemini or Sagittarius is said to be in its detriment because there's a kind of archetypal tension between Mercury and Jupiter when Mercury has to act and behave in a Jupiterian manner. It doesn't come as naturally; it's more, you know, it's more tense for Mercury to do so.

When Mercury is in its own sign, it's just Mercury gets to be Mercury, and that dignity usually is going to make like when you have a Mercury retrograde in Gemini or Virgo in particular, it's almost like you have all the tools at your disposal to make it a more effective experience and it just there's something about it that makes sense, and it doesn't feel like there are wires that are getting crossed. So there's a kind of clarity and crispness and ease with Mercury being retrograde in its own sign, and it is for the duration of the retrograde it goes retrograde in Virgo retrogrades down into earlier Virgo stations and turns direct goes back to work.

So it's well-dignified Mercury all the way through September, and that's nice. Mercury can do things more effectively, whether that's on the level of thinking and thought or mind speech and communication or technology or organization or philosophy or, you know, turning things around in our heads and arguing and debating with, you know, our own ideas and thoughts, all mercurial things, right. We can do that work in a way that's more effective. So that's one thing to remember.

The second is that this retrograde has a really nice testimony from Jupiter in Taurus. So let's look at this again. The upcoming retrograde will, and this is Mercury at the station point. Let me just back it up a little bit. So we'll get to here. Let's see a station. So the retrograde of Mercury goes all the way down through a trine with Jupiter, and that plays out just really nicely. So here comes the trine, right you can see it forming between Mercury and Jupiter.

The other thing I forgot to mention this about the dignity of Mercury being in its own sign, and exultation also gives it this special dignity status when it comes to its retrograde called being in its own chariot, which means that it's also protected from the Sun's rays or the combustion that would typically happen when Mercury gets close to the Sun. Mercury or Venus, any planet that gets close to the Sun, is said to be burnt up and weakened or, you know, greatly compromised.

As I'm making this, Venus is about to hit the cazimi mark with the Sun, and that means that Venus is going from a kind of debilitated place into a space of rebirth and renewal and recovery.

Well, Mercury going through this process while being in its own domicile and exultation protects it from that tremendous weakening that often happens for a planet as it gets close to the Sun in its synodic cycle. So you have this protection of Mercury from the beams of the Sun, as it is retrograding, it is also gradually picking up a nice trine from Jupiter, and I think it's interesting that Jupiter, as that trine gets picked up, also turns retrograde.

It's interesting; it's as if Mercury and Jupiter have some work together to do some that there's something that they're trying to do together, and it's, you know, it's a trine. trines are of the nature of Jupiter at the trine to Jupiter; it's a trine to Jupiter in a benefic sign and Venus. Venus is about to turn direct.

I think, broadly speaking, this Mercury Retrograde has the ability to work on behalf of something that Venus and Jupiter are trying to sort out as Venus's just turned direct, and it's like Mercury's helping with some kind of reorganization and Mercury's very well dignified and sort of protected from that combustion process.

So I just love these details because it really paints the picture of something that's pretty uplifting and constructive taking place. You know, it's kind of like solving problems, getting things done, working things out, reordering, revisioning, redesigning in some ways, integrating lessons learned and so forth, and seeing them as they become a part of the tapestry of our lives sort of well placed.

Anyway, then as Mercury, you know, gets into the station to turn direct, you're going to see that Mercury is still, you know, very close to it as you can see it's stationing and turning direct here, and it's still in a trine with Jupiter, and then it turns direct, and goes back through the trine with Jupiter.

So that's all happening as Venus is still up for a good portion of that time square to Jupiter seems like a very strong moment for Jupiter, and I think that this is again reason to think that this retrograde is not going to devastate us, but at best, could also be really helpful and constructive retrograde; we really get things done and reordered in the right way.

Finally, one thing that is to me just really interesting about this retrograde is the way that the retrograde of Mercury avoids the malefics. So what I want you to notice is that as Mercury is coming to turn retrograde, it's the faster moving planet, and it's coming into a conjunction with Mars, malefic Mars right, meaning a planet that can be very difficult.

The intensity of Mars, however, is avoided because Mercury refrains from making the conjunction and turns retrograde. What I find so interesting is that on the other side of the cazimi, once Mercury starts rising as the Morningstar. Mercury goes into an opposition with Saturn. You can see here's Mercury starting to get to the opposition with Saturn. But Mercury is going to station and refrain before it can get into that opposition.

So it's like Mercury's doing this little trapeze walk between the malefics almost conjoins Mars at the start, but then Retrogrades hits Jupiter in the process; big Jupiterian trine it's protected from combustion; it's got all this nice dignity. It backs up its stations as it's about to oppose Saturn, but it refrains and turns direct.

To me, this is like there's something about this that suggests weaving order out of chaos or walking a line to avoid worst case scenarios, or getting something done in a little window of time. You have to walk it really tightly and be kind of like have things go right in in a pressured situation, but they very well could here because you can kind of see the picture that Mercury's painting, of avoiding these worst case scenarios, avoiding combustion. There's a lot in this retrograde that speaks to Mercury avoiding disaster, and not even that, but I think being constructive despite pressures and maybe helping cap off the Venus retrograde cycle somehow.

Okay, well, these are very impressionistic takes that, and I want to let you guys into the process that I have as an astrologer. Oftentimes, before I make a video exploring the archetype of Mercury retrograde in Virgo or look at your horoscopes or whatever, I just try to get a feel for what the actual transit looks like by studying the context, and that context can give you there's just these beautiful, the retrograde, and its context becomes like a, you know, drawing a tarot card and then drawing two more to offer a little context to the first card pulled.

I find that these little contextual details can give us glimpses that we sometimes don't get because we look at the transits in a vacuum. So anyway, I hope it was useful for you. I hope you have a great weekend. I hope you will have a very positive retrograde starting off next week. And we will take a look at it again through some horoscopes as well. Next, we can get a sense of what whole sign house it falls into. But that's it for now. I hope you guys have a great weekend, and we'll see you again soon. Bye, everyone.