Mark your calendars: May 10 to June 3 marks the year’s second Mercury retrograde. To get you through it, here is Tatler Asia’s ultimate survival guide
Have you ever gone through periods of time where you felt like bad luck followed you wherever you went? Mercury retrograde may be to blame.
You've probably heard the phrase "Mercury retrograde" a hundred times, whether it be from your friend who starts their day reading their horoscope and checking their astrology apps, or from celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Katy Perry contemplating whether Mercury retrograde is the reason behind their series of unfortunate luck.
It's likely that you've also wondered: What is Mercury retrograde and why does life seem to go wrong every time it happens? How can we avoid the ill-fated luck that it seems to always bring to us?
To answer these questions and more, we spoke with De Rui, a Hong Kong-based Western astrologer and founder of astrology service, Chart Life. Here, De Rui helps us learn more about Mercury retrograde, along with explaining what we can expect from the second Mercury retrograde of 2022.
What is Mercury in Retrograde?
In basic astronomy terms, retrograde motion is the optical illusion in the sky that a planet is moving backwards. It’s similar to the sensation while driving that when you speed up, the other cars go backwards, at least in relation to you. Of course, the cars are not actually going backwards––it’s merely an illusion that’s caused by your speeding up. In the same way, celestial bodies in the sky don’t move backwards in their orbits––it’s an illusion caused by the Earth’s orbit in relation to them.
Every planet retrogrades on a regular basis. During these periods the energies associated with that planet are not expressing in their usual, direct way. We are often pulled to revisit past events and reconsider their meaning in our lives.