Some days, I hear bells ringing.
When I’m on, I’m on. The symbols speak. And when they speak, they speak clearly, explaining calmly that there is a story here worth telling, and that it must be told in this moment, for these reasons. That it exists in sacred time. Sometimes there is a spark of certainty, a passing word read as though it is a light just turned on, or a bell just rung. Sometimes intuition rings.
I saw talk on Twitter recently about what happens when you lose your passion for astrology. More and more people kept chiming in, asking the same question. It felt like some sort of collective sigh of relief—no one is alone in this. A part of me has wanted to answer, but I haven’t known what to say. I’ve wondered if I am among the people whose passion seems to be in a waning phase. I’m not entirely sure.
Sometimes the symbols stop speaking. Sometimes they become a low hum in the background, something that could be music if you could only make out the tune. When I did aptitude testing in high school, my lowest scores by far were in the auditory categories.
In college I told my therapist that on the days after my anxiety attacks, I felt acutely depressed. I would go hours without speaking a word aloud, mobile ordering at the less crowded Starbucks, walking around campus with my headphones on, grateful to have Scorpio rising, a built-in shield against unwanted interaction.
Scorpio is, traditionally, a mute sign, and Mercury is traditionally associated with astrologers. If we let the symbols speak, we could say that Mercury’s retrograde in Scorpio might bring forth a mutedness among the astrologers, a revisioning and rethinking of this particular way of relating to the world. It could bring up doubts, or a mental lull, or a waning of curiosity. Perhaps giving voice to the unspoken doubt is the perfect remediation.
Retrograde planets travel backward, reviewing the past, and doing things in ways they otherwise might not. Mercury, the fastest of all bodies save the Moon, turns backward and forward again at least times per year, emerging from the underworld and stretching upward into the predawn hours, charging boldly into the Sun then racing as far ahead as possible only to find themselves breathless, retreating once again into the Sun’s embrace. It’s a dizzying display enacted with such frequency that the general public hardly has time to forget the last one before another seems to be upon them. Perhaps this accounts for the public fascination with Mercury’s retrograde. The average person has barely had time to forget the last one before another is upon us.
A planet’s retrograde phase is something like the New Moon. It is the moment of rebirth, of emerging from the darkness of the underworld into new light. Among other things, Mercury is the psychopomp, traveling between ours and the underworld, the heavenly messenger. During these retrograde phases, they walk backward into the shadow of the Sun with whatever they’ve learned to reemerge with new meaning. It is a moment of exchange, where everything seems to turn upside down.
It’s not that my passion for astrology has faded. At least I don’t think so. I’m still excited by what I read, still thinking about planets and meanings for most of my days. But I don’t have much to say. This retrograde is passing right over my natal Mercury, and these days feel the same as those days in college after the peak of anxiety when I no longer wanted to speak. This year is a pressure cooker, my anxiety heightened most every day. And when something charges forward or upward, it must eventually come back down. This is for me, the coming back down. Maybe it is for someone else too.
Sometimes a fading of passion is a sign to move on. Sometimes, it’s a chance to untangle the sticky, knotted parts of your being. Sometimes it’s an amplification of doubts and fears that can kill just about any fire. And sometimes it’s something else. I don’t have advice on how to get your passion back, because I don’t know where it went in the first place, or what took its place. I don’t have advice because I know that sometimes, the symbols stop speaking. I haven’t figured out how to make them speak again, but I hope they will someday. And for now, I’ll keep listening.