The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 382, titled:
Capricorn in Astrology: Meaning and Traits
With Chris Brennan and guests Diana Rose Harper and Madeline Decotes
Episode originally released on January 13, 2023
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released February 1, 2023
Copyright © 2023 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode we’re gonna be talking about the zodiac sign Capricorn and talking about its characteristics and traits and meaning and basically doing a whole two-hour deep dive into the meaning of this sign. So joining me today are astrologers Diana Rose Harper and Madeline Decotes. Welcome, both of you.
DIANA ROSE HARPER: Hi.
MADELINE DECOTES: Hi, it’s an honor to be here.
CB: Yeah, thanks for joining me today. Diana, this is your tenth appearance on the podcast. You actually also have the distinction of being one of the few people that’s joined me on both the planetary series and now the zodiac series, having done the Saturn episode together last year. And Madeline, this is your first time on the show.
MD: Correct.
CB: All right, well, let’s talk a little bit first. I like to open these episodes talking about what your credentials are and getting a little bit of a resume in terms of your Capricorn placements. Diana, let’s start with you. What are your placements?
DRH: So I have Capricorn rising, Saturn and Venus. I also have the Lot of Eros and the Lot of Fortune in Capricorn, and Neptune and Uranus, and the asteroids Eros and Hygeia. So a lot of Capricorn happening.
CB: All right, well, that’s a little bit of a stellium there; a little stellium action going on, I think that’s pretty good. But then you’ve also got that balancing Sagittarius stellium of Sun, Moon, and Mercury in Sagittarius as well.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Okay, good times. That’s pretty good credentials. I think the Leo people had like a ‘stellium-measuring’ contest at one point, so I think you’re up there in terms of beating them out, especially once you include some of those other points.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Madeline, what about you? What are your credentials?
MD: Yeah, I’m also Capricorn rising and part of the Saturn-Uranus-Neptune in Capricorn generation. But, you know, I might win just because I have Mars on the Ascendant in Capricorn—just gonna put that out there. And in a really beautiful trine to Venus in Taurus, thank you.
DRH: Wow.
MD: It is a beautiful trine. Thank God, that’s all I have to say. Thank God.
CB: Nice. I like that Mars placement in Capricorn. I think that is the best placement, I think everyone objectively agrees, as we’ll see when we get to my chart which also has Mars in Capricorn. So both of you are from that generation of the late 1980s when there was that pileup of stuff in Capricorn, and then you have that concentrated, both of you, in your rising sign, which is pretty notable.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s definitely an experience of embodying quite literally generational signatures.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Also, I apologize for the loud sound. I don’t know what is happening in my neighbor’s house, but it just started as soon as we started recording.
CB: That’s fine. It’s not too bad right now from our perspective, so we might be okay. I’ve got some stuff as well, so we’ll see how it goes. One of the things that’s cool I just noticed randomly in both of your charts is you both have those generational placements in Capricorn of the outer planets, but then one of you has Venus there as well as a personal planet, and then one of you has Mars there as a personal planet, which is kind of an interesting tradeoff there and sort of balance.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Yeah, it really brings it home I think, Diana, like you were saying, embodying that generation. I feel that pretty strongly we’re here to do the work.
DRH: Right. And you have a night chart, right, Madeline? I didn’t actually see where your Sun was.
MD: Yeah, yeah, it’s in the 4th.
DRH: Right. So that brings the Mars component even more strongly forward. I have diurnal triplicity with Venus in Capricorn, so we both have strengthened personal planets in the 1st in Cap.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: There we go.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, that’s really cool. I like that. For myself, I did pretty much most of this zodiac series having none of the placements that we were talking about. So it’s not till the very end that I get to say that I actually have some of my own credentials, which is that I have Jupiter and Mars in Capricorn in my birth chart in the 12th house. So while I can’t speak to the big stellium energy that both of you have in Capricorn, I can at least talk about it a little bit from that perspective, so we’ll see how it goes.
MD: That’s very interesting too to have the planet exalted in Capricorn as well as the planet in fall, so we’ll probably touch on that more when we get to that part of the episode.
CB: That is an excellent transition because that’s what we’ll talk about right now with this beautiful diagram that Paula Belluomini designed for us, which shows first the symbol—for those watching the video version—or the glyph for Capricorn. Capricorn is the name of the sign. So Capricorn, in terms of its basic stats or qualities, is a feminine or nocturnal sign. It’s the third earth sign in the series of the zodiac using the four qualities of earth, air, fire, and water. In terms of modality it’s a cardinal sign, in terms of the modalities of cardinal, fixed, and mutable. In terms of planetary rulerships Capricorn is the first planet in our series that’s ruled by the planet Saturn, which is the furthest and slowest visible planet.
Capricorn’s also said to be the sign of the exaltation of Mars, where the planet Mars is raised up. It’s said to be the sign of the detriment or antithesis of the Moon, since it’s opposite to the Moon’s home sign of Cancer. And it’s said to be the sign of the fall or the depression of Jupiter, since it’s opposite to the sign of the exaltation of Jupiter where Jupiter is raised up in Cancer. So those are the basic qualities that we’re gonna be talking about here. And here’s a diagram which just shows the signs of the zodiac in general, where we started out many episodes ago, ten episodes back with Aries. We’ve now gotten up to the top of the zodiac with the sign of Capricorn. All right, so starting points—where should we start in terms of talking about this sign? Or where do the two of you like to start when you talk about and conceptualize this sign?
MD: Can I just quickly interject for the audio listeners? There’s a very cute typo on that graphic that says, “Domicile of ‘the’ Saturn.”
CB: Okay.
MD: That was very appropriate.
CB: Yeah. Well, that’s pretty good. I think you should put a definitive in front of most Capricorn and Saturn things.
MD: That’s what it feels. Yeah, domicile of ‘the’ Saturn, unlike Aquarius, domicile of the ‘fake’ Saturn.
CB: Right.
MD: The ‘real’ Saturn we find in Capricorn. Just kidding, Aquarians. You’re very Saturnian.
DRH: I think the first thing that comes to mind whenever I talk about Capricorn, my impulse is to immediately address stereotyping when it comes to Capricorn. And a large part of that I think is the stereotype very much focuses on the cardinality as well as the earthiness in terms of building materiality, like building material resources. Which, you know, that tracks with it being cardinal, that is to say initiating, like trying to get stuff done, and being an earth sign having to do with the tangible in some way.
CB: Yeah.
DRH: And it’s really easy—oh, go ahead.
CB: And that’s a good starting point just ‘cause we’re definitely building this up as if the person doesn’t have any preconceptions about the sign and is learning this for the first time. You know, we might want to establish some of that stuff if we’re taking that for granted before knocking down some of the misconceptions or the preconceptions.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I feel like the things I think about with cardinal earth are things like tectonic plate action that creates mountains, right? Or, you know, the rifts at the bottom of the ocean where like lava comes up and it literally creates the seafloor, or whenever there are underwater volcanoes that eventually create archipelagos like islands and things like that. There’s something very much, “I am building something substantial,” that comes with the territory of Capricorn.
CB: That’s great. I love that, the cardinal earth energy. Because that’s one of the issues with cardinal signs like Aries, it can have that great initial push and that fierce initial drive to create something, but it doesn’t have sometimes a lot of staying power or a lot of ‘long-lasting-ness’, and Capricorn is the cardinal sign that has that the most, out of the four cardinal signs, because it’s ruled by Saturn. Even though it has that quality of being a cardinal sign, still it seems like it has a greater sense of permanence or ‘lasting-ness’ or endurance to a certain extent compared to the other four cardinal signs.
DRH: Yeah, building durability.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense.
MD: I love that imagery as well with what you were describing Diana with what creates mountains and what creates landmasses and sort of the inherent violence in that, which might speak to, again, the allusion to Mars having its exaltation in Capricorn, or the notion that Capricorn, you know, there’s some suffering or some pain requisite in creating something that’s long-lasting. So that visualization of tectonic plates ramming together and then the result is continents.
DRH: Right. Absolutely, absolutely. It’s like the Ring of Fire along the Pacific Ocean where there’s so much volcanic activity, there’s so much land being built, but there’s also quite a lot of caution that you have to take in these areas, you know, as somebody that’s on the west coast of North America. You know, there’s quite a lot of tectonic activity, and so you have to be aware that at any moment in the process of the creation of land or the interactions of landmasses there can be destruction too.
