This is an article by Oner Dowser
In fact, the planets never move back in their orbits. While we are observing the movements of the planets from the Earth, their apparent motion seems to be retrograding. When we observe the sky at night, we witness how the planets move forward on their orbits within Zodiac. The planets move from the West to the East in Zodiac. This is what we call as direct movement which is counter clockwise. Sometimes a planet slows down and when we observe from the Earth, it looks as if it stopped and moving in the opposite direction of the Zodiac Signs. Then the planet seems to move clockwise. We call this “retrograde”. When the planet seems to stop, we call it “stationary”.
The planet retrogrades for a period then again it slows down, comes to stationary position and again moves forward. We observe it as a direct movement. As mentioned before, this is what we see as the observer from the Earth. In fact, the planets do not go back in the sky.
The Sun and the Moon – the luminaries as we call in astrology – always go direct, they never retrograde. Other planets travel from the east to the West for short periods and before turning direct they retrograde. Therefore there are two types of movement. One of them is the basic movement which if from the East to the West. This is called “daily movement”. The other is the movement from the West to the East, which is called “secondary movement”.
Great post!