ON THE ONE HAND... WE NOMINATE FOR OBLIVION: MERCURY IN RETROGRADE

What does it actually mean, and why is everybody so weird about it? HILLARY BUSIS considers this celestial nonsense

HILLARY BUSIS

VANITIES

It's a positioning thing, I take it? The planets glide, silently performing their extraterrestrial ballet until one goes...behind Mercury? Mercury goes behind it? I want to say the sun's involved?

Frankly, "Mercury in retrograde" is none of my business, and I can't be bothered to research it any further (read: at all). I do not have the bandwidth to add this concept to my mental load because I'm an adult, with the children, mortgage, and localized plantar fasciitis to prove it.

I suggest you join me. Not in crushing debt, but in rejecting American culture's pervasive backward slide into premodern flimflam. Surely you, a reasonable, presumably literate, fully grown person—or perhaps a pretentious teenager!—can agree that earnestly believing in astrology is silly at best. Surely you would not sincerely credit your good luck, let alone your misfortunes, to the movement of an inanimate hunk of rock—wouldn't show up late or cancel plans or find yourself in a foul mood because Mercury is in retrograde, whatever that even is. Surely you can't be serious.

Look: On some level, I get it. Mystic trust in the power of Mercury or whatever spans generations and intellectual capacities. (The most astrology-obsessed people I've ever met were grad students.) Attempting to rationalize our chaotic existence is among the oldest human impulses; it must be comforting to chalk up undesired outcomes to forces beyond anyone's individual control, to abdicate authority and submit to the strong hand of fate. (I believe this is what Babygirl was about.) Only a nerd takes pleasure in responsibility, and we are firmly ensconced in an anti-nerd epoch.

That said, what's more insufferable— a skeptical know-it-all or a proud know-nothing? Fine, new question: What's more damaging?

Go ahead, take it at face value that Mercury in retrograde has some measurable effect on your day-to-day. It might feel harmless; it might feel pleasantly analog, like reading a paper book. But know that if you do, you 're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from embracing all manner of woo-woo hooey: Reiki, sound bathing, The Telepathy Tapes, tarot, Santa Claus, phrenology. You may as well be a TikToker convinced you can cure flu symptoms by putting potatoes in your socks; you may as well be Kim Kardashian, furious that she didn't pass the California bar exam even though her psychics told her she would. Psychics, plural! Every waking hour, the internet bombards us with slop and made-up garbage; I refuse to live in a techno dystopia where a criticalmass also thinks astrology is real. Pick a lane, people!

If you absolutely must infuse your life with ancient baloney, why not try more interesting forms of paganism instead: Norse mythology! Cambodian folklore! Or look further into the cosmos: Could the dwarf planet Haumea be blamed for your flight getting canceled? There's a galaxy out there called Hoag's Object; is that anything? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in a grad student's philosophy. If we've collectively agreed to pretend bogus BS is real—and I fear we have—we may as well get creative with it.

But the "Saturn return"? Don't even get me started.