MD: There’s definitely that looming quality to living on the west coast. I recalled I lived in Portland, Oregon for ten years and just the imminent threat of, “The ‘big one’ is coming, we’re due for the big earthquake anytime,” has a very Capricornian tone there obviously. It’s like just be prepared. We all might die soon.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely. I almost wore my hoodie today that says, “Death is certain.” It has like two dancing rats with flower crowns on it. It’s like the humor, but also the reality of, you know, all creation has alongside it destruction, this Saturnian awareness with Capricorn of the finitude of materiality, which, at least in my experience, that’s part of the cardinal impulse to create things that endure. Like can we push the edge of how long things can last because nothing actually can last forever.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, pursuing personal material comfort is irrelevant to Capricorn for that reason ‘cause in that grand scheme of things, etc., etc., we’re all gonna die.
CB: Seems like in that way it’s contrasting Cancer, which is more of a nurturing sign ruled by the Moon, whereas Saturn, to the extent that it nurtures something, it does it more through testing and trial and attrition, and that which isn’t strong enough doesn’t survive. So it’s sort of like evolution or something like that, which is much more of a harsh way of things growing rather than one where things are just supported and nurtured and kind of like ‘babied’ into existence.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I think about I know we’ll talk more about is the balance between Cancer and Capricorn. But one of the things I think about is Capricron is the bucket and then Cancer’s the milk that goes in the bucket. The milk is supposed to be consumed, it’s gonna be used up really quickly. But if you have a really good bucket, like that bucket can be around for multiple generations, and there’s lots and lots and lots of batchees of milk that get held in the bucket. You know, Capricorn is not the nourisher but that which holds the nourishing thing. So it’s like, “I don’t really care about nourishing thing as long as I know I can hold it.”
CB: Yeah, that which provides form or structure and support to that which nourishes. ‘Cause then the opposite is like if you’ve got a leaky bucket or like a hole in your bucket that’s like defective then it’s not gonna be able to hold that nourishment and effectively do its job essentially.
DRH: Yeah. And, you know, it’s like milk is crucial for the growing of the structures of young ones, right? So there’s also this idea that you have to hold that which will contribute to structures by having a structure to hold the nourishing thing.
CB: Okay. Yeah, so we’re getting into a lot of Saturn keywords. And I think this is really good and really important as a baseline since that’s something we focused on in every sign pretty early on, which is just, what is the ruling planet? And unlike some of the other signs where we’ve seen almost every other planet at this point, this is the first time that we’ve encountered Saturn as a ruler of the sign of the zodiac or within the context of the signs of the zodiac. What are some back keywords for Saturn that are kind of relevant for Capricorn? It sounds like so far we’re talking about things like structure, but also issues related to time and impermanence and other things like that it seems like.
MD: I think of labor as another big one, with those traditional associations of Saturn sort of representing the working class or, you know, the people in society who have to exchange their labor for livelihood as opposed to, say, the Sun, you know, being the ruling class.
DRH: Yeah, it’s like essential workers have this kind of Saturnian element in that they are foundational for the continuance of society. And so, ‘foundation’ I feel like is a Saturn word that I would associate with Capricorn, as well as ‘legacy’, you know, legacy as a consequence of durability or endurance of whatever the thing might be. Yeah, legacy.
MD: All things that are old and ancient and enduring, like ancient ruins, elderly people.
DRH: Rocks.
MD: Anything that’s been around and seen a lot. Fossils.
DRH: Bones, like literally bones.
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Oh, man, I just had a word and it just left.
CB: So Camille Michelle Gray helped to do some research for this episode, and in her notes she write down some keywords for Capricorn such as hard work, discipline, groundedness, responsibility, long-term planning, practicality, and that Saturn brings in archetypes of time, the elder, seriousness, self-denial, aloofness, restriction, consolidation, and structure. I thought that—yeah, go ahead.
DRH: I was just gonna say ‘limitation’ is also one that I think comes up quite strongly with Saturn, especially Saturn in its earthy place. You know, what are the limitations of materiality and reality, and how does that affect your long-term planning when your idea’s around what’s worth investing in? I think ‘investing’ is another thing I would associate with Saturn in Capricorn.
CB: Yeah, that makes me think of time and the issue of what are some of the fundamental things that all of us, or what are we exchanging, for example, when we do work. And sometimes it gets reduced into things like labor, which is an obvious one, or energy, like to whatever extent we have energy and we’re expending energy on something. But the other possible most fundamental thing is just time, that each of us has a certain finite amount of time in our lives in which we’re gonna be alive. And when we work on something or direct our attention to something or do work for somebody else, part of what we’re giving up is time. And there’s something about that I think that ties in the Saturn element to Capricorn.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely.
MD: Capricorn is very aware of time, just as an unavoidable construct, but almost even taking pleasure in that, I would think. Anyone with strong Capricorn placements enjoys things that are time-boxed or that are constrained by time to a certain extent. We might get into this when we talk about how Capricorn differs from Sagittarius, how Sagittarius loves, you know, freedom and the open road and just the ability to be itself and go wherever it pleases. Capricorn is a reaction to that. It almost prefers fewer options, a clear sense of a definitive constrained amount of time to work with in reaction to all of that Jupiterian freedom and openness I feel comes up with Capricorn.
CB: That’s great, and I’m glad you brought that up ‘cause I forgot that that was actually my jumping-off point in the past several episodes, which is the corrective quality that each sign of the zodiac has that follows the previous sign of the zodiac, so that actually would be a really good thing for us to focus on here. You know, we’re moving from a mutable, Jupiter-ruled sign and a fire sign with Sagittarius suddenly to a cardinal sign that’s an earth sign that’s ruled by Saturn. So it’s almost like night and day in terms of the contrast between those two signs in some ways and that’s maybe how you’ll start to understand Capricorn than anything else, as in some ways a reaction to some of the excesses of Sagittarius in some instances.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s very much a reality track that Capricorn brings. And I think this is even one of the ways to understand the transition of Jupiter at home in Sagittarius to being in fall in Capricorn. And one of the ways that I’ve thought about this and even experienced this—when Jupiter moved from Sag to Cap in the past—what was that? 2019?
CB: Oh, yeah.
DRH: Am I getting that year right?
CB: That was a rough transition.
MD: It was December 2019.
DRH: Significant. It was very significant, right? But, you know, it’s like Jupiter in Sag is just like, “Everything is possible. Look at all these different ways we can think about things. Like, wow, the world is so cool. What if we did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?” And then it reaches Capricorn and Saturn’s like, “All right, where’s your blueprint? Where’s your budget? Where are your materials? Are you ready to actually put in the blood, sweat, and tears to build this castle in the sky you’ve been imagining this whole time?” You know, Capricorn kind of asks you to put your money where your mouth is.
MD: An inherent sacrifice is necessary in that. ‘Sacrifice’ is another good Saturn keyword.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: You’ve gathered so many ideas and possibilities in Sagittarius. You’re excited, you’re mutable fire, you’re going in all these different directions and like in love with life. Capricorn, the next step, like you were saying, is to just decide which out of all these possibilities you’re actually gonna focus on because if you scatter your energy in too many directions, you’re never gonna accomplish anything.
DRH: Right.
MD: So you have to give up on some of those dreams, and I feel like that’s part of the Jupiter in fall aspect. It’s like there aren’t unlimited possibilities. If you actually want to accomplish something you’re gonna have to narrow your focus.
DRH: Absolutely. There’s something about the path with Capricorn. You know, with Sagittarius it’s like mustangs running freely across the plains, but with Capricorn it’s like the narrow path through the mountain range. And if you are going to accomplish reaching the peak, you can’t just splat your energy all over the place. You have to be really focused and dedicated in order to really have that achievement as a feather in your cap.
MD: I like that image too of the mustangs running across the wild, open plains and seeing them transition into the mountain goat. If you’ve seen those images of the mountain goats who just climb these sheer rock faces just because they’re so focused on getting that lick of salt.
DRH: Right, or the psychoactive moss.
MD: Yeah, to each their own Capricorn goal. Which I think is a good—sorry.
CB: Go ahead.
MD: Just that little point about the psychoactive moss reminded me that—you know, once we get into the stereotypes I guess of Capricorn—there can be that misconception that Capricorn is always striving for something like, whatever; like climbing to the top of the corporate ladder, or, you know, building an empire. It’s very subjective, you know, whatever that person’s chart is, whatever is important to them. You know, it could be anything, but then Capricorn placements help focus in on getting to that ‘anything’ whether it’s building a company or reaching your psychoactive moss on the mountaintop.
