Mercury Retrograde!?
Testing Times of Self-Remembering
© 1999 Antero Alli (excerpted from ASTROLOGIK)

This is only a test...

Some astrologers tend to behave in a peculiar fashion when Mercury goes retrograde. Why is this ? I mean peculiar as in the self-created anxiety attacks ("Oh no, Mercury's retrograde!") or gestures of personal resignation ("Don't do anything until Mercury goes direct"). I've often wondered what the fuss was all about until deciding to conduct several tests of my own over several different periods when Mercury went retrograde.

What I discovered was also peculiar but in the way that the faculty of memory is genuinely peculiar. Times of Mercury retrograde seemed to demand a greater dependence on memory to solve my daily problems and to communicate more effectively with others. Without consciously working my memory, communications did tend to "short-circuit" or "cross wires". Hmmm. So, I saw what the fuss was all about. I was also dismayed to find nothing written, no books, about how to respond more creatively to this unusual opportunity for what I can only call self-remembering.

I look at the timing of Mercury retrograde like the ringing of a bell in a Zen monastery, reminding the monks walking the grounds to remember the moment passing before them and to wake up to their own existence in that moment. The bell rings perhaps once or twice before the monks respond, and then it is really the body's memory of the sound that reminds them; they remember the bell and respond with more awareness.

We can only remember each moment as the next moment is already replacing the last in an ongoing eternal now. What we think is present time is actually our memory of present time. I do not mean to be spouting Zen koans here but attempting to state simple truths often taken for granted. When Mercury goes retrograde people tend to to stumble over their passing moments to the extent that they are not working to remember them. During times of Mercury retrograde memory is everything.

This is a memory test

Mercury retrograde works on our consciousness as a kind of memory test. The kind of blunders made during Mercury retrograde, especially with words and communication, may indicate the degree of self-remembering lacking in those instances. For example, when attempting long-distance communications (via phone fax or modem) during Mercury retrograde, try doing a little more footwork before making the call.

Clarify your intent.

Imagine the history of the person you are trying to reach. Get a sense of where they might ne coming from with any knowledge you may have of their circumstances: their family, their job, their personal interests. When entering Mercury retrograde with a more prepared memory, one may be surprised at how truly curious this thing called communication can be.

It's safe to assume that most astrologers accept Mercury as a symbol of the human faculty of intellect and intellect shows many atributes. When it functions we solve problems, translate our experience into information, we think about what to say and write, while developing complex modes of conceptual interaction with other intellects.

At the rudimentary level, intellect enables us to learn and to educate ourselves. It's our way of processing information. And, lest we forget, all symbolic information -- data -- is processed, organized and made accessible to recall through intellectual memory.

During the time of Mercury retrograde it is my assumption that the information levels of the universe undergo increasing complexity and density, demanding more effort on the behalf of its human translators to process; more research, more recall, more memory. Look at your computer as an analogy: to run heavier loads of information at higher speeds, you must add more memory. If you don't, information processing slows down, freezes or fails to function at all. When the computer finally crashes, it's time for a major memory upgrade. Sounds a little like Mercury retrograde to me.

The spiritual function of intellect

The chief spiritual function of the intellect rests in the capacity for paying attention. Any intellect that has forgotten how to stop, look and listen has already developed a learning problem. In its more advanced stages of myopia, the frenzied intellect shuts down and fragments under the stress of its own closed systems and assumptions.

This fragmentation contributes to such familiar symptons as concentration loss, a slowness or difficulty in learning new concepts, an ongoing repetition of similar errors, and a propensity to interrupt the converstaions of others. The solution to these problems depends on your personal commitment to paying attention to whatever is happening and the mental fortitude to register what is happening. This registration requires a kind of self-remembering.

Developing the intellectual function of the "silent witness" can allow for new kinds of learning, which is to say learning new ways to keep learning. Silent witness requires an open mind. Its foil is the one-sided critic, or persecutor, who condemns without praise. During times of Mercury retrograde, we can discover the degree our negative critic attempts to control our communication processes by our failures to pay attention and listen.

Real communicaton is rare enough and rarer still if we are unwilling to do the footwork and research to "upgrade memory to download more density of data". The ringing bells of any Mercury retrograde period are, in effect, opportunities for checking in with how conscious we are.

If we avoid the work of self-remembering, it is safe to assume that communications will probably breakdown as our ill-prepared intellects scramble in a futile attempt to process increasing complexities. When you hear astrologers say, "Oh, no, Mercury's retrograde!" what they really mean is, "Oh, no, what a lazy mind I have!"

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