Close on the heels of the Sun’s journey through the herd of centaurs in Sagittarius and the highly polarizing Full Moon, Mercury is now making its way over the same Sagittarius planets. Mercury represents the mind and how we communicate our thoughts; conjunct some planets that invoke old baggage and the potential for out-of-control consequences, Mercury is signaling to us to monitor our reactions.
In the background of Mercury’s movement, we are approaching the Capricorn solstice (when the Sun enters Capricorn and the shortest days in the northern hemisphere) as well as Venus stationing retrograde in Capricorn — both on Saturday, Dec. 21. The Sun will enter Capricorn at 12:11 pm EST. Venus stations retrograde a few hours later, at 4:53 pm EST.
One take on the solstice and Venus retrograde is the idea of gifts from the past and gifts from within emerging. The trick may be finding the stillness and quiet amidst holiday bustle (or busy mental landscape) to recognize and receive them. It’s worth noting that the sense of an impending seasonal pivot point and an impending inner planet retrograde may feel like pressure. If you’re wondering why the tension of the Full Moon seems to have been replaced with some other, less defined sense of unease, that could be it.
The other factor is Mercury moving through those minor planets in Sagittarius. Yesterday Mercury encountered Chariklo, Haumea, Ixion and Pholus; on Friday, Amycus; Saturday it will conjoin Hylonome and Quaoar. (There are a couple others in the mix, too.)
Those planets are not necessarily ‘negative’, but taken together, they represent a lot of ‘stuff’ coming into consciousness very rapidly, and possibly in a hard-to-untangle mix.