HAPPY SOLSTICE, everyone! Sun enters Capricorn December 21st at 7:27 pm Pacific time. Mercury retrograde, also in the sign of sea goat, sextiles (60°) Saturn at 2°23’ Pisces early morning on solstice. It is ok to dream, make some New Year’s resolutions, celebrate the seed percolating within and the hope it holds. What mountain are you climbing? What is truly worth the effort? Mercury retrograde is best used as a reflective, contemplative time. And with Mars out of bounds in Sagittarius, we need to be bold and unconventional with thinking about the ways we can put our ideas into action.
Mercury retrograde can also bring back into our lives the “ghosts of Christmas past.” People and events of time gone by might be on our minds and in our hearts. In that spirit of recollection, I want to share an amazing story about disciplined and hardworking Capricorn, about striving for a great work and the focused determination of the sign. Folks might find this post helpful when meditating upon how best to use Mercury retrograde in Capricorn this December.
A few years back, during the pandemic, I wrote about the astrology at play in the fall of 1843 when Dickens took the chance to work in solitude, very hard on a writing project, the now-famous novella, “A Christmas Carol”, AKA ‘Scrooge’. It sold out by Christmas Eve that year!
How can we best work with the sign of Capricorn in terms of evolutionary astrology, for personal growth and change in the New Year? I thought I’d post the story again. Here below is a biwheel chart showing Dickens’ natal chart (inner wheel) and the current sky at the time of publication of “A Christmas Carol” (outer wheel – set for noon).
We always start with the Sun, Moon and Ascendant; Aquarius, Sagittarius and Virgo, respectively, for Mr. Dickens. But let’s focus upon the events occurring here.
Between October and December of 1843, when Dickens produced “A Christmas Carol,” he threw himself into an intensive writing period of several weeks. Saturn, the great “task master,” was very strong in the sign of Capricorn then. During the 6-week period, the planet formed an exact conjunction with Charles Dickens’ natal Mercury on his 5th House cusp, house of creative expression, Mercury the writer. Faster moving Mars, out of bounds, came through as well by conjunction, helping Dickens to focus his will and put into action creatively his ideas about moral and social reform, the higher octave of Capricorn, through an unconventional out-of-bounds voice. By the date of publication (shown in the biwheel chart), Mars had moved on into Pisces.
When the book sold the days before Christmas that same year, Venus by transit joined Saturn in the sky, again meeting Dickens’ natal Mercury. His Capricorn Saturnine creative endeavor was well received! Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius were also exactly in conjunction with his natal Sun, also in his 5th House, during November – the visionary writer as teacher of social justice and change.
It wasn’t an easy time for Dickens (Saturn conjunct his natal Mercury, Pluto in Aries by transit in an exact square) and he didn’t make much money despite the book’s popularity – he actually got into a legal scuffle over it - but in the long run…what a gift for all of us. It transformed our notion of Christmas for generations to come.
Most cool I think is that Neptune seems to have this impact of moving the larger collective. And there the planet was sitting on his natal Sun, his solar self. He needed a vison for his life. When we consider the nodes of the Moon, we see a karmic pattern, like something needed to be said. The south node in the sky in the fall of 1843 aligned by conjunction Dickens’ Jupiter in Gemini in his 10th House, house of mission or career. For those not familiar with astrological archetypes, Gemini, ruled by Mercury, is strongly associated with communication and writing.
I often think about what a collective impact that story had and how its legacy is so enduring. Good ol’ Ebenezer Scrooge and his encounter with the three ghosts; everyone knows the story.
Knowing your natal chart and the potential of the “current sky” is such an extraordinary and sacred tool. Now is a good season to ask yourself, what great work is dormant in me? I hope you enjoyed my story…Yuletide blessings, everyone!