How to perform quantum magic during Mercury retrograde

MERCURY RETROGRADE WHILE TRAVELING BACK IN TIME

Is there really a front, back, bottom, top, before, or after to the river of time? Or is time merely an effort by humans—who have attained the intelligence to relate their self-awareness to the universe they inhabit—to make sense of their limited lifespan on Earth by using the movements of celestial bodies as a measure?

Whether we accept or deny it, humanity gives meaning to its existence not through things that exist inherently, but through the duties it assigns to those things. Therefore, the most important constant for a human being concerned with finding meaning along a temporal line is the movement of the celestial dome; they measure and weigh themselves against day and night, cycles, and seasons; they organize their daily and even lifelong trajectory with this knowledge.

Within time, when stories evolve into reality,

and realities evolve into tales in the rotation of the celestial spheres,

in an era when the starry dome appeared closer to humans,

and earthly lights did not overshadow the stars.

It was a summer night 6000 years ago, from the present to the past of the Euphrates River...

On a hot, humid, heavy night when even the full moon had fled to the other side of the world, emerald green leaves sweated pearl by pearl with the humidity of the river's heat, birds were silent, mixed with sleep, and foxes, jackals, and squirrels had returned to their dens to protect all their young. If you asked the black bird with the mottled beak, this silence was not a good omen at all.

The river's waters, pebbles, fish, the black celestial dome, the stars; the entire nature was not much different from its state today. The only difference was the human of that era living between the starry dome and the earth.

The heavy, humid evening had bid farewell to the daylight, but had not yet withdrawn its hands from the orange, misty blue, cloud white, and dusty pink hair of the blue dome. The face of the Euphrates had darkened with the sorrow of the departing sun, and the last iridescence had hidden under the rocks on the surface along with the fry.

These were the hours when the river became alienated from its surroundings with a shudder like a roaring black shadow; when people withdrew and fish approached the surface of the water to feed. The elders of the vicinity used to tell that the white fish of the river appeared to children with pure hearts during these hours. Whoever saw this sacred creature, called the White Mother, should not hesitate to state their heart's wish. However, woe to those who tried to hunt it. The life of a fisherman who hunted the White Mother would shorten so much that they would never see another sunrise.

Two half-grown children, raised on these tales, had gone down to the riverbank to cast nets so as not to miss the feeding time of the fish. They wanted to finish their work as soon as possible and return home before it became pitch black. Ku-Aba, who was hurriedly tying the ropes of the net, muttered to himself that there was no moonlight either. Before long, as the rapidly darkening air passed over their shoulders with a shudder and made his insides tremble, he said to his brother Zizi, "Quick, quick, tie that one too and let's go home, don't cast the remaining nets." Zizi stood there, hands motionless, eyes frozen toward the other side of the river. Suddenly, he jumped up in fear and fell onto his backside, saying, "The White Mother, the white fish... I saw it, it was huge." The other child also recoiled a few steps, shuddering at the same reflection; there were too many white fish on the surface of the rippling water, appearing and disappearing, their numbers constantly increasing. Then, a sound mixed with a rustle broke out across the entire surface of the river with a "Boom!"; the fry scattered, drops that had become heavy on the green leaves fell, and the sleeping birds were startled and took flight. The sound echoed in all the darkness. The two children started running, leaving the remaining nets on the ground. The sound began to repeat itself with rhythmic emphasis, again and again, and only then did the children think to look at the red walls of the mud-brick palace on the riverbank. What they thought were fish were white tambourines whose reflections fell into the water; the first sound they heard was the powerful single beat of the cymbals of 60 tambourines rising to the sky, hitting the rim of the tambourines with a single strong strike.

"Who is playing?" said the one who was smaller in height and age. "Run without looking back," said the other, "the jinn are playing, don't let them see you, run without looking back." The children were right; there was no one in the air holding the tambourines that were being struck with all their might and moving as if they were being thrown into the sky. These were undoubtedly the very jinn that the royal seer Ur-Nammu was able to invite to the palace.

These jinn, made of black smoke and born of black fire, perched on the red walls of the mud-brick palace, were the only beings that could protect the newborn from the scorching breath of the devil. Provided that the gods did not issue commands and give orders.

