What dangers does retrograde Mercury pose, and when does it start moving backward? In this article, you will receive expert commentary from a practicing astrologer about what you can expect from retrograde Mercury and how it will manifest in your life.
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Periods of Retrograde Mercury
Retrograde Mercury in 2024 by Months:
- December 13, 2023 – January 2, 2024
- April 1 – April 25, 2024
- August 5 – August 28, 2024
- November 26 – December 15, 2024
Retrograde Mercury in 2025 by Months:
- March 15 – April 7, 2025
- July 18 – August 11, 2025
- November 9 – November 29, 2025
How Does Retrograde Mercury Affect Your Life?
A retrograde planet in your horoscope indicates specific processes in your life that cannot be completed and will regularly break off and repeat. For example, if the planet indicating marriage is retrograde, it is highly likely that there will be multiple marriages.
For reference:
- A fast-moving direct planet indicates rapid and intense processes.
- A slow-moving planet indicates prolonged but less vivid processes.
- A retrograde planet indicates incomplete processes.
A retrograde planet in the horoscope outlines the flow of events in a specific area of your life. But what happens when Mercury, Mars, or another planet becomes retrograde at the present moment? What should you expect? The answer is nothing. The retrograde motion of planets in the moment itself does not affect your life in any way.
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What Happens During Periods of Retrograde Mercury?
At the moment of your birth, according to authoritative astrological practices1, the cosmic radiation imbued in the atmosphere “imprints” itself on your nervous system. Specifically, your body becomes particularly sensitive to the points where the planets were positioned at your birth.
When the planets pass through these same points, your body sensitively reacts to these moments, and you unconsciously make a series of decisions leading to a pre-determined event. The key factor here is the moment in time when the planets return to their original positions in your horoscope, not the times when these planets become retrograde in other locations.
The retrograde motion of planets, including retrograde Mercury, does not directly influence the events in your life in any way.
How to Practically Verify the Effects of Retrograde Mercury?
As a practical example, I took the natal chart of a randomly selected famous individual—Rodney King—who had retrograde Mercury.
You've likely heard Mercury is responsible for trades, purchases, communication, etc. However, these general significations of Mercury rarely manifest in their pure form in real life. In the horoscope of a specific person, Mercury falls into a particular sector of the sky known as an astrological house. This immediately "obligates" Mercury to manifest in a specific area of life, which may be far removed from communication or commerce.
For example, in Rodney King's horoscope, Mercury is located in the 12th house of confinement and simultaneously manifests in the context of Mars (which rules Mercury and is associated with conflicts and confrontations in this chart). At the same time, the 12th house of confinement is ruled by Jupiter, which signifies the judicial system. This means that Mercury is associated with arrests and detentions related to law violations in this particular chart.
What remains of Mercury's natural significations generally pertain to communication, trades, medical substances, and knowledge? In this case, we are left with two specific manifestations of Mercury:
- Lies or the spread of dangerous ideas leading to arrests, or conversely, significant public uproar caused by arrests.
- The use of prohibited medical substances (drugs) resulting in detentions.
Additionally, since Mercury is retrograde, this indicates repeated arrests, violations of the law, or a return to drug use.
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Indeed, Rodney King is known for his scandals and minor offenses, often linked to excessive use of prohibited substances. His arrests sparked significant public outrage, particularly following his harsh detainment. This fully confirms the specific role of Mercury in this particular horoscope. As you can see, it has nothing in common with the usual interpretations of Mercury. In the second part of our course on predictive astrology, we teach students how to read a natal chart in this way while cross-referencing its indications with known reality before making predictions.
Furthermore, throughout his life, he committed four offenses, each coinciding with rare moments when several planets related to the 12th house simultaneously returned to their positions in his natal chart. Meanwhile, there were approximately 165 periods of retrograde Mercury during his lifetime, and in 98% of cases, retrograde Mercury had no impact on the flow of events at all.
As you can see, a natal chart and the planets within it operate differently from how they are often described in popular blogs. As a practicing astrologer, I strongly recommend relying on statements that are free of subjectivity and easily verifiable in practice.
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J.B. Morinus Astrologia Gallica, book 21. ↩
