Mercury Rx in Scorpio: Love and Truth

“Love everyone and tell the truth.”
— Neem Karoli Baba, as recounted by Ram Dass

I’ve always been drawn to Ram Dass’s spiritual teachings, and this instruction from his teacher, Neem Karoli Baba, gives me a lot to sit with. I appreciate how it brings love and honesty together, even though holding both at once isn’t always easy.

What happens when we’re worried that being honest might put a relationship at risk? Or when keeping the peace means not saying what we really think, want, or need?

On October 24, Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio. This retrograde season lasts through mid-November and may bring us back to conversations we’ve been avoiding, and to the things we know but haven’t quite been willing to say.

Mercury has to do with thinking, communication, questions, and how we make sense of our experiences. When Mercury turns retrograde, we have an opportunity to revisit our assumptions, reconsider what we’ve been telling ourselves, and notice where our words don’t quite match what’s going on inside.

And because this retrograde is happening in Scorpio, that reflection may not stay on the surface. Scorpio wants to dig deeper. What’s underneath the silence? What are we protecting? Have we been holding something back because we’re afraid of what might happen if we’re honest?

With Venus also moving through her retrograde period, these questions connect with relationships, self-worth, and what we value. We may begin to recognize where we’ve been trying to preserve a connection by leaving too much of ourselves out of it. Can we care about another person and still make room for our own knowing, our own needs, and our own value?

That doesn’t mean every thought needs to be spoken immediately, or that speaking honestly guarantees someone else will agree. Sometimes we need to listen more closely to ourselves first. Sometimes that means being willing to have an uncomfortable conversation—not because we can control how it turns out, but because keeping the peace shouldn’t require us to leave ourselves out.

In the video linked below, I explore Mercury retrograde in Scorpio by rising sign and house, looking at where these themes may show up in your life — from livelihood and creativity to family, partnerships, and the patterns we don’t always recognize in ourselves. I also talk about how the Mercury and Venus retrogrades connect, and what it can mean to communicate from a deeper sense of our own value.

If you prefer to read, you’ll find the transcript underneath.

If you’d like to understand how this Mercury retrograde may be showing up in your own birth chart, you can book a reading using the link below. I offer readings online and in person in Minneapolis.

Transcript (Revised and Expanded)

Hi, this is Cathy Gnatek. On October 24th, Mercury goes retrograde in the sign of Scorpio.

This could bring a period of reflection, an opportunity to understand the deeper truth of how you communicate in relationships. By the end of the period, you might have had an aha! moment when you understand that you’ve been off track with the messages you’ve been bringing into a particular relationship in your life. Then you may have a desire to bring the truth out into the open, to speak your truth, and, as a result, perhaps have the opportunity to connect with another person in a more intimate way.

There’s a lot to talk about. Toward the end of the video, I’ll talk about what area of life or what relationship might be coming up for you, depending on your rising sign, so stick around for that.

If you enjoy the video, it would be great if you could like and subscribe. I’m trying to grow my channel right now.

What Happens When Planets Go Retrograde?

First, let’s talk about what happens when planets go retrograde in the sky. What does that even mean?

Ordinarily, planets move in this counterclockwise motion through the heavens. When we have a retrograde, they begin to move clockwise through the sky. That counterclockwise motion was known as “secondary motion” in ancient times by the philosopher Aristotle.

Symbolically, secondary motion, or that counterclockwise motion, is associated with everyday, mundane life. We’re out there, little human beings on Earth, doing our best to manifest in the material world, live our lives, and get things done.

When a planet turns around and begins to move clockwise, in what Aristotle called “primary motion,” it’s an opportunity for a correction, a realignment with our divine nature. That’s because primary motion was known as the motion of the divine. It’s the same motion as the Sun in the sky when it rises in the east and sets in the west. It’s been associated with that deeper knowing of spirit of connection with consciousness.

Whenever I talk about retrogrades or the eclipse seasons, which are also associated with this divine motion, I always think of them as opportunities for us to have a “karmic correction,” to realign our path with what’s true, with the deeper part of what we know.

