Navigate Mercury Retrograde 2025: Dates, effects, and tips to handle communication, travel, and tech challenges during the year’s three retrograde phases.
Mercury Retrograde 2025
If you’re familiar with the term “Mercury retrograde,” odds are you don’t have good feelings about it. “Oh, no, not again!” is the usual reaction to learning that one is coming up.
Take heart! It doesn’t mean the sky is falling. Mercury retrograde is not a freak occurrence, much less the end of the world. It’s a regular phenomenon that happens three or four times a year. We can’t stop it, but we can understand and work with it. Read on for how.
Do you already know how a Mercury retrograde works? Scroll down for this year’s details.
What does Mercury Retrograde 2025 mean?
First, the technicalities: Mercury is retrograde when it looks from the Earth as if it’s traveling backward. That’s an optical illusion, of course, and happens when Mercury’s orbital speed changes compared to Earth’s. It’s the planetary equivalent of speeding up on a highway, passing a car, and seeing it fall far behind after you in the rearview mirror.
How this works: When Mercury is retrograde, the areas of life it governs do not play by the usual rules. Anything related to communication and travel requires extra attention. This includes phones, computers, electronic devices, mail, cars, public transportation, and commutes.
Our information flow is always a casualty. Messages go astray. Misunderstandings, confusion, half-truths, and deception are rampant. Both sides of a conversation may use the same words, but the words may not have the same meaning at all. Or expectations and assumptions may differ.
Vehicles of communication also misfire. Anything with inherent instability hits the breaking point. Technology malfunctions. Websites and networks go down. Programs stop working. Tasks that should be ordinary turn into a gauntlet of error messages and trouble-shooting.
Getting around is also a challenge—traffic snarls. Travel gets delayed. Buses don’t arrive. Cars break down. Detours pop up and complicate your route.
What Should You Do?
Postpone launching major projects, signing major contracts, and buying big-ticket items if possible. (You may not have complete or accurate information; the subject or purpose may not be what you think it is.) Double-check fine print, backup your data, and allow lots of extra time when you’re on the road.
Watch for opportunities for a do-over, which may initially show up as un-raveling or restructuring. Mercury Retrograde is also an excellent time to investigate and research, finish old business, clean up paperwork, and get in touch with people you haven’t talked to in a while. Pay attention to who surfaces from the past, in person, or in thought. Their reappearance could help tie up loose ends or resolve lingering business. Organize and prepare so you’ll be ready to move ahead when Mercury does.
What About Mercury’s shadow?
The shadow is the stretch of the sky between the degree where the retrograde will end and the degree where it will start. Mercury enters the retrograde’s shadow when it reaches the degree to which it will eventually return. After the planet stations direct, it travels through the shadow again.
Does this matter? The hype this phenomenon enjoys on social media would make you think so. You may find that matters that pop up in the shadow come up again for revisiting during the retrograde. Beyond that, though, the shadow’s importance is only hype.
Think about it: if you add the shadow time to the weeks of retrograde, Mercury would have a retrograde impact for most of the year. So…don’t sweat the shadow.
Mercury Retrogrades in 2025
First, the details. In 2025, Mercury is retrograde:
March 15 – April 7, going from 9 Aries to 26 Pisces;
July 18 – August 11, going from 15 – 4 Leo; and
November 9 – 29, going from 6 Sagittarius – 20 Scorpio.
Look for effects before and after these dates. Communication and transportation matters usually start slowing (or growing complicated) a few days before a retrograde begins. On the day of the retrograde station (when Mercury appears to be motionless, as it appears to change direction), it can feel as if time has stopped altogether.
The same sensation returns when Mercury stations direct. Communication and transportation matters don’t suddenly speed up once the retrograde ends. Give the planet time to get moving again. Wait a few days after Mercury stations direct before resuming business as usual.
All of Mercury’s 2025 retrogrades take place in fire signs, with two twists: the first and third start in fire and end in water.
Mercury is comfortable in fire but also feisty and combustible. Even if trip-ups and misunderstandings and do-overs involve real-world practicalities, the impact, and reactions are likely to be … dramatic. Expect high energies and passions, frenetic activity, volatility and frustration, with people all too quick to anger. On the positive side, the fire portions of the retrogrades will deliver the gumption to go after snafus and blast through old business.
The water periods, however, will take us into undercurrents, secrets, power games, and suspicions. These retrogrades will stir emotions that may have been ignored or miscommunicated and add an emotional streak to matters up for reworking or completing.
Note that two of this year’s retrogrades return to territory from 2024 retrogrades. This year’s middle Mercury retrograde revisits some of the degrees of Mars’ retrograde in December 2024, suggesting that we’ll be going back over issues and events from that time. Also, the last retro-grade starts where Mercury’s last retrograde in 2024 stopped, suggesting a storyline that will be going further back.
The first retrograde, from March 15 – to April 7, going from 9 Aries to 26 Pisces, revisits personal autonomy and risktaking before sliding back into matters of interconnectedness and non-worldly influences.
