But first, a Mercury Retrograde. Mercury stations retrograde in your 2nd house on the 13th, which means most of December might amount to an audit of your finances. Fortunately, this looks like a relatively productive period for getting organized. If you’ve experienced a lot of growth at work lately, it’s likely that you might need to adjust your budget accordingly, or reallocate some funds to make the next wave of expansion possible. Which is coming before you know it—Jupiter stations direct in your work sector on the 30th. You’ll be hitting the ground running in the new year and acting on some of the more inspiring visions you’ve been incubating over the fall.
For the most part, the mounting excitement toward the end of the month will be big enough to override any momentary frustrations, but you might be more prone to stumbling into confrontations or miscommunicating with family around the 27th and 28th. Mercury will complete its retrograde in Sagittarius, which means you might have to clarify your stance or double back on a personal choice you made recently. If the words come out wrong the first time, expressing yourself more deliberately might help you feel more solid in your decision.
Lin Chen
Capricorn Rising
Yes, true, the weeks leading up to your birthday are naturally a time for pause and self-reflection in the year. But this December, the question of who you are, where you’ve been, and how you tell that story feels more urgent than ever, and you might be in the process of rewriting that script. Mercury enters Capricorn on the 1st, and it stations retrograde on the 13th. A large part of this month will amount to a personal review session. Think of it like an opportunity to update your understanding of yourself, given recent experiences and the new knowledge you’ve learned. You might find yourself feeling nostalgic, wanting to look through old photos and dig through old diaries. Mining the past for clues might give you the answers you’re looking for, especially because of how dramatically you’ve changed over the last several years.
The Sun entering Capricorn brings greater clarity, as well as a sense of waking up and coming back to life. Your natural radiance and no-nonsense outlook on life get their turn in the Sun, and it’s time to center your own happiness and self-expression for a change. When Mercury and the Sun conjoin on the 22nd, a powerful moment of self-recognition occurs—one that helps you cohere all those separate threads you’ve been trying to untangle.
Although it sounds like you’ll be consumed with a lot of navel-gazing this December, some of this digging will shore up new creative inspiration for your projects, a clearer sense of the kind of parent you’d like to be, or a renewed commitment to the things that feed your joy (like travel, among other things). As Jupiter stations direct on the 30th and heightens your expectations of fulfillment in the new year, you’ll be bursting with creative potential—and a lot of ideas for how you’d like to grow that particular garden in 2024.
Aquarius Rising
If you were looking for an excuse to take a bit of a retreat this month, you’ll be supported in doing so. Although you might be raking in appreciation and compliments for your achievements, you’ll also be preoccupied with reorganizing the clutter in the storage closet of your mind. As Mercury spends much of December crisscrossing through your 12th house, you may also be rethinking some of your biggest struggle narratives, reflecting on the past in order to better understand your patterns of self-sabotage, and reviewing your old dream journals, therapy notes, and diary entries in an attempt to see yourself more clearly. You can accomplish this just fine without ever leaving your house, but this could also be the right time to go on a silent meditation retreat, or a vacation that lends itself to quiet contemplation. You’ll be especially receptive to insights on the 22nd, so pay attention to the messages and transmissions that are landing in your awareness.