Capricorn

Capricorn is cardinal earth, the sign of the December solstice in the northern hemisphere, the darkest turn, when a beginning looks like a bare structure. The image is the sea-goat in older art, a goat that also belongs to the water, climbing and enduring. Cardinal signs begin. Earth signs begin with a material plan. Capricorn begins a structure: an office, a duty, a reputation, a thing that is supposed to last longer than a mood.

The weather is cold in the classical sense, which means gathering and condensing, and dry, which means bounded. It wants a rank, a time, a load that has a name, and the patience to carry the load up a real hill. The sign respects what has been built and tested. It is suspicious of a flourish that has not met a winter. That suspicion is a method. It becomes a problem when no flourish is ever allowed, including the ones that are true.

Saturn rules Capricorn, and in the traditional scheme Saturn also rules Aquarius. In Capricorn, Saturn is in his earth domicile: time, limit, and responsibility expressed as an institution or a craft with a standard. Mars is exalted in Capricorn, classically near 28 degrees. The planet of heat and severance is an honored guest in the sign of the long climb. Effort, ambition, and a controlled use of force have a room together. Mars in his fall, Cancer, is the opposite condition: heat lost in a protective tide. Jupiter is in fall in Capricorn, opposite his exaltation in Cancer. Wide faith and easy increase fit this weather poorly. Jupiter can still bless a Capricorn placement. The blessing looks like a durable achievement, not a windfall. The Moon is in detriment in Capricorn, opposite her domicile in Cancer. Tidal, sheltering feeling sits awkwardly in a sign devoted to the public bone of things.

The natural house is the tenth: career in the modern word, and in the older language honor, rank, the ruler, and what the world can see. It is an angular house, the midheaven in quadrant systems, one of the four strongest places. A planet in the sign of Capricorn brings a saturnine, structuring style to whatever house it occupies. Capricorn on the tenth is the natural match.

Sun in Capricorn makes the conscious will serious about time and standing. The person often builds an identity by accepting a duty and then becoming equal to it. Moon in Capricorn feels safer with a plan and a role, and may distrust a feeling that has no work attached. Saturn in Capricorn is the ruler at home. The Ascendant in Capricorn makes a first impression reserved, competent, and older than the face, and the birth time is what confirms the rising sign.

Capricorn squares Aries and Libra, and it opposes Cancer. The opposition is the pair of the public structure and the private root. Trines run to Taurus and Virgo. Earth supports earth, and the work can be trusted to continue. The risk is a structure that outlives its purpose and calls the outliving virtue.

In a reading, ask what is being built to last, and whose standard it serves. Capricorn's gift is a beginning with a spine. Its risk is a spine that cannot bend when the hill has changed. For the ruler, read Saturn. For the exaltation, read Mars. For the private opposite, read Cancer. For public standing, read the tenth house.