This stretch coincides with Venus’ retrograde (March 1 – April 12) over roughly the same territory, from 10 Aries to 24 Pisces. The rulers of communication and relationships, money and desire, run alongside each other until Mercury stations direct April 7.
The overlap will amplify both the misfiring and the reworking potentials of each retrograde. People from the past are likely to resurface, in dreams and thoughts if not in actual physical form.
Mercury’s time in Aries will revisit and reset matters involving anger, aggression, conflicts (yes, war), excessive force, and the role of men and masculinity. This stretch comes with exceptional volatility because it coincides with the Aries New Moon solar eclipse on March 29, which is dramatically wrapping up two years of upgrading how we deal with each other.
Mercury retrograde in Aries is doing reconnaissance and laying ground-work for two other big, longterm processes, besides the eclipse wrap-up: Neptune’s first foray into Aries (which he enters March 30), and Saturn’s coming entry into that sign May 24.
Mercury’s time in Pisces, starting March 29, promises to bring retrograde on steroids issues, thanks to Venus also being retrograde and the two planets’ conjunction with the sign’s ruler, Neptune. Everyone could be off in the clouds and misreading everything. On the positive end, the potential is equally great for uncovering delusions, misunderstandings, and misplaced expectations. Finishing creative projects is also likely, with enhanced inspiration.
First Mercury Retrograde 2025 Dates to Watch:
The retrograde station, on the days either side of March 15, sparks push-pull impulses, requiring patience and reconsideration as we build to the March 29 Aries solar eclipse, which will shoot us into bold, independent horizons.
- Candid conversations and windows opening onto secrets, fears, and power games are possible when Mercury sextiles Pluto on March 25.
- The atmosphere becomes watery, dreamy, and extra confusing when Mercury returns to Pisces on March 29 and meets with illusionist Neptune.
The second retrograde, from July 18 to August 11, from 15 to 4 Leo, adds high drama and personal stakes to the general fire retrograde vibes.
You may discover that your attempts to express yourself did not land as you intended or go awry now. You may also stumble upon unfinished creative projects and find the drive to complete or rework them.
Some of the investigations and redoing will be conducted at the end of last year, when Mars’ retrograde covered the last degrees of Mercury’s current retrograde. This may be especially hot on August 4 and 5, when Mercury reaches the degree of Mars’ retrograde station (6 Leo), where he trained Mercury stationing direct on December 15, 2024. (Too technical for you? Just know that early August could bring lots more information about developments in the middle of last December.)
Second Mercury Retrograde 2025 Dates to Watch:
- Watch for relationship, creativity, and worth (self and financial) related opportunities (and misunderstandings) when Mercury sextiles Venus on July 18.
- Look for more to December 2024’s story when Mercury reaches the degree of Mars’ retrograde station August 4-5.
The final retrograde, from November 9 – 29, going from 6 Sagittarius to 20 Scorpio, starts with minds, conversations, and information streams more animated, impassioned, and inclined toward the theoretical (and self-righteous) than they’ve been during Mercury’s retrogrades this year. Watch out for foot-in-mouth disease and intellectual superiority and for issues returning involving politics and policy, education, the media, and foreign affairs.
Once Mercury slides back in Scorpio on November 18, nonverbal communication will be on the rise as we explore secrets, fears, power games, and all manner of unspoken undercurrents. Don’t assume your assumptions are accurate. Your visceral read, however, may well be.
Third Mercury Retrograde 2025 Dates to watch:
- Thoughts lead to action (perhaps behind the scenes) when Mercury met Mars on November 17.
- Doors open to monumental conversations and important discoveries when Mercury sextiles Pluto on November 17.
- Sudden insights and flashes of inspiration flood us when Mercury opposes Uranus and trines Neptune on November 19.
- Personal clarity and understanding lock in when Mercury meets the Sun on November 20.
- November 22 could be every which way, with stability from Mercu-ry’s trine to Saturn November 22, coupled with an information over-load, from Mercury simultaneously trining Jupiter.
- Clarity about your thinking, desires, relationships, and worth (self and financial) – or the opportunity to address these – comes when Mercury conjuncts Venus on November 24.
Learn more about the cosmic messenger in Kathy’s Mercury Intensive.
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About the Author
Kathy Biehl is a professional astrologer with more than 30 years of experience. She has been translating astrology for the mainstream since high school and has a knack for combining humor and pop culture with her guidance. Visit EmpowermentUnlimited.net to sign up for her mailing list, listen to her forecasts, and book a session for her. Find her on Facebook at Empowerment Unlimited, the Astro-Insight Lounge, and YouTube at the Professional Aquarian Channel. Listen to her radio show Celestial Compass on OMTimes Radio.
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Kathy Biehl has been a professional astrologer and psychic for more than 30 years. Book a private session with Kathy at EmpowermentUnlimited.net, where you can sign up for her newsletter, listen to her weekly podcasts, and purchase her recordings. You can also follow her daily insights and whimsical photos on Facebook, and find her at the Professional Aquarian YouTube channel.