The usual picks are black tourmaline for general steadiness, smoky quartz for grounding, aquamarine for saying the thing you need to say, and fluorite for keeping your head. Whether you need any of them depends on what your next three weeks hold.
The oldest systematic account of what Mercury governs is a list of jobs.
Ptolemy, writing in the second century, says Mercury “produces writers, superintendents of business, accountants, teachers in the sciences, merchants and bankers: also, soothsayers, astrologers, and attendants on sacrifices, and, in short, all who live by the exercise of literature, and by furnishing explanation or interpretation; as well as by stipend and salary, or allowance.”
The summing-up in the middle of that is his, not mine. All who live by the exercise of literature, and by furnishing explanation or interpretation. Machines are absent from the list, and so is paperwork as such. What organises it is work that finishes when somebody else has understood something, and the clause he tacks on at the end is about how people in those trades get paid.
What the tradition tells you to do
The instructions are unusually specific for astrology. Susan Miller, whose Astrology Zone is where a lot of readers first meet the rules, is direct about it: “a retrograde period is not a good time to sign any contracts or even to shake hands on any new agreements. Do not close on a house during this time nor sign a lease.” She also tells you to back up your computer beforehand and to hold off on installing anything. And afterwards, “always allow two days, minimum, after Mercury moves ahead to normal direct speed before you start initiating projects or making big purchases.”
There is a run-up as well. Miller calls the two or three weeks before the retrograde proper the “impending shadow period”, on the grounds that things started in it run into the same trouble.
The tradition is also narrower than its reputation suggests. Cafe Astrology, which keeps a retrograde calendar, says on its own page that “there is no reason to suspend projects or anything of the sort during a Mercury Retrograde cycle”, and then draws the line where Miller draws it: “It’s not an ideal time to start new ones or to sign contracts, simply because a change of mind is quite likely once Mercury turns direct.” Carry on, in other words. Just do not start anything and do not sign.
Read closely instead of absorbed from a group chat, the rules turn out to be for a week with a decision in it, and plenty of weeks do not have one. The two references above also disagree about what Mercury covers. Miller writes that “included under this planet’s domain are all types of code, including computer codes, as well as transportation, shipping, and travel”. Cafe Astrology’s own list runs “speaking, negotiating, buying and selling, listening, formal contracts, documents, travel, mail, and shipping”, with nothing technological on it, and the same page still tells you to back up your computer. Two current references, two answers, no arbiter.
What a retrograde is
Briefly, because the schedule depends on it.
Retrograde motion, in NASA’s words, “is an APPARENT change in the movement of the planet through the sky. It is not REAL in that the planet does not physically start moving backwards in its orbit.” What you are seeing is the geometry of one planet overtaking another. The Planetary Society gives the frequency: because Mercury takes 88 days to go round the Sun against Earth’s 365, it overtakes us three to four times a year, and appears to run backwards for about three weeks each time.
Three weeks, three or four times a year, published years in advance. That is the whole of the astronomy, and it is why this is one of the very few crystal practices that arrives with a start date and an end date printed on it.
What does go wrong, whatever the planet is doing
The oldest version of this, the part about being misunderstood, has something behind it, and it is what I did not expect to find.
In 2005, Justin Kruger and three colleagues published five experiments in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on how well people think they communicate by email. In the first study, participants expected 97 percent of their messages to be read the way they meant them. The actual figure was 84 percent.
The second study is the one that stays with you. When the messages were sarcastic, listeners who heard them spoken decoded nearly three-quarters correctly. Readers who got the same statements by email scored at a rate the authors describe as indistinguishable from chance. And the senders had no idea, rating their own clarity the same in both conditions.
That is not a claim about planets and I am not offering it as one. What it measures is the failure Ptolemy’s list is organised around. You thought you had made yourself understood, and the other person did not get it. That failure happens at a steady rate all year, an awkward result for the astrology and a useful one for you.
Which stones, and do you need any
Start with the sorting question. Do the next three weeks contain a conversation, a negotiation, a piece of writing, a difficult message, a thing you have to explain to someone who has a reason not to want to hear it?
If the answer is no, skip this entirely. There is nothing here for a week with no decisions in it, and buying a stone for one is buying a stone for nothing. That is not the usual advice in this corner of the internet and I mean it.
If the answer is yes, the stones that practice sends you to are the throat ones, and aquamarine is the one with an instruction attached rather than a vibe. Hold it and say the sentence out loud before you send it, which is covered properly here. Fluorite gets the sorting-your-thoughts job. Black tourmaline gets general steadiness, though I would drop the placement that retrograde lists keep recommending for it, propped beside your devices, for reasons set out here. Smoky quartz is the standard pick if the period reads to you as a scattered feeling instead of a communication problem. Pick one.
The individual stones are all set out in the Crystalance Mineral Library.
And whichever you pick, the retrograde has a published end date, so put the stone away on it. Not much else on that shelf comes with a day on which you are supposed to stop.
Sources
- Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Book IV, chapter IV, “The Quality of Employment”
- Susan Miller, “Everything You Need to Know About Mercury Retrograde”, Astrology Zone
- Cafe Astrology, Mercury retrograde
- NASA StarChild, “What does it mean for Mercury to be in retrograde?”
- Kate Howells, “What does Mercury in retrograde actually mean?”, The Planetary Society, 19 April 2023
- Kruger, Epley, Parker and Ng, “Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89(6), 2005, 925 to 936
