Mercury Retrograde and Improvisation: Return to the Breached Fortress

In seminary my thesis project revolved around improvisation, particularly vocal music improvisation. A small group of us gathered weekly for a year, and experimented chanting and singing biblical and extracanonical texts. Most meetings ended with a free improvisation, where we would sit in silence until sound would emerge from one mouth and then the next. The beginnings of these free improvisations were often discordant and chaotic, but we learned that this stage of the song would pass if we held on to each other. Eventually, themes would establish themselves and the free improvisation would bloom into wild song. I remember the colors of our voices pinwheeling all around us. Something cathartic and passionate and painful and hopeful always emerged. Always, always. 

Of course, there was ritual and music theory to buttress what we were doing. And years of experience. Most of us were serious musicians, having dedicated our lives to studying song. It was this mastery of expressive form that enabled us to have any experimental success. Otherwise, I doubt we would have gotten past the noise stage in those free improvisations. 

What was fairly earth-shattering about these improvisations is that they created new frameworks for old, tired biblical stories. They also engendered opportunities to drape ourselves with new (to us) extracanonical stories like a warm, reassuring blanket. Practically everyone knows the toxic version of the Garden of Eden narrative because it’s woven into our viscera. It’s just “out there” and it’s “in us”. But an alchemical process of narrative redemption would unfold when chanting the text with a group of musicians. Our melodies would hang on overlooked and underrepresented words and phrases. With bible stories, we were re-mapping them, re-inventing them, re-claiming them. With extracanonical stories, we were integrating them, downloading them, synthesizing them. 

In classical astrology, Saturn rules over both the wintry signs of Capricorn and Aquarius. It makes sense when considering the luminaries (Moon and Sun) rule over the summery signs of Cancer and Leo, respectively. In the northern hemisphere, Cancer and Leo are the brightest, warmest zodiacal seasons of the year. Capricorn and Aquarius, meanwhile, exist at the other end of the spectrum, much like their ruler Saturn marks the cold gates and secure walls of the classically known universe.

Mercury, the messenger, planet of thought and communication, vehicular in nature, stations retrograde today. Beginning in Aquarius, it will appear to us to travel backward into Capricorn. This is the first of four Mercury Rxs this year, all beginning in air signs (Aquarius, Gemini, Libra) and ending in earth signs (Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo). Themes of integrating theory and praxis seem to scaffold Mercury’s cycling this year.

Saturn is the planet of form and it rules both Capricorn and Aquarius. Conventionally, Capricorn is seen as a conservative sign. It enjoys form and structure and also maintaining tradition. Of course, when traditions are healthy for us, the stability of Capricorn is welcome. However, when traditions become waxy and toxic, like our interpretations of the Eden narrative, Capricorn’s adherence to the old guard can begin to feel like a chokehold. 

And here’s where improvisation re-enters this circuitous outline. Aquarius, sign of the water-bearer, sign of the container that exists not for its own sake but to hold space for life-giving water, takes form and fucks with it. Aquarius is a strong improviser, as capable of performing at conservatories (notice the etymology of that word) as jazz bars. If Capricorn has command over rules and form, Aquarius demonstrates its own theoretical competency while also breaking free from it. 

It’s notable that Mercury’s first station this year is in Aquarius, sign of 2020’s Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn, and moving into Capricorn, where Pluto has been ripping back the veil for the better part of 20 years, nearing its exact return in the USA’s birth chart (that’s this year). Venus has been retrograde in this area of the sky since December. 

It’s as if Mercury is on a special mission to return to the breached fortress of Capricorn and reclaim what ideas are still alive there, and bring them into the future. It’s as if Mercury is on a reconnaissance assignment to brush up on the laws worth keeping and the ones that sorely need to be bent or broken into a new, splendid song. 

In our own charts, the placements of Capricorn and Aquarius can tell us a lot about where we have broken free from the old ways and also held on to dearly cherished traditions. There’s alchemy in the movement from Capricorn to Aquarius in our charts, and this Mercury Retrograde is here to highlight your own stories of improvisation on forms you know all too well, for better or worse. 

Your friendly neighborhood astrologer can help you get a better sense of this. *wink* But if nothing else, let this post inspire you to consider which of the old ways need renovating, reclaiming, or restoring. Mercury is here to help.