Whats the deal with retrograde planets?!

Whats the deal with retrograde planets?

I have five retrograde planets in my birth chart which are mercury, saturn, neptune, uranus and pluto. What does that mean?

It simply means that they don't have the same effect of any other planet in that sign in that house... or - in other words - that they have the 'backwards', opposite effect.

But you learn to live with that. The only good thing about having a planet in retrograde in your natal chart, is that you're less affected - even not at all affected - when any of those planets (note; the sun and the moon *never* do - logically) go in retrograde motion during your lifetime. While other people get affected by those events on a regular basis (I myself am fecked; I've no Retrograde planets... none at all. Always heavily affected by them.)


Now, astronomically, a retrograde motion of an object or of a planet usually, is actually an optical illusion.
All planets orbit on a different speed, and some orbits are smaller than others. This results in certain planets taking more, or less time than others to complete their one cycle.

Take for example the earth. From our point of view, the sun never goes retrograde (because we orbit around it) nor does the moon (because it orbits around us). Mercury and Venus, however, go retrograde on a regular basis. They go faster than us, and have a narrower orbit. Their orbital periods (on our planet known as 'year') are 87 days and 224 days respectively. Ours is 365.25 days. Which means, at one point, we will have to catch up on them.

When that happens, when we 'catch up on' them, they appear to be standing still, and even moving backwards. The best way to explain this is to show a diagram, but that's one thing, sadly enough, that Y! didn't allow us to use yet - maybe for the better.

This event, is what lead people to believe that whenever a planet *seemed* to be moving backwards, it's characteristics would have a backwards effect on people.

So far I've noticed it does hold some truth, funnily enough since the backwards - or retrograde - motion isn't really the planet moving backwards, but us just catching up.

PS; an even more simplified explanation of how retrograde motion works, is to watch parked cars or slower moving cars when you're in a moving car yourself. But that's only half the explanation.