NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Let’s see, in just the past week we’ve had a ‘Blood Moon’ and a Friday the 13th. Maybe you’ve been dealing with some unusual events. Could just be a coincidence.

Or maybe it’s Mercury.

“Mercury retrograde is a real thing. It’s a big thing,” New Orleans psychic and astrologer Cari Roy told WGNO News. Roy has been watching the planets and stars and predicting their affects on earth for decades.

“We caution people not to make big purchases, not to make huge decisions,” Roy said.

So what is Mercury retrograde? It’s an event that happens three times a year as the planet makes its 88 day trip around the sun. When it’s on the same side of the sun, it is clearly moving the same way as the Earth. But as it makes its way around the other side of the sun, from the point of view from earth, it appears to be heading back the other direction.

But scientists say there is no connection between Mercury’s orbit and anything on Earth.

“There’s just really no affect either electromagnetically or gravitationally or pretty much anything,” University of New Orleans astrophysicist Greg Seab told WGNO.

Seab says that Mercury is a very interesting planet that can have temperatures hot enough to melt led and as cold as liquid nitrogen, but that’s as far as the planet’s extremes reach.

So when you get your Groupon offer for restaurant or spa deals to help cope with Mercury retrograde, just know that while you could certainly get a great deal, the cause is debatable on scientific and spiritual ground here.