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In our community of soulful seekers we do not hide under the covers when Mercury goes retrograde.
Three or four times a year, the internet remembers that Mercury is retrograde and decides to be afraid of it. Contracts go unsigned. Flights go un-booked. People apologize in advance for things they have not done yet.
This is, to say the least, poorly done.
Mercury retrograde is one of the most reliable and workable periods in the whole year, its one of my personal faves, and in the Sacred Arts we have always known that. What follows is what it actually is, what it actually touches, and how to meet it.
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What Is Actually Happening in the Sky
Mercury does not reverse direction. Nothing in the solar system does…planetary motion doesn’t work that way.
Mercury takes about eighty-eight days to orbit the sun. Earth takes three hundred and sixty-five. So Mercury laps us, repeatedly, and during the stretch where it overtakes us it appears, from where we stand, to slide backward against the fixed stars.
It is the same thing that happens when you pass a slower car on the highway and it seems for a moment to roll backward relative to you. Nothing is reversing. The geometry of two moving things changes what you can see.
This happens three or four times a year and lasts about three weeks each time.
The shadow periods are the stretches on either side. Before the retrograde begins, Mercury passes over a span of sky. It then appears to go back over that same span, and afterward travels it a third time. Those first and third passes are the shadow. Many people feel the shape of a retrograde beginning before the retrograde technically starts, and that is why.
Three passes over the same ground. The tradition noticed this long before anyone could explain the orbital mechanics. The ancient understanding was that Mercury was not reversing at all, rather it was descending, into shadow, into the Underworld, into darkness, for a measured and discreet period of time, and that insight is key to much that follows.
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Who Mercury Actually Is
The planet is named for a god, and the god is worth knowing, because he is not a malfunction.
Mercury is the messenger. He carries words between parties who cannot reach each other directly. He rules speech, writing, commerce, contracts, roads, and hands. He is quick and he is clever.
He is also the trickster. The one who steals the cattle on the day he is born and talks his way out of it. The patron of merchants and of thieves alike, which the ancients understood as the same skill pointed in two different directions.
A less well-known but equally vital role is Mercury as psychopomp. The one who guides souls between the worlds, who moves freely where no one else can go. Of all the gods, Mercury is the one who crosses boundaries.
A god like that does not punish you for three weeks a year. But he does ask for attention, and he will most likely play tricks on people who are not paying any.
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What a Retrograde Actually Impacts
Three passes over the same ground. That is the whole teaching.
Mercury retrograde is not just a period when things break, they can, it is true. The deeper significance is that it is a period when things come back around for another look.
The word to hold is re-.
Review. Revise. Reconsider. Repair. Return. Remember. Reconnect. Rework. Reconcile. Research. Rest.
That is Mercury retrograde working correctly.
What we don’t want to do is force the opposite in a time when it is not supported: Launching something you have not examined. Signing something you have not read twice. Saying a thing for the first time when you have not thought it through. Not because its “bad” but because it is out of alignment, out of sync, out of right relationship with the sky, the stars, and the energy of the moment.
So it genuinely does affect:
Communication, particularly the kind that gets misread. Contracts and agreements, particularly the clauses nobody looked at. Travel and logistics, particularly tight connections. Technology, particularly the backup you have been meaning to make. Plans, particularly the ones built on assumptions nobody checked.
And it genuinely does favor:
Finishing the thing you abandoned. Reading the contract properly. Going back through old notes and finding what you missed. Repairing if you can and replacing if you cannot. Reconnecting with the person you lost touch with.
People who already work this way often find retrogrades to be among their most productive weeks of the year.
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What You Can Actually Do
None of this requires anything from me. Take it and use it.
Build slack into everything. Not because the universe will sabotage you, but because a retrograde surfaces the places where your plans had no room in them. Leave yourself margin and most of the trouble never arrives.
