Can a Comic Book Hero Explain Retrograde Mercury?
To begin with, let’s set the record stright: Mercury is not the only planet to go retrograde. We hear about it a lot because it happens 3 times a year, but actually every planet and asteroid except for the Sun and Moon go retrograde at one time or the other. It is actually rare for there to be a time when we aren’t experiencing some retrograde or the other. Every planet from Mercury which is closest to the Sun all the way out to Pluto and Ceres at the outer edge of our solar system goes retrograde. And so do all the Astroids, like Chiron, Vesta, Sedna, Pallas and Juno.
We can better understand retrograde Mercury by taking a favorite comic book character as an example – let’s say Zorro with a capital Z. When the planets change directions (and they all do) they make a kind of “moonwalk” in the sky as they appear to zig backwards in their orbit.
These Mercury Retrogrades (and Mars, Venus, Pluto, Chiron or Jupiter Retrogrades). Are zig-zags that the planets make in the sky and they take various amounts of time. A retrograde of Mercury takes 3 weeks, but larger planets like Pluto or Saturn spend up to 6 months or longer in retrograde motion. But just looking at retrograde is to overlook some of the most important elements of the retrograde cycle. That’s a lot like eating the frosting and ignoring the cake. Since we want to have our cake and eat it too – we need to understand the whole picture. The picture that retrograde makes starts weeks or months before the retrograde begins, and ends the same amount of time AFTER the retrograde ends. It is a three part process.
The three distinct parts of a mercury retrograde, or other planetary retrograde cycle each have a