In any case, here is a letter to the "Many Things" column of American Astrology September 1978 by my friend (and closet Siderealist), the late Jim Lewis, discussing the topic in a fresh way. I remember the letter from over 40 years ago and think it deserves to be preserved here.
SYMBOL SLOWDOWN
Thanks for your comments on "Wrong Way Mercury," June '788 "Many Things." While your comments are justified, I hasten to caution you not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I, and I may assume, many others, have experienced too many validations of Mercury's exasperating periodic malevolence to dismiss it entirely.
For what it's worth, I have observed that these most pronounced effects occur not when Mercury is retrograde, but when it is decelerating in motion (just before stations); things seem to go along just fine when it is speeding along, even if it is backwards from our viewpoint. When decelerating, however, there seem to be just too many Mercury-related occurrences to dismiss - not air crashes and business failures (what about Mars-Uranus aspects for the former?) - but instead, minor, confusing, often banal events involving the traditional rulerships of Mercury - travel, office procedures, symbols, words and mail, to name a few. And, true to classical ideas, they seem to affect Mercury-ruled natives the most, this obviously because we scions of the winged messenger get our lives tied p more with such things. (I have a mail order business, and if I could show you what we get when Mercury slows....)
Finally, I would like to proffer a philosophical explanation for the phenomenon, without pretentions of its being scientific. If the Sun symbolizes the essence, Mercury is the symbol of the "incarnation" of that essence. The orbital pattern of Mercury shows how symbols, like bureaucracies, have a way of assuming a life of their own, and growing further away from their subjects. Then, in Mercury retrograde periods, it becomes obvious that the symbol is no longer close enough to its subject to appropriately work for it, and relationships based on this symbolization deteriorate. The symbol is redefined more in conformity with its subject's present reality.
But enough of this heady stuff, I won't even tell you about the six successive malfunctioning paper staplers I bought under six successive retrograde Mercuries, nor about the time they printed the wrong address on my lecture tickets on the rainiest night of the year, nor the time they changed the bus routes....
Jim Lewis, San Francisco
