Does this scenario sound familiar? Your workplace suffers from a string of unfortunate events: important checks being lost in the mail, packages ending up in the wrong place, computers randomly glitching. You’re commiserating with your coworkers when someone mentions that Mercury is in retrograde.
Ah-ha, you shout in unison. That explains it!
Yep. Mercury retrograde. When bad luck multiplies and people hide under the bed waiting for Mercury to go back to normal. (For the record, Mercury isn’t actually moving backward during this period. It just appears to.)
Mercury gets blamed for communication and tech problems just like the full moon gets blamed for people acting extra crazy.
Do studies prove that these celestial objects are causing our woes? Nope. But ask any of your friends and I bet they have a story about things going wrong with Mercury retrograde or crazy with the full moon. Because we’re a tribe of storytellers. We love assigning cause and effect, even if there’s no hard proof there’s a connection. Why? We want to find order in chaos. If blaming Mercury and the moon helps us navigate this sometime incomprehensible, sometimes scary world, well, where’s the harm?
Mercury and the moon aren’t complaining.
As for me, I think I’ll set Mercury retrograde loose in one of my future books and see how my characters react.
