“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
>”,”name”:”in-content-cta”,”type”:”link”}}”>Download the app.
Welcome to the final Mercury retrograde of 2024. It arrives in aligned timing as it invites us to take a moment and intentionally assess what exists within our minds before we usher ourselves into the new year. Everything, including our minds, requires time and space for a reset, rewrite, and realignment sometimes. This Mercury retrograde is our chance.
When is Mercury Retrograde?
Beginning November 25 and continuing until December 15, 2024.
What Does Mercury Retrograde Mean?
The fourth and final Mercury retrograde of 2024 takes place in the sign of Sagittarius. Known as the seeker of the zodiac, it is a student of life and an explorer of truth. The planet of the mind, it retrogrades through this Jupiter-ruled fire sign, we are looking within instead of looking around. We are reviewing our beliefs, creating space for greater truth, and rewriting our narratives, perspectives, and meanings.
Retrogrades are less about actively expressing ourselves outwardly or even taking in information and more about an opportune time to review what already exists within us so that we may align our perspectives, beliefs, and iterations of ourselves into the current moment.
When we revisit something within our past from the vantage of our current perspective, as we do during Mercury retrograde, what exists within us is completely rewritten. It is a time for journaling prompts and spacious reflection, attuning to intuitive knowing, creating space before speaking and observing where the words are coming from. It is even a time to create boundaries between the mind and the constant information influx that comes from spaces such as social media, the news, and outer perspectives. As we clear the noise, we begin to attune to what is real.
Sagittarius experiences life from a broader perspective through which it ponders the larger truths of life. As such, this Mercury retrograde has each of us zooming out and examining those perspectives that shape our every other thought and belief. Is this world inherently good? Can we have hope? Does the Universe propel us toward growth and evolution?
Behind the many thoughts and ideas arising in our minds each day, what do you believe about life? About yourself? As we reconnect to this space, let it speak from somewhere that has always been alive within you, rather than learned or taught from elsewhere. Sagittarius is the kind of wisdom that lives beyond the rational mind. It comes from a higher perspective, a deeper truth, and our own unique connection with life itself.
How we experience what we experience is shaped by us and our perspectives. What we see in life depends on the framework we look through. What we believe to be possible—or not possible—for ourselves is quite often mirrored back to us. We aren’t just doing this from the mind. Rather, we are also creating the space from our intuition, our body’s knowing, and our instincts.
As we explore our relationship with our future, we consider what we want, what we envision for ourselves, and what we believe possible for ourselves. At the same time, we observe how we relate to our hopes, our trust in something greater leading us, and our larger beliefs of what this world—and our place within it—means.
What Mercury Retrograde 2024 Means for Your Zodiac Sign
Informed by Sagittarius, the final Mercury retrograde of 2024 interacts with your astrology chart in unique ways, highlighting a specific area of life as represented by the astrological houses. By reading for your rising sign, you can begin to unfold and expand your understanding of what this retrograde invites you to understand.
Aries Rising
Create space within your mind for the vaster conversation you are having within—the one between you and life itself. The conversation between you and an inner wisdom. Let this conversation take priority over the words, thoughts, perspectives, and beliefs of the collective—including those on social media, in the news, and those around you—at least for a moment. In this space, much that was never yours will begin to drop away and much of your own truth, direction, and wisdom will be rediscovered.
Taurus Rising
As Mercury travels backward, it takes you by the hand and invites you into your own underworld. It brings you face to face with the spaces within yourself yearning for love, presence, and conscious awareness. It takes you face-to-face with unconscious belief systems and narratives that influence your conscious mind and outer living. And it asks you to navigate some inner exploration out of a desire for empowerment and self-intimacy, honesty and vulnerability. As we bring awareness, understanding, and love to these spaces, they transform—and we transform along with them.
Gemini Rising
How do you desire to collaborate in this life? What do you want to share, offer, and receive from another? How do you want to connect, love, and experience adventure alongside others? What do you most desire to experience within your relationships? And, underneath it all, what is your purpose of coming together with others?
Create the space to question the thoughts and perspectives that contribute to your previous answers to these questions so that you may reconsider and allow for more aligned insights, awarenesses, and truth to take form.
