I had an early meeting, which means I slept terribly. So at 3am I was lying awake thinking about retrogrades (as one does) and it occurred to me that retrogrades are time travel.
We think of time as a function of when, but if you look at the history of how humans mark time, it’s mostly about where. AstroNOMically, the earth travels around the sun, marking the year, and spins on its axis, marking the day. And the rotation of the moon around the earth is the original month.
AstroLOGically, the day beings when the sun rises over the eastern horizon, the month has to do with the phase of the moon, and the year, well, the year is about where the Sun is in the zodiac. Of course, societies codified this in various ways, with atomic clocks and regular hours and calendar months and the days of the week (which have to do with the seven primary planets). But on a fundamental, experiential level, it’s about where things are in the sky.
Except really it’s about where WE are. Because of course the sun isn’t really traveling through the stars. Instead we’re seeing the sun against a different backdrop of stars… it’s our perspective that changes. I stole this image from one of those annoying “your zodiac sign is wrong” articles that make the rounds every so often. But issues of procession and tropical versus sidereal aside, there’s actually a powerful metaphysical truth here. Our perspective is what governs time. We experience the sun traveling through the stars, the moon waxing and waning, the seasons changing and the days lengthening and shortening.
We think that time moves, but really we move. Physics talks about increasing entropy, I like to think of it as increasing perspective. My cells know more than they did and that makes them older (I don’t know about wiser, but at least with more experience). Perspective is how we experience time and the reason that, for us, time doesn’t go backwards… except if we change our perspective.
Our primary conception of time is Sun Time: the sun moving through the sky each day and through the zodiac each year. And the sun is never retrograde — the sun always marches forward. But what if we experienced time as the movement of another planet, say Mercury.
If we tracked by Mercury Time (Mercury moving against the backdrop of stars in the zodiac) then three times a year time would move backward as Mercury retrograded.
This diagram also provides a nice graphic display of retrograde shadow. Shadow time is Planet time that you go through more than once. So the window of time before the retrograde that will be revisited by the planet and the window of time after when the planet is traveling back through that time. So from the start to the end of retrograde shadow, that window is being revisited three times — twice forward and once backwards.
Now think about how we narrativize time travel. Time travel in our stories is always a bit risky or chaotic. Whether the results are positive (Back to the Future) or negative (12 Monkeys), lighthearted (Bill and Ted) or serious (Terminator) there’s a sense of risk in moving through time. You might go back and kill your grandfather or keep your parents from getting together or keep from saving the band (Alaskan Military School!) or cause the very problem you are trying to stop.
But when it comes to planetary perspective time, we aren’t hopping around in time, we’re grinding back through the same part of the horoscope that Mercury was in before, all while the Sun keep marching forward. Hence the tendency for retrogrades to cause chaos and issues. It’s like Mercury time is pulling us back, but Sun time (which again is what governs how we move through time) still pulling us forward. The conflict causes problems with travel and machinery and communications. Just like Venus retrograde causes friction with human relationships and Mars retrograde with conflict and competition.
The further a planet is from the Sun, the less chaotic push-pull time conflict there is. So Mercury is famous for personal disruption, but the outer planets are more like repeating themes. Jupiter spends six months a year or so in retrograde, allowing us to revisit and repeat themes around expansion and sovereignty. But we don’t fret and obsess over it the way we do the inner planets going retrograde.
All this made me think of magical time travel. Things like journeying back to your childhood to heal wounds, communication with your younger selves as per Weaving Fate, Fotamecus style time compression, and Mandela-effect changes. As distinct from fortunetelling and divination, which is typically about SEEING the future, this tech is more about CHANGING the past.
Seeing is easier close up (it’s easier to predict and forecast the next week rather than the next decade). The further out you get the less accurate you become. But when it comes to messing with time, the further away you get, the easier it is. Going back to your past self two decades ago is actually quite doable and really useful. Making a road trip shorter by compressing time is HARD and typically has weird after effects (hard doesn’t mean impossible, I’ve done it and my husband has a knack for it).
Mars goes retrograde this year (a much less frequent occurrence than Mercury) and while the retrograde doesn’t officially start until the end of October, the shadow period starts right at the beginning of September. That means that, starting next month, you will be in a timeline that you will have to plow back through and do again — if you look at it from Mars time. So what is Mars time? We probably already know Mars’ basic personality, but how you experience it will depend — again — on your perspective (that is, your birth chart). Let’s walk through it…
Mars is retrograde in Gemini. In your own chart:
- What house is Gemini in? Mars is going to be spending a lot of time there (like 7 months) so that’s where the Mars time will be happening in your own life. So lots of energetic starts and then painful pullback and conflicts and then reworking. Is it in your first house, focused on the self? Or your seventh and focused on your relationships? Or your fifth and dealing with your children (whether literal or figurative creative projects)? This is why I like whole sign houses (though they aren’t any more “true” than any other house system).
- What other planets are in Gemini? Are they comfortable there? These planets are like the denizens of that house and they will be impacted by this Mars time (as well as the literal multiple Mars conjunctions as he traverses the sign). If Venus is in Gemini, she’s not favored or debilitated, but she won’t enjoy those Mars conjunctions one bit. If Jupiter is in Gemini, he’s unhappy (in detriment) already and having a long-term malefic visitor might make him cranky. So how do you think your Gemini residing planets manifest for you? Mars will be bringing some energy, but also shaking things up with the chaos of retrograde time travel.
- Mercury is the ruler of Gemini — like the owner of that house. They might be an absentee landlord (most of our planets are) but they are still impacted by what goes on in their house. So where is Mercury at? Imagine Mercury getting calls from your house of Gemini about the situation “it’s chaos, he’s here and he won’t leave! everything is going screwy, the electricity keeps going out!” Now Mercury is currently residing in another sign and house in your chart. Where is that? And is he happy or unhappy or neutral living there? So it’s going to have an impact there.
There’s more advanced stuff too, like angles to other planets and houses where they live, but this is plenty to think about in terms of how this upcoming Mars time travel is going to work for you.