Read it twice. Then read it out loud. Mercury rules the written and the spoken, and the gap between them is often where misunderstandings live. Something that reads fine and sounds wrong has information for you.
Back everything up. This is the oldest piece of retrograde advice there is and it is also simply true all year. Let the retrograde be your reminder.
Work with your hands. Mercury rules them. Handwriting, mending, cooking, sorting. There is something in this period that settles when the hands are busy and the mind is allowed to go sideways. I always give myself a discreet retrograde aligned project BEFORE the shadow period starts to keep my hands busy.
Make a list of your unfinished things. Not to finish them all. Just to look. A retrograde is very good at showing you which of them you actually want and which you have been carrying out of habit. This sounds stressful and in practice it is something that will de-stress you very fast.
Notice REturns. People, opportunities, old ideas, things you thought were finished. Mercury retrograde has a particular habit of returning things to you.
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October 24 – November 13, 2026 ~
When Mercury retrogrades in Scorpio, the focus shifts to intimacy, shared resources, inheritance, death and rebirth, secrets, and power. You will feel this retrograde most if you have personal planets or angles between 5° and 21° Scorpio, since this is the stretch of sky Mercury will travel back over. The same is true if you have placements at those degrees in the other fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, and Aquarius), and if you are a Gemini or Virgo, since Mercury rules your sign. Look to the house Scorpio occupies in your chart to see where in your life the old stories, buried truths, and unfinished business are most likely to surface.
Don’t: Do NOT dig where you have not been invited, don’t go looking for trauma to process or difficulties to surface – life will give you plenty of material to work with, I promise. No on the sly reading of texts, pressing for confessions, or springing a long-held secret on someone at the family table. Scorpio wants to get to the bottom of things, but a retrograde Mercury does not always hand us the whole truth, and what we unearth now may look very different once Mercury stations direct on November 13.
Do: The one thing I want you to use this time for is your ancestors. This retrograde moves through the heart of ancestor season, and Mercury is the guide of souls, so this is the perfect time to return to the family stories, the old photographs, the names no one says anymore, and the conversations with your beloved dead that were left unfinished.
And a note on timing: this retrograde ends on November 13, which puts it squarely in the weeks when the holidays get planned rather than when they happen. Who hosts. Who is invited. Who is being avoided. What gets said in a group text that everyone will still be thinking about in December. What gets ACCIDENTALLY sent out to someone who was not on the group chat. A little awareness about that now can save a lot of heartache on the other side of the RX period.
Join me for a live teaching on:
Love and Death in the Time of Mercury
Mercury and Venus Retrograde Through Ancestor Season and the pre-Holiday season.
When: Wednesday, October 21, 7:00 to 8:30pm Central | $50 | Live, with recording for registrants
This autumn, Mercury retrogrades through Scorpio, the sign of death, inheritance, secrets, and intimacy, right as the veil thins and we enter the season of the dead. At the same time, Venus is retrograde, moving from Scorpio back into Libra, turning our attention to love, partnership, the body, and what we truly value.
Both planets station direct on the same day, November 13, which makes this one of the most potent stretches of the year to look back, tend what has been buried, and decide what we carry forward. Three days before Mercury stations, I am gathering us together so that you can meet this season prepared instead of blindsided.
In this live teaching, we will walk through the key dates and degrees and what they mean for your chart, explore the Venus retrograde overlap and what it asks of our relationships and our bodies, and work with Mercury in his oldest role as the guide of souls during Samhain, All Souls, and Día de los Muertos.
I will also give you a practical guide to the weeks ahead, from family gatherings where old secrets surface to holiday spending and travel, and lead you through a guided Active Imagination Meditation to meet an ancestor who knows how to hold the body as holy…something especially important in this moment.
You will receive a Mercury Retrograde Checklist to keep with you through November 13. You can send in your questions ahead of time, and there will be time for live Q&A near the end of the session.
Once you register, you will receive the Q and A link as well as the call-in instructions.