Here's what I learned from Venus & Mercury retrograde in Aries

aka don't start a new draft during this time!!!

• Mercury retrograde (Aries → Pisces): March 14 - April 7, 2025

• Venus retrograde (Aries → Pisces): March 1 - April 12, 2025

Retrogrades are a time of reevaluation, revising, and rethinking. For the last several weeks, you may have been reevaluating aspects of your life related to communication, travel, relationships, love, and money. These are the themes often related to Mercury and Venus retrogrades, and now that we’re in the clear -- Mercury and Venus are now both direct -- it’s time to reflect on what the last few weeks taught us.

As a Gemini rising and being ruled by Mercury, I usually feel Mercury retrogrades more than folks who aren’t ruled by the planet. Basic Mercury retrograde things feel more prominent for me: Delays in communication, excessive typos in emails, issues with technology, etc.

And as a Gemini rising, Mercury and Venus in Aries started in my 11th House (friendship, networking, technology, long-term dreams) and moved back into my 10th House (career, public image, legacy) in Pisces.

What happened in my life during this time, and how does it relate to the retrogrades? Here are the highlights:

• Drafted a thorough outline for my novel: In early March, I felt the retrogrades almost immediately. I had been approaching this my current novel with more of a pantser-approach than I have for other projects in the past, but I hit a wall midway through writing where I realized I really needed an outline to remind myself of my themes and how to carry the story through until the end. I paused writing and prioritized outlining for a bit.

• Reverse outlined my favorite books: In tandem with outlining my own, I reread some of my favorite books and created a reverse outline for them. (See previous post about how I can’t read new books while I’m writing.)

  Here’s a snippet of what I did for Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, for example. (My favorite Rooney novel and perhaps the most underrated Rooney novel, if a Rooney novel can be underrated.)

• Started Substack! I’ve subscribed to several newsletters for years, but I finally decided to try writing my own. At the end of March, right when Venus was moving from my 11th House to my 10th, I took Chani Nicholas’ advice to put something out in the world. I posted this piece, which I thought would just fade into the void, but it is still getting views and likes, so Chani’s advice was absolutely correct. (If you don’t have the premium version of the CHANI app and you like astrology, I’d really recommend it.)

• Thought of a different framing for my novel and had a crisis. Almost immediately after starting my second draft post-outline (and getting 15K words into it), I realized a different framing of the story that made it stronger. Then I had a crash out, lol. Retrogrades are times for reviewing and revising-- not usually great times for creation. You can create or make something new during this time, of course, but usually you end up reevaluating or questioning it later.

  As the astrologer Lauren Ash put this Aries retrograde:

  “If you take off sprinting too far in the wrong direction when we’re in the middle of a phase of revision, rethinking, and recalibrating, you could expend a lot of energy and a lot of resources and time and focus running really far in the wrong direction, and then you have to track it back. That doesn’t mean sit on your ass and do nothing. But it doesn’t have to be 0 or 100.”

So yeah, I went 100 and then had to backtrack. I should have known better than to start a whole new draft during these retrogrades, oops. I took a pause on my writing and went back to outlining and researching. (Now that Mercury and Venus are direct, I’m eager to get back to drafting.)

If you’re curious about where these retrogrades were transiting in your life, look at your birth chart and check the houses where Aries and Pisces are. (If you haven’t looked at your birth chart before, you’ll need your birth date, birth time, and location and you can plug the information in here to get your chart.)

How did these retrogrades affect you? Were there any lessons or moments of significance for you?

All planets are direct until May 1 (then Pluto begins its retrograde), so the next few weeks are a great time to lock in and work on whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

• Next Mercury retrograde (Leo → Cancer): July 17 - August 11, 2025

• Next Venus retrograde (Scorpio → Libra): October 3 - November 14, 2026

Chat soon,

Megan