Moon Mondays: Scapegoating Mercury retrograde. How convenient. 

Mercury turns retrograde on Saturday. Let the games begin.  

Mercury isn’t the only one stirring the pot this week. Scorpio season kicks off on Friday, just as Venus meets exactly with the sun. Scorpio is an oft-maligned sign, and Mercury retrograde gets a bad rap. Fear not — both are woefully misunderstood. To quench our thirst for impending doom, we might as well just say Mercury’s in Gatorade. 

I’ve got a different idea. One of these Mercury retrograde cycles, I’m taking a staycation and creating my own writing retreat. I see it now: glorious, inspiration-filled days, sitting at my laptop, nary a responsibility in sight. Heck, since it’s off-season and life is blessedly a little slower, I could even do a mini retreat right now. Write in the mornings and work in the afternoons — take my longed-for Mercury retrograde fantasy out for a spin.  

When Mercury retraces its steps through the sky, it shouldn’t become the scapegoat for all our ails. Instead, it’s an opportunity to release the reins we grip so tightly. Allow the right hemisphere of our brains to get a little airtime. We’re so constantly on the go, go, go, linearly obsessed, busy climbing the ladder that we forget we have a whole creative side gasping for breath.  

Humans possess a burning desire to make stuff. Even if you don’t fancy yourself an artist, creativity is a primal need. That’s why we rearrange our furniture for the umpteenth time, spend way too long putting together the perfect outfit and turn a simple Halloween costume into a full-blown theater production. 

Remember when you were little? Was art class a fav? It was for me. That free, open time left to just play with fingerpaints, crayons, glitter and clay. I couldn’t get enough of the fruity, wheat-y, smell of Play-Doh — or was that just me?  

We grow up and get “serious” and abandon our “trivial” pursuits. Often some well-meaning but misguided adult steers us away from the delight that comes from creating, toward “real” jobs and activities. Why isn’t making stuff worth our time? A little piece inside of me dies when I turn my back on my heart’s joy.  

Mercury retrograde implores us to wedge open that door rusted shut. What creative pursuits did you love as a kid? What about now? Can you find any wiggle room for unsupervised play, unstructured, just for the sake of the creating itself? 

Before we start planning our first gallery opening or receiving a Grammy for our hit single, we can start with paper and a colored pencil, or a guitar and YouTube. We’ve got three weeks of retrograde Mercury to dip our toes into anything we secretly desire.  

Not everything has to stick. My office is filled with watercolors and photography projects I’ve abandoned, but I don’t let my loss of interest stop me from exploring new directions to express my inner artist. 

When you start to blame Mercury retrograde for the email you didn’t get or your router going down, remember this time is an invitation to get off the hamster wheel for a minute and just play, daydream and create something small out of thin air, just because you can or want to. 

If you’re feeling intimidated, the start of Scorpio season can help. The scorpion isn’t afraid to explore what’s hidden beneath the surface, like the creative parts we’ve stuffed away.  

Scorpio thrives in the right brain. It doesn’t have much use for the left brain and, in fact, finds it boring. Scorpio desires an intense feeling experience. It’s obsessed with the juice of life. It couldn’t care less about your emails, unless they’re sexy poems from your lover. A scorpion has minimal use for your router, other than using ChatGPT to mine its emotional abyss.  

Scorpio wants to engage in realms of the shadow, emotion and what’s hiding under that rock in your unconscious, where you buried your last finger painting. Scorpio’s ready to release the creativity beast from its cage, just to feel what happens. 

As Venus meets with the new Scorpio sun, there’s a union between the light and the goddess. Both are creators themselves. The sun generates life in its radiance, and the goddess created heaven and earth her very first day on the job.  

I’m going to lean into this energetic boost — and my inspired mini-retreat — to give my deepest desires more room to breathe and grow. No agenda, no “should.” See what comes when I crack open the door inside my unconscious to let in a little stream of Scorpio sunlight while I drink my Mercury Gatorade. 

Sheridan Semple is the creator of the Astrology for Real Life Method. She helps women who feel stuck in the same patterns understand why they keep repeating them — and what to do differently. Learn more or work with her at sheridansemple.com.