Being a night person I seldom listened to WBCN back when their morning show reigned supreme in the area market, but whenever I caught up to him, Darrell Martinie was always an amusing presence on-air. Amusing with genuine depth because with astrology there’s always this tension between serious and pablum – "happy talk" and arcane technical babble. The Cosmic Muffin was invariably entertaining, while striking a beguiling tone. Best yet, his reasoning was sound. You have him to thank for introducing the concepts of "Mercury Retrograde" and "lunar void of course" to a general audience. Boston was probably the only market in the country that could deal with astrology more complicated than sun signs and he educated a couple of generations in the world’s second-oldest profession. We wish him godspeed in his journey deeper into the cosmos.

Hi, Sally.
> I just love reading your column. I find most of what
> you say to be true and this week's blog about the
> Mercury retrograde is especially fitting. I think I
> was probably born during a Mercury retrograde period
> (29 August 1977/2:45 PM/Warwick, RI) because I seem to
> fit the profile. I am a pushover for an
> accent/different languages, I like writing to people
> better than speaking, and it seems like there are
> times that I either have to explain myself a lot to
> people until they get what I am saying, or noone
> acknowledges what I said but someone else says it a
> different way and it is a good point. I was also
> wondering if anyone else born under the Mercury
> retrograde complain about machines that never seem to
> work right for them, times of foggy thinking, or never
> being able to contact the people they need to speak to
> right away? I always seem to have those problems.
>
> Anyways, I wanted to share this story with your
> readers. After a month of refrigerators dying, cars
> rolling by themselves, missed communications,
> electrical systems in vehicles going haywire, and lost
> keys, the Mercury retrograde finally worked to my
> coworkers and my advantage. We had a severe
> thunderstorm last night that knocked the power out to
> the whole area. When I got to work this morning, we
> were on generator power. Well, after about 8 hours of
> the generator being on, it blew up and we were without
> power. To make matters worse, the whole area is not
> expected to have power until 8 or 9 tonight! With
> nothing working (not even the phones), the office
> grew quiet and people started talking and joking with
> each other when we realized the generators were not
> coming back on and we will probably be going home
> early (which of course, we did). It was such a great
> morale boost. All I can say is, "thanks Mercury
> retrograde!"
>

Dear Lighter Side –

Totally all true. Mercury retrograde is an EXCELLENT time to manufacture excuses from the trivial ("I didn’t get your email") to the major ("I didn’t get your email because my computer was stolen and I went blind"). Sometimes we just don’t slow down and so a few extra trillion ions in the atmosphere makes that happen. My advice in terms of getting to the bottom of mis-working machinery is to climb up the power-source until you find the head monkey holding the cord and see if you can find the outlet together.

Natal Mercury retrograde can also be a placement that means one is constantly MIS-interpreting tone and gesture – sort of an undiagnosed offshoot of Asperger’s. I knew someone for a very long time who was chronically guilty of this – one of those sensitive types who couldn’t look you in the eye because they were waiting for the next resentable bit of irony to emerge. I mean – we’re all egomaniacs – but natal Mercury retrograde can add this patina of forgiveable charm to it however. I applaud your self-knowledge – not everyone with Rx placements has a clue as to what’s going on!

Thanks for writing.

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The ground rules for Letters to Symboline:

I get so many letters there’s no way I can answer individual queries without posting them. So, what you send me is what I will print, with editing for grammar and mechanics and so on. If you’re writing just to vent, and don’t care about getting a reply, please tell me. I will not post your email address, and I will delete your last name from your letter. And I am available for individual forecasts. You can find information about that at www.moonsigns.net. I really enjoy having clients, and have a detailed form that asks circumstances and dates so I can construct a "map" of what’s happened when/why/how. And "Sally Cragin’s Moon Signs Calendar" for 2006 which features a daily Lunar Phase is finally done. Visit moonsigns.net and click on the store to see.

Mercury continues to rise as Mercury retrogrades. Here’s what I’ve heard/read about this week: falling panels in the main Big Dig tunnel, blaming an administrator without finger-pointing at Bechtel, lost lottery tickets, appointments that don’t happen, directions that aren’t accurate as to mileage or direction, messages coming in late, going awry, almost locking the keys in the car, writing down the wrong number, writing down the wrong number by one digit, thinking of someone who lives 3000 miles away and the next day getting an email from her, confessing similar perplexity with Mercury retrograde. Plenty of people have natal mercury retrograde you know, and those are the folks who: in my practice and in my experience otherwise marry people whose native language is different from their own, choose an artistic discipline or some other method of communication apart from actual talking, always manage to seem misunderstood even when they are completely understood, thus deflecting the attention from anyone’s expectations of personal responsibility, conveniently not being present for the bill.

And Mercury retrograde is not the time to decide to put A/C in the bedroom for the one week or 10 days of the year when you need it because if you think humanity’s unreliable, spend some time around machines – the addled guy in the South End Starbucks yesterday who had no idea what lid went on the blender gizmo to make the little slushy drink I had a coupon for making me almost late for the play – no machines are not your friend now either.

And after nearly 8 years of maintaining a tightly-focussed gaze upward at signs, symbols, numerals, angles, tangles, planetary confunctionfusion, I find I am in a place that doesn’t make quite as much sense and think that Mercury retrograde isn’t….

…helping….

How're YOU doing?

Sally - I am a little confused at this week's column. For the daily of June 24 you say that decisions made probably won't last but for the 23 weekly you seem to say the opposite, that decisions made would be lasting. Am I reading something wrong? Once again I really enjoy your column. -- Paulette

Hi Paulette - -thanks for writing. I looked back at those dates and saw that June 24 was dark of the moon which is VERY different from new moon. Make decisions ON or AFTER the new moon. When you make them before – you want to retract when moon changes phase. Lots of cultures that use lunar phases in calendar and holiday planning use new and full moons are guideposts. The dark of the moon is, well, hinky. When it’s not being downright mischievous and malevolent. Assume nothing on the dark of the moon.

In other news – oh joy, are any of you watching Supernova? Another rock-star-in-progress show! And here I thought INXS’s hejira for singer last summer was a one-of! As a retired rock critic and sister of a retired rock star who’s been around the globe in leather pants more often than John Glenn did in a spacesuit (though the space suit and capsule is actually a LESS hermetic environment than the appurtenances of the travelling rock entourage) I have to say I love this stuff. Mostly because as the wife of a DIY rock label entrepreneur we always enjoy hubris.

What’s this have to do with astrology? Expect MAJOR hubris and entertainment value thanks to Mars rolling through Leo and playing catch-up with Saturn (the orb was exact the week before the solstice – any of you Taurus/Scorp/Aquarians flip out then?).

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The ground rules for Letters to Symboline:

I get so many letters there’s no way I can answer individual queries without posting them. So, what you send me is what I will print, with editing for grammar and mechanics and so on. If you’re writing just to vent, and don’t care about getting a reply, please tell me. I will not post your email address, and I will delete your last name from your letter. And I am available for individual forecasts. You can find information about that at www.moonsigns.net. I really enjoy having clients, and have a detailed form that asks circumstances and dates so I can construct a "map" of what’s happened when/why/how. And "Sally Cragin’s Moon Signs Calendar" for 2006 which features a daily Lunar Phase is finally done. Visit moonsigns.net and click on the store to see.