The Tortoise & the Hare: Mercury Stations Retrograde in Aries
Mercury Retrograde in Aries
April 1, 2024 - April 25, 2024
Mercury in Aries is hot. Like fire, it moves quickly. It jumps, it leaps, it activates, it dances. Fire cannot hide. It’s bright, it transforms, and it leaves its mark.
Aries season is full of transformative astrology, this year especially so.
Today, April 1st, Mercury stations retrograde in Aries, the first sign of the zodiac where a week from today, it will make an exact conjunction with the dwarf planet Eris as the New Moon Total Solar Eclipse occurs exactly conjunct Chiron, the most significant asteroid in our solar system.
Last year we had our first eclipse in Aries, a Total Solar New Moon Eclipse on April 19, 2023 (visible in the Southern Hemisphere), and with it came lessons about our courage, authenticity, leadership, and all things Aries. While Mercury retrogrades this part of the sky, these areas are under review.
On Wednesday, April 3, Venus makes a conjunction with Neptune in Pisces, which is Neptune's home sign and the place of Venus’ exaltation. And because Neptune takes 165 years to move through the zodiac, and next year Neptune will leave Pisces, this is the second to last time we’ll ever experience this astrology. This Venus-Neptune conjunction supercharges our romances, with ourselves, with our lovers, with life itself. It activates the erotic – that slow, regenerative, nonrational presence that connects us to the pulsating vitality of aliveness.
Then, on Friday, Venus leaves Pisces, joining Mercury, the Sun, Chiron, Eris, and the North Node in Aries. Soon after on Saturday, Venus makes a transformative sextile to Pluto in Aquarius initiating the love we cultivated on Wednesday towards our greatest personal and collective (r)evolution. This sets the stage for the Total New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aries on April 8th, conjunct the asteroid Chiron, the wounded healer, showing us where our lives demand our courage and our will to withstand the intensity necessary for change.
Our branches can only grow as wide as our roots can stretch deep. Eclipses can slow but they also can quicken. Mercury in Aries runs hot and fast, but Mercury retrograde is slow and spirals.
Can you find steadiness on the polarities of your edges?
Remember the tortoise finishes first by moving slowly. The hare reminds us that the most important time to slow down is when we're most confident in our ability.
Mercury retrograde in Aries has a similar message. As tempting as it is to move quickly, we’re moving through unknown terrain. We don’t know the path we’re traversing and the walls, the rocks, the roots, the blocks we may encounter. When Mercury goes retrograde, it increases those roadblocks around our communication – our vehicle for connection, creation, and expression, all of which are core themes of the Eclipse Dragon Portal energy. Mercury retrograde reminds us again that friction is important. It tells us where the energy isn’t flowing, where things are out of line and out of place and out of focus. Without friction, there wouldn’t be refinement.
Mercury will remain in retrograde through the Sun’s entry into Taurus on April 19th, including while Jupiter and Uranus make a once-in-a-lifetime conjunction in Taurus on April 20th.
This is astrology to find your steady. It’s astrology to conjure disciplined awareness, even in moments you feel you don’t have to and especially in moments you don’t want to.
We’re living in speedy times. Technology is constantly propelling us towards more speed and efficiency, demanding more and more from every one of us. The more time accelerates, the more our presence is needed. The more our free will depends on our ability to notice the current sweeping us and still consciously choose the direction we want to take our life in; even when that direction requires our resistance.
Mercury retrograde amplifies resistance. It interrupts the channels that are usually flowing. The understanding that usually comes easily is turned on its head, waking us up to where we’ve been living on autopilot.
“Nothing can survive without food. Everything we consume acts either to heal us or to poison us. We tend to think of nourishment only as what we take in through our mouths, but what we consume with our eyes, our ears, our noses, our tongues, and our bodies is also food. The conversations going on around us, and those we participate in, are also food. Are we consuming and creating the kind of food that is healthy for us and helps us grow?”
Mercury retrograde paired with eclipse season draws attention to what we’re nourishing, challenging us to find the privilege of active contentment in the places we’ve been lured into idleness.
Are you passively receiving whatever nourishment finds its way to your doorstep? Or are you acting as a filter to take what is healthy and leave the rest? Are you going through the motions in your life or actively nourishing what ignites your heart and what sustains you?
Over the last year, what lessons are coming up around you standing in your power? As the captain of the ship on the adventure that’s your life? Smooth sailing never made a skilled sailor. Active contentment means finding value in your journey during stormy seas as much as when the sun is shining.
The roadblocks, agitations, and conflicts we’re experiencing now are all course corrections. Can you get curious at disruption? What would it feel like to meet urgency with patience? What would you need to meet your deepest longing with gratitude and acceptance? How might you place what you lack at the front of your altar, honoring what connects to the abundance all around you? The abundance that IS you.
