☿︎ Planets
Mercury
Thinking and exchange: how a person gathers information and explains it to others
What it means
Mercury is the way of thinking and negotiating: the speed at which a person grasps and the form in which they express thoughts. In a chart it never strays far from the Sun, so its sign is either the Sun's sign or an adjacent one.
In balance
Precise questions, quick learning, an ability to reach agreement
Out of balance
Talk instead of action, arguing for its own sake, scattered attention
What this object is
a year around the circle, up to three weeks in a sign
Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, completing an orbit in 88 days. From Earth it appears to move backwards three times a year: this is the famous retrograde Mercury. No actual reversal occurs in its motion – this is how its path looks from a moving Earth.
Rulership of signs
How to read in your chart
The sign shows how you phrase things, the house indicates what you think about most often. Retrograde Mercury in a chart is not a flaw: it usually means the person thinks before speaking and needs a second pass over the material.