Venus Retrograde in Capricorn: an in-depth guide

I’ve created a guide on the Venus retrograde in Capricorn with archetypal themes to reflect on as we navigate this several month period of Venus in Capricorn and her retrograde in this sign. (I’m bringing this to you this week instead of the normal weekly forecast.) You can receive the guide immediately by signing up for my mailing list here.

My inspiration to write this comes from personally getting to know what it’s like to live out a planetary transit with awareness of the archetypal themes: life becomes an enchanted, animated story, and we are the players (as Shakespeare classically says, All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.).

Even just in the retrograde shadow period, I’ve personally had such a massive experience because I constantly track the symbols, and perceive my own life, and merge the two. Venus in Capricorn has already been my guide for navigating the terrain of uncertainty within large developments in my life, with hidden reserves of grace.

I hope that this guide supports you in connecting with the Venus retrograde in Capricorn – as you may explore in the text below, it’s potentially a sobering ride at times but I believe there is a magic in reality itself when we really ground into it, and peel back the layers or the stories we’ve placed onto reality or who we think we should be inside of it.

The retrograde period dates: 

• Pre-retrograde shadow period begins November 17, 2021. 
• Venus stations retrograde on December 19, 2021, and stations direct again on January 29, 2022. 
• Venus will leave post-retrograde shadow on March 1, 2022, and eventually leave the sign of Capricorn on March 5, 2022.

Essence of Venus retrograde: Venus retrograde is a ceremony, by which the events unfolding in our inner and outer lives brings us to some transformation around Venusian themes: our values, our relationships, money/resources and our relationship with them, joy and pleasure. Themes around the heart heighten. The nature of the ceremony is deeply personal for each individual: whether it is the journey of falling in love, the journey of heartbreak, the journey of merging finances with someone else, the journey of starting to notice dissatisfaction in love, the journey of repair, and so on. By reflecting deeply on the state of our heart and our relationships, we will know what the ceremony is for us. Retrogrades in general relate to reflection, review, and revisiting, and now this reflective mood rests in the palace of Venus.

To Begin: Understanding Capricorn

Capricorn is a cardinal earth sign ruled by the planet Saturn. Capricorn is represented by the seagoat, who can both climb precarious mountains and swim deep in the water. Capricorn has a worldly, aspirational (climbing), practical, calculating nature. Capricorn relates to the construction of all structures, including parameters, containers, and boundaries – these structures influence the way reality flows. Capricorn relates to the trait or development of the trait of authority – what it means to have responsibility in a situation, hold a position of power, influence the design of one’s life, and have boundaries around what we will or will not accept. Authority can simply be a position of power (that one has attained or been given) or it can be a deeply energetic phenomenon: you feel it in someone’s bones, you feel their grace, poise, integrity, embodiment, skill. (It could be some combination of both social and energetic).

One of the potential negative traits of Capricorn is excess rigidity. It is the quality if someone becoming more bitter and closed off to life after experiencing hardships and failures – aka crustiness. Capricorn and Saturn are both forces of materialization/crystallization, so our habits (for better or worse) forge a structure over time. Structures can be changed, but it is an undertaking.

In a modern context where progress and upward momentum is the most desirable, and it’s considered (objectively or internalized) unfortunate or shameful for someone to be going through a “dark night of the soul” or a personal downswing, we really miss the seagoat part of the goat. The goat that descends. How we move through the dark, through uncertainty, through personal failure, through cyclical depression, and the like – influences what we are capable of during our upward momentum. It also grounds us in a fertile, feminine, wet kind of truth: that of the soil, that of our deep interiority, that of the mystery.

The Venus in Capricorn retrograde ceremony can put us in touch with the upper-side of the mountain goat as well as the lower-side of the seagoat descended into the water. Upper and lower here is not a value judgement but simply a spatial description. 

On the mountain side, we may know our goals and boundaries clear as day and are embarking on the path of living out our standards through our choices and rational policies (this is acceptable, this is unacceptable, etc). We are carefully gaining leverage via one foothold after another, and steadily getting up the mountain through devoted engagement of a mission.

On the watery descent side, we are feeling our way through. Maybe our concept of “should” in a situation is dissolving right before our eyes. Maybe something we thought was going to work out didn’t, and we are grappling with our disappointment and re-orienting ourselves. Maybe we got something we wanted only to realize it didn’t grant us the feeling we anticipated it would. Maybe we got everything we wanted and we’re trying to feel what the next truest thing is. Maybe we’re just resting or playing, and taking into our bodies a deep infusion of inspiration in a moment of repose.

With this in mind, here are some possible themes of this retrograde as we more deeply and reflectively explore Venus in Capricorn internally and relationally…

Receive the full (free) guide here.

With love and retrograde blessings,

Sabrina Monarch