Retrograde planets: what's really happening and what it means

Planets don't really go backwards

Every planet orbits the Sun in the same direction, all the time. But we watch from a moving Earth. When we overtake a slower outer planet on the inside track, it seems to slide backwards against the stars for a while, the way a car you pass on the motorway seems to drift back. Mercury and Venus, inside our orbit, appear to reverse when they swing round the near side of the Sun and catch us up. That apparent backward motion is retrograde.

A planet slows to a halt before it turns (a station), moves back, stations again and goes direct. Astrologers pay most attention to the stations, when the planet hangs on one degree for days.

How often it happens

• Mercury: three or four times a year, about three weeks each.
• Venus: every 19 months or so, for about six weeks.
• Mars: roughly every two years, for two to two and a half months.
• Jupiter and Saturn: every year, for four months or more.
• Uranus, Neptune and Pluto: every year, for five months or more. They spend close to half of each year retrograde.

The Sun and Moon never go retrograde. The lunar node moves backwards nearly all the time, which is just how it moves, so it isn't called retrograde.

Retrograde right now

• Mercury at 14°34′ Scorpio
• Venus at 25°25′ Libra
• Saturn at 9°10′ Aries
• Uranus at 4°36′ Gemini
• Neptune at 2°03′ Aries

Every station in the next twelve months

Mercury to Saturn; worked out from the ephemeris, to the hour, as the planet's daily motion crosses zero.

What a retrograde means in a transit

The usual reading is that a retrograde planet's themes turn inward and backward: Mercury retrograde for revisiting plans, messages and old contacts (and double-checking travel and contracts); Venus retrograde for old relationships and values; Mars retrograde for frustrated momentum and unfinished fights. It's a good time to review rather than launch. Nothing about it is dangerous.

A slow planet's retrograde also means it can touch a point in your chart three times: once going forwards, once backwards, once forwards again. That's why the year-ahead view lists some transits with several dates.

Retrograde in your birth chart

About one birth chart in five has Mercury retrograde, and most people have at least one planet retrograde somewhere (the outer planets spend so long in reverse). Astrologers tend to read a natal retrograde as that planet's energy working inwardly or on its own timetable: a Mercury retrograde thinker who mulls before speaking, a Venus retrograde person slow to trust their own taste. Your chart marks any retrograde planet with ℞.