School is out for the summer at Circle Green Healing Arts. Reiki Circles and healing arts apprenticeships will be open again in the fall. We’re still available for Reiki healing sessions and personal consultation.

Our summer assignment is the same every year: Get out there and soak up the sun while our brief beautiful Northwest summer lasts. Wild crafting hits its height at Summer Solstice with fruits, flowers and greens galore ready for harvest. Now is the time to stash some of that sunshine for later.

Give us a call and we’ll come down out of the mountains or back up from the sea to meet you in Snohomish. Until then we’ll be out in the great wild green enjoying the season and collecting herbal provisions to restock our Faery apothecary.  

Every wild-crafter and kitchen witch has a few standby recipes at the core of their practice. I developed some of my favorite formulas from a book by herbalist Dina Falconi printed late last century yet still available.
 
Earthly Bodies & Heavenly Hair is a complete guide to making your own body care products with wholesome natural ingredients. I checked it out from the library so often for reference that I eventually bought a hard copy for my own bookshelf.
 
From tender baby balms and pain relieving body soaks to exotic perfume and medicinal herbal tinctures, this book is a great place to start if you’re ready to get your hands greasy making beeswax salve and natural body care. 

 Everyone has Mercury in their Birth Chart, however only about 20% of people are born with Mercury in retrograde, which is when the planet appears to be spinning backwards in the sky. The way your thoughts spin depends on how your character attribute page (your Birth Chart) is written.
 
You can think of a person’s Birth Chart as a star-studded character description for the game were all playing together in this life. Your astrological super powers are based on the cosmic vibration shining down from the heavens at the moment of your birth. If the spin on your Mercury is reversed then you are a native to the lands of intuitive understanding. Strange luck, uncanny timing, and the ability to read between the lines are on the list of Mercury Retrograde superpowers.

Hermes (Planetary Ruler of Mercury) is the quickest of the Greek Gods and often depicted with wings on his feet. In the game of natal astrology this god of old bestows you with the power of communication, clever thinking, luck, timing, and the ability to translate information of all kinds. Usually astrological interpretations focus on the elemental aspects of your chart and the placement of the planets. Looking up Mercury in your Birth Chart lets you know more about the deeper aspects of yourself and your preferred style of communication with others.
 
Most of the ways of the world are written in Mercury’s forward spinning, rational thinking format that runs by a definite schematic plan. The unspinning of Mercury Retrograde works backwards in its influence on the psyche. Well, not exactly perpendicularly backwards, that would be too straight forward. Let’s say that the malleable mind of retrograde thinking has a way of walking through walls and moving around the corners of time to reach its goal.
 
Watching from the Earth’s perspective as astrology does, there is a point in every planet’s orbit in which it appears to run the reverse of its regular course. This is the Retrograde Phase. During Mercury Retrograde the sun’s closest starry planet seems to be drifting backwards in the sky but I can assure you, it does not. It never does. Mercury moves forward even when it’s daydreaming. It is the blinders of linear projection that makes it look as though the movement of Mercury’s orbit is unravelling.

Mercury Retrograde is the most notorious of all planetary retrograde influences because of its effect on the process of communication for the majority of people. This means that the mental projection of approximately 80% of the population goes slightly off the rails when Mercury hits retrograde. This is famously when computers crash, clocks stop and electronic devices conk out.
 
For the other 19%, the reverse flow of Mercury Retrograde is a time of inspiration and mental clarity. The wisdom of Mercury goes beyond the rational thoughts of man. As the Messenger of the Gods strides through the cosmos he travels with the knowledge that the shortest path between two perspectives is not always a straight line. Retrograde is not a backward movement; it is the rounding of the corner on the journey beyond the sun.
 
Celestial objects undoubtedly hold a gravitational influence on our planet and can interfere with EMF communication systems. The unwinding pause of our mental collective logic during Mercury Retrograde is also at work. Smoochy’s theory is that people have far more to do with communication breakdown than planetary drift. Brain power and intention helps hold the world together. When it skips a breath so does everything else.
 
Find out if you have Mercury in Retrograde. Circle Green Healing Arts has a free birth chart generator where you can check the retrograde of all your planets, especially Mercury. Retrograde is marked with an R in parentheses ( r ). Planets that are running direct have no special marking. Run a free chart in less time than it takes to read this blog post, no email required.
 
Click here to see if you have Mercury in Retrograde with a free astrological Birth Chart.
 
 

Here’s a one time coupon with unlimited Friend Power. The 5050FRIENDS coupon code at Circle Green applies to every aromatherapy product we sell. There’s no minimum or maximum to order. Going halfsies with you is our way of saying Thank You for supporting small business and keeping our Elves in hot tea and biscuits.