Lunar Eclipse in Virgo, Mercury goes retrograde: Use your words

We all remember the children's rhyme: sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.  Though I understand the sentiment, if there was ever a statement that is incorrect, it would be that one. Words have power. They have the capacity to both separate us and to bring us together.  They can enchant; they can dismember us.   

In the Christian Bible, John 1:1 boldly states, “In the beginning was the word.”  Throughout the day, just as I am doing as I write this,  we search for the right words.  They shape our world.  Through the words we utter, we speak our lives into being.  The stories we tell ourselves and share with others about ourselves create both the windows and the walls of our experience. We bring ourselves to life through our words. 

Early Friday morning, if you are on the East Coast of the US, or late Thursday evening, if you are on the West Coast, a lunar eclipse in Virgo occurs and then, almost exactly 24 hours later, Mercury stations and turns retrograde. 

Eclipses, particularly lunar, are intense no matter what sign they fall in.  They bring both unexpected beginnings and endings. 

Mercury, the archetype of liminal space, is the ruler of Gemini and Virgo and, therefore, has an influence over this eclipse.  He rules communication, the very words we use to navigate both our inner and outer world. In his Virgo guise, he takes things apart and puts them back together again. You could say, through this digestive process, he coordinates our thought processes, using both ideas and sensory information from conscious and unconscious sources that all need to be assimilated to be understood. Mercury plays a role in how we process everything. Words, the very building blocks of our stories, just like food, can either nourish us or make us ill.   

This Eclipse, which could easily feel like a Full Moon on steroids, is shining a light on the words we use, and its alignment with Saturn invites us to take responsibility for them.  To recognize that they are tools that we can use. 

During retrogrades, a planet appears to be moving backward across the sky, essentially retracing its steps before it turns around and once again moves forward.  But when it initially begins forward movement, it moves sluggishly, more slowly than usual, and is considered to be in its shadow period until it begins once again at a normal rate of motion.  2025 began with Mars retrograde, Venus is currently retrograde through April, and now the last personal planet, Mercury, is shifting direction as well. From an astrological viewpoint, in many ways, from the beginning of 2025 all the way through mid-May, when Mars finally leaves the shadow period of its retrograde, the universe is signaling for us to slow down.  To not jump to conclusions of any kind. 

Here is one way of weaving all of this together and harnessing its energy: Venus retrograde gives us an opportunity to reevaluate our priorities. (One note: Venus rules money, and since she went retrograde on March 1, financial markets have been retrograding as well.) Mercury completes its retrograde on April 7 during this period, helping us to rethink and refocus on what is most important to us prior to Venus becoming direct on April 12. This allows us to know what is worth taking a stand for and pursuing (Mars) when everything finally moves full steam ahead in May.

We hear that actions speak louder than words, but walking our talk begins with words, the stories we are telling ourselves.  They can either motivate us or alarm us.  My mother had many, many wonderful qualities but was also a master of terrifying tales. I vividly remember her blithely telling me to be careful as I headed out to go skiing in my early-teens by sharing that my cousin Gerrie had apparently been on the chair lift when it had stopped abruptly, and she had fallen off and broken both legs.  It was only the third time I had been skiing, and the first time we were going to use the chair lift rather than the rope pull. Needless to say, I was gripping the medal bar as though my life depended upon it.  And though I now find it hilarious, it took at least another month for me to be able to approach the chair lift with anything other than suspicion. 

This was one minor story told to me by someone else, yet its impact was profound.  Imagine how the stories we stick to, that we tell ourselves over and over again, chanting them into being, amplify into mythic proportion over time.  Tales of how or where we don’t belong, tales about what we can or can’t do, of what dreams are available to us.   

The thing I want you to remember during this retrograde, during this eclipse, is that your words have power.