![]() So if you were stressed because tomorrow is the beginning of a time when communication breaks down, technology stops working, and you’re in constant terror of stepping in dog poop, take a deep breath. Apparent retrograde motion is what you see when Mercury laps around the Earth as if we were racing around a track. Retrograde motion is all an optical illusion, albeit a really cool one! The planets are always moving in their orbits in the same uniform direction, but they all move at different speeds. No matter what you may have heard from other YouTubers, Mercury does not stop moving. This is the video that earlier comment was from. This video does an absolutely fantastic job of explaining it in more clear detail, although what I said is the very basic idea of what happens. So starting tomorrow, and ending on March 9th, if you had some way of knowing where the planet Mercury is (which is very difficult) in relation to the Earth and the Sun, it would look like it stops, moves backward, stops again, and continues moving in the right direction. It describes any planet that appears to be moving backward from its usual direction across the night sky. Retrograde isn’t a place or a state of being, it’s an adjective and a verb. It retrogrades most often, three to four times a year for about three weeks each time. It seems that the reason why Mercury retrogrades is the only one that non-astronomers and non-astrologers have heard of is because being closest to the Sun, Mercury moves fastest through its orbit. Neptune will typically retrograde from June all the way until November. As a matter of fact, every planet retrogrades sometimes. So if you are into astrology, you still shouldn’t be asking if it is in retrograde you should be asking if Mercury is retrograde. You don’t want to be like this person:īarring the part about Gatorade, the first thing that we’ve been getting wrong is that Mercury isn’t in retrograde at all: it is retrograde. There lies the end of my rant, but I think that after dismissing the astrological beliefs behind Mercury in retrograde, my readers, and especially my coworkers, deserve to know what it actually is and what it actually means. ![]() It is a far too frequent occurrence that I’ll sit at my desk as I fret over which font to use on a banner and hear, “Why is everything going wrong!? Is Mercury in retrograde?” followed by “It is! Oh my god, I hope it ends soon!” or “It’s not even in retrograde! So why is everything so terrible!?” ![]() After leaving Grove City College, I thought I was leaving anti-scientific nonsense behind me. But never in my life, before starting this job, had I ever heard anyone voice legitimate concerns that Mercury was in retrograde. And usually, I even like my coworkers, and I barely ever like anyone. I started my first full-time job as a graphic designer almost one year ago. Well, today’s post is in a nostalgic spirit as another rant rears its ugly head just in time for Mercury to enter retrograde tomorrow, February 17th. ![]() Since those days, I’ve managed to separate myself from religion, and so I haven’t blogged many rants for a while. Usually it’s been different aspects of religion invading my life that made me so upset. I started this blog as a way to vent about the things in my life that bothered me.
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