How to Read Retrograde

Most of the time a planet moves forward across the sky, but now and then it slows, stops, travels back for a while, then stops again and goes forward once more. The moment it stops is a “station,” and the stretch where it goes back is “retrograde.”

So one retrograde has two stations: at the first it starts going back, at the second it turns forward again. Those two moments are where a planet's path gets split into stretches.

What the old texts say: Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, Book I ch. 8, on the planets and the Sun, uses the terms “first station” and “second station” — moist from rising to the first station, hot to evening rising, dry to the second station, cold to setting. The text treats stations as something everyone knows and uses them to mark out stretches.

The method is simple: work out the degree at your moment of birth, then the degree a short moment later, and subtract. If it got smaller, the body is marked retrograde. The Sun and Moon are never marked, because seen from Earth they do not go retrograde.

So the retrograde mark is a plain fact: at that moment, its degree along the zodiac was going backwards. The planet's sign and aspects are shown as usual, worked out the same way.

On the chart page, every planet with a retrograde mark beside it was going backwards at your moment of birth. Several, just one or none at all are all common.

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day puts it plainly for Mars: Mars did not really reverse the direction of its orbit; its “going back” against the background stars reflects the motion of the Earth itself. Another entry says that about every two years Earth passes Mars on the way round the Sun, that Mars then seems to draw a loop in the sky, going back most clearly as Earth passes it, and that the same can be seen for other planets.

Think of overtaking on a motorway: you are going faster than the car beside you, and as you pass it, it looks as if it is sliding backwards. So Mars's retrograde also comes round about every two years.

A common saying is “don't sign contracts or have talks during Mercury retrograde.” Many people take it as a reminder: before you speak, write or sign, check the details once more.

When you see a retrograde mark in your own chart, read it as a fact: at your moment of birth, that body was going backwards. Read the planet's sign and aspects as usual, and note the mark alongside.

What the old texts say: Book I ch. 8 uses the stations as points in time that mark out how a planet's qualities change.