Retrograde Mercury and the inner vision of the astral field
In their teachings about the texture of the astral field, many esoteric teachers say that the astral world is a different world from the physical one because, among others, our vision turns inward. In a way that a person is unable to see anything in the outer physical world but can observe only things that are inside him. An impermeable ring surrounds man, says for example Rudolf Steiner, especially the man that hasn’t worked with detachment in his time on earth and the result is that this man is unable to see anything in the astral field that is not already inside him. So the astral world gives the sense of isolation, especially, if someone hasn’t experienced love in his physical life and hasn’t any memories of it. Steiner says that we take to that world whatever we have inside us when we leave physical life and we recycle it again and again without stopping it. We live again and again what we have already lived, see our mistakes, feel guilty for the shortcomings, try to correct our duties. Every effort to move forward, unfortunately fails and the conditions in the astral field turn us back to the issues of our past.
The above description could easily describe what happens to us internally while Mercury is retrograde. Not that this happens all the time, but there are retrograde Mercury’s periods where indeed, every effort to solve problems by looking forward fails. Always something arises which forces us to go back, while many issues that we thought we left behind us, reappear in front of us. The more we try to move forward, the more past issues arise. At the end, our time is occupied so much from our past duties, so that we are forced to cancel decisions we had taken before retrograde Mercury, because we can no more keep promises we have made. Also, when trying to get closer to information we need, it seems to escape us; therefore a problem which normally would have an easy solution makes us deal with it again and again and every time something escapes us, so that we have to take another look again and again.
In conclusion, retrograde Mercury could be a period during which we have to act more with our – as Steiner puts it - astral vision than our physical one. The difference between astral vision and physical one is, according to Steiner, that with physical vision, when we want to learn something about an object, we just stand up from the chair, approach it and study it. We exercise an act of will, in order to come closer to the object. But with astral vision, these acts of will go down the drain. There, to learn something about an object we don’t have to get closer to it, we have to attract it; to bring that one to us, not to get us the object. But in order to do so, to attract an object, we have to approach it otherwise, not through the will. We have to relax, to let go and to ask for it, to beg for it somehow to come to us. To exercise no direct force, no matter how much this tortures us. If the object wants, it will come itself to us, if not, it will not come at all.
This astral vision is the way our minds are working in the state of meditation. Meaning that, in this state, we are completely empty of any urge and are left to “the will of God” or in general to the will of things, if they want to come to us. We act magnetically, not willingly and we work with anything that has the will to approach us, not with what we ourselves want to approach.
That seems to be the way that our thinking must work at retrograde Mercury’s period. Sit back and relax is the basic instruction, let your personal goals aside, what you wanted to do, your pursuits etc, and let go completely. Let go and observe what has the goodwill to come to your way. Take advantage of what is approaching to you, and if there is nothing, just wait. Otherwise, no matter how you try to submit the object to your will, the astral field, or your senses in this world, will betray you.
PS: All the above, as mentioned, do not apply so strongly in every retrograde Mercury period. In periods when Mercury transits personal points in our chart, or if our chart has generally a significant odor of Mercury, that feeling though, is particularly intense.
PS1: It goes without saying, that those who have retrograde Mercury in their natal chart, recognize the above pattern more, namely to “attract” things, by waiting patiently for fortune to bring things close to them, instead of trying to get to them on their own.
In their teachings about the texture of the astral field, many esoteric teachers say that the astral world is a different world from the physical one because, among others, our vision turns inward. In a way that a person is unable to see anything in the outer physical world but can observe only things that are inside him. An impermeable ring surrounds man, says for example Rudolf Steiner, especially the man that hasn’t worked with detachment in his time on earth and the result is that this man is unable to see anything in the astral field that is not already inside him. So the astral world gives the sense of isolation, especially, if someone hasn’t experienced love in his physical life and hasn’t any memories of it. Steiner says that we take to that world whatever we have inside us when we leave physical life and we recycle it again and again without stopping it. We live again and again what we have already lived, see our mistakes, feel guilty for the shortcomings, try to correct our duties. Every effort to move forward, unfortunately fails and the conditions in the astral field turn us back to the issues of our past.
The above description could easily describe what happens to us internally while Mercury is retrograde. Not that this happens all the time, but there are retrograde Mercury’s periods where indeed, every effort to solve problems by looking forward fails. Always something arises which forces us to go back, while many issues that we thought we left behind us, reappear in front of us. The more we try to move forward, the more past issues arise. At the end, our time is occupied so much from our past duties, so that we are forced to cancel decisions we had taken before retrograde Mercury, because we can no more keep promises we have made. Also, when trying to get closer to information we need, it seems to escape us; therefore a problem which normally would have an easy solution makes us deal with it again and again and every time something escapes us, so that we have to take another look again and again.
In conclusion, retrograde Mercury could be a period during which we have to act more with our – as Steiner puts it - astral vision than our physical one. The difference between astral vision and physical one is, according to Steiner, that with physical vision, when we want to learn something about an object, we just stand up from the chair, approach it and study it. We exercise an act of will, in order to come closer to the object. But with astral vision, these acts of will go down the drain. There, to learn something about an object we don’t have to get closer to it, we have to attract it; to bring that one to us, not to get us the object. But in order to do so, to attract an object, we have to approach it otherwise, not through the will. We have to relax, to let go and to ask for it, to beg for it somehow to come to us. To exercise no direct force, no matter how much this tortures us. If the object wants, it will come itself to us, if not, it will not come at all.
This astral vision is the way our minds are working in the state of meditation. Meaning that, in this state, we are completely empty of any urge and are left to “the will of God” or in general to the will of things, if they want to come to us. We act magnetically, not willingly and we work with anything that has the will to approach us, not with what we ourselves want to approach.
That seems to be the way that our thinking must work at retrograde Mercury’s period. Sit back and relax is the basic instruction, let your personal goals aside, what you wanted to do, your pursuits etc, and let go completely. Let go and observe what has the goodwill to come to your way. Take advantage of what is approaching to you, and if there is nothing, just wait. Otherwise, no matter how you try to submit the object to your will, the astral field, or your senses in this world, will betray you.
PS: All the above, as mentioned, do not apply so strongly in every retrograde Mercury period. In periods when Mercury transits personal points in our chart, or if our chart has generally a significant odor of Mercury, that feeling though, is particularly intense.
PS1: It goes without saying, that those who have retrograde Mercury in their natal chart, recognize the above pattern more, namely to “attract” things, by waiting patiently for fortune to bring things close to them, instead of trying to get to them on their own.
