Strata smoking fines tossed
Seeking a wildfire 'hero'
BC firm's materials in space
UN workers charged 
Trudeau in Saskatoon 
Doctors protest tax change
5 die crossing channel
Jury finds railway at fault 
Mistrial in migrant shooting
Tourism operators struggle 
Nude Beverages sells line
Wealth gap widening
Leafs even series
Cristall gets pro look
Warriors even series in OT
Swift breaks Spotify record
Cudi Coachella set cut short
Bon Jovi 'hasn't been a saint'
We live in perilous times, and never more so than now, with Mercury pulling a retrograde number on us. The retrograde Mercury gig, well-known among astrologists, started on October 21 and continues through November 10.
The retrograde Mercury event is an occasionally occurring sneak-planet maneuver that disrupts every single thing we sentient beings do, according to astrological experts. It messes with our computers, too, and God knows what it does to Siri, who is messed up enough as it is.
According to one astrologist,“Mercury rules communication, clear thinking, truth and travel, so when the planet goes retrograde — which means that it looks like it’s going backwards in the sky — all those things go backwards. They start to get ugly and tangle up.”
It’s no wonder, really, since it turns out that “Mercury is not an emotional planet, but rather a highly objective, truth-seeking one.”
Now, as most of you know, when you are curious about astrological stuff, it pays to come to the most expert of experts. Who would that be? C’est moi (astrologically ‘c’est moi’ means ‘Jo Slade is the astrological expert, also she has a bridge to sell you’).
This particular phenomena, the retrograde-but-not-emotional Mercury thing, causes every single person’s mind to warp in unexpected and perverse ways (more than usual, that is). For example, you may suddenly have the urge to run naked through the streets strumming an out-of-tune ukulele while singing ‘Karma Chameleon’. Well, our friend retrograde Mercury is the reason you want to do that. Personally, it has always been on my list of Things To Do, but that’s just me.
Another example: The last few days, I could not figure out for the life of me why I was murdering people and planting them in the front yard, until I realized Mercury was all retrograde-this, retrograde-that. Instead of sensibly burying the bodies in the back yard as I usually do, my brain was addled from the primal retrogradial soup, and as a result I was tossing the damn things in the front yard where anybody could see. That’s the thing with retrograde Mercury, it just gets into your brain and messes with your thoughts. Your brain on retrograde Mercury is a disaster.
A friend of mine, Cate Eales, recently posted her Virgo horoscope on Facebook:
We may feel as if we're stuck in a loop today if we seek answers by repeatedly analyzing the same data over and over again. We are faced with a dilemma as the logical Virgo Moon opposes imaginative Neptune to stimulate our dreams. However, retrograde Mercury backs into hard-nosed Saturn, requiring us to have all our facts in order. Unfortunately, the truth remains elusive no matter how many times our minds run around in the same circles.
You see what I mean? Poor Cate spent that day in some kind of cosmic endless-loop hell of retrogradedness. As you can see by the horoscope, the ever-logical-but-kinda-drama-queenish Virgo moon had a hissy fit and snapped at fun-loving whacko Neptune, giving Cate a nightmare about having to appear in this column again, then Mercury came wandering in backwards to fight against snotty Saturn who whacked Mercury upside the head with one of her rings. In the meantime, Cate was chasing down facts to put them in order. And in the end it was all for naught, because apparently the truth was dizzy from running around in circles.
Horoscopes can be tricky to interpret, but no worries, it’s what I do best.
One bit of advice from astrological experts: back up your computer, because Mercury is going to zap that sucker to kingdom come. My advice is, don’t do it. Empirical scientific studies show that when you restore data that was backed up during a retrogradification, the restored data will be in Latin, with misspellings and serious grammatical errors. Are you willing to take a chance? Haiku in poorly structured Latin is generally a fail.
No need to panic about this situation, dire though it is. Just take reasonable precautions, don’t buy anything, sell anything, work, play, fall in love, fall out of love, think, go anywhere, or do anything. Not really a big deal, if you’re lazy like me.
See you on the flip-side of the retrograde.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
