Mercury goes retrograde three times a year every year until the end of time or the solar system is renovated. Mercury is doomed to repeat its retrograde over and over. We can't get out of this cycle which screws up communication, traveling, and machines. I've already heard examples of all three: Paddy, once a singer in the Jimmy Durante orchestra, agreed to meet with others at one of the local theaters for a showing at 3:30. But the time was wrong and instead of waiting around to see the movie at 5:00, they had an early dinner instead. Howard, an innovative lamp maker, was coming back from Los Angeles on I5, when he was stopped by an accident and told by the highway patrol to get off the freeway. He had to go 145 miles out of his way back to the Bay Area. Last week there was a power surge that destroyed the compressor on our refrigerator. This is the fourth time for service in four years. We bought a lemon, but Sears won't give us a new one unless we have six service calls in a year. Of course, the technician didn't have our part and he had to order it and so we faced 7-10 days without a fridge in the middle of our present heat wave. We partially solved the problem by buying a 4.0 cubic feet refrigerator that I can later take to work. Still, we have to buy bags of ice each day to keep the food cold that won't fit in it and we lost about 100 dollars worth of food.
I really don't understand Mercury retrograde but astronomers explain it as the slowing down of Mercury's speed in its travel around the Sun, so it appears to lag behind the Earth and move backwards. Mercury being closer to the Sun than the Earth normally travels faster.
People say weird things during Mercury retrograde. You just can't take some of the things they say seriously. A good example was what the outrageous attending physician said at my Gemini's daughter's birth. When he came into the labor room at Kaiser hospital in San Francisco he told me that she might stay inside of me and die. This was back in 1975 when Kaiser did not have the best of reputations. When I blew up at him, he told me I was hostile. I said, "of course, I'm hostile, I've never seen you before in my life and you tell me that my child is going to die." Then he told me I could leave. "I'm not leaving," I said, "I'm in the middle of labor." He also said,"Your child is 10 days overdue but it's a good that she wasn't born on her due date because that's my birthday (yep, he's was a Gemini, too) and it's not a very good day."
Cars need repair during mercury retrograde. Joe, a local postmaster, told me that his Cadillac broke down and that I shouldn't buy one. I told him I wouldn't. He knew I had a Prius, anyway.
Dave, a poet and an EXPERT in popular music, bought a Sylvania tv during the last Mercury retro and it malfunctioned a week later. He lives in San Rafael and had to go all the way to Napa to have it fixed. He just picked it up yesterday and it still doesn't work properly.
The shuttle went up last week after having problems that put off its launch for several days. It's never a good idea to go up into space during Mercury retrograde but NASA, obviously, has no truck with astrology and blundered on ahead.
While Mercury is retrograde I try not to make plans or buy machines. I discount what people say. I double check information. I don't start new projects. I do work on old projects, though.
At least I don't do what I used to, before I paid attention to the Mercury cycle. In the past, I invariably came up with "bright" ideas that never came to fruition when Mercury was direct.
Retrograde began this year on Independence Day, which was apropos. I think it would be a good idea to forget about celebrating the 4th of July because the U.S. horoscope for that day is rather primitive, particularly when a unevolved Cancer is at the helm. He even had the gall to celebrate his 60th birthday on ours. What an arrogant doofus. Instead of using July 4, 1776 as the birth date of this country, I think it would be a better idea to use the birth date of the Constitution, which is September 17, 1787. The Sun sign is, of course, Virgo, which would fit with the predilections of the framers of the Constitution, many of whom were Masons. David Ovason, in his book, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, claims that the foundation of Washington DC was set by Masonic builders, surveyors, and engineers who wanted to align it with the Constellation of Virgo. More about this later.
Mercury stays retrograde until July 28 and then we should all wait a couple of days before going ahead with our plans.
Do you have Mercury Retrograde stories? Submit them to aquila@aquilaink.com and I’ll print them.
