About Michael Erlewine
situation are the ultimate talisman or key to the meaning
or directionality that may be involved. With this in mind,
let’s take a look at the very important phenomenon of
planetary motion, in particular, the fact that the planets
appear to go forward and backward thru the zodiac—
the retrograde phenomenon.
Outer Planets Retrograde
First, a brief review: The planets orbit the Sun in large,
almost circular, orbits. Considered from a heliocentric or
Sun-centered standpoint, there is no retrograde or
backward motion, only the steady forward travel thru the
zodiac—cycle after cycle, round after round. Retrograde,
or backward motion, only exists from the Earth-centered
or geocentric perspective. As the earth moves thru its
orbit around the Sun, the other planets appear, at times,
to move backward (retrograde) in the zodiac, much like
a slower train seems to move backward when seen from
within a faster moving train. Thus the position of a