By Dorian Grimault, astrologer · Published · updated
In your positions table, a small red ℞ next to a planet's name tells you it was retrograde on the day you were born: seen from Earth, it seemed to move backwards through the zodiac. It is neither a flaw nor an anomaly. It is a state of motion that tradition has read since Antiquity and that modern astrology links to an energy lived from the inside, taken up again, reworked. Here is what this symbol covers, how AstralPro handles it, and where it sits in your report.
No planet reverses along its orbit. Retrogradation is an effect of perspective: Earth and the other planets circle the Sun at different speeds, and when Earth overtakes one of them (or when an inner planet such as Mercury or Venus passes between us and the Sun), that planet appears, for a few weeks, to retrace its steps against the stars. The Sun and the Moon are never retrograde: their apparent motion always runs in the same direction.
In the calculation data, retrogradation is simple to read: the body's speed, expressed in degrees per day, becomes negative. Before and after each retrograde phase, the planet slows down until it seems motionless: this is the station, a distinct state with its own entry (speed and stations).
For William Lilly, in the 17th century, a retrograde planet is weakened accidentally: not by its sign, but by its state at that moment. Lilly takes points away from it in his table of fortitudes, as he does for a planet in a weak house or burnt by the Sun. The psychological astrology of the 20th century shifted the reading: the planet's function is not missing, it turns inward, mulls itself over, takes itself up again before expressing itself outwardly.
AstralPro keeps both views without setting them against each other. The ℞ does not make a planet a "bad" planet, and no score in the report penalises it. But for the seven traditional planets, retrogradation is one of the elements weighed in a planet's inner balance, alongside its dignity, its house and its distance from the Sun. As measured by the engine, the retrograde state affects about 15% of bodies: rare enough to be worth saying, common enough to be nothing exceptional.
The ℞ appears in three places:
The karmic section only keeps Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Chiron. The Nodes and Lilith are left out: they are calculated points, and their ℞ says nothing about an energy to take up again.
Chapter III looks backwards: what you already carry, what repeats, what remains to be settled. In this reading, retrograde planets are read as assets of the past that express themselves inwardly, a second round of work on those energies. The section gives them an overall reading, in two or three paragraphs, and does not develop each planet one by one (it is the detailed Book that devotes a block to each retrograde).
Like the other sections of the chapter, it ends with a concrete step: not where to go, but what you can stop doing or set down, citing the retrograde planet that justifies it. If your chart has no retrograde planet, the section says so in one sentence: the energy is then turned forward, with little inner revisiting.
Take Camille Morel, AstralPro's example chart (fictional data). Only one of her planets is retrograde: Mercury, at 6°37' Scorpio, in house 12. Her table also shows a ℞ on the North Node (3°00' Sagittarius), which the karmic chapter does not count.
This Mercury plays a particular role in her chapter III. Her South Node is in Gemini, in house 7, and the ruler of Gemini is Mercury: it is therefore the ruler of the South Node, the door through which that Node's memories express themselves. The chapter's data record it like this: ruler of the South Node, Mercury, 6°37' Scorpio, house 12 (retrograde). The "The South Node" section therefore reads a door turned inward, in the most withdrawn house of the chart, and the "The retrogrades" section takes up Mercury as the only energy to rework.
In chapter I, retrogradation enters the balance of this same Mercury. On one side, its conjunction within 1° of Venus (orb 0°07'). On the other, it is peregrine, in house 12, retrograde, close to the Sun and rising before it. The report holds both sides together without settling the matter, and without ever using the vocabulary of the calculation.
A planet can be retrograde without being stationary, and the other way round. Retrogradation describes the direction of motion; the station describes its halt, when the speed drops below 10% of its average. Camille's Mercury moves backwards, but it is not at a standstill: her report therefore gives it no station weight. The two pieces of information are read separately, and the entry on speed and stations details the second.
Keep the essentials in mind: the ℞ predicts nothing and condemns nothing. It shows that a function of your chart is worked on first from within, and your natal report shows you where, in which sign, in which house and with which links.
These entries describe astrology for everyone. Your birth chart, though, is unique: discover what your birth sky reveals about you.
Discover my birth chart — €29.90 →