By Amanda Painter
Have you ever looked at your reflection in the water with the Sun directly behind you? Your reflection ends up being mostly a silhouette that’s gently distorted by the movement of the water; and though you can’t see your own features very well, you can see all the color and detail of what’s behind you — it’s just softer than if you turned and looked directly at where you are.
Photo by Amanda Painter
It occurred to me this might be one way to think of tonight’s conjunction of the Sun with retrograde Mercury in Pisces.
Due to the compression of your perspective with the source of illumination, you may not be able to see yourself as others see you right now. Yet you might find a new, gentler appreciation for where you’ve been — a view with softer edges but no less imagination-sparking (or growth-sparking) insight.
After all, Mercury retrogrades really are about slowing down and reassessing more than they’re about everything getting glitchy and going to hell in a handbasket. As I saw suggested elsewhere, those hiccups are generally the result of us fallible humans refusing to slow down, pay closer attention, and retrace the steps that got us where we are now (or where we have been many times). It’s trendy these days, even for people who scoff at astrology, to blame everything that goes wrong on Mercury being retrograde — even when it isn’t.