DRH: Right.
CB: One of the contrasts I like that you brought up Diana—‘cause we talked about this a lot in the Sag episode—was just that Sagittarius sometimes was fueled by optimism and that that was such a core component because sometimes it was necessary in order to drive them forward in order to reach their goals, this almost unlimited capacity for optimism. But also, the feeling of the opposite or pessimism could drag them down or stop them from their almost magical ability sometimes to manifest good luck and success just through visualizing and believing that that was possible in this almost unlimited capacity to do that in some of the most extreme instances. And that actually is really important because it seems like a core thing that changes once you get to Capricorn is that you get—and one of the stereotypes—a fundamental pessimism.
And I think that that’s true to a certain extent, but there’s different ways in which sometimes that’s a good thing actually, that the pessimism is a good thing that’s more grounded in reality and just the reality of what the world is like and what’s gonna be necessary in order to accomplish things vs. sometimes there can be a way that that can be taken too far in a negative way where one of the primary keywords becomes Saturn’s keyword of ‘no’. No, something won’t happen or that’s the first response as opposed to Sagittarius or even Pisces to a certain extent where the initial desire or impulse is to say ‘yes’ to everything. The initial impulse on Saturn’s part, or Capricon’s part is to say ‘no’ to things.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely. And this is just making me think about how I think both Saturn and Jupiter in their respective signs are really interested in what’s possible. But from the Jupiter sign perspective it’s like, “What’s possible?” like sparkly eyes, and from the Saturn sign perspective it’s, “What’s actually possible?” There’s that realism which can feel like pessimism when it’s face-to-face with ungrounded optimism but is really about—especially with Capricorn—actually making it happen requires you to be judicious around your aspirations. You know, it’s like it’s possible that it could be better than we can even imagine, and also, it’s not gonna happen if we don’t actually have some skin in the game, so let’s go actually move things around and do stuff rather than just dreaming about it.
MD: Yeah, like the notion that our thoughts create reality is all well and good, but our actions, that cardinality of Capricorn, is where that comes in. They’re like, “Cool, Sagittarius, have fun daydreaming. I’m gonna actually get to work now.”
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, sometimes reality creates reality.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Exactly. I envision Capricorn turning to Sagittarius and being like, “Cool story, bro.”
CB: Right.
MD: “Like how’s that going for you, bro?”
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, the cardinality and the earth. So this is the third time that we’ve encountered earth. And in Taurus, one of the analogies was like a beautiful garden with flowers and things like that, which was kind of contrasted with Libra, the other Venus-ruled sign, as like an art gallery; like something artificial or manmade and that was more, you know, not organic in that way, but Taurus being like an organic garden. Virgo, the analogy was more like an apothecary or like a garden that has like a bunch of herbs that are actually useful that you can put to work for something specific, especially for healing purposes. So when we get to Capricorn and the type of earth that that represents, we’ve talked about, you know, mountain ranges, and we’ve talked about tectonic plates and things jutting out of the ground. What are some other earth-related keywords that might help us understand this as the third earth sign?
DRH: Quarries.
CB: Quarry.
DRH: A place where you go to harvest actual stone. So you’re not plucking flowers and you’re not gathering for the apothecary, you’re getting what you need to build the building.
CB: Nice. So you’re finding a place where you can literally cut stone out of a mountain in chunks or in cubes and then haul it somewhere in order to make that like the foundation of a building or a city.
DRH: Mm-hmm, yeah.
MD: Similarly in that foundational component, I think of, you know, the flower garden and the apothecary are on the land that Capricorn like worked its butt off to purchase.
CB: That’s good.
MD: Taurus and Virgo collaborated with Capricorn, and Capricorn was like, “I’ll get the land. You guys do your pretty stuff. We’ll form the business together.” It’s providing that structure or that focus for, you know, the hobbies or the craft skills of Taurus and Virgo.
DRH: Yeah. You saying that was just reminding me that all soil is made out of dead stuff.
MD: Yes, absolutely.
DRH: Like Saturn is the reaper, Saturn is the end of life, but every time we have an end of life—unless you’re, you know, completely pickled inside of a coffin—you know, your body returns to the earth and facilitates ongoing life. So when we’re talking about Capricorn is literally the land, that’s also all of the dead things that have contributed to that being soil, right? It’s like the active compost is Scorpio, where it’s like real smelly, but the functional dirt, that would be Capricorn.
MD: Functional dirt, that is Capricorn. Another great tagline.
CB: I like that. So the compost heap or the result of the death and recycling of things that turns it back into fertile soil that can be used in future generations.
DRH: Yeah. I mean, even just thinking about Saturn and Kronos as historically being agricultural gods, right, and this understanding that all of the wealth comes from the land, like all genuine wealth comes from land, whether that’s the wealth of abundant crops. I would say mines would be another Capricorn place of doing effort to gather up the valuable resources that are underground, whether it’s valuable because, you know, you need metal for your swords or your plows or whatever, or valuable because it’s gold; and gold, you know, is not super functional in a lot of ways, but it’s really pretty.
MD: Yeah, that reminds me again of that contrast with Sagittarius of, you know, like being tied to nothing, having the freedom to go anywhere vs. Capricorn investing in something tangible and then maybe having the freedom within that to create whatever you want through that tangible, perhaps, land-based investment.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: And then land also makes me think of generational wealth, and the transfer of land ownership historically was like a way of a transfer of generational wealth and things like that.
DRH: Yeah. I mean, that remains the case, at least inside of this particular economic structure. And that also makes me think about stewardship, right? ‘Cause I think Capricorn can very much be a steward and not just an owner. And so, to think about the very long term, so not just the short-term wealth creation of like flipping a house, or even the relatively short term of wanting to own a house so you can leave it to your kids, but the longer and larger picture of what does it mean to be in right relationship with the land in a way that facilitates multiple, multiple generations of not just human continuance, but also the endurance and durability of ecosystems. I would say that’s also very Capricornian, of just like pursuing sustainability in the deepest and broadest sense, right? And I know one of our examples for Capricorn is Greta Thornberg.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: You know, like what does it mean to be investing deeply in a future you may not be alive inside of?
MD: Mm-hmm. That perspective of knowing that your actions in your lifetime do have ramifications for generations unseen.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Well, also, fear. ‘Cause one of the big Saturn keywords is ‘fear’ and that ties into the pessimism thing. But one of the things you switch to when you get out of Sagittarius and the optimism is Saturn and Capricorn and the fear of things that are coming in the future, or fear of having a lack of something, or fear of something going away. ‘Cause one of the things about Capricorn—and maybe we should tie this in astronomically—is, you know, we’re using the tropical zodiac and most of this system was developed in the northern hemisphere. Once you get to Capricorn you hit the winter solstice, where you have the longest nights and the shortest days, where the Sun has sort of gone as far away as it possibly can, and you’re in a much darker state, where it seems like the night is seeming to dominate over things.
And it’s also very cold and it’s like wintery and it’s snowing. You can’t grow anything; like all of the plants have died and it’s like the middle of the winter season where things are, at the most, either dead or, you know, hibernating let’s say in order to get through the harsh winter. So there’s this real sense of if you don’t do a good job during the summer that you really are gonna reap the rewards or the failures of that. If you have enough food to get through the winter, you’re doing pretty well at this point, but if you didn’t plan things out well or didn’t do a good job of working hard during the summer of harvesting things then you’re basically like starving and like shivering during this part of the year and you’re not having a very good time. And once you’ve had that experience, it instills a certain amount of fear for you next time, that if you make the same mistake that might happen again. So fear becomes a driving factor which sometimes can be bad or other times can actually be good motivation.
DRH: Absolutely. There’s an awareness of the perpetual potential of austerity that Capricorn holds and sometimes that can lead to choosing austerity as much as possible, so there’s a minimum amount of attachment to unnecessary things. An example, just for myself, it’s like I’ve never ever been interested or understood the appeal of cigarettes because there’s this idea of being attached in an unnecessary way to something that’s expensive and also is gonna shorten my lifespan that just doesn’t make sense to me, even though I can also recognize that there is quite a lot of pleasure that cigarettes can facilitate, right? But I’m just like I don’t want to be in a position where I have no money and I really need a cigarette, you know.
