Paganism

Column: Spiritual Decluttering

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This has been a really rough summer for many people around me, and for my own family. As we approach Labor Day, the start of September, the peak of what should be a festive holiday weekend, I find my heart and thoughts turning to tuning out pain. There has been so much of it, from natural disasters to political fireworks to unifying eclipses. We’re on a wild roller coaster with no brake sand it seems, no way to get off.  So we default to what we know: we multitask. We busy ourselves.

Paganism

Column: Healing the body, mind, spirit during retrograde

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“Release the past to rest as deeply as possible.”
The last tweet from Charlie Murphy the night before he died. For many Pagans, Mercury Retrograde carries the reputation of being a time to expect communication, traffic snarls, computer problems, and overall worry about saying or doing the wrong thing. How many times do you wonder why everything seems to be going wrong, only to relax when someone says, “Mercury’s in retrograde”? Pagans in general learn early about the stars, astrology, and the impact that times of delay can have in general. Venus in Retrograde asks us to think hard about who and what we value: who do we let into our lives, what or who do we treasure and how, what means the most to us overall?

Living

Enter the trickster: Mercury returns to retrograde

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK –In astrology, the planet Mercury begins moving retrograde again on January 21, meaning that the planet will appear to be moving in the opposite direction of other heavenly bodies. This optical illusion occurs three times annually, and usually inspires a plethora of social media posts blaming communication and other blunders on the condition. This time around, Mercury’s reversal has caught the attention of writer Kristin Dombek, who in an essay in the New York Times magazine writes:
On Jan. 21, at 10:54 a.m. Eastern Time, Mercury will begin its first pass by Earth of the new year. For about three weeks, it will appear to move backward across our sky and will, according to astrologers, disrupt technology, communication and human concord.