Mercury Retrograde in Capricorn
December 26th, 2009 – January 15th, 2009
This Mercury Retrograde (MR) officially begins on December 26th (right after Christmas, nice right??) and ends in the New Year on January 15th, 2010.
Yet as previously mentioned, the set up phase has been in motion since December 9th when Mercury entered into the degree of Capricorn it will retrogress back to.
As Capricorn as an archetype has to do with our ambitions and goals in the world, the poignancy of this MR bridging us from the last year into the next is synchronicity at its best!
We are cosmically asked to look at our lives square in the eyes and get down to the bottom line we’re facing per the fate and destiny of our times – most notably via the economy, something archetypally connected to Capricorn.
That said, we must understand that the challenges we are going through now are not just transformational, they are evolutionary. And the time has come to rethink what fuels our ambitions and if that serves the greater global context of our collective Destiny.
Capricorn – From Ambition to Service
Every zodiacal sign in astrology represents an archetypal step in the developmental process of human consciousness. By the time we reach the sign Capricorn, symbolized by the mountain goat (sometimes with a fish’s body) we are at process in human development through which our soul must birth into our ego through a role of service to society which we typically define as a career.
Careers often ask much from us in terms of tenacity, fortitude, perseverance, mastery, motivation, and ambition – all qualities of Capricorn and that anyone born December 21st-January 19th must develop as part of a life path.
Yet it’s my intuitive sense as mirrored in my client readings of late that this MR will excavate that which has been motivating our ambitions and goals when it comes to our careers. I mean, what exactly is the purpose of working so hard to have things in life or ‘getting ahead’ and why is that often the defining focus of our purpose?
For those of you out there who are suffering from job loss, from the fear of job loss, or from significant pay cuts I know that these questions have been stalking you. Not to mention many of us have been forced to ask what bottom line changes must we now make – like it or not – to survive.
Whether we have currently have survival or career issues energized in our life or not, I feel the MR will bring up similar theses themes for all of us as the cosmos has soulfully deemed it time to evaluate the quality of empowerment that fuels our life’s ambition via the archetype of Capricorn.
For it is our empowerment that functions as the arbiter of whether we engage a ‘career’ or ‘calling’ via our role of service to the world.
That said, I’ve noticed that when our ambitions are motivated by our insecurities and a need to prove ourselves to the world, we become graspingly attached to the outcome of our efforts and often feel little real meaning or satisfaction in what we accomplish.
Often we find ourselves unconsciously chasing our value through our accomplishments, hoping we’ll eventually capture it in the form of some accolade or prized status laden possession.
And even when we get it, don’t we feel empty and even more disconnected?
However, when our ambition is supported by an empowered sense of Self and a need to extend that into service to others, we rest easy with our efforts as we know that we are channeling purpose vs. ‘manifesting’ it with an inflated sense that we make things happen.
Could it be that we don’t really manifest our life’s purpose at all, rather through healthy self-esteem from our soul and solid boundaries (Capricorn) we become exquisite vessels which channel it into being?
This MR in Capricorn will help us understand what this really means so that we can detach from the gravity of a career to the pull of a new force: a calling. But callings play by different rules than careers, and most important, they ask us to bring our soul service to the world with a surrender of ego attachment.
Now the concept of surrender brings me to the next thing up for evaluation during this MR in Capricorn: where exactly do we have power vs. where are we powerless in life?
Look for the answers to this in Astrology, Robert Ohotto & Mercury Retrograde (part three)!
