Retrograde · vakra

Retrograde is vakra, “bending back.” Watched over weeks, a planet at times appears to slow, stop, and move backward against the fixed stars before turning forward again. Nothing in the planet reverses. The backward drift is an appearance, made by the changing angle between a moving Earth and the planet it watches. The Sun and Moon never retrograde; the other five do.

The tradition reads a retrograde graha as turned inward. Its significations are held to intensify, to revisit and repeat, to arrive delayed or to circle back to unfinished matters rather than move cleanly ahead. The register is inward and doubled, not simply blocked.

The planet does not stop giving. It gives again, from behind.

A second reading sits beside the first and does not cancel it. By cheṣṭā bala, the motional strength counted within ṣaḍbala, a planet near its retrograde station scores high and is called strong and bright. So the classical picture holds two things at once: functionally inward and complicating, yet strong by the measure of strength.