Your Mercury Sign Is Why You Come Across As An Extrovert

When we think of the planet Mercury, it's easy to let our minds go straight to the dreaded Mercury retrograde periods. But there's much more to Mercury in astrology than its annoying backspins. Knowing what your Mercury sign says about your personality can give you insight into your cosmic self — especially when it comes to the way you think, communicate, and express yourself.

Each of the planets in astrology represent a different part of who we are. Mercury is the planet of ideas, communicating, and sharing information — so when we're chatting it up with someone or thinking something through, it's likely that our Mercury zodiac sign is taking the wheel and wielding its influence over our thoughts and social lives.

As Mercury travels through the zodiac, it spends approximately three weeks in each sign (although it can sometimes be quite a bit longer, depending on its retrograde cycle), and takes about one year to travel through all 12 of them. As it moves through the zodiac, it expresses its energy through the qualities of each individual sign. That said, by looking at the sign Mercury was in at the time you were born, you can learn a lot about the way you process information and express your ideas to the world around you.

How To Calculate Your Mercury Sign

In order to calculate your Mercury sign, you'll need to use your birth date and year. You can look up Mercury's location in the zodiac of on the date and year of your birth in an online Mercury transit table, if you don't mind scrolling through hundreds of dates. But your astrological birth chart will also tell you your Mercury sign, so dig up your birth certificate and consult a professional astrologer to get the dish, or use an online birth chart calculator to figure it out at home. If you already have a copy of your birth chart or an astrology app with a table of the planets in your chart, take a look there.

What Mercury Represents In Astrology

Mercury is named after the swift and clever messenger god in Roman mythology, and this archetype translates beautifully into its astrological meaning. Mercury in astrology is all about information: how we absorb it, how we form our own ideas with it, and how we express our ideas about it to the world. Just like the messenger god it's named for, Mercury rules over communication. Talking, tweeting, and texting all fall within its jurisdiction. Of course, in order to properly communicate our thoughts, we have to be able to think things through in the first place — so it's no surprise that Mercury also rules over thinking, learning, and calculating things. Mercury energy loves to pay attention to details and make sure everything's in place.

But Mercury is about more than just communicating information and thoughts. It rules logistical matters, too — including timing, scheduling, and getting from place to place. It's all about how we manage our time and ensure that logistics in our life run smoothly (which, of course, is interdependent on the way we think about things and communicate). Additionally, this planet rules over our tech devices, which makes sense, since tech is a helpful tool when it comes to managing our communications and calendars. Mercury is a true jack-of-all-trades planet, as it governs over many important little matters. That's part of why the tri-annual Mercury retrograde periods tend to have such a strong effect on us!

What You Can Learn From Your Mercury Sign

Your Mercury sign serves as somewhat of a mirror to how you communicate. Look at the zodiac sign where Mercury is located in your chart, and then look up the qualities of that sign. It may not be the same as your sun sign (although it very well could be, since Mercury is never more than two zodiac signs away from the sun!), but do you relate to those qualities in social situations? It's likely that your Mercury sign reflects the way you express yourself and your style of communicating. It illustrates the slang you like to use, the way you text or tweet, and your mannerisms while speaking.

If you don't already feel aligned with your Mercury sign, then leaning into its zodiacal energy may actually help you better express yourself to others. If you ever struggle to get your point across or find your groove in a social situation, try embracing your Mercury sign qualities and see if you feel any more comfortable or effective. Embracing these qualities is also helpful when brainstorming new ideas or trying to find a solution to a problem, since your Mercury sign governs how you think, too.

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We're all multi-faceted people with many sides to our personalities, and astrology fully reflects that. Learning about the zodiacal placement of the planets in your birth chart can help you learn more about the many pieces of you — and in the case of Mercury, it'll shed a whole new light on your social self.