And that fear can also lead to—you know, one of the Saturn words is ‘greed’ or ‘avarice’, right? This sort of hoarding mentality of, “I need to get as much as possible for myself. Not for any like higher ideal, but just because I’m never gonna have enough.” Like I just need more and more and more of this thing that might create eventually a sense of security. But whenever it’s not addressed—whatever the underlying insecurity is—when that’s not addressed, it’s just like, “No, more and more and more;” it gets very ‘Scroogie’. I can’t be generous because I don’t have enough to be.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, I think that comes up with Capricorn. I dealt once with a client actually, I was gonna use an example, but it was like a client who had Capricorn rising and he had Saturn in Aquarius in the 2nd whole sign house in a night chart. And I gave a little delineation of, “This seems to show a focus on money, that there may be fears or challenges surrounding this in your life,” and he was like, “No, that doesn’t really track,” and I was like, “Okay.” But he was there with his wife ‘cause they wanted to do a consultation together, and she was like, “No, that fits you perfectly.” She was like, “You grew up in the Great Depression, and your family was extremely, extremely poor, and a common saying around the house was, ‘That’s all we have’.” And she continued to explain and eventually got him to open up about how that left such a huge imprint on his mind that he’d always been extremely careful with money and finances to the point of being—what is the term for that? You just used it.
DRH: Avaricious.
CB: No, Scrooge-like or like penny-pinching.
DRH: Stingy.
CB: Stingy—that’s one of the keywords that’s sometimes associated with Capricorn. Even once he had become successful and even once he didn’t have financial hardships that still stuck with him, and he was still extremely cheap to a certain extent basically, the way his wife described it. I actually saw a post on Reddit that made me think of that today that I wanted to share really quickly ‘cause I thought it was vaguely appropriate. And while I don’t know anything about any birth chart placements with these people, it sort of reminded me of that client and that story; the title of it was, “My boyfriend is so cheap that it’s literally a turn off.” And she said, “[So] everyone likes a good deal…around the clearance section but this is ten times worse. My boyfriend is the cheapest person I’ve ever known. But what’s funny is that he’s extremely wealthy. Before [you] all say I’m some sort of gold digger, I fell in love with him…before I knew he had money.” And then she goes on, she says, “He always brags about how every article of clothing he has is from goodwill and how it was “only $2.” You can…tell because his clothes are faded and ripped in some places.”
And she just keeps going on about this really interesting situation ‘cause eventually at Christmas, they gave gifts, but he gave her this stuff he found at Goodwill and they got in a fight about it. And I’m sure there’s like different perspectives and ways that you can kind of interpret this situation more positively or more negatively, but it was interesting and I wanted to explore a little bit where that comes from ‘cause I know that’s one of the keywords that sometimes gets associated with Capricorn, a sort of stinginess, maybe partially due to fear of a lack of something. I know that that’s one place it can come from, but perhaps there’s like other places it can come from at the same time.
DRH: There’s also like a self-negation quality, almost like a pride in suffering, like a pride in doing with as little as possible that I think is really interesting.
CB: Austerity.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Yeah, like the pride in austerity. Even just this idea that, you know, austerity or asceticism is somehow purifying in some way, which, you know, it can be. But if you fast forever you will speed up your death, right? And this is making me think about the quality of Capricorn as dry, right, like this stinginess, this dryness. And it’s like whenever things desicate, the life goes out of them, right? For some reason I’m being reminded of, you know, how in the Dune world they have the stillsuits, which are these outfits that collect all of your sweat and other forms of liquid and then re-purifies it so that you can recycle it.
MD: Capricorn’s like that.
DRH: Yeah, that’s just what you do. You’re just like constantly recycling your water, and water is this super, super, super precious resource. And people who have access to more water, they’re called ‘water fat’, right? They might not be plump in an ‘extra flesh’ way, but because they are properly hydrated, they’re plumper.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: And, you know, the dryness of Capricron, there can be this sort of hesitance or, again, even a sort of like masochistic pleasure in not having quite enough; like getting by with as little as possible, even if it would be a much more pleasant experience to let yourself have actually enough rather than the barest minimum.
CB: What’s seen as almost a virtue to a certain extent. That it’s virtuous to live with less and to live with excess might be seen almost as a sin or something in a religious context. There’s like a word for that, right? Like one of the seven deadly sins?
DRH: Gluttony.
CB: Gluttony.
MD: Yeah, gluttony. I mean, back to the sustainability piece, I think perhaps with folks of, you know, the millennial generation—with the Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn—that awareness from a very young age of the gluttony of consumerism I think has been in the front of a lot of our minds, you know, as we’ve come of age. So you kind of notice in the consumer trends, I guess since we’ve become more the buying power in the market, the focus on sustainability products and what not is pretty huge. Like what are you doing? Are you doing your part to consume as little as possible? Like have you taken a vow to reduce trash this year?
DRH: Zero waste.
MD: Have you gone plastic-free?
DRH: Zero waste. Minimalism.
MD: Yes.
DRH: Minimalism and zero waste are very Saturnian in a Capricornian way, I would say.
MD: Yeah, it’s like the pleasure of knowing that you’re not being part of the problem. You know, both malefics have dignity in Capricorn, so there’s almost that fear of being malefic oneself. And so, denying the self because you don’t want to produce bad results, you’re almost working against that. You have so much awareness of the maleficence of life or the possible negative outcomes of your consequences.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with the generational placement of Uranus and Neptune and sometimes Saturn in Capricorn and that sort of idealism and other things that come along with that that’s very specific to that sub-generation and in terms of how they manifest the Capricorn archetype in that way.
MD: That’s true.
DRH: This is reminding me that our little sub-generation doesn’t have the same relationship with the concept of tradition as people who have Capricorn placements without Uranus and Neptune also hanging out there, right?
MD: Absolutely.
DRH: You know, ‘tradition’ is another Saturn word. It’s both Aquarian and Capricornian I would say because tradition, you know, it creates the structure of the worldview, but it also literally affects how people interact with materiality. You know, it’s traditional to ‘x, y, z’, but when you have Uranus and Neptune, it’s like, is that necessary? Is that part of our idea structure? Can we be building different ways of interacting with being alive?
MD: Yeah, is this the right tradition?
DRH: Is it the correct tradition?
MD: Yeah, I see the generation with Neptune in Capricorn really craving an idealized sense of tradition. Like wouldn’t it be so great if we had a society that actually did what it claims to do and supports, you know, everyone? Supports people in meeting their basic needs.
DRH: Right.
MD: So Uranus, you know, is kind of seeing that and knowing that things have gotta change because our systems aren’t doing what they say they’re supposed to do.
DRH: Right. It’s like the structures of reality as they have existed so far have come to a kind of expiration date, right? But I would absolutely say, you know, Saturnian-Capricornian propulsion absolutely includes either the perpetuation of tradition or even the creation of new traditions in terms of how we’re interacting with incarnate reality.
MD: Mm-hmm. And even the desire to look back I think to older traditions, you know, those of us who try to understand the traditions of the indigenous people, other traditional custodians of our land, or perhaps our ties to indigenous ancestors with examples of human populations who were sustainable, who were able to perpetuate their culture for tens of thousands of years, and identifying what is it about those societies that we can perhaps reincorporate or reimagine as we try to make our own current social structure capable of lasting beyond, you know, the next ten years.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: That makes me think of keywords like ‘elders’ and also ‘hierarchical structures’ in terms of having somebody that’s older and wiser and then passing that down to somebody as part of the generational transfer of wealth, not just through financial things but also through the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom.
DRH: Yeah, ancestry, honestly, is another thing that I would associate with both Saturn and Capricorn, especially Capricorn, understanding that our literal physical bodies are made of our ancestors. You know, it’s like our DNA comes from the literal physical bodies of our ancestors. And then with ideas around the land, quite literally being our ancestor in that every single thing that we eat has attachments to the land ultimately, and then those component parts make up our literal physical forms. You know, so it’s like the peach that I ate in August is one of my ancestors, and its ancestor is the land; and like the land that that particular peach tree grew on and then its ancestors includes every single dead thing that contributed nutrients to that soil.
MD: That makes me think of the tie-in with Venus ruling one of the other earth signs, you know, Taurus. Venus is aware of relationships and of course the pleasure of having a physical form, having a physical body; whereas the Saturn-ruled earth sign is aware of, like you were saying, the legacy of relationships, the long-lasting impacts of evolution or of the work that we put in, you know, a year ago in order to grow a peach tree so that we might enjoy it now in the present moment.
