_{Virgo by Salvador Dali, 1969}

From the 23rd of August until the 15th of September 2023, swift planet Mercury will retrograde in the sign of pragmatic Virgo, travelling from Virgo 21’51 degrees to Virgo 8’00 degrees (8 being the esoteric number of power and financial wealth). Needless to say, starting the ‘going back to school’ season with a Mercury retrograde is not ideal since most of the administrative things that will need to be efficiently dealt with, will take up more time than expected, will require more of our attention, focus and effort. However by the end of the retrograde something important will have been cleared up in our lives and following some random expenses brought about by the Venus retrograde which will overlap with this Mercury retrograde, well those expenses will be reorganized and finally dealt with. Financial reconstitution is the main theme of this retrograde and bringing order back into the emotional chaos of the summer is its main goal.

A retrograde brings a confusing energy with it, and it often creates a phenomenon called ‘brain fog’. On a pragmatic level, symptoms of its manifestations might include mixing up delivery addresses, forgetting the passwords that you use daily, making invoice mistakes, losing your keys, dropping your phone or laptop to the ground, messing up spreadsheets and double-booking meetings and events. On a psychological level, retrogrades bring with them the energy of feeling ‘completely out of it’ or as if you just ‘can’t be bothered with it’. This is why a retrograde is a perfect time for a detox, a clean up or a holiday, since you’ll be moving with the energy of release rather than pushing hard to build new things on quick-sand.

Virgo is the energy of the Divine feminine, as she represents the 6th sign of the zodiac and this is the numerological vibration of Venus and beauty in all its manifestations here on Earth. Virgo is a also the flexible Earth sign of the zodiac, the pure, hard-worker who appreciates stability, loyalty and ‘savoir faire’ (or skilled competence). If you struggled to get into some healthy eating habits, if you neglected your self-care routine, if you fell ill and couldn’t work, then the period around the New Moon in Virgo is your ‘health = wealth’ reset time. We need Virgoan analytical magic to parse through the complicated emotions that this Venus in Leo has stirred in us all. The problem is that much as love and beauty tends to be muted during a Venus retrograde, so is logic and order absent during a Mercury retrograde. Without logic and love, or rather with these energies ‘on hold’ for a while, then what are we?

The answer to this is that we are adequately equipped to work on the past and deal with those things that have been haunting us. Reflecting on our relationships with people from the past and with the past itself, reconsidering some things we overlooked when the planets were direct, reviving a beauty routine, clearing up some old objects, catching up with childhood friends or getting closure from an ex are all favorable during this 3 week period. We might have decided on something as Venus was retrograding by herself, only to reconsider our decision as Mercury begins its retrograde. This is why I feel that celebrity couples who broke up during this Venus retro will potentially shock us with news of a surprise reconciliation or some ‘dirty laundry’ being washed in public during the Mercury retrograde.

The good news is that the period of this Mercury retrograde will actually wrap up the Venus retrograde which will officially end on the 3rd of September. Furthermore, during Mercury’s backward spin we will also have a Full Moon in Pisces conjunct Saturn and Neptune on the 31st of August and a New Moon in Virgo on the 15th of September – the day we will collectively be released from the retrogrades of these personal planets (woo hoo! mark that date and chill the champagne). However, we will remain knee-deep in outer-planetary retrogrades as Pluto, Saturn and Neptune are all retrograde and on the 29th of August, Uranus will join them too. So, as the outer planets all line up in their retrograde positions, all personal planets line up in their direct modes, during this magical Mercury retro. This means that we will gradually begin to feel more personal power, as external events will become slightly more difficult to deal with. The Autumn and Winter of 2023 should be interesting times, especially as Pluto in Capricorn will be reaching peak corruption and the 1% will continue to live out their ‘honeymoon period’ on borrowed time.

A gradual worsening of the economy (Saturn), ongoing environmental surprises (Uranus), and the rise in the use of psychedelics, medication and other forms of escapism (Neptune) are ushering in some sudden and powerful changes in society in the year 2024 (a year which begins strongly Uranian, as Uranus goes direct during Aquarius season on the 27th of January and Pluto re-enters Aquarius on the 20th of January). But I feel I am looking too far ahead and I run the risk of confusing you with too much information all at once. Better boundaries with the kind of information you receive during this Mercury retrograde will be an important skill to acquire.

To sum up, Virgo likes to clean house and this is exactly what this Mercury retro will do for us: help us move away from bad romances, remove toxicity that exists in our body due to relationship stress, help us get grounded and look at things with more common sense than ever. We will post-it our walls, streamline our wardrobes to make them more echo friendly, think of ways to save up and manage our money better, refresh our food intake, and think deeply about how can we be of service to the world, when faced with so much destruction (or the decay of the crumbling Pluto in Capricorn environment). And if you can, please deal with any frustrations by being outdoors and close to nature, or ideally take a step back from work and focus on some emotional, internal clean up, as you get some rest. In the Pluto in Cap era we have been all over-worked and underpaid. Therefore, if you feel some strong procrastination tendencies, don’t worry; you are simply beginning to align with the energies of the Pluto in Aqua imaginative environment, in which work will begin to change its meaning and form, and social causes will abound.

With universal love,

Lexi