2024 in Productivity

More macro stuff for you: Uranus is almost done being retrograde, and is stationing (appearing to stop) to turn direct in the sky right now, so I was staring into one of my favorite things to stare into: the Planetary Speed Ephemeris. This appears insane when you first start looking at it, but basically, it's read vertically and tells you what planets are retrograde with a gray bar down the line where the retrograde is occurring (note that the mean motion of the lunar nodes is retrograde, and also those are not planets, so they do not count). The numbers tell you how fast the planet is appearing to go relative to earth (our friendly little planets maintain the same speed in the solar system, obviously, but astrology is earth-centric). So looking at 2024, the Planetary Speed Ephemeris will tell you that there are no planets retrograde in February and March of 2024. What this means: it is the easiest to get stuff done in a general sense in February and March of 2024 (period, the end). From August through the end of the year, we’ll have about 4 planets retrograde at a time, with brief periods of plus or minus one planet. But I kept scrolling, and due to where things are going to be placed in the sky, after March 2024, we won't have a month without *something* retrograde until 2026. We'll have several 7ish day periods in 2025 with nothing retrograde, but that's not enough to make a big difference.

This doesn't mean that you're never going to get anything done after March of this year, but it IS interesting. The last 5 years or so, we've had some extreme situations where we've had about 5 or 6 planets retrograde at at time. In September 2023 we had 6 at once, and I told people not to try too hard to be productive, which I remember, because people said it back to me when they ran up against impossible situations. For me, I was just looking at the speed ephemeris a lot, which told me about how hard I should try to get anything done, because I'm a freaking nerd. But: when a planet is retrograde and has picked up speed, it *is* a little easier to try to move people or things than if there's no movement. It's like sailing with wind vs. no wind. Retrogrades are times for introspection, not outer action, and if you flout that basic idea, you're gonna have a bad time.

It also depends on how sensitive you are to various planets, and the longer I do this, the more I see the variations amongst people close to me. For me, Mercury retrograde means I can't get stuff done at my day job. This past Mercury retrograde, I got comically few emails. I was out of the country for most of the time, and if my job was just responding to emails (it's not), I could have worked "remotely" and tackled stuff incredibly easily. I'm still stunned I managed to travel somewhere new without delays and lost luggage (because that was me flouting Mercury retrograde, but my rationalization was that I had all the time in the world, so if it meant sitting around airports, so be it). But I watched Mercury retrograde impact other people close to me in scheduling problems and miscommunications that hurt some feelings (and saying "well, Mercury IS retrograde" is not going to assuage butthurt, so I kept my mouth shut). Venus retrograde, I could care less. I can see what it does, but it's not a massive life upheaval (though it is a major drama-causer, it's just not as personal-feeling to me). Mars retrogrades make me want to build a bunker and get in it.

The trend in the sky that causes all the retrogrades to happen at once is more or less the same trend that causes what I talked about in my last post: all the planets gathered in the same place in the sky relative to earth. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto have been unusually close to each other for the last 5ish years. In 2024, Jupiter is starting to separate from the pack, as is Uranus, which means that long stretches of everything-retrograde stop, but so too do long stretches of nothing-retrograde. So later in 2024, the maximum number of planets we will have retrograde at once is 4. There's a big difference between 4 and 6, I promise, so next fall isn't gangbusters in terms of productivity, but it's not horrible.

Generally, retrogrades mean that the planet in question is closer to earth than normal, and that makes it "act" weird. So in the case of Mars through Pluto (working your way outward), the earth is coming between the sun and the planet. In a birth chart, that appears as an opposition (if you have *something* opposite the sun in your birth chart, that something is always retrograde). In the case of Venus and Mercury retrogrades, they are coming between the earth and the sun (they'll appear as conjunctions to the sun, though--it's impossible for Mercury and Venus to be opposite the sun relative to earth). Again: we are too close.

So, to be silly: imagine that a retrograde planet is a close-talking person who won't leave you alone. They follow you around and invade your personal space. You can probably function if you're good at ignoring distractions and it's just one planet, but when it's 6, just imagine 6 people crowding you all with their own agenda of things for you to think about. When planets "station" or appear to stop, imagine that they are still too close, but maybe they're not chattering away, just standing there, staring at you, like "what're you gonna do [about me]?" It doesn't matter if you know astrology or not: everyone's influenced by this stuff, so they act weird, too, but it does depend on which planets THEY are sensitive to. So when you think about it that way, it makes more sense.

So: do the big-ticket life items in February/March this year. For those of you who notice major life upheavals when retrogrades of Mercury, Venus, or Mars strike, I will do a retrograde report for you, but the next Mercury retrograde isn't until April, so you might want to hit me up in March to talk about 2024 in retrograde energy. It does help a lot to know the houses impacted by retrograde activity, as this really gives you a flavor for what to expect.