DRH: Yeah, totally. Which reminds me actually of one of my favorite little sayings, which feels very Capricornian. It’s like, “The best time to plant a fruit tree is forty years ago, and the next best time is now.”
MD: Exactly.
DRH: This awareness that the best fruits come from mature trees, which means that you need to have patience and foresight in order to fully benefit from the labor that’s put in.
MD: Mm-hmm. That reminds me of the more malefic quality of Saturn ruling Capricorn, that regret maybe regarding time, regarding effort not well-spent. There’s a lot of self-flagellation that can go along with Capricorn, especially in a night chart perhaps where Capricorn is the more ‘malefic’ malefic. Yeah, the regret or the depression. Just not ever being able to meet those standards of achievement that Saturn might hope for with Capricorn.
DRH: Right.
CB: That’s really important. Having high standards is a huge Saturn thing and a huge Capricorn thing, and I’ve been trying to understand this over the past decade; it’s been a thing I’ve been fascinated by. Because one of the things I’ve seen is like a superpower for Saturn and for Capricorn people or people with heavy Capricorn placements, the ability to see what’s wrong with something or to see the negative things in something and like the weaknesses, which can make them really excellent critics of things. But sometimes that criticism is most often visibly seen being projected outwards onto other things and other people, similarly to Virgo in that way. Like Virgo’s able to see, you know, the microscopic details and issues. Virgo can be, for example, very good at proofreading a text and then just seeing typos in it that other people might miss. Capricorn has a similar ability to do things, but to see the larger cracks in larger structures and the problems with them, and the way that it could have been done better.
But one of the problems is that sometimes that criticism, just as much as it’s projected outwards and externally, it’s also projected internally as a self-criticism. And sometimes one of the downsides with that can be inaction or an inability to do anything because it’s not good enough or it doesn’t meet up to their very high expectations. So sometimes people with those placements can, when they do produce something, it can take a while, but it will be of the highest quality because they do their very best job, not having any problems or errors or cracks in it. But other times when that tendency malfunctions, part of the malfunction is an inability to finish things or get things done because it’s never quite good enough for them to let it go and release it and finish that.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Absolutely. The awareness of fault lines—you know, if we’re gonna keep with the tectonic plate metaphors—absolutely is a Capricorn quality. Like I can see where the foundation is not gonna be strong enough here. Or it’s like it’s good enough for now, but we are building in a place that has earthquakes. And so maybe we shouldn’t build anything at all because, you know, at some point in the next five hundred years, it’s gonna get destroyed. You know, almost too long of a vision, or like too long of a timeline getting incorporated into pretty immediate decision-making. You know, that awareness of consequences can be quite paralyzing.
MD: Yeah, like the stagnation component of Saturn. Saturn representing things that can’t move forward; it can’t move past this line. I think that can really come in for Capricorn placements when they have set their expectations too high, almost like not being aware of their own limitations, like when it comes to personal finances or personal mental health, or even physical ability. A Capricorn placement might be trying to achieve something that is beyond the limitations of their ‘real’ reality, so that can be, yeah, debilitating because you’re never able to reach that goal. So it’s almost like a process for Capricorns over their lifetime to find those boundaries—like you were saying—find those tectonic edges of where’s that sweet spot of what I’m capable of doing and what I want to do.
DRH: There’s also something about resourcing with that, of just like, “I should be able to do it with a quarter of a tank of gas. I don’t need to buy gas.” “I don’t need to spend money.” Or “I don’t need to receive help,” or those sorts of things. Like I think that’s one of the limitations that I’ve witnessed Capricorn come up against quite a lot, especially, you know, throughout the time of everybody with Saturn in Capricorn going through their Saturn returns and observing a lot of that. It’s like you hit a wall not because that wall is permanent, but because you don’t have the appropriate tools or resourcing to get over the wall. So if you give yourself the resources you need, you can get over the wall. And then there’s a resistance to receiving or gathering those resources because it hasn’t been ‘earned’ yet. You know, ‘earning’ is a very Capricorn thing. “I have to earn ‘x, y, z’. And if I don’t perceive myself to have earned it then I don’t deserve it,” even though whatever it is is actually what you need to push past the limitations you’re experiencing.
MD: Yeah, Capricorn’s very allergic to entitlement.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: And that feels resonate in terms of once we look at the relationship between Capricorn and Cancer. Just that Capricorn placements reaching that limitation where they do have to finally reach across the aisle and ask someone for help taking care of some of the aspects of the project, like calling in the Moon perhaps to take care of their physical self.
DRH: Ooh, I’m being reminded, I’m being reminded. So in the Thomas Taylor translation of “The Orphic Hymn to Saturn”—Kronos, whatever—the word ‘obstetric’ or the phrase ‘obstetric Nature’ gets used, which is reflected in the original Greek; but whatever, I don’t speak Greek.
CB: What does that word mean?
DRH: Obstetric. Obstetric nature. So it’s like obstetric, ‘of obstetrics’. Like an OB-GYN, an obstetrics doctor is somebody who…
MD: Like birthing.
DRH: …facilitates birthing. Exactly. Like bringing things into the world. And of the things I was just reminded of, especially with the Capricorn-Cancer axis, is whenever people are pregnant, if they aren’t consuming enough nutrients for both their gestating child and their own personal body—I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on out there. But, you know, it’s like they need to be consuming enough minerals and vitamins and macronutrients and things like that for both them and their child. If they aren’t consuming enough fats and minerals and things like that for both of them, the body prioritizes growing their child, which means that that can lead to perinatal osteoporosis and neurological degeneration and things like that. And so, there’s a very tidy metaphor for Capricornian types of just prioritizing so much what is being built that there is a forgetting of the necessity of resourcing the self as the one doing the building.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Like there’s that alienation from the self or from the body because of Capricorn being opposite to Cancer, which the Moon is representing the body. It’s like as far away as you can get from the needs of the body and the needs of the emotions.
DRH: Right.
MD: Like the needs of the self.
DRH: The animal softness.
MD: Exactly.
DRH: But also, that’s very frequently entirely what’s necessary to not just self-sacrifice on the altar of your legacy but participate in your legacy.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, get down into your body and into your relationships. Almost like who are you doing all of this for? Like if Capricorn is working towards something but is completely alone on their mountaintop, depending on the person, they might be into that. But often there is that craving for Cancer, to have some family, some people that you love that you can share your accomplishments with.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, who is the legacy for?
CB: Maybe this would be a good time to share the contrast that Camille came up with for Cancer vs. Capricorn. So I don’t have a very good diagram for this, but let me just share the table from our written document. So this is the contrast, like a table—for those listening to the audio version—of two columns, and we’re gonna compare Capricorn on the left and Cancer on the right. So a Capricron keyword is ‘dry’ and it’s opposite to Cancer’s keyword of ‘wet’, being an earth sign vs. a water sign. Capricorn is ‘the mentor’ vs. Cancer is ‘the mother’. Capricorn is ‘the world’ vs. Cancer is ‘the womb’. Capricorn is ‘earthly intelligence’, whereas Cancer is ‘emotional intelligence’. Capricorn is ‘to reason’, Cancer is ‘to intuit’. Capricorn is ‘firm’, whereas Cancer is ‘gentle’. Capricorn is ‘blood, sweat’ and Cancer is ‘the tears’. Capricorn is ‘to deny oneself’ vs. Cancer is ‘to care for oneself’. Capricorn is ‘hard work’ vs. Cancer is ‘heart work’. And Capricorn is ‘the provider’ vs. Cancer is ‘the protector’.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, there’s a lot of good keywords there that tie in to what you were both just saying.
MD: I mean, there’s this sort of archetypal or stereotypical ‘mommy/daddy’ association with Cancer and with Capricorn, where Cancer as the archetypal Mother is keeping its loved ones close to itself or even keeping itself, you know, close and contained and protected, like nurtured and shielded; whereas Capricorn is, you know, out there earning the bread for the family. Or Capricorn is taking the children out of the nest and showing them that here’s what you’re gonna have to deal with in the real world. You know, it’s time to grow up and face the music; like you have to leave the nest sometime.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that actually reminds me quite directly of the image for Capricorn, like the mer-goat, right, and some of the stories that get associated with that, and this idea of you can’t just stay in the ocean, you actually do have to come onto land.
