Quick thoughts on the meaning of planets retrograde
Retrograde means that a planet seems to be going backwards in the skies – in reality planets don’t go backwards, it just appears like they do. One way to think of retrograde is like you are sitting on a train and it starts to move slowly – yet, it seems like the train next to you is moving backwards. An illusion. When planets appear retrograde they are closer to the earth which is how this illusion is created.
But hang on…is it truly an illusion? Could these planets affect us just that little bit more deeply when they are closer and most visible to the naked eye (the planets that can be visible to the naked eye that is – Uranus Neptune and Pluto are not). Does their energetic function change when they are closer and slower? Is it lazier, or harder to express? Or deeper and more profound?
Planets retrograde might function in any of the above ways, depending on what we are learning. This is definitely not a subscription to theories which sprout things like “Saturn retrograde is unlucky” (I don’t subscribe to Saturn being any more difficult than Venus if we work consciously to integrate the lessons of Saturn).
Sometimes astrologers say one way to understand retrograde planets is to think of them operating like they might in the 12th house. However lets not subscribe to the 12th house being evil for the purposes of this note, let’s think about the 12th house being the collective unconscious, the everything, that which when tapped enables us to find the gold in our souls within it. The place where manifestation is seeded.
When planets retrograde might appear to be going more quietly, what they might indeed be doing is enabling us to get away from everyday noise and clutter to indeed reflect, dig within and plant seeds to bring some of our inner gold out into the world.
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