Before You Blame Mercury Retrograde…

Mercury Retrograde has come back around. What’s the vibe you’re bringing to it?

There is a particular tone that settles over the witchy and spiritual corner of the internet in the weeks before Mercury stations retrograde. You can almost feel it building. You start getting emails that include disclaimers about delays before anything has even happened. Social media fills with checklists that read less like preparations and more like evacuation plans for a disaster.

Back up your devices.
Don’t sign contracts.
Don’t travel.
Don’t text your ex.
Don’t buy anything. Don’t say anything. Don’t look at anyone!
Stay inside and surround yourself with black tourmaline and just wait this out.

Meanwhile…nothing has happened yet! By the time the retrograde actually arrives, many people are already braced for impact, shoulders tight, waiting for something to go wrong because everything and their dog has been telling them to “get ready, it’s happening again!” 

I have always found that more interesting than the retrograde itself.

Mercury Retrograde is back. 

Currently, Mercury is retrograde in the sign of Pisces until March 20. Pisces is not a sign concerned with hard facts and well laid plans.It moves through feeling, symbolism, memory, and imagination. During this window, misunderstandings are less likely to come from missed emails and more likely to come from blurred boundaries, unspoken assumptions, and emotional projection. It is a powerful time for reflection, creative revision, spiritual recalibration, and intuitive work, but it requires discernment. Not every feeling is a prophecy, and not every resurfaced memory is a call to return.

Here’s the really important thing we never talk about with Mercury Retrograde: when you prepare for disaster with enough conviction, you start scanning your life for evidence that it has begun. You start looking for evidence of shit going south to confirm that all your worries and preparations were valid. In a weird and twisted kind of way in the witchy work, I feel like it makes some people feel really “intuitive and powerful” when that bias happens so they can take that “I told you so” vibe to everyone in their life who told them they're being a woo-woo cuckoo. 

Mercury, in astrological symbolism, governs communication, information, contracts, technology, short travel, and thought patterns. When it appears to move backward from our vantage point on Earth, the traditional interpretation is that these areas become slower, muddled, and reflective. Not cursed or chaotic like we’re often led to believe, just reflective. It’s a time where we’re asked to review the past to learn for the future. 

Somewhere along the way, that nuance got replaced with catastrophe.

Are You Doom Prepping?

The problem is not that retrogrades correlate with revision and reconsideration. The problem is that the cultural script surrounding them has shifted from “review and refine” to “brace yourself.”

It’s a weird shift that matters because it’s responsible for this culture fear and worry around this unavoidable astrological event that happens about three times a year. 

In magick, we say that energy follows attention. In psychology, there is language for expectancy bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. In everyday life, it looks like rereading a perfectly neutral text message and deciding the tone feels off because you were already primed to believe communication would break down because Mercury was in retrograde.

If you expect misunderstandings, you approach every conversation, especially important or emotional ones, feeling guarded. Guarded energy creates tension which can change the tone of the conversation and it makes you defensive. Suddenly you are in the very communication spiral you were warned about but not because it was organically going to happen. You brought those vibes with you and got the response you envisioned.

Even though it might feel cosmic or inevitable, it is often just nervous system anticipation playing out in real time. I hate to say this is one is on you but…it’s on you.

This is not an argument against astrology. It is an argument for understanding how belief interacts with experience.

That Old Shit Comes Back Around Sometimes 

Retrogrades do tend to surface unfinished business. That part is real in my experience. I opened up my YouTube account on my TV the second day of the retrograde only to find out of the blue my ex-husband and his current girlfriend’s YT logins are listed on my home screen. It’s just so weird because we haven’t spoken in months. Why is your face on my TV?  

Old conversations resurface in your mind. Old patterns become visible. Sometimes, yes, old people resurface too, even in weird ways like that.

When someone from your past reaches out during a retrograde, it is tempting to assign meaning immediately. Fate. Destiny. A second chance. A test. A karmic loop.

Sometimes it is none of those things.

Sometimes it is simply that retrograde periods highlight what has not been resolved. It can be a sign that you’re ready to let go and get the closure you need to move on. It can mean confirmation that you have changed and this thing from your past is no longer needed in your life. It can mean practicing a boundary you did not know how to hold the first time around. And with that it can often mean not engaging and just letting it all go silently on your own.

This is one of the biggest issues I run into with clients during Mercury retrograde when an ex or someone else from the past comes back. People will think it’s an invitation to bring up the past and have some grand discussion to either attempt to fix the past or let it go.

