You’ve been sens­ing a change of ener­gy, a shift of direc­tion… and you are right. Her­mes has (seem­ing­ly) stopped mov­ing for­ward and is retrac­ing his steps. That’s right, it is Mer­cury Ret­ro­grade Time, again. From now till April 23 it is going to be “inter­est­ing”.

Three times a year, and for about three weeks each time, Mer­cury appears to slow down, stop and then move back­wards. It is real­ly catch­ing up to Earth (being between us and the Sun), pass­ing us by and then con­tin­u­ing on its jour­ney around the Solar system.

Ide­al­ly, if you could accom­mo­date your life to the rhythm of the plan­ets, then all would be just fine. You would take this time and use it for intro­spec­tion, self-reex­am­i­na­tion and con­tem­pla­tion. You could focus on review­ing old thought pat­terns, ideas and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. You would forge a bet­ter under­stand­ing of your men­tal pat­terns and work to remove your blind spots. Real­ly, it is the per­fect time for a spir­i­tu­al retreat, self-study or rest.

But, life goes on (usu­al­ly), and you have to con­tin­ue in your life pat­terns at home and work as if every­thing was the same.…but it is not. So, watch out for pit­falls and look for the oppor­tu­ni­ties that come with Mer­cury in reverse.

Because every­one is sim­i­lar­ly affect­ed, be more care­ful with the com­mu­ni­ca­tions you receive as well as in those you send. Fol­low up the receipt of any mes­sage by con­firm­ing with the sender what you under­stood the mes­sage to mean. When you send a mes­sage, con­firm its receipt and then make sure it was under­stood as well. The rule of thumb with Mer­cury ret­ro­grade is nev­er assume… any­thing! By just being more care­ful you can avoid the annoy­ances that seem to come with Mer­cury danc­ing back­wards, and you can instead focus on its very real benefits.

This is a time to bend the mind back on itself. After all, one of your great­est gifts is your “self-reflec­tiv­i­ty”, your capac­i­ty to look at your­self as if from a van­tage point out­side of your­self. Mer­cury ret­ro­grade helps you to use this pow­er of your observ­ing-ana­lyz­ing intel­lect so that you might bet­ter under­stand yourself.

This time, the ret­ro­grade is in Aries, so the lessons will be about your aware­ness of your “Pres­ence” in the world. Re-exam­ine how you appear to oth­ers. Are you com­ing across too strong, so that your pres­ence is over­whelm­ing? Or do you move so soft­ly that no one notices and so you underwhelm?

The moment you turn a cor­ner, the moment you enter a “space”, it changes. Was it the change that was need­ed, was it the change you intend­ed to bring? You are always you, but you should bring to bear what is required giv­en what you sense is need­ed. Remem­ber, of all those ele­ments of your pres­ence the most impor­tant is… your attitude.

By work­ing with Mer­cury now you can exam­ine these “Masks of Per­son­al­i­ty” and make sure that you are pre­sent­ing the best of you to the world. When you prac­tice this “Art of Pres­ence”, you per­form through the best of your­self, because you have cen­tered your atti­tude by align­ing your­self with your true self.

So, let Her­mes, the mes­sen­ger, take you with­in your­self so that you may come out again with that greater clar­i­ty of pur­pose, inten­tion and atti­tude. Right think­ing leads to Right Atti­tude which allows for Right Action, these are the gifts of Mer­cury in ret­ro­grade. Thank you Hermes!