{"id":2133,"date":"2014-10-11T12:10:50","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T17:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/?p=2133"},"modified":"2014-10-11T12:10:50","modified_gmt":"2014-10-11T17:10:50","slug":"the-cliche-of-mercury-retrograde-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/?p=2133","title":{"rendered":"The clich\u00c3\u00a9 of Mercury retrograde thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"schoolteacher\"<\/span><\/p>\n

As an author I try to be mindful of clich\u00c3\u00a9s and avoid them like the plague. Clich\u00c3\u00a9s include phrases like: think outside the horoscope, kill two Geminis with one stone, take the Taurus by the horns, etc. We\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve seen these word-groups so many times they\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve become stock communications devices, comfortable crutches we can lean on when we\u00e2\u0080\u0099re too lazy to walk.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge that every serious writer takes up, however, is to express something in words that no one\u00e2\u0080\u0099s yet composed in this particular combination. The very word\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>novelist<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0implies a responsibility to say something new, or at least say an old thing in a novel way.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As an astrologer, I\u00e2\u0080\u0099m dismayed at how often our profession advises deferring life in the face of Mercury retrograde. Three times a year this old bogeyman in a wheelchair gets rolled out for everyone to contemplate with a collective sense of dread, lethargy and resignation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sadly, repeated warnings of Mercury retrograde from the astrological community have become a kind of\u00c2\u00a0boy-who-cried-wolf<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0running gag that now turns up on mainstream media. Sorry, but we do our profession no service by continuing to spout this questionable folk wisdom. We might as well shout:\u00c2\u00a0Beware Friday the 13th! Don\u00e2\u0080\u0099t walk under that ladder in front of that black cat! Don\u00e2\u0080\u0099t step on that crack, you\u00e2\u0080\u0099ll break your mother\u00e2\u0080\u0099s back!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"mercurygod\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Mercury retrograde has become the modern astrologer\u00e2\u0080\u0099s clich\u00c3\u00a9. So deeply entrenched is this in our culture that some national astrological associations routinely offer for sale wallet-sized cards indicating Mercury retrograde periods. God forbid we should forget to discourage a client with the dubious prediction that these murky periods \u00e2\u0080\u0093 three times a year, for three weeks at a pop \u00e2\u0080\u0093 lurk like ponds of quicksand to swallow their emails, their travel plans or their job interviews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, serious analysis of this phenomenon reveals\u00c2\u00a0no bias whatsoever\u00c2\u00a0for mishap or disaster during Mercury retrograde periods \u00e2\u0080\u0093 neither natural disasters, aviation crashes, maritime sinkings, train wrecks nor acts of terrorism. If there really was a discernible southbound drift of stock prices during Mercury retrograde, don\u00e2\u0080\u0099t you think we\u00e2\u0080\u0099d all be counting our money on the terrace of our Caribbean hideaway instead of selling umbrellas to clients for the next planetary shit-storm?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mercury retrograde: it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a problem all right, but one that we\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve created in our own minds. We lend it more credence than it deserves, and it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s time we stop passing this fallacy on to our clients.<\/span><\/p>\n

But\u00c2\u00a0if you think this is unduly harsh, just remember,\u00c2\u00a0Every cloud has a Mercury lining<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Alan<\/span><\/a>Alan Annand is an astrologer and writer of crime fiction, including his\u00c2\u00a0New Age Noir<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0series featuring astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, a criminal profiler whom one reviewer called \u00e2\u0080\u009cSherlock Holmes with a horoscope.\u00e2\u0080\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n

Find his books at\u00c2\u00a0Amazon<\/span><\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0Apple<\/span><\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0Barnes&Noble<\/span><\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0Kobo<\/span><\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0Smashwords<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Astrologer: navamsa.com<\/a>. Writer: sextile.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an author I try to be mindful of clich\u00c3\u00a9s and avoid them like the plague. Clich\u00c3\u00a9s include phrases like: think outside the horoscope, kill two Geminis with one stone, take the Taurus by the horns, etc. We\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve seen these word-groups so many times they\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve become stock communications devices, comfortable crutches we can lean on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,26],"tags":[176,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2147,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/2147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}