August 23 2023

Wednesday, AUGUST 23

The Sun enters Virgo today and will stay in the sign until September 23rd. Our focus shifts to the puzzle pieces–the details of our lives. It’s now time to take care of practical concerns. Attending to the details of daily living can free us from the unnecessary stress that results from “collecting” odds and ends of unfinished business.

It’s an ideal cycle to get organized, do detailed work, and improve connections and communications on the job. Rediscovering the joy of our work, services, chores, and routines can be in focus in the month ahead.

While we’re beginning anew with this Sun transit, Mercury, already in the sign of Virgo, stations and turns retrograde today. Communication can be tricky, and it can be hard to focus on cold, hard facts.

Mercury will remain retrograde in the sign of Virgo until September 15th. During this time, our thinking turns inward as we review and re-assess matters.

Mercury retrograde periods can be times of heightened inner awareness, when meditation, benefiting from keeping a journal, reworking old plans, and reviewing past work are favored. Minor breaks in the mechanical aspects of communication can reconnect us with other, possibly more meaningful, means of communication.

The more difficult times are the periods of the shifts themselves – near the stations (today and September 15th), after which we grow increasingly accustomed to the energy shift.

Retrograde Mercury periods send us to the past for more or previously hidden information. They’re cycles for learning to let go of control and overthinking.

With retrograde Mercury in Virgo, we might look at past decisions and ideas from a new, possibly enlightened perspective, although we may be especially analytical and critical, perhaps to excess. We tend to return to past projects and refine or tweak them.

With the shift occurring today, it makes sense to observe rather than make critical decisions.