MERCURY RETROGRADE IN VIRGO 23rd August until 15th September 2023

Tending to the mental garden

Another Mercury Retrograde is just around the corner, which is going to help us clear out some mental weeds.

Mercury describes our communication, perception and what stimulates us. Being retrograde simply means it is a time to re-evaluate and review the Mercury principles. When a planet goes retrograde, it seems to go backwards on its journey through the skies. Which is why this is a period for introspection and reflection.

Virgo - a mutable earth sign - embodies the qualities of sharing and collaborating on a very practical level. Whatever we find out during this Retrograde period, you might want to share it with others so we all can improve.

This Retrograde invites us to observe how practical our thoughts are. Very often, we find ourselves in emotional or philosophical loops that get us nowhere. Virgo wants us to be more practical, hands-on in our thoughts and conversations. This earthy energy helps us to really ground and manifest in reality whatever is going on in our heads.

It's also a great time to check the quality of our thoughts and decide which ones we want to keep because they are useful and which ones are not. Like pulling weeds in a garden, it can be very healthy to reevaluate which thoughts we want to keep growing and which ones have to go. There might be some old gnarly poison ivy vines in your head that are well past their due date. It's time to cut them out.

A good exercise for this period could be the following questions: Every time you get stuck in a mental loop, instead of labeling something as good or bad, ask yourself:

Is how I perceive this situation useful or detrimental to where I want to go?

The other person might have 'wronged' you, but is it really useful to keep thinking about it? Politician X might be really bad, but can you actually do something about it? And if not how useful is it to keep your mind occupied with these thoughts? Discernment and refinement is one of Virgo's strength, so we all get an opportunity now to practice better discernment and refine how we think and speak.

photo: Bamby Diagne | Unsplash