MD: Mm-hmm. I like that one story that I was reading about the pain of Capricorn, where the mer-goat, Pricus, has lost his children. They were all intelligent, magical sea-goats, but then his children eventually wandered onto the shores and basked in the Sun and lost their ability to relate to him. And so, in this story Pricus has the ability to turn back time, so he tries to turn back time so that he can prevent his children from leaving the sea and leaving him all alone. But then he eventually gives up and realizes that there’s no way to prevent this from happening, he is ultimately alone.
DRH: Mm-hmm, yeah.
CB: It makes me think of and brings up—a lot of what you were both saying right now—that part of the interesting dynamic of the parents in astrology and the general planetary significators of the parents that you sometimes default to are the Sun representing the father figure vs. the Moon representing the mother figure, but also in traditional astrology there were other alternative significators, which were Saturn and Venus. But it’s interesting thinking about the differences between the Sun as the archetype for the father vs. Saturn as part of the archetype for the father, or the different ways in which the role of that sort of fatherly or parental role can manifest sometimes in the Saturn or the Capricorn archetype.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, what’s interesting is I personally resonate much more with Saturn as more of a grandmotherly figure, right? So it’s still not a direct gestating parent, but still this sort of like external, ‘of the world’. There’s kind of like a worldly knowledge; there’s like a wisdom component there. And the guidance around what does it mean to mature, what does it mean to grow up is a little bit more distant, in the same way that I think of the binary ideas about father and mother; like mother is at home and close with the children and father is out in the world. You kno, there’s that same sort of element with the grandmother; it’s like the grandmother is a step removed from direct interaction with the baby, but is still a factor in helping that baby become an adult. And there’s very much something about how like Saturn is the one with external world, capital ‘E’xperience that might be a buzzkill a lot of the time, but it’s a buzzkill that comes from experience, not just from protectiveness or something like that.
CB: Yeah, that notion of there being some distance or coldness sometimes to that archetype seems important though ‘cause it seems like there’s some kind of recurring theme there. And while that can be warmed up, sometimes just the notion that there’s like a coldness or a distance to it or an absence in some way is kind of interesting in both the grandmother archetype, as well as, you know, a distant father-type archetype.
MD: Mm-hmm. Even in looking at perhaps the difference between the Sun as the father vs. Saturn as the father, you can see the Sun as sort of like the idealized father or paternal figure as someone you would look up to and admire and think like, “Wow, I want to be just like him.” Or in one’s personal chart, looking at the Sun as perhaps how you’ve inherited—for better or for worse—traits of the father, whereas Saturn could almost be like the absence of the father, or what do you do once the father is gone, say, as you become older, and the father isn’t someone who isn’t that shiny solar symbol anymore. How are you taking care of yourself, or how are you meeting the needs that the archetypal father would have met earlier in life?
CB: Yeah.
DRH: There’s also something about Saturn as the provider of the structures, and a lot of times the structures of our lives are the easiest things to take for granted. They don’t necessarily feel directly like expressions of care or love, even if they are necessary for our continuance, right? So it’s like you might not see the money coming into the bank account that buys the groceries, what you see is the groceries made into a meal on the dinner table.
MD: Mm-hmm. And you literally might not even see the parent who’s out there like earning the money. Like they have to be absent, away from the home oftentimes in order to…
DRH: To do that.
MD: Exactly.
DRH: To bring home the bacon, you have to be out in the field all the time.
MD: Exactly.
CB: That’s really important ‘cause, you know, without even getting into gender roles and things like that sometimes the experience of one of the parents is more of the harsh or the hard ass-type figure that set the rules or that went out and got the money and supported the family, even if they were then absent, and therefore, weren’t able to play what was immediately experienced maybe early on as the nurturing role, but their nurturing was through supporting the family or something like that. While we often have recurring themes of that that are associated with the father maybe previously, that’s something that can manifest in either parent figure—those types of dynamics—at this point in time.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely. It’s like structurally present, but not emotionally available.
CB: Right.
MD: Yeah, Cancer is there being emotionally available, being, you know, on-call for meeting those immediate emotional and physical needs.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah. And that’s where we run into the Moon being opposite to its domicile in Capricorn and why that sometimes associated with a challenging placement or one that at least is contrary to Moon because in Capricorn maybe there’s a coldness, or an emotional coldness to a certain extent, or a distances that’s different than what the Moon in Cancer is like or what its immediate impulse would be.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and what’s interesting too is to think about how that distance can also be experienced as spaciousness depending on the circumstances and depending on the dynamics of the people involved, right? So it’s like Saturn gives you room, it might not be the room that you want sometimes, right? It’s like, you know, you’re absent. And it’s like, well, no, you have all this room to become yourself, right? But there can be that combination feeling of like I wouldn’t have become who I am if I’d been coddled.
MD: Right, yeah.
DRH: And also, probably it could have been nice to have more hugs.
MD: Yeah, you need both. You don’t want to be totally out in the cold, you know, defenseless and alone. The reason why infants cry, they’re feeling that lack, they’re feeling alone; they’re feeling a Capricorn experience. “Like I’m not ready to be out there taking care of myself. Like I still need nurturing and support and protection.”
DRH: Yeah, this is reminding me of Saturn in Capricorn, like Capricorn as the winter solstice point, right? Like that’s when we enter Capricorn season, which is initiating the return of the Sun, right? It’s initiating this coming back of light. And initiation experiences, like being pushed through a threshold, that often happens when you don’t necessarily feel prepared for it.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: But that’s also where you get the ‘MacGyver’ resourcing capacity, right? Like there’s very much a ‘MacGyver’ quality to Capricorn of like, “I’m going to make due with the materials that I have here available to me as best I can.” Like I would rather have the easy way maybe, but instead what I have to do is figure out how to just deal with this. And so, even just thinking about, you know, certain initiation experiences of, “You’re out in the wilderness by yourself for three days. Hope you survive kid.” But there’s something about that that is very maturing in significant ways and that you can’t replicate if you’re having your hand held the entire time.
CB: Yeah.
MD: It’s like a training montage in a kung fu movie. Like, “Okay, kid, you want to be the best, it’s time to start climbing those thousand staircases, balancing the water buckets on your back,” and all of that.
DRH: Mastery. ‘Mastery’ is another Saturn and Capricorn word.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: That’s a really good one. That ties back into the desire to achieve the highest and to have the ability to see when things are not good and wanting to surpass that and wanting to like get to the top of something, and that would be a good keyword for that, mastery.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely.
MD: Yeah, why not do it the best that it can be almost.
CB: Yeah, and that then ties back into the whole inability—‘cause I had a teacher, Robert Schmidt, who three planets in Capricorn, and he would produce very high-quality translations, but he got paralyzed sometimes in not putting out work and translations because he always wanted it to be the best. And that sometimes made it so he couldn’t accomplish as much as he wanted to just because it held him back not being able to just put out what he had at the time, and I think that’s something that as a Capricorn Mars and Jupiter that I’ve had to learn by observing that in different people. For example, I had done the audio podcast for five years, of just five years of just audio since 2012. And then in 2017 I wanted to get into doing video, and I tried to plan out some of it ahead of time—like where I plan the structure of episodes—and you can see in the very first episode I had very grand plans for what I wanted to do in the podcast.
But then when I started doing video versions, I realized I had to learn this whole new thing of doing video and getting the lighting right and shooting the audio at the same time and all this stuff. But there was a way in which I researched it as much as I could, but I realized I had to just start doing it ‘cause there’s some things that you can only learn by doing them and by making mistakes, and through trial and error. So I would like record a video, look at it. It would look and sound terrible, but then I would learn something from it each time. And each time I would put out a new video every few days and look at it and see what was wrong with it and then try to fix just one thing each time. And in doing that it made it manageable so that eventually it built up until I had like a heap of all of these videos, and I could see my progress, and you can track my progress. So you can look back at The Astrology Podcast from 2017. I don’t recommend it ‘cause there’s just some very poorly-shot videos from that time period, if you want to laugh at that.
MD: It’s all old-timey, in black-and-white.
CB: Yeah, exactly.
MD: Stop motion.