In essence, 60 women in black robes and black headscarves, with black kohl in their eyes and black embroidery on their faces, had waited for the evening to calm down and the night to spread, lining up like black shadows on the high walls of the red mud-brick palace, and had begun to strike their tambourines with bells with all their might and in the same rhythm.

The labor pains of the first concubine of the young King Shar-Kali-Sharri had begun in the late hours of the evening, and 60 aged wise women had come to the palace from all corners of the vicinity weeks ago, and finally, when the labor pains began, they had started to strike their ritual rhythms with all their might, in a trance, to hide the voice of the 15-year-old girl from the devils and to protect the royal baby she was likely to give birth to.

The children who fled in fear were not wrong at all; it was believed that the white tambourines were being struck toward the stars not by human hands, but by the hands of jinn made of black smoke. In the relative view of the public and their perception formed by stories, the mysterious jinn of the unseen realm had been invited to the mud-brick palace on the banks of the Euphrates by the order of the king's seer, Ur-Nammu. The jinn perched on the red walls were begging Enlil, the god of the heavens, to protect the king who was about to be born. Judging by the sounds that never ceased and were constantly rising, the war between the jinn and the demons was quite fierce. Because the king had many enemies, both human and demonic.

When the aged shadows in black garments added the words of their own breath to the beats of the tambourines, it was impossible for any human or even a child of a demon not to be startled by this sound echoing against the Euphrates river, mountains, forests, and caves in the dark night.

En-lil lu-gir-ra šeg-gig-ga nigin

dumu ki-gar-ta šu-gar

ama-ni dingir-ne-eš ba-da-gen

nam-ti-la ša-ge gen En-lil

As the moonless night grew heavier and heavier, the dark body of the river seemed to be pinned to where it was, not flowing. The tambourine cymbals clashing at the same time and the raspy voices of the aged black shadows broke the silence of the entire vicinity, and they raised their prayers, which began as a murmur, higher and higher to drown out the voice of 15-year-old Princess Ninlil, who was screaming in blood in her bed inside.

O Enlil, God of the Heavens, cast away the evils!

Let the baby come to earth,

may the gods also help its mother,

grant them long life, O Enlil...

Young King Shar-Kali-Sharri had ordered the palace commander to keep the army ready at the entrance of the palace, wanting to take his own precautions against the devils who wanted to steal his baby. The king, who was uneasy in despair from the tambourine sounds that dragged on and the rising prayers, was also waiting for news from the star observations of the palace seer Ur-Nammu.

Finally, shortly before daybreak, the seer had observed a star in the sky moving backward, and he could not hide his darkened expression from the king. With the breaking of the night's darkness, the tambourines fell silent, and silence descended on the walls of the mud-brick red palace.

Neither the poor child nor her mother had been able to survive the difficult night. The seer had very clear evidence in his hand to avoid being killed; the star that was supposed to bring good news had moved backward, and the life that was supposed to come had been taken back manifold by the gods. The fault was not the seer's, nor the midwives', nor the jinn's, nor the fairies'; even the devil was among the innocents of this night, because Enlil, the sky god, had willed it so.

This event was told from tongue to tongue, spread from province to province, and while all the spheres were rotating in the same direction, the event caused by a planet going backward was etched into the public mind as a sign of disaster...

The shared traumas we experience form our stories, and our stories form our narratives that we shape around a fear that turns into tradition. Traumatic narratives recorded with fear are passed down from generation to generation. Because not forgetting our fears keeps us alive.

The most dangerous thing is that behavioral patterns that turn into traditions with fear templates are recorded as information in the collective mind of society. Mercury retrograde perhaps settled into the culture of our geography with such a trauma as long as 6000 years ago.

OPTICAL PERCEPTION ILLUSION

It was not yet possible to know that this phenomenon, known as "Retrograde motion" 6000 years ago, was entirely an optical illusion.

They did not know that Mercury completes its orbit around the Sun in approximately 88 Earth days, and therefore moves very fast compared to the Earth, which completes its orbit around the Sun in 365 days. When viewed from Earth, due to the difference in orbital speed, Mercury is perceived as if it is going backward, meaning Mercury is not actually going backward; they did not know that this phenomenon consists solely of an optical illusion formed in the perception of the observer on Earth, depending on the movement of the Earth.