When it’s a Mercury retrograde, it has to do with how we think, speak, and communicate messages. Mercury—known to the Greeks as Hermes—was the messenger of the gods. He carried messages between the gods and the human world, so there’s this idea of moving between divine understanding and our everyday lives, bringing a message from one into the other. In traditional astrology, Mercury is associated with language, reasoning, writing, and interpretation. It’s not just about speaking, but also about how we understand something and put it into words.

When Mercury enters his retrograde phase, I think of it as an opportunity to pause and reconsider those messages. Am I saying what I actually mean? Am I understanding what the other person is saying, or am I filling in the gaps with my own assumptions? It’s a chance to reconnect with spirit and the truth of what we know and then consider how we want to bring that understanding out into the world to other people.

Mercury in Scorpio: Getting to the Truth

Sometimes, for good reasons as human beings, we’re hesitant to speak the truth because we don’t want to hurt other people.

For example, we’re hesitant because we know that if we speak about what matters to us most, our partner, our work companion, our friend, or our child might feel the sting of our truth. There’s very good reason to be careful about how we communicate.

At the same time, speaking truth is also quite important, particularly for the sign of Scorpio.

I’m a Scorpio rising, and Scorpio is a water sign that grapples with questions of life and death, integrity, truth, and emotional connection. It’s ruled by Mars, the god of war. It wants to penetrate and understand other people in an intimate way. It’s very psychological.

When we have a Mercury retrograde in Scorpio, there can be this desire to dig deeply into a matter—a matter of communication—and understand it and find the truth.

Mercury in Scorpio is a little bit akin to the detective who’s going to get to the root of the problem, no matter what it costs. That’s the energy we have in the sky right now around our communication. Something is going to want to dig deep and understand what’s happening with you and what your truth is.

Then there will come a moment in the Mercury retrograde season when Mercury aligns with the Sun. That’s called a “cazimi,” and that may be the moment when you have an aha!, a light-bulb moment around your truth. You finally reconnect with what you know, and you integrate it.

That doesn’t necessarily mean this is the moment when you speak to another person in a relationship about what you know. That will likely unfold over the weeks to come after Mercury and Venus become visible and shine brightly in the morning sky in mid-November.

Connecting Mercury Retrograde with Venus Retrograde

Let’s connect this back to the Venus retrograde and how this moment may relate to conversations and communication in our relationships.

Mercury has to do with how we think, how we understand one another, and what we say. Venus has to do with love, pleasure, and what brings us into relationship with another person. So these two retrogrades in Scorpio bring up questions that are closely connected: What do I want in this relationship, and have I actually communicated that? Have I been saying what I mean, or have I been saying what I think will keep things pleasant between us?

Sometimes we don’t even realize there’s a difference until we slow down and reflect. We may genuinely want to preserve the connection, but in doing that, we’ve left something important unsaid. This is where the Mercury and Venus retrogrades can work together: reconsidering how we relate to somebody, and finding the words for what we’re beginning to understand.

With Venus in Scorpio, there can be this desire to have a real, authentic relationship with another person, even if that means we’re not necessarily being nice or keeping everything comfortable. It’s not that we want to be hurtful. It’s that being pleasant isn’t quite enough if we’re leaving something important out of the relationship.

I talked about this at length in the Venus retrograde video. I’ll post a link to it below.

Something about the Venus retrograde season has to do with taking off those veils of harmony, connection, and beauty, and getting down to the core of how we want to relate to somebody. Are we trying to keep the relationship going just as it is, or is there room for us to be honest about what we want and what matters to us? It becomes a question of connecting with our own truth and recognizing our own value, rather than only doing what we think will make the relationship last.

This connects with the myth of Inanna and her descent into the underworld, which I talked about in relation to the Venus cycle. Again, that myth brings up questions about who we are, what our value is, and who values us. It’s about making the choice to honor ourselves and what we know to be true in our relationships, even when that’s difficult.