CB: Well, no, it’s just like funny things. Like my head will be in the middle of the screen, but there will be like ten feet of space above my head. And so, a friend who shot video was like, “Yeah, your head should be closer to the top of the frame.” And there’s just like little things like that you don’t think of until you do them, but it’s like the alternative is to just become paralyzed by trying to anticipate and plan out all these things that are unknowable until you’ve actually like tried to do it. So that whole trial-and-error thing is very important. Yeah, it’s tied in with a lot of different things related to Capricorn and the different dignity schemes. And that may be one of the reasons why Mars I think is said to do well with its exaltation because I think that it gives it more of a push sometimes to just do it and just take the action and then learn from the mistake as opposed to being crippled by trying to plan everything out ahead of time.
MD: It feels like it speaks to, you know, the square or the relationship between Capricorn and Aries. Like obviously when you’re saying ‘just do it’, there’s such an Aries vibe to that. And the ways in which, you know, Aries I guess benefits from Capricorn, but Capricorn also benefits from Aries, so it’s sort of the way that they push each other. The drive to just make something happen is very Aries, but then the drive to maybe continue to refine that something rather than just, “Oh, I did this thing and I wasn’t good at it; like I shot my video and it looked like crap, so forget it, I’m onto the next interest,” is Capricorn. I think that’s part of why Mars gets that exaltation because Mars stops, you know, shooting itself into new directions all the time, and instead keeps that gung-ho energy to just like, “No, I’m gonna do better next time. I’m gonna do better next time.”
DRH: There’s also something about Capricorn providing Mars with stuff to do, right? So it’s not just like focusing Mars, it’s also like, “Okay, I need these stones cut. Here’s a pile of rocks and some sharp stuff to play with. Like go do the thing.” And there’s also something about how Mars warms up Capricorn, right? Capricorn cools down Mars enough for Mars to be functional, but Capricorn is in turn warmed up by the experience of Mars being present there.
MD: That confidence that Mars lends as well maybe is part of the heat.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: ‘Cause Mars just fucking loves winning. It’s just like, “Yeah, I’ve got this grand vision and I’m gonna just make it happen no matter what it takes.”
DRH: It’s like, “Let’s fucking go, man.”
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Untouchable.
MD: That thirty-year vision, let’s do it.
CB: Yeah, Mars loves the competition and the drive and can be very much ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ or the first into the breach. But Saturn in Capricorn gives it that structure, that long-term structure, that can help with success and help to guide Mars to be more successful than it might be otherwise just shooting from the hip.
DRH: Absolutely.
MD: I think it allows Mars to accept feedback too. Like Mars is less pointy, being in a receptive sign, and being in a sign that wants to, you know, reach that high expectation. So Mars in Capricorn maybe finds that, like, “Oh, I did something wrong,” and is able to maybe take that in and be like, I don’t want to miss the mark next time, so thank you for the constructive criticism. Next time I’m gonna do it even more effectively.”
CB: Yeah, for sure.
MD: Also, just Capricorn loves critical feedback.
DRH: As long as it’s applicable.
MD: True.
DRH: It needs to be pragmatic feedback and not amorphous feedback.
MD: Yes. And as long as it hasn’t already thought of it itself, “No, no, no, believe me, I know what went wrong.”
DRH: I am aware of all of the fault lines.
CB: Right.
MD: Yes.
DRH: I don’t need your observations about the fault lines, but if your observation helps with the fault line, I guess it’s okay.
MD: Yeah, actually constructive. If I haven’t thought of it before then absolutely.
CB: There was kind of like an arrogant thing that came out like a month or two ago, but there was somebody who was like, “I don’t accept criticism from anybody that’s doing worse than I’m doing.” And that struck me as kind of like a little Capricorn-y sort of keyword at the time as well. Not that that’s always gonna be the recurring part of the archetype or everyone’s gonna have that attitude, but I can see some versions of the archetype that would have that.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. It’s like if you aren’t where I want to go, why would I listen to you?
MD: Right. Very much like, “You’re not a role model for me.”
DRH: Right, right. And it’s also interesting to think about how that often contributes to that asceticism dynamic with Capricorn, where it’s just like the rejection of things that would be very nourishing because it’s not immediately apparent to the Capricorn placement why it would be useful.
MD: Being a cardinal sign especially it’s like, “I’m in progress. I’m working on something. Is this relevant to what I’m working on right now?”
DRH: There’s almost like this ‘blinders’ thing of just like, “That’s the direction that I’m going in, everything else is a distraction,” even if the other stuff is not actually a distraction. It’s like you need to fix your wheel and it’s just like, “No, I’m moving in this direction and you’re not going where I’m going, so why am I listening to you?” And it’s just like, “Bro, your wheels are gonna fall off. Like I don’t need to be going where you’re going to be able to see that your wheel’s gonna fall off.”
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s almost like what are the limitations of Capricorn and how can it benefit the input of some of the other signs.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely.
MD: That is reminding me of the ‘hermit’ archetype, you know, with Saturn having its joy in the 12th. So Saturnian types just having their joy in a locked room somewhere.
DRH: Isolation.
MD: Exactly.
DRH: Isolation as a relief rather than a punishment.
MD: Exactly. Yeah, because there’s just less to manage. Almost like that distance, again, from Cancer, which can be so busy meeting other people’s needs or meeting emotional needs if Capricorn can distance itself from Cancer. All right, no distractions, no one else’s needs, just the work that needs to get done right now.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: But then you’re right. When isolating itself, Capricorn can miss out on the benefit of input from other people who have the perspective that they may be taking a blind eye to.
DRH: Can’t see your own ass without a mirror.
MD: That’s why Leo is in aversion to Capricorn.
CB: That’s a good one. I’m just…
MD: Yeah…
CB: Go ahead.
MD: Go ahead. Now you go.
CB: No, it was gonna be a transition away, so you should say what you want.
MD: No, that’s what I was hoping for too. I was like, “I think we need to get back to structure.”
CB: Yeah, not structure necessarily. We should take a break soon. But I do want to mention really quickly one chart example I have, which is always one of my favorite chart examples. This is J. Paul Getty who had Capricorn rising and Saturn exalted in Libra in the 10th whole sign house, with Saturn ruling not just the Ascendant but also the 2nd house of finances. He was like an oil baron. In the 1950s, he was the richest man in the world, but he was like a famous workaholic and would just work all the time, and he was also famously kind of stingy to a certain extent. For example, Wikipedia has this little sentence at the very top where it says, “Despite his vast wealth, Getty was famously frugal, notably negotiating his grandson’s kidnapping ransom in 1973.” Basically, his grandson was kidnapped, but he famously refused to pay the ransom and was like, “No, I’m not gonna pay that.” And it was always one of my favorite examples.
DRH: It’s so brutal.
CB: Yeah.
MD: It’s just not a good deal.
CB: Yeah, he’s like, “Can I get a coupon on? Can we bring that price down?” trying to like negotiate. And it was actually terrible because I think they ended up cutting off his grandson’s ear or something like that. It was like real bad. So it’s like funny, but also there can be really extreme versions of that tendency of Saturn sometimes to withhold or Capricorn to withhold things or hang onto things so much. That’s obviously a super extreme example, but ‘frugal’ is a good keyword that I don’t think we’ve used yet as a better, softer term for the financial part of that.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Stingy on the downside, frugal on the upside.
DRH: On the upside.
CB: Yeah.
DRH: And there’s so many variations of that. So, you know, I think about—I forget who first said it—but it’s like, “We’re too poor to buy cheap shoes.” You know, this idea of frugal isn’t just about buying the cheapest thing, that’s like stinginess; stinginess is what’s as cheap as possible. Frugality includes the considerations of the long-term, right? So you save up your money, you buy the highest quality pair of shoes that you can afford that also, you know, has the most broad usefulness. And you take it to the cobbler to get them repaired and, you know, you replace the shoelaces when they break, all of that kind of thing. It’s like over the lifespan of that pair of shoes, you’re gonna have spent much less money than if you just bought the cheapest pair possible that falls apart immediately and then you have to replace them constantly.
CB: Yeah, buy the thing that will last.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Buy the thing that lasts. Buy the thing that you can repair. You know, buy the thing that once it’s no longer repairable, you can recycle into a different use, right? So it’s like you buy the high quality linen shirt and you wear it to death, and you repair it to death, and eventually that becomes your rags and you use that to clean your house. And eventually the rags are too raggedy, so you put them in the compost heap because you bought a natural fiber that will decompose in your compost heap. You know, that’s the long-form, positive variation of Saturnian frugality.
MD: Mm-hmm. Almost like a long-term cycle too. Like thinking of the Moon as ruling the short-term cycles, so its opposite’s Saturn. Can I see the logical conclusion of everything or of any particular item?