Cancer Rising
This retrograde acts as a beautiful opportunity to pause and look around, Cancer Rising. To look at what lives within us and how this translates into our outer action. To reconnect with what matters beneath it all and if this is translating into our outer action. It is a retrograde to take a step back and reconnect with our bigger picture, our overarching beliefs, and our vaster desires and truths – so that we may then begin to realign our daily actions to be in service to this space. Whether through our habits, rituals, consistent movements and schedules, or daily thoughts, we are realigning the outer to the inner.
Leo Rising
Who are you? What is your unique expression for life? We are all here to express ourselves as we are, freely and uniquely, lovingly and ecstatically. This retrograde invites you to clear the noise and reconnect to your larger truths, including your relationship with life. It also nudges you to reflect on who is that self that you express and create with so that you may commune wwith your own source of creativity and freedom of expression.
Virgo Rising
This retrograde feels personal. The weeks to come bring an opportunity to create a sanctuary within and around you where you can settle into your sense of safety, belonging, and wisdom. It’s a reminder that your deepest truths often exist in the deepest spaces within us and sometimes require that we distances ourselves from others’ energies, past perspectives, outside teachings, and emotional baggage in order to experience ourselves. This retrograde welcomes both a higher perspective and a new relationship with your emotions. When you look to your past with expanded awareness, you rewrite your emotional wisdom.
Libra Rising
It’s a retrograde that’s all about the mind and the beliefs and perspectives it forms. It’s during Mercury’s retrograde that you have an opportunity to peer within and observe the patterns, beliefs, and narratives through which you operate your life. A lot of time has passed since this narrative was created. Does it still serve you? Your mind has expanded since your beliefs were formed. Are they still true? It is through observing our habitual responses—through our thoughts, communication styles, and emotions—that awareness, insight, and realignment can take place.
Scorpio Rising
Your truth can be found in your body. This retrograde, allow yourself to move down from the mind and into your body. Welcome welcome more of your own energy into your physical form and reconnect with your senses. It is here that you will remember deeper truths and understandings of self and life. It is here you will track what beliefs are truly yours and what has been picked up from others. And it is here that you will remember the conversation with life itself that you are always in. You are rewriting narratives around your body, safety, security, finances, and worth.
Sagittarius Rising
This Mercury retrograde acts as a sacred invitation to reconnect to your own truth and to come home to your own knowing and desires. Consider your relationship with meaning, with life, and with who you are. There is a knowing that exists within each of us. This is your opportunity to clear the noise, the thoughts and ideas that were never yours, the patterns and the narratives that no longer serve you. All so that you may return to that knowing. When you create space within the bounds of your self-identity, you may be surprised by what you discover.
Capricorn Rising
It is a retrograde of intuition, communion with the sacred, and a deep release of what has been gathered and stored within the unconscious. There are entire worlds living behind rational thought. Create the space for meditation and connection to everything divine that lives beyond time and space. Turn within, hear the silence, and surrender the mind.
As you enter this realm, it is as if you are plugging your mind into Universal truth, dissolving expired narratives, and expanding both your mind and yourself in the process.
Aquarius Rising
All cosmic movement takes place in service to evolution. This final Mercury retrograde 2024 is no different. It reminds you that it is through tending to your past and present that you are in the deepest service to your future. There are desires and realities that await you, experiences and hopes that call your name. This retrograde invites you to tend to your own beliefs of possibility, truth, and belief in yourself and life. All this so you may become the person required to meet these dreams, realities, experiences and hopes in your future.
Pisces Rising
Create a moment to review the life you are living, the direction you are walking, and the future you are building through your thoughts and tangible actions. Allow space for reflection and intuition, questioning and reframing. Connect with past versions of yourself and observe what dreams they held for your life. Are those dreams still alive in the now or have have evolved?
Connect with future versions of yourself, too, as if looking back at your life from a greater vantage during Mercury retrograde 2024. What whispers and wisdom come through? Before you walk ahead, be certain to create the space to intentionally and consciously choose your direction.
Learn more about the influence of the Moon and planets on your everyday life, including your weekly horoscope, when you sign up for our astrology email newsletter.
RELATED: Pluto is About to Enter Aquarius for the First Time in 200 Years. Here’s What That Means for You.