And it’s about understanding that relationship includes the darkness, too—not just the light, beautiful side of Venus, but also the uncomfortable feelings and difficult truths we may need to acknowledge if we want to connect with another person in a more honest way.

In ancient times, Venus was known as the goddess of love, but she was also associated with war and justice. Symbolically, the Venus retrograde cycle marks her transition from the goddess of love to the goddess of war.

Venus as the goddess of love was associated with her appearance as the evening star: soft and beautiful, connective, chill. As she moves through the retrograde cycle, she shifts from the evening star to the morning star. Instead of seeing her in the evening sky, we begin to see her in the morning sky, bright and shining. In some ancient traditions, Venus appearing as the morning star was a signal to go to war.

This doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily go to war with others. But around mid-November, when Venus is clear and bright in the morning sky, you may feel ready to take a stand for yourself in a relationship.

You may be ready to bring into the world the truth that came to you at the “cazimi” moment I talked about—that light-bulb moment.

During these overlapping Mercury and Venus retrograde seasons, we have two of these light-bulb moments. First, on October 24, Venus conjoins the Sun, inviting us to connect more deeply with the truth of what we value. Then, on November 4, Mercury conjoins the Sun, offering a new understanding of how we communicate those values to others.

As both Mercury and Venus come out of their retrograde cycles around mid-November, we may feel clearer about what matters to us—and more ready to speak that truth in our relationships.

Applying This to Your Own Life

Of course, we always ground our knowing in our own lives. The best way to understand astrology is to apply it in your personal life and think about how it might appear for you.

For me, I’m using this time to slow down and reflect on how I speak, and to listen for signs of where I’ve been out of alignment with my own truth—both in how I communicate and in how I work with people in relationships.

The two are intimately connected during these Mercury and Venus retrograde cycles.

So let’s look at where these questions might come up for you, depending on your rising sign. Using whole-sign houses, your rising sign tells us which house Scorpio occupies in your chart. That gives us an area of life where you may be reconsidering how you communicate, what you value, and how you relate to other people. If you don’t know your rising sign, here’s a link to a video that shows you how to pull up your birth chart on astroseek.com.

We’ll start with Scorpio rising, which puts Scorpio in the first house, and then work our way through the houses from there. This also happens to be my own rising sign, so I can see how personally this touches me.

Scorpio Rising: Your Relationship with Yourself (1st House)

For Scorpio risings, you may feel like you’re being asked to change your very being—or, it’s not that you change your very being. I want to be careful with language here. It’s more about the way you bring your truth out into the world.

As a Scorpio rising, part of who you are is that you manifest this desire to connect deeply and intimately with other people, to have integrity, to be psychological, and to try to penetrate and understand people in a really deep way.

For you, just the act of being who you are is going to bring out questions around how you communicate and how you are in relationships. It’s more about your relationship with yourself.

Are you being honest with yourself if you’re a Scorpio rising? How do you get honest with yourself about how you communicate with other people?

So, let’s talk about the other rising signs. I’m just going to pull up my little astrology chart to do that. One second. I’m pulling it up on a different computer. Here we go.

Sagittarius Rising: What’s Hidden and How You Undermine Yourself (12th House)

If you’re a Sagittarius rising, Scorpio is going to be in your twelfth house. This is where I’m bringing in the idea of the unconscious.

The exploration of truth and relationship is going to be a little bit in the background for you. The twelfth house has to do with things that are hidden. I’m also connecting that with the collective unconscious here.

You may be asked to explore the ways you undermine yourself in relationships or in how you communicate with other folks.

When I say “undermine yourself,” I’m talking about the idea of our own self-undoing associated with the twelfth house. In ancient, Hellenistic astrology, this was a difficult house, connected with confinement, isolation, and people or circumstances working against us. Here, I’m looking particularly at the ways we can work against ourselves without realizing it.

Sometimes we do something in the world, and we don’t know why we did it, right? It was unconscious. Something comes and bites us in the butt, and we’re like, “Geez, I didn’t think I was that person.”

If you have these moments as a Sagittarius rising, when you act out in the world in a relationship and you’re not quite sure what the basis of that was, it’s a really great moment to take some time with yourself and journal.

See what comes up. See what associations from the past come up that are similar to whatever the situation was. See if you gain access to some new information about who you are.

That’s what the unconscious wants to bring to us.

Capricorn Rising: Friends, Groups, and Organizations (11th House)

If you’re a Capricorn rising, this is going to be happening in your eleventh house of friends, groups, and organizations.

The eleventh house can have to do with the creative projects we undertake with other people. A lot of times, people talk about the eleventh house as the house of friends, and that’s true. But it’s not necessarily just the most intimate friends.

I feel like some of those closer connections can also show up through the third house, or even the fifth house sometimes, depending on the relationship. There are all these different relationship houses.

The eleventh house could show up through a book club or an organization you’re in. Sometimes it can be nonprofits and government organizations—those kinds of big groups out in the world, and the friends and supporters we find through them.

If you’re a Capricorn rising, you might explore what’s coming up for you around being aligned with your truth and how you communicate in groups. You may be given an opportunity to reflect on and rework how you bring out your own truth in those groups and how you work relationally in a group environment.

Are you sacrificing yourself in some way for the sake of keeping the group together?

If so, you might be asked to bring the fullness of who you are into those relationships, and to understand your own value and what you’re meant to bring to that group of folks.

Aquarius Rising: Career and What You’re Known For (10th House)

If you’re an Aquarius rising, Scorpio is in your tenth house of career.

It could be that you’re being asked to be more truthful, or to find your own truth, around who you are out in the world, what you’re bringing to the world, and what you’re known for in the world.

If your Midheaven, for example, is in the tenth house, that can put further emphasis on these questions. You may be asked to dig deep and bring an honest communication style, the truth of your own knowing, into your career, and to look at how you’re relating to people in that career field.

Are you selling yourself short in some way because you’re trying to appease other people in that field?

Can you bring the truth, the fullness of your Venusian value, out into that career space and let go of the need to please other people?

Perhaps there are ways you don’t bring the fullness of who you are and your own value into that space because you’re afraid it’s going to harm a relationship.

This is about letting it be okay, and understanding that Venus and relationship are not just about being nice, but also about being true to your own value.

Pisces Rising: Philosophy, Religion, and Your Understanding of Relationships (9th House)

If you’re a Pisces rising, this is going to be in your ninth house. Scorpio is your ninth house of philosophy, religion, and international travel—those things that expand your understanding and take you beyond what’s familiar.

You may be asked to rework your philosophy around these deep connections with other people and what they mean.

Again, I’m talking about deep connections because it is Scorpio, and Scorpio wants to get in there in a really penetrating way. The scorpion, right, has these pincers. There’s this psychological quality that wants to dig in.

The question for you might be: Are you doing that kind of exploration? Are you using your psychological capacity in an honest way to reflect your own values?

Are you communicating in an honest way? Are you open to bringing out the truth of what you think, or are you hiding behind a wall?

Scorpio has this protective quality where sometimes it doesn’t want to share what’s inside because it fears that other people might be able to penetrate it psychologically in the way it can penetrate other people.

Reworking your philosophy around that Scorpionic protective capacity may be part of what’s coming up for you, Pisces risings.

Aries Rising: Shared Resources and Inheritance (8th House)

If you’re an Aries rising, this is going to be in your eighth house of shared resources. It’s also a house that has to do with death.

That doesn’t mean this retrograde necessarily involves a literal death. In the situations I’m talking about here, there can also be questions about letting go of control, especially when resources or decisions aren’t entirely in your own hands.

For Aries risings, you might come across issues with partners around money, right? Or with family members around inheritance, because the eighth house also has to do with inheritance.

You may be working through questions of communication, truth, and honesty, and bringing forward your own truth, your own value, and your own knowing in those conversations with other people—those intimate conversations around resources and money.

It could also be a bit about your own desire for control in relationships. That can come up in these eighth-house situations, where we’re dealing with another person’s resources or with something we can’t entirely control ourselves.

Taurus Rising: One-to-One Relationships (7th House)

If you’re a Taurus rising, Scorpio is in your seventh house of one-to-one relationships.

This can be a partner. It could be a marital partner. It could be a therapist. It could be your own clients, right? Those are one-to-one relationships if you happen to be somebody who’s a therapist or someone who works individually with people.

You may find that circumstances are bubbling up in your life that ask you to review how you work with your partner. They may ask you to have difficult conversations—or really demand them.

After these Mercury and Venus retrograde periods, it can feel like something in us can’t go along with the way we used to be in conversations and relationships. Something wants to bring up the truth that has not been expressed. That’s the Scorpio piece.

You may find that you have these deeper connections, or this desire for a deeper conversation with a partner around topics you’ve been avoiding.

Gemini Rising: Health, Service, and Where You Lack Power (6th House)

If you’re a Gemini rising—give me one second to adjust my brain here—then it’s going to be in your sixth house.

The sixth house has to do with where we lack power. In ancient times, it was associated with people who served other people and lacked power in the relationship.

It can also have to do with our health. If you think about it, when we have health issues, we can be in a situation where we lack power or autonomy in our lives and have to adjust and come to understand our powerlessness.

For Gemini risings, you may find that communication issues, speaking truth, expressing your own value, and asserting your own worth in a situation arise in any of these areas—any area where you serve others or lack power.

Say, for example, you’re someone who’s in a health crisis, and you’re talking with doctors about some treatment you think you might want, or a treatment they think you should have. Then you sit with that and reflect on what you really want.

You may find that you have a desire to bring forward your truth about what you value and what matters to you, even if it unsettles that doctor-patient relationship because the doctor doesn’t agree with you, right? You may really want to have those difficult conversations.

Now, that’s just an example. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with health. This is also a house associated with everyday workers and working in service to others.

It could be that you’re in a work environment where the boss comes to you, and you’ve been having a communication problem or haven’t been speaking your truth. You want to get into it in a deeper way.

It’s that Scorpionic feeling of, “I really want to grapple with this question, uncover what the truth is for me, and speak it out of a sense of my own value,” right?

Cancer Rising: Children, Pleasure, and Creativity (5th House)

If you’re a Cancer rising, this retrograde period is happening in your fifth house of children, pleasure, fun, and creativity.

All of these questions about speaking your own truth, finding your value, digging deep to communicate, and grappling with questions come up in that area of your life.

It could involve a child if you’re having some sort of miscommunication, or perhaps you haven’t been speaking about the things that are really going on with you in that relationship.

It could be an adult child, for example. You decide you want to bring something up and grapple with it in that deeper Scorpionic way. You want to bring forward your own value, perhaps setting boundaries if that’s necessary.

Of course, this could also involve a younger child. It’s not that you’re necessarily going to get into a deep conversation with them, but you may find that you say what you mean instead of trying to avoid it.

Perhaps you’ve been avoiding a boundary or limit with that child because you’re afraid of their capacity to experience a conflict in that way.

There are different ways we work with younger children than with older or adult children, obviously.

Again, the fifth house is not just about children. It’s also about creativity.

If you’re an artist or somebody who’s got a project going, say you’ve been a little bit on the wrong path. You’ve been working on a project that doesn’t really feel aligned with who you are and what you know, and you begin to realize you’re off track a little bit.

Maybe you’ve been doing it out of a desire to please people in the world. You’ve been using your mind, your Mercury energy, to interpret what’s necessary. But instead of seeking or trying to understand what you really want and the creativity you really want to bring out into the world, you’ve been thinking about what other people want.

When we get off track with what we’re intended to create, with what spirit wants us to bring forward into the world, this is a moment when maybe we get realigned with that deeper purpose.

