As if all the current commentary about what is going on in the collective wasn’t enough, I made the “mistake” of noticing an upcoming Yikes! kind of transit in my natal chart three years from now.
Fortunately I actually remembered to do for myself what I try to do for clients to help them “read their lives backward” before discussing an upcoming transit. I ask them to tell me stories during the time periods of the earlier cycle(s) before we discuss what themes lie ahead.
“Reading life backward” is a James Hillman phrase and his book The Soul’s Code is devoted to this. It means the events in our lives tend to only make sense in retrospect.
So I found myself reaching for my pen, journals, and a notebook with a set of dates in the past and let my life speak.
As Thomas Moore says, “All work on the soul takes the form of a circle, a rotatio. … The life of the soul, as the structure of dreams reveals, is a continual going over and over of the material of life” (Care of the Soul).
Above all, we circle back not to navel-gaze, but to face what we must do gladly: “Jung’s solution was both succinct and elegant: Free will is doing gladly and freely that which one must do” (Liz Greene, Jung’s Studies in Astrology).
When I reviewed those past experiences in my life with a fresh pair of eyes, I realized they weren’t all about me. They were also about bearing witness to what others were going through, and about how the personal and collective were interwoven.
With all the profound challenges present in society and the world right now, and a new war underway, I think about Pisces, and how it is characterized by an expansive, boundary-less capacity for emotion and a compassionate identification with the world’s suffering.
The two fishes of Pisces symbolize the tension between the soul’s desire for transcendence and an equally strong pull toward material enmeshment.
Which now brings us to the current Mercury Retrograde in Pisces, which asks us to honor both—to feel the suffering without being drowned by it; to reflect without escaping into spiritual bypassing.
Retrogrades are a perfect time to read our lives backward, which can help us metabolize what is going on in the present. All the Mercury retrogrades this year are in water signs, with this first one occurring in Pisces. This brings much-needed waters of healing and an intuitive, feeling-toned vibe amidst the loudness of everything going on in the fire and air signs this year.
Below are the dates of previous Mercury Retrogrades in Pisces during the past seven years.
March 5 – March 28, 2019
February 16 – March 9, 2020 (the retrograde started in Pisces and ended in Aquarius)
March 14 – April 7, 2025 (the retrograde started in Aries and ended in Pisces)
February 25 – March 20, 2026
And a sneak preview:
February 9 – March 3, 2027 (starting in Pisces and ending in Aquarius)
As you review these dates, and perhaps grab a journal or calendar to look back, ask yourself: What was happening in your life during these periods? What was happening in the collective? And in the lives of the people you care about?
If you keep a dream journal, what were your dreams telling you during those periods? Dreams tell us what is really going on inside us.
Did anything from those periods feel off script? Were you taking on too much responsibility for the emotional well-being of someone else? Did you experience any suffering? Were you especially creative?
As I review these dates myself, there are both mundane and the most dramatic details. For the 2025 period, my journal shows my relief at receiving a bathroom remodel estimate that was actually within the realm of affordability, unlike one received a few weeks prior. During the 2019 retrograde, I had a dream about my late grandfather that felt like a visitation dream (Pisces is my 4th house associated with home, property, ancestors, parents). The 2020 dates coincide with when the world shut down at the beginning of the pandemic.
The practice of reading life backward isn’t about proving that transits “work.” It’s about learning to see life—with all its small mercies and large upheavals—as the life we were given to live. As James Hollis writes:
“The love of one’s fate is not fatalism, resignation, defeat or passivity. It is an heroic submission to the gods—not my will but Thine—which leads to the blessing of a life lived as it was meant to be lived” (p. 58, Creating a Life).
I invite you to try this practice during Mercury’s retrograde journey through Pisces. Grab your journal, look at the dates, and let your life tell you what it knows. The stories we tell backward reveal the form we’re living forward.
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