Capricorn Horoscope for December 2013

This is an interesting and even quirky month for you, Capricorn, when you are more fully coming into yourself while exploring your roots. Over these first few weeks, with one important part of your mind you are quietly internal as is perhaps typical for you for this time of year. You are also unusually expansive and future-oriented with an urge to be out and doing, so that this is a paradoxical period. The Winter Solstice, as the Sun enters your sign, is always powerful, and this time even more so, with overtones of deep reflection and a reexamination of partnership and your own creativity that extends well into the New Year, as you continue to find ways to visualize the potential for significant connection with others to revitalize and empower your life.

As an overview for the entire month, it is of interest that you are strongly affected by two retrograde stations as the month unwinds, one backward and one forward – in what is termed a station out of retrograde into direct motion. This latter applies to Uranus, located in your sector of home, family and tribe, and stationing direct in mid-December; for this reason, Uranus occupies the very same zodiacal degree for the entire month. Planets that are standing still in the sky are far more powerful in their symbolic impact. Plus, the position of Uranus is highlighted by the New Moon that begins the month, taking place on December 2nd. This monthly cycle therefore represents one of startling insight that applies most directly to issues of your home base and the familial connections that allow it to thrive. These lightning flashes of inspiration throughout the month also apply to feelings of security and your sense of psychological rootedness, with the implication that Uranus represents a form of deeper intuitive understanding that bypasses mere logical thought process.

The other retrograde station is that of Venus, in your sign, beginning on the 21st and coincident with the Winter Solstice, when the Sun also enters Capricorn. Her period of retrograde motion happens every two years or so, in this case culminating in January, although Venus does not escape your sign until March. The Venus station takes place in the penultimate degree of Capricorn on the solstice. This is of course the shortest day of the year, and thus a magical time that has been celebrated for millennia, from pagan era right through to the modern Christmas celebration with its evergreen tree symbolizing the return of the light and the springtime color of renewed life.

All this symbolism is available to you most directly since the Sun is entering your own sign, representing the identity sector of your solar chart, and with the further magic of the Venus station near its ending degree. Venus symbolizes relationships of all kinds and their impact on your life. There are also implications for your work in the world and your creative self-expression, since Venus is the ruler of these sectors. All of these areas, identity, relationship, outer presence and creativity are subject to review and reexamination as Venus retrogrades. This process reaches one culmination on January 17th, when Venus makes her return as a visible "star" in the sky, a time known as her helical rise as the Morning Star, and another on January 31st when she stations direct.

With Pluto highlighted this month and located in your identity sector, there is transformation in the air for you, as it has been all through these past few years. You are slowly getting more familiar with your inner realms that speak to you in a subtle way and yet one that becomes discernable by doing the inner work required to become conversant.

As you go through the magical changes and challenges of this monthly cycle, there is a fundamental optimism that you can always draw on, based on renewed faith in the surrounding cosmos and the highlighted presence of expansive Jupiter located in your opposite sign, symbolizing partnership with others. It is true that we need to go it alone, as your sign is fond of recalling when in stress, and yet it is equally true that we need each other to provide a different perspective and to help us through the difficult patches. This provides food for thought as you enter into yet another year of transformative power and radical personal evolution.