6000 YEARS PASSING OVER WRONG INFORMATION

So what is happening... What is happening that we hear the sounds of a narrative that is about 6000 years old, in the sentences of individuals who have gone through a modern education and whom we assume to be of sound mind, with phrases like "Mercury retrograde," "horoscope chart," "quantum fortune-telling," "sending energy to the universe," which are completely outside the framework of rationality?

I don't mean to say, how is "the effects of Mercury retrograde" a sentence spoken as a result of a mental blackout when one could reach the correct information with just a few keys!

Because those who get caught up in this craze are not just elderly uncles and aunts who are deprived of education and training; among these people are academics, writers, university graduates, and many who benefit from the blessings of intellectuality. Since the matter has reached this point, there is no point in distancing ourselves from it by just criticizing the situation. The fact is, no problem that has been diagnosed has been observed to be resolved through destructive criticism and insult methods.

COGNITIVE BIASES

What we know is that the majority of beliefs or acceptances that people integrate into their lives without needing a logical connection are based on cognitive biases, perception errors, or emotional needs. When perception errors and misinformation acquired through culture and traditions, and passed down through family, are reinforced by the individual's unfulfilled desires, conflicts, and traumas in their life flow, these beliefs can turn into behavioral patterns that completely distance the individual's decision-making mechanism from rationality.

It is, of course, not an unexpected situation for an individual who has developed a way of thinking far from rationality to have a tendency to develop a biased verification method in order not to contradict themselves. This is just a kind of internal defense mechanism that follows irrationality.

GROUP DYNAMICS

Another factor that keeps people within such irrational belief systems is group dynamics. Most of the time, people's need for belonging and feeling safe by socializing within the group convinces them to stay within the group without questioning these wrong behavioral patterns. Plato's allegory of the cave is a unique example for this subject.

However, such explanations can never be a justification for individuals who can write and have the opportunity to influence the community to fall into such ignorance. Because the responsibility that their actions impose on them is not only related to their own lives.

Ultimately, no writer writes their articles by themselves and reads them to themselves in front of the mirror. No program producer gets dressed, gets ready, sits at the makeup table, and has a breakdown by themselves saying, "yes, dear viewers."

Ultimately, is every individual who shares their writings, programs, works, and actions with the community they live in within an official form not responsible with the sensitivity of a civil servant in the duty of architecture in shaping society?

While the stones of ignorance thrown into the lake of reason by such influencers appear as pleasant romantic ripples on the water surface in their wrongly programmed relative perceptions, the deep waves of the ignorance approved by this action can cost the life of a young child in the countryside. Replacing concepts like jinn, fortune-telling, havas, abjad, and magic with so-called modernized nonsense like horoscope charts, quantum fortune-telling, sending energy to the universe, and tarot cards does not improve the situation in any way.

The same wave of behavior, at another level, causes behavioral disorders among the moderately educated that prevent institutions from functioning healthily. How can we expect an engineer who believes they can send energy to the universe to overcome the irrational walls in their brain and make an invention? It is not even possible to think of an IT worker who believes in the effect of Mercury retrograde on electronic devices.

Unfortunately, these beliefs do not remain as curiosities that we keep in a corner of our lives just for fun, as is thought. A small door that we leave ajar for irrationality in our minds fundamentally affects our decision-making mechanisms, the way we manage our lives, our work, our productivity, and most importantly, the way we perceive life, both in our private lives and in the jobs we work in.

Therefore, the cup you turn over at the end of a pleasant coffee, tarot readings where you assign the power to comment on and decide about your life to a person you don't know at all, and behavior that rejects all principles of reason, such as thinking that you are really affected by the movement of a planet thousands of kilometers away, are not as innocent behaviors as you think.

Societies consist of individuals. If individuals are far from rationality, prone to superstitions, and far from science, the situation spreads to society and therefore to institutions in the same way. In this case, one should not be surprised by a non-functioning legal system, severe disruptions in the education system, chaos in politics, or financial crises. We cannot build a rational, scientific, controlled, logical, and developing system on wrong and superstitious foundations.