Your comprehensive guide to Mercury retrograde in Leo...

It's here! But no need to fear...this is everything you need to know to make Mercury retrograde work for you! (including a free guidebook)

Well, my friends, we’re here. Late tonight or in the earliest hours of tomorrow (depending on your time zone) Mercury will station retrograde, beginning its backward journey through the skies. Mercury retrogrades get a lot of bad press and serve as our biggest astrological scapegoat, something I like to blame on early social media inflammatory pop astrology, and we all know what the priority was there…

How I’ve never incorporated a bojack reference in my newsletter before is beyond me, but here we finally are

BUT, and I’ll hold your hand while I say this if I need to, Mercury retrograde is NOT bad. In fact, it’s actually kind of good? And really it happens 3-4 times a year, so it’s definitely nothing ground-breaking.

And it should come as absolutely no shock that a huge reason that the Mercury retrograde smear campaign has succeeded is because the way Mercury retrograde tends to get talked about pulls this important period out of its greater context (as are most issues with how pop-strology presents astrology, but I digress, that’s a soap box for another day). Mercury retrograde is simply a cosmic recalibration of sorts, and a natural part of the rhythm of Mercury’s cyclical relationship to the Sun, its synodic cycle. Mercury and the Sun are never more than 28° (or 1 zodiac sign) away from one another, and during this ~3 week retrograde period Mercury retraces its steps through a segment of the zodiac as it pulls back into its place by the Sun’s side after straying too far. Mercury’s retrograde is a reset moment as Mercury ends one synodic cycle and begins another, a moment that occurs with the cazimi that falls right in the middle of Mercury’s retrograde.

During a retrograde a planet appears to hover to stillness in the sky before changing directions completely, disrupting its forward movement through the zodiac in order to retrace its steps. And in a late-stage capitalist society where things are hyper-focused on moving one direction and one direction only, forward, this presents as incredibly disruptive. In reality, it’s simply a disruption to our typical rhythm and has the potential to reveal some crucial information in areas of our life where things have become complacent or stale…in other words, it disrupts the things that aren’t working anymore, and brings our attention to things that need adjustment. Mercury retrogrades are also fantastic times to revisit projects that we left behind thinking it wasn’t going to work because they’re all about getting us to see things differently and possibly even try a new approach. Capitalism hates to see you slowing down and fixing things rather than moving right along to the next.

In the doctrine of sect, Mercury belongs to neither the day or the night sect, but rather has the ability to shift between the two, slipping between diurnal and nocturnal consciousness and perspectives. In essence, this makes Mercury a conduit between soul and spirit, acting as a go between between our deepest desires and how they’re interfacing with our own consciousness and reality. In other words, Mercury retrograde holds the potential to act as a recalibration between where these two facets of self, reconnecting them in places where they’ve become disconnected from one another.

I’ve prepared a comprehensive PDF guide carefully crafted to help you develop a stronger relationship to your own natal Mercury, as well as detail everything you need to know about how retrogrades work and a guide to help carry you through this specific Mercury retrograde in Leo. This guide breaks down all things Mercury in order to help facilitate a more intimate understanding of the magic and wisdom of this planet and how its functions are essential in finding cohesion in your day to day life in support of your greater dreams and aspirations. This guide also has reflection questions and journal prompts that can also be used in tandem with tarot or your own choice of divinatory methods (because Mercury retrograde is the PERFECT time to step back from doing and lean into divination as a tool to help bring clarity through the chaos).

This guide is COMPLETELY FREE as my Mercury retrograde gift to you, so download it, use it, share it, and send it forward to anyone you think might benefit from it!

You can also find a recording of the retrogrades workshop I taught earlier this year in the Cauldron, the section of this substack for my paid subscribers. In that workshop we went over allllll things retrograde (for all planets!) that provides really valuable information on understanding retrogrades in a contextualized way. You can find that here: