Come To Pass — Mercury Echo Phase Begins

Mercury’s progress through mid-Scorpio enters the echo (or ‘shadow’) phase of its retrograde cycle Thursday at 8:45 am EDT. That means Mercury will be in direct motion over the furthest point to which November’s apparent reversal will return it. It also means you should begin listening for echoes of what has not yet to come to pass, so that you can better pass through what is to come.

What will never come to pass is any planet actually reversing course. November’s period of apparent backwards motion, as well as its echo, is a product of how we perceive Mercury from Earth as it catches up to pass between Earth and the Sun.

As Mercury approaches to catch up and pass us, it appears to first slow down, then go backwards, then gradually regain full speed in forward motion. The whole cycle takes between seven and eight weeks and can be broken down into three phases, corresponding to the first, second and third passes over the same crescent of zodiac pie crust. The first pass frequently echoes actual events to follow, thus awarding awareness and anticipation.

Since awareness requires information, what follows are crucial dates after Thursday’s start of the first pass. To begin with, Mercury makes sluggish ingress to Sagittarius on Oct. 29. The second phase begins on Nov. 6, election day in the United States, when Mercury shifts into reverse from early Sagittarius. Mercury then backs out of Sagittarius, returning to Scorpio Nov. 14, before conjoining with, or passing in front of, the Sun on Nov. 17. 

After passing between Earth and the Sun, the innermost planet continues to backpedal until it revisits Thursday’s Scorpio position on Nov. 26, resuming direct motion and beginning the third pass. Mercury enters Sagittarius a second time on Dec. 10 or 11, depending on where you are. Finally, on Dec. 14, the fastest planet speeds past the retrograde station first reached on Election Day, concluding a unique, and probably historical, cycle.

Besides the auspicious inclusion of a presidential election, there are two other factors that distinguish the impending Mercury retrograde cycle, allowing you to anticipate what echoes to listen for. Most obviously, the arc of zodiac pie crust that Mercury will trace three times includes two very different signs. More subtly will be the spatial and temporal length of Mercury’s retrograde motion, making for a bigger than normal slice of pie with less time to eat it.

One fundamental of astrology is that adjacent signs often exhibit the starkest differences. While every planet has a personality which remains essentially the same regardless, an object’s location can have profound impact on how its energy is felt. With Scorpio as its field of expression, the cerebral nature of Mercury acquires both deep motivation and personal prejudice.

The fixed quality of Scorpio confers Mercury with a motivation to inquire deeply. The associated element of water makes any such inquiry deeply personal, and there’s the rub. From Thursday to October 29, you will need to exercise discretion lest you mistake informative echo for deceptive siren song. You will know that you are going off course if you start interpreting other people’s motivations based solely on what you have done or would do. After Mercury enters Sagittarius, its expression changes radically.

Mercury in Sagittarius is art on fire. All of the enthusiasm, vision, expansiveness and freedom associated with creating art festoons the thinking planet’s presence in the mutable field where Jupiter rules supreme. It may therefore be the artists rather than the investigators who paradoxically hold sway over election day. Regardless of what turn history takes when Mercury does, let the creative consciousness of a homemade Halloween costume inform the echoes you hear as this month folds into next. Folded into the dual signature of Mercury’s echo phase is an anticipation of the retrograde itself.

Not all Mercury retrograde periods are the same spatial or temporal length. The period beginning on November 6 will be short in time (only 20 days) and long in travel (16 degrees). That means you are on your way to a larger than usual piece of pie, as well as one with two markedly different fillings.

With a bigger, more complex slice of the zodiac to take in, and less time to do it, the echoes you begin to hear starting Thursday can give you a head start anticipating, and preparing for, the astrology and corresponding events that will come to pass on your way to the Capricorn Solstice. Keeping track of where Mercury is, and correlating it to what you hear, could very well be essential in what comes to pass for you.

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Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.