Making the Most of Mercury Retrograde

Aug 04, 2024

If you have any exposure to astrology other than me, you’ll know Mercury retrograde gets a bad rap. Most astrologers advise to stop what you’re doing, expect delays, avoid travel, blame it for your tech glitches, etc. But where’s the line between how much is actually cosmic influence verses how much we create our own reality based on our fears and expectations?

I personally love Mercury retrograde periods. I always find clarity during them and more often than not, receive some pretty major unexpected gifts. I find myself looking forward to the surprise that each retrograde period has in store for me - and I hope that by the end of the post you’ll feel the same way.

Like anything in astrology, Mercury retrograde is an important part of the cycle of life. And it happens almost-quarterly, so it’s about time we learned to make the most of it.

First, Mercury Retrograde 101

Mercury is the planet of communication, intellect and travel. In your natal chart, Mercury reveals how you think, process information, communicate and the types of things you’re interested in. It also influences your learning style, decision making process and even your sense of humor.

Mercury retrograde (or any planetary retrograde for that matter) occurs when a planet appears to move backwards in its orbit from our perspective here on Earth. It’s an optical illusion because of the relative speeds and positions of the planets in their orbits around the sun. In other words, Mercury’s orbit is not actually changing course, it’s just our perception from where we’re sitting.

When Mercury goes retrograde, it causes us to feel resistance when it comes to pushing forward or starting new things. It urges us to slow down, reflect and reassess various aspects of our lives. You can think of it in terms of feminine and masculine energy. When Mercury is direct, it’s in it’s masculine state - pushing, acting, driving forward. When Mercury is in retrograde, it’s in it’s feminine state - reflecting, releasing and receiving.

You know Mercury retrograde for negatively impacting our communication, technology, travel plans, and decision making process - but instead of seeing it as a time of chaos, I invite you to look at it as an opportunity to pause and gain clarity that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see.

If you were born with Mercury in Retrograde, you’re likely going to have a different experience than the rest of us over the next few weeks - a better one. You’re probably used to having a hard time explaining your ideas and needing extra time to decide how you want to speak your mind. That’s because you think best in reverse, so you’ll likely experience greater clarity during Mercury Retrograde periods. Just be patient with the rest of us if we need some extra time to think.

To learn how the cosmos are influencing you personally, book your reading here.

Why I think Mercury RX is so great

Mercury retrograde is the BEST time to reflect, refine, and reconnect with each other, ourselves, and what we’re really doing all of this for. As spiritual entrepreneurs, we’ve been rebelling against the “hustle” culture but as business owners, there’s still a sense of having to constantly be moving forward, and when we say things like “we’re going backwards” it’s considered a bad thing.

Mercury retrograde is a giant (kind of mandatory) invitation to stop moving forward and take the time to retrace our steps to learn from our lived experience so that we can make the adjustments needed to move forward in a more aligned way.

This retrograde is occurring from August 5th to August 28th and begins in the early degrees of Virgo, then moves back into Leo.

Virgo is going to help us comb through the details, reflect and reassess, and review processes, strategies and goals to uncover what’s working and what needs improvement.
Then Leo will help us breath new life into old projects and inject some extra enthusiasm into the things that we once felt passionate about but put on the back burner because “life happens”.

The Do’s of Mercury Rx

You hear the “don’ts” enough already. Here are some activities that I think will help you make the most of Mercury Rx.

Review. Contracts, proposals, client materials, marketing content, etc.
Revisit. Old projects, opportunities, ideas, and creative endeavors
Reconnect. Catch up with past collaborators or clients
Receive/Rest. Sit back and hold space for the universe bring you gifts.

If there’s something not on this list that you have planned for the next 3 weeks, a good rule of thumb is to analyze if it could be considered a “RE” activity.

Did you notice the pattern in my list above?

To Launch or Not to Launch
I get a lot of questions around whether or not it is “okay” to launch during a Mercury retrograde period. In most instances, I would advise against it. But it’s not a blanket “no” for a couple of reasons.
First, I believe that our intuition is our greatest source of wisdom - if you’re being guided to launch something in the next three weeks, do it. Even if it doesn’t work out the way you wanted or expected, the experience may bring you clarity or valuable information you need for future iterations.
Second, if you’re launching something that is either an old program or service that you’ve dusted off and are bringing back or it’s an offer that helps people with Mercury-Rx-friendly activities (like reviewing and refinement), you may do well to launch during this time.

For example, here’s where my focus will be for the next three weeks

Giving business astrology readings in the old format (that did really well in the past). Instead of scheduling a live call, you’ll receive a recorded reading and then have 3 days with me on WhatsApp voice note & text to ask questions / integrate the insights. If you’ve been waiting for this format to come back, you can book yours here.
Beta testing new services. I’m only offering these services to past clients, warm leads and my email list. Doing a beta round of these services now is going to help me catch the tech glitches or inefficiencies within the process so that I can improve them before offering them more broadly. I also like to think I’m earning bonus points since one of the services is a review of your business.
Editing podcast interviews. I batch interviewed during the entire month of July - and now I have 20 conversations to listen back to, edit into an episode and make promotional materials for. Once all the review work is done, I’ll have 5 months of content ready to go.
Combing through old content. My network has grown x10 in the past 6 months, so I’ll be digging up some old social media posts to reuse/repurpose for the second half of the year as well as sending some of my favorite long form content over to my social media manager to splice into new social posts and video clips.
Reconsidering my Substack strategy. More to come on this - but you’ll likely find that you’ll be getting access to a lot more content as a free subscriber.
*Maybe* migrating my website over to a simpler platform that will not only be easier for me to edit, but easier for you to find the links you need to engage with my work. I’m sitting with this one, because SEO rankings and whatnot but if I’m still thinking about in in a couple of weeks, I’m going to go for it - because you know I’m all for simplicity.

So you see? This can be a really opportune time to do things that you don’t make time for when you’re flowing with the forward momentum of your business.

With love,

Marissa xo