It’s hours after December’s Sagittarius new Moon – our last new Moon of the year – and Mercury begins its final backward spin of the year on 13 December 2023 until 1 January, 2024.
And like all retrogrades, it holds within invitations, wisdom, insights, and opportunities for realignment.
It’s a retrograde that seems to hold the space for visioning into the new year. May you too, hold this same space, so that you may live with purpose, fulfilment, and joy in the year to come.
When is Mercury Retrograde?
13 December, 2023 – 1 January, 2024.
What is a Retrograde?
Ancient Astrologers viewed retrogrades as a planet moving through the underworld on a quest for new perspectives, for greater wisdom, and deeper insight. While the known path can be nourishing, supportive, and safe – sometimes a different direction, with different scenery, is where our greatest growth, or at least, alternative perspectives, can be found.
Perhaps as Mercury passes the Earth and slips into what we call a retrograde, it is venturing out on its own journey for the sake of our growth, for the sake of our joy, and for the sake of our lives being fully lived. And once it returns to its known path of forward movement, we can be the receivers of all gained along its quest.
Retrogrades in Astrology are opportunities for ‘re’ words like review, revise, reframe, retrace, renew, and realign.
They are a sacred pause to return to our awareness, our inner guidance, our truth. They offer a moment in time to reconnect with what matters to us amidst the outside movement, noise, activity, and guidance.
And they invite us to look back on the path recently walked, reminding us that there is always more to see, more perspectives to look from, and more wisdom waiting to be gained through reflection.
Mercury Retrograde in Capricorn
While Mercury represents our mental processing, perspectives, inner narratives, and communication, Capricorn is a zodiac that invites us to become all that we can be.
Ruled by the Earth element it lives within the tangible realm, speaking to practical, grounded, productive, and disciplined action. While in Capricorn, Mercury takes on the lens of structure, practicality, organisation, and boundaries. It becomes concerned with our goals, life plans, career, and reputation – the kinds of things we often find ourselves contemplating as we step into the new year with our new intentions.
As we begin to approach the final weeks of the year, Mercury Retrograde in Capricorn asks us to reflect on the path we have taken to arrive here.
What felt good, aligned, real, or meaningful?
What narratives have I been carrying in my mind, shaping who I am and how I live in the world?
What goals have I been holding, and are they still what I desire?
This is our review before beginning in 2024 on the same path, trajectory, and direction that we have already been walking – reviewing first, if it is the path, trajectory, and direction that we desire to continue, or if there is some tweaking waiting to be made.
It is our opportunity to begin the next year with purpose, intention, clarity, and direction as Mercury moves forward again on 1 January 2024.
Our Final Mercury Retrograde of 2023: Your Invitations
As Mercury shifts into retrograde in Capricorn just the day after our final new Moon of the year, it is through reaching into a vision, a dream, a life that may be stretching what we believe to be possible, that we are then offered alternative perspectives, more information, and reflection that supports the building of these dreams in the year to come.
It’s a retrograde that can be seen as a cosmic permission slip to take time and purpose in aligning our goals with our values.
It is the permission to ponder on our path ahead without concretizing it too quickly, which often only leads to guilt or feelings of inadequacy when we fall ‘short’ or perhaps realise it was never for us. And it is also our permission slip to clear away the noise of the world around us, what new year intentions should look like, or in greater truth, what our lives should look like.
Capricorn guides us into who we want to be in the world, what we want to contribute and what path we want to master.
Here we have the opportunity to reconsider all that we have been taught, and all that we have believed, about who we are in the world and what we should do with our lives. And we get to do it in a way that serves us, in preparation for the new year, just in time for a new chapter.
Invite the space to reflect on your inner talk:
What narratives within me believe I don’t deserve my desired life?
What dreams were born under the New Moon, and do I believe in myself to walk that path, to meet that mountain?
What reframes are needed for me to become the person who can live this desired life?
Invite a different way of seeing the path towards your dreams, allowing space for alternative resources, ideas, and opportunities for you to move forward with in the new year.