When we get realigned with that creative juice, when it’s really coming out of the center of who we are and what we value, it’s so much more pleasurable.

That’s the potential here for you.

Leo Rising: Home, Family, and Ancestry (4th House)

If you’re a Leo rising, this is going to fall in your fourth house of home, family, and ancestry.

The retrograde may bring up moments when you’re reworking issues or having conversations with your family of origin in some way—parents, et cetera.

Again, if you’ve been out of alignment in an effort to please or keep the relationship going—Venus, right?—you have this moment to reconnect with what you value, be honest about it, and bring it into connection with another person. To be vulnerable and speak your truth.

Now, just because we speak our truth about what we want, what our values are, or what we’ve been thinking but hiding, doesn’t mean the other person agrees with us.

That’s what Mercury retrograde brings up: “Oh, what’s really going on with us that we haven’t been saying?” Especially in Scorpio.

Just because we speak it and communicate it to another person doesn’t mean they agree with us. But this brings an opportunity to have that real Scorpionic, “We’re going to get into it” kind of energy, where we’re having some real communication about things we’ve been avoiding.

Virgo Rising: Neighbors, Community, and Spiritual Practice (3rd House)

If you’re a Virgo rising, this retrograde is going through your third house.

The third house has to do with things that are local: neighbors, community, siblings, and familiar surroundings. I also think about closer, more intimate friends here.

The third house was known as the house of the Goddess. It also has to do with those spiritual practices involving ritual and connecting with ourselves in a quiet, more internal way—the more local kind of spirituality.

For you, this could bring a reworking of how you are in relationship with your community.

If you’re working with smaller local groups, trying to change your little world, right, this may be an opportunity to explore what you haven’t brought forward.

Perhaps, again, you’ve hesitated to bring what you really feel, how you really want to relate, or your own value into the conversation.

After this retrograde, once both Venus and Mercury become morning stars, ready to speak and bring their truth out into the world around mid-November, you may find that you’re having these conversations in local spaces about what matters to you.

Libra Rising: Livelihood and What Sustains You (2nd House)

If you’re a Libra rising—this is the last sign, since I started with Scorpio—then this retrograde is happening in your second house.

This is a house that has to do with the things that sustain you in life and how you support yourself.

A lot of people talk about the second house as having to do with how we make money, and that’s true. But really, on a deeper level, it has to do with livelihood.

I’m also connecting that here with how we value ourselves. You know, when we do things out in the world that bring us money and resources, there can be this feedback loop of feeling valued.

If you’re a Libra rising, this Scorpio retrograde period for Mercury and Venus may have you reevaluating your relationship with how you support yourself in the world and what you’re doing.

If you’ve been out of whack, if you haven’t been in alignment with your deeper knowing and understanding of what you want in those areas of your life, this may bring a moment when you want to bring that truth forward.

For example—and this is just one example, because for each house there are so many ways it could show up, right?—say you want a raise.

You’re working, you’re a great worker, and you’ve been putting in the time. But you’ve never spoken up at work about what you want around how you make money and bring resources to yourself, because you’re afraid to rock the boat or you’re afraid it might harm the relationship in some way. That’s the Venus piece.

This might give you an oomph to speak the truth.

You might have a light-bulb moment in the middle of the retrograde period for Venus and Mercury when you realize what you really want, and you just can’t be quiet about it anymore.

You’re ready to have a deep conversation, to name those truths and bring them out into the world.

Closing Thoughts

I hope that was a helpful explanation for folks. It’s going to be an interesting period.

I would love to hear from you now and in mid-November, after this retrograde season or retrograde moment has played out, because that’s really when we’re going to see the fruition of some of these light-bulb moments.

I’d love it if you could drop a little comment and let me know how it went for you.

Thanks a lot, and feel free to check out my offerings. I do astrology readings online and in person here in Minneapolis. If you’re interested, there’s a link below to my website for all my different offerings.

Have a great day.