Mercury Retrograde in Aquarius 2022

How are you feeling today and what house is Aquarius in your chart?

Ever the shape-shifter, Mercury rules mutable signs Gemini and Virgo. Masculine with traditionally masculine planets, feminine with traditionally feminine planets, benefic with benefic planets, malefic with malefic planets, Mercury is hot, cold, wet, dry, a breathless rush of pure mystery. At ease with ambivalence, Mercury teaches us to honour our complexities. Inconsistency has its virtues. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are better when we don't paper over the things that don't seem to 'fit.'

Traditionally retrogradation was a malefic condition as the planet doesn't behave as it should. From our earthly perspective, a retrograde planet appears to move backward in the sky, tracing over steps it's already taken. But what's wrong with a little disobedience - or a lot? Maleficence always begs the questions of to whom, about what, and for how long.

Retrogrades tease us about what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. Retrogrades call us to think twice. In the Saturn-ruled fixed Air Sign of Aquarius, a Mercury retrograde questions the things we tell ourselves about the distances we maintain - between ourselves and certain people, places and points of view. I don't mean physical distance (or 'social distance' as it were). I mean the way we keep things at a distance because we're afraid of what we become when we're too close. We're afraid of sunk costs. Of stuck-ness. We want to stay current so we never commit. Yet we want people to stay committed to us.

If you're that committed to detachment, haven't you already demonstrated a capacity to be true to something?