Yes, it’s that time again, boys and grrls. Mercury is about to do its retrograde thing, just like it does two or three times every year. May 26 is the official start date, and the little bugger won’t go direct again until June 20.
(Insert usual warnings here: back up your hard drives now, don’t sign any contracts during the retrograde period, double-check your change at the video store, and all that jazz.)
Yeah, we’ve heard it all before, and sometimes we even make the effort to pay attention. Sometimes we get hit with a few communication snafus, and sometimes we get off scot-free. Sometimes we get smug about it and then Mercury hits us with a catastrophic blue-screen motherboard crash in the follow-up shadow period.
Along with representing everyday communications and information exchange, Mercury represents the Trickster archetype. If your mental picture of the Great Cosmic Joker in the Sky (or in the collective unconscious, if you will) includes nothing but bells, bad knock-knock jokes, and a few pies in the face, allow me to gently disillusion you.
He can be real bastard.
Mercury as Trickster has a job to do. He is not put here to make our lives easier, more pleasant, more thigh-slapping humorous—that would be Jerry Lewis. Mercury the Trickster’s job is to shatter our existing mental paradigms.
You know all those comfortable preconceived ideas you carry around, the ones that help you get through the day? Like “Stoplights turn green after being red for a given amount of time,” or “This contract I’m signing with the dog groomer can’t possibly do me any harm.” When Mercury the Trickster is involved, the stoplight might decide to skip green altogether, causing a nice four-car pileup. The Canine Unit could turn up and indict you on charges of contributing to an international smuggling operation involving a doggy deodorant banned in forty-nine countries as cruel and unusual.
Think of it this way: how funny is a Zen koan (“What’s the sound of one hand clapping?”) when it involves your real actual life? Contemplation is all very well, but in real life we tend to like our existing frameworks to stay put.
Mercury has many faces, and when he’s in retrograde, the Trickster is one of the most prominent. This time around, we could be in for more interesting twists than usual.
Foremost, the retrograde happens in Mercury’s home sign of Gemini. Nowhere is Mercury more mercurial than here. Furthermore, there’s a lingering square to Uranus that will, without a doubt, cause a twist or two.
Mercury squared to Uranus usually coincides with mental agitation-- not “good” agitation or “bad” agitation, just agitation in general. Look for a flurry of activity around the blogosphere and elsewhere beginning this week (the square actually moves into solid orb near the 14th.) Sometimes this agitation leads to spots of brilliance, while sometimes it just leads to sleepless nights and ridiculous arguments.
Avoid caffeine if you can bear it (I can’t, but good luck to you.) A few bouts of insomnia are damn-near inevitable.
Due to the retrograde, this square will last a lot longer than usual—all the way through July 5, which is the date of the exact aspect, with a brief grace period between June 12 and June 27.
You can get some sleep then. Meantime, try to make peace with the bags under your eyes.
Did you know that Uranus is considered to be the higher octave of Mercury? If Mercury the retrograde Trickster will be showing us his backside anyway, what in the world will happen when Shock-Of-Your-Life Uranus gets in on the action?
What’s going to jump out of the cosmic cake and yell “Surprise!” this time around?
In part two, I’ll offer up a surmise or three, plus gibber on a bit about how Mercury and Uranus are related. I’d do it now, but I’ll need something to keep me occupied while I’m busy not sleeping.
(Pictured above: "Invocation (Trickster Throws the Dice)" by Anna Conti, acrylic, http://www.bigcrow.com/ )
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