No. Stop. Don’t.
Resurfacing people doesn’t mean you’re destined to reconcile. It’s a mirror for your current station in life. It’s a way to show you how far you have come and how much you have changed. Do you really want to repeat that old pattern or do you want to keep moving forward? 

What Retrograde Energy Really Does

What retrograde energy often does is slow down the forward momentum just enough that you can see what you have been carrying unfinished. That visibility can feel dramatic, especially if you were not planning on looking at it. But visibility is not the same as destruction.

Where things get murky is when we begin outsourcing our accountability to the sky.

Forgetting to proofread an email is not a planetary event. Avoiding a difficult conversation for months and then having it explode during a retrograde is not cosmic sabotage. Signing a contract without reading it carefully and later regretting it is not proof that you were astrologically doomed.

Retrogrades do not override free will. They do not remove your capacity for discernment. They do not possess your communication style.

What they can do is amplify whatever is already unstable.

If your systems are disorganized, delays will expose that. If your communication patterns are indirect, misunderstandings will make that visible. If you have been avoiding a conversation, the pressure to finally address it may increase.

None of this is Mercury Retrograde Punishment, it’s that mirror showing you where you have flaws. Just blaming it all on the retrograde is not the answer because all this does is keep you from actually learning anything about yourself.

And, let's be so for real…you know there are other retrograde events that happen right? Do you pay attention to all of them like you do this one and then blame things on those?

Like when Venus is retrograde do you blame that on bills not getting paid since financial issues are possible then? 

I’m going to guess no because your FYP isn’t filled with warnings and spells and “survival times” for Venus Retrograde. 

The danger of the “everything is about to blow up” narrative is that it creates a kind of learned helplessness. People delay projects they were ready for, don’t respond to or initiate important conversations, reply to emails, go on trips, move house, or buy needed big ticket items. They also interpret every inconvenience as confirmation that the universe is against them.

When you move through a period expecting disruption, you become hypervigilant looking for it and that also narrows your perception. You see problems everywhere. You miss the moments of ease and positive opportunities and changes because they do not fit the current script.

And in magick, scripts matter.

What Think and What You Say Matters

If you cast the spell that says, “This retrograde will ruin my plans,” you will unconsciously behave in ways that support that outcome. Without even realizing it you might procrastinate, overthink and second-guess intuitive nudges. You will delay action waiting for a safer window that may not actually be safer at all.

There is another way to approach these cycles. Let’s stop preparing for problems and inviting disaster into our lives because of a naturally occurring planetary event.

Retrogrades are a great time for review, reflection and course correction for going forward. This is an ideal time for looking at things like your communication. Is it clear? Are you letting people know how you really feel? Are you asking for what you actually want from both others and the universe? Have you been postponing conversations or emails because there is something about what needs to be discussed that you aren’t clear on? 

Now is the time to get those things sorted. It’s the perfect time to find patterns that you trend to let run on autopilot in your life and adjust them if you need to. It's time to revisit and realign. It’s a great time for tying up loose ends.

It is not a spiritual emergency.

You do not need to panic cleanse your entire house or wrap every electronic device in energetic bubble wrap. You do not need to treat those three weeks as a cosmic minefield.

What you can do is slow down deliberately instead of reactively.

Slow and Steady, Not Panicked and Chaotic

Read contracts twice, not because Mercury is out to get you, but because reading contracts twice is what people that don’t want to be caught by surprise later on do. Clarify tone in important emails. Think before you speak and make sure you’re being clear and honest. Leave a little more space between stimulus and response. Don’t allow for knee jerk reactions, reflect and respond with intention. Notice where you assume the worst and gently question that assumption.

If someone resurfaces from your past, ask yourself what feels unresolved. If a miscommunication happens, examine how you contributed to it. If a delay occurs, consider whether it is revealing something that needed attention anyway. You’ll be surprised to find realize on reflection that it was a good thing when something doesn’t go as planned.

The sky does not need to be blamed for every inconvenience. Nor does it need to be dismissed.

Astrological cycles can be mirrors. The trouble begins when we treat them like monsters.

Mercury retrograde is not an omen of collapse. It is a recurring invitation to review how you think, speak, plan, and respond. When you approach it that way, it becomes far less dramatic and far more useful.

And if your life still contains a few glitches, delays, or awkward conversations during that time, welcome to being human.