mercury retrograde in capricorn for writers
through the lens of hamilton i'm so sorry
Mercury Rx in Capricorn Dates
Stations Retrograde: December 29, 2022 at 24* Capricorn
Stations Direct: January 18, 2023 at 8* Capricorn
Clears Retrograde Shadow: February 7, 2023 at 25* Capricorn
It is fitting, I think, to be starting a new calendar year under a Mercury Retrograde, especially one in a sign as editorial as Capricorn. This is a period when so many reflect on the year behind and consider the year ahead, making resolutions and questioning on what they want to do with their lives, what they want to really be remembered for. Retrogrades ask what if? and the perhaps more productive, if not now, then when?
Winter invites a meditation on legacy, and legacy is distinctly Capricorn terrain: something that can only be slowly accumulated with the passage of Saturnian time.
If we are going to use one piece of art to talk about archetypal Capricorn thinking, planning, and writing, there is, to my mind, simply no better example than the musical Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton, the historical man, was a Capricorn, likely with a Capricorn moon and Mercury and definitively a Cap Venus. His archetypal Capricorn traits, the good and the bad, are tragically immortalized by Lin-Manuel Miranda, himself a Capricorn who, criticisms aside, produces work that is glaringly obsessed with lineage and legacy, with the tension between the public and the private. Miranda has a tight conjunction between his sun and Mercury, both in Capricorn, and his moon, also in Capricorn, is almost exactly conjunct his Cap midheaven.