Mercury Retrograde November - December 2025
trickster
Mercury stations retrograde Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 6°51’ Sagittarius. Mercury entered their* shadow on Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 20°42’ of Scorpio, which if you remember, was the same day as the Libra new Moon. Is there anything that has been coming up between now and then that seems to want to be reworked, revisited or revised?
Mercury will station direct again at 20°42’ of Scorpio on Saturday, November 29, 2025, and Mercury will exit their shadow at 6°51’ Sagittarius on Tuesday, December 16, 2025. So we have several weeks to parse all of this symbolism out for ourselves.
Let’s just focus on Mercury related topics, as these are likely what is wanting to be revisited at this time. Some (but not all) Mercury related topics include:
Communication (receiving and delivering: listening as well as talking/writing)
Learning
Making mental connections
Collecting or sharing information
Cataloging
Mercury as the negotiator between the conscious and the unconscious mind
Combining, analyzing, and differentiating
Critical examination and fine differentiation of thoughts, ideas, theories, and logical points of view
Nervous system
Do any of these topics jog something in your life that seems to popping into your awareness, possibly wanting to be revised, refined, or revisited?
The nature of a retrograde is that of slowing down and going back over some ground that you have already tread. When we say that Mercury entered their shadow, that simply means that at that point of entering their shadow (this time at 20°42’ Scorpio) that is the degree that Mercury will retrograde back to. If we use the metaphor of the car reversing, we can visualize more adeptly. Let’s say you’re driving down the street, looking for a parking space. You drive past an open space, thinking you see another open space a little closer to your destination several parking spaces up. When you pull into that second space, you look up and see that there is one of those little “don’t park here/out of order” hoods on the meter. So you pull out and reverse back to that open space that you initially drove past. The hood meter point at which you stop and reverse is the retrograde degree point. The parking space that you initially passed and eventually reverse back to is the shadow degree or station direct point.
After you park and get out to go about your business, you eventually will return to your car to pull out of the parking space and drive forward again back down the road that you had reversed down, this time going toward the hood meter parking space once again. That is similar to when Mercury will be going direct, going back over the patch of road which you have traversed twice, and will now go forward over again a third time. So that little patch of road between the open parking space that you initially passed and the hood meter parking space where you stopped and reversed back to the initial space is the area that Mercury will be traversing three times total: once forward, once backward, and once again forward. When Mercury goes forward past the degree point where the hooded parking meter is, that is the point that we say Mercury leaves their shadow.
Can you see why the symbolism of a retrograde is about going back over things - all of the “re” words, such as re-do, revise, revisit, refine, reconsider, etc.
Now let’s look at the signs that Mercury will be traversing; Mercury is stationing retrograde in Sagittarius, and retrograding back into Scorpio, where they will station direct and move toward Sagittarius again.
Some Sagittarius themes are:
Freedom
Exploration
Optimism
Faith
Honesty
Big picture
Teaching/Education
Ethical (right and wrong)
Seeking/exploring meaning
Some Scorpio themes are:
Self-mastery
Willpower
Transformation/death
Trust and mistrust
Impulse into the depths
Being a true, completely irritating healer
Intensity
Secrets
Provocation
We can drill down even further into the meaning of this particular Mercury retrograde for each of us personally by looking at our natal charts:
What house or houses are being transited by Mercury during this retrograde? This is the area of life that this Mercury retrograde may be affording an opportunity for some refinement or revision.
What if any planets or points are located between 20°42’ Scorpio and 6°51’ Sagittarius in our charts? The significations of these planets or points may be asking for a second look - if Venus, our impulse toward beauty or connection; if Neptune, our experience of the mystical or with non-ordinary states of consciousness; if Mars, our impulse toward assertion, etc.
What planets or points are located at or near (within 2-ish degrees) of the station degrees of 20°42’ Scorpio and 6°51’ Sagittarius? These degree points are where Mercury will be slowing down and staying for roughly a week - a long time for typically fast Mercury to sit still! This planet or point will be even more emphasized than those that are simply in the path of the retrograde, who will be passed by three times, relatively quickly. If we go back to the parking space metaphor - our car will spend more time in the area of the parking space that we passed by initially and eventually reverse back to and park, and the point of the hooded meter, where we stopped and put the car in reverse to go back to the original parking space. The area of road in between the two open spaces will be passed over by our car three times, but will not experience the same length of time having our car present that the two open parking spaces will.
As you can see, astrology is one of those practices in which you can go as deep or as surface as you’re comfortable with, or have time for; the symbolic movement of the planets through your chart can be a nourishing way to reflect on your life and your experience in order to have a more clarified, peaceful, and meaningful experience of life. Since we are all living our natal charts every day, many of us will intuitively dial into the area of our chart and life that this Mercury retrograde is traversing, and reconsider something that is being highlighted for us. In other words, look into your chart if you have the time and inclination, but more importantly, trust your intuition on what is wanting to be revisited or revised in your life and consciousness at this time.
*You may notice that I’m experimenting with using they/them pronouns for Mercury. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t gender the planets, but I’ve tried, and that doesn’t feel right to me, as I have the tendency to gender (and misgender) everything - people, animals, plants, rocks, etc. The planets are physical things out there in the Universe, and yes, in that context referring to them as “it” makes a little more sense, but especially in the context of astrology, the planets symbolize drives within our human psyches, and that makes me feel weird when I refer to a planet as “it”. The reason I’m experimenting with using they/them for Mercury, is because of all the planets, mythologically Mercury is the most non-binary of the Olympic gods. Literally the term “hermaphrodite” comes from the offspring of Hermes (Mercury) and Aphrodite (Venus). If we think of gender as a spectrum (and I do), I feel that Mercury leans slightly toward the more masculine side of the spectrum, but like in the area of a young boy who is not yet a grown man, or a “tomboy” type girl, who bats clean-up on her little league team and leads the league in triples. Mercury is also a trickster and can appear in any guise, and was the one god who could traverse the worlds - from the upper world of Mount Olympus, to the earthly world, down to the Underworld. Mercury as psychopomp was the guide of souls to (and occasionally from) the Underworld. So feel into these many facets of Mercury when you are contemplating what this Mercury retrograde could be affording you the opportunity to revise or revisit.