Retrogradation

A worked example

Reading the diagram

A simplified, top-down map of the solar system. The Sun holds the centre; Earth travels the tight inner orbit, Jupiter the broad outer one. Earth laps the Sun once a year, Jupiter roughly once every twelve, so our planet keeps catching up to and overtaking the slower giant.

Each thin line is a line of sight. Extended from Earth past Jupiter, it reaches the fixed ring of signs and marks where we actually see the planet: its real position projected onto the zodiac. The dashed line does the same for the Sun.

Follow that projected point and the loop appears. The trail is drawn in one colour while Jupiter moves forward through the signs, and in another during the weeks it appears to slide backward, exactly as a slower car seems to drift back the instant you overtake it.

In charts this phase is marked with the abbreviation Rx. Symbolically, the planet's energy turns introspective and reflective: a time to review, rethink, reconsider.