DRH: What’s its life cycle?
MD: Exactly.
DRH: And then the death cycle too. Like if you can own a particular object from start to finish and beyond, that’s a Capricornian experience, I would say.
MD: Totally. And definitely the pleasure in making things last. Like taking small, tiniest bits of resources and then stretching them as far as they can go. Like my husband loves to tell the story of the first road trip we took together, where I had not finished a cucumber or something like that; like I had maybe three slices of cucumber left in my little snack bag. And he’s just like, “And you saved them. You saved them for later. And then later on that day, you pulled out the three slices of cucumber and it was great. We enjoyed that snack at that time.” And I go, “That’s right.” Always save your leftover snacks, come on.
DRH: You gotta get the tiny tupperware so that you can save the two tablespoons of that salad dressing ‘cause you will eat it later.
MD: Exactly. You will use it later.
CB: That’s funny. So prolonging the life of something gets into another aspect of the Capricorn archetype that often is brought up, which is the idea of aging in reverse sometimes. Like those who were born very old or exhibit traits that we might associate with somebody that’s older or more serious than their age when relatively young vs. somebody that almost seems to get younger or to age really well or age in reverse in some ways. So Camille wrote in the notes that Capricorn can be, “Inflexible, rigid, can take life a bit too seriously, although it says with time and age Capricorn energy ferments, gets looser, more childlike, the ‘Benjamin Button’ syndrome. It’s not always guaranteed, but it implies that the early life of Capricorn may be more responsibility-heavy.” But that is certainly something with just Saturn in general, that Saturn does tend to get better with age.
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Anything that gets better with age is Saturnian.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: It has a Saturnian quality. And I can say that for myself, people thought that I was a solid four to five years older than I was until I hit 26 or so and then people got closer. When I hit my Saturn return people were pretty good at guessing how old I was, and now, people think I’m younger than I am. Also, I had crow’s feet when I was like 24 and they went away.
MD: Interesting. The blessing of having Venus in the 1st.
DRH: I mean, yeah, it’s like dignified Saturn in the 1st and dignified Venus in the 1st, plus a well-thought-out and sustainable skin care regimen, right? Like we’re doing the ‘slo-mo’ elegant aging rather than the easy answer botox or whatever people might do. It’s like I don’t want the easy answer, I want the thing that I can do at home for a minimal amount of money. One of my tools is a gua sha, which is a stone tool for ensuring the health of your connective tissue—connective tissue is Saturnian, skin is Saturnian—is durable; Saturnian.
MD: That’s beautiful.
CB: I like that.
MD: Feels like it kind of ties into the relationship with Libra, like what are the things that Capricorn and Libra share in common and where do they differ, and Saturn having its exaltation in Libra. There’s this ridiculous amount of discipline and determination that goes into high Libra ideals of, you know, the beauty. In order to attain perfected beauty, one must have a disciplined skin care routine, for instance.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, you’re doing the ‘Patrick Bateman’ skin care routine at the beginning of each day.
DRH: It’s not that.
CB: It’s not that. All right, going back to the age thing though, it brings up one of my chart examples, which I think of Tiger Woods. He has Virgo rising and Mercury in Capricorn in the 5th house, along with the Sun obviously in a night chart. And, you know, it’s in the 5th house of like games, but you can see these videos of him just being super young and being taught golf by his dad and just from an early age playing that game over and over again and developing a mastery of it, but also maybe not having as much of a childhood or not having the same sort childhood that other people his age had because he was taking this game, which became his life’s work, much more seriously. That’s I think a good image for Capricorn in terms of that ‘reverse aging’ thing or being older than your years or sometimes wiser beyond your years.
DRH: Yeah. One thing that is very consistent in my client sessions with especially Cap risings—but Aquarius risings to a degree as well—is the experience in childhood of having to be an adult; not necessarily choosing to be an adult, but being kind of forced into precocious levels of maturity. And then once they are actually in adulthood consistently people will have a ‘light bulb’ moment of like, “Oh, I’m not responsible for anyone except myself. And so, that means I can do what I want.”
MD: It becomes much easier.
DRH: Because I’m going to do what I have to do. Yeah, like for me it was the moment where I was just like, “Oh, I’m a grownup. I can have brownies and wine for dinner whenever I want,” right? You know, whatever that might be, it’s just like this sort of recognition that you have your entire household’s stability on your shoulders anymore because you don’t live there anymore.
MD: It’s almost important to have that experience of being alone or being on your own. You can imagine some Capricorn experiences where you might transition from being, you know, a serious child with a lot of responsibility, straight into being, you know, a serious young adult with a lot of responsibility. And so, do you give yourself the chance to have, you know, enough alone time to kind of sort out your priorities and responsibilities, or does it take until, you know, maybe the first Saturn return?
DRH: Or the second Saturn return for some folks.
MD: Exactly. And perhaps in that Saturnian way, something is taken away from you, or you’re denied something. Something falls apart and then you maybe realize is ‘x, y, z’ worth the effort that you’ve been putting into it.
DRH: Mm-hmm. I feel like people who really, really, really love retirement, you know, who just go all out, like hardcore, basically partying at the—oh, man, what’s that restaurant chain? Oh, man, it’s like a restaurant chain for people who really like this specific singer. I’m not gonna remember it right now. You know what I’m talking about?
MD: I do know what you’re talking about. Like Margaritaville?
DRH: Yeah, Margaritaville.
MD: Jimmy Buffett.
DRH: Jimmy Buffett, exactly, right? It’s like they’re going all out at the Margaritaville; you know, they’re in their retirement communities having their wild parties. Like that is such a good example of that Saturnian ‘Benjamin Button’ syndrome where it’s just like, “We were the serious adults who fulfilled our responsibilities. Our kids have left the nest, they have their own lives. We retired from the company. We have our pensions, whatever, and now we’re just gonna have the time of our lives before we’re done being alive.” That would be like the second Saturn return version of the ‘Benjamin Button’ experience, I would say.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, and being able to reap the rewards from having, you know, put away money or done stuff earlier to be in a good position later on. I mean, there’s some people though when I think about Capricorn that are the perpetual people that keep working even into old age. Like I’m looking at some of my private files right now of just people for whom work is what they love doing, or they’ve always worked so that it’s something they continue to do even relatively late in life to keep focusing on that.
DRH: Yeah, that’s like either completely leaving work behind and being a kid, or, you know, “My work is my life, so why would I retire?”
CB: Right. Almost like finding their identity in that to some extent.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: That cardinality, again, just needing to do stuff is a big factor of it.
DRH: I’m reminded of my grandmother who’s a very solid Capricorn, who after she retired was just volunteering all the time, all the time. It’s only now, like in her very late 80’s that she’s calmed down with having somewhere to go almost everyday.
CB: Okay.
MD: It’s sort of that relationship, again, with Virgo of like usefulness, like needing to be useful. You know, maybe like having a little bit of the fear of idle time or just having an awareness of all of the possible effects that one’s actions could have. So I’m not gonna rest because I could be using my time and energy to help other people, to serve or something.
DRH: I don’t want to waste my time.
MD: Yeah, definitely. Every good Capricorn is like the thought of wasting time makes them puke in the mouth.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense.
DRH: Especially if somebody else is wasting our time. If we waste our own time, we’ll flagellate ourselves. But if somebody else wastes our time, that’s just time to walk away.
MD: Although I will say as someone with the night chart—Saturn in the 1st—wasting my own time is much scarier. It’s like, okay, I should have been more responsible.
CB: And one last example to round off the time and the ‘older-younger’ thing that Camille had mentioned as a chart example is Greta Thunberg, who has the Sun, probably the Moon, and Mercury in Capricorn. We don’t have birth time for her, but she’s somebody that became an environmental rights activist extremely young and became prominent and known for that relatively early in her life, being only born in 2003. When did she come to prominence? It was like several years ago now at this point, right?
DRH: I feel like she was 14 or something.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Probably at the Saturn opposition, like around that age.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Oh, yes. Wikipedia says, “In August 2018, at age 15, she started spending her Fridays outside the Swedish Parliament to call for stronger action on climate change,” as most normal 15-year-olds do, spend their days outside of parliament, lobbying parliament to make changes.
MD: To be responsible.
CB: Right.
DRH: Specifically to be responsible.
CB: And kind of like shaming them. Didn’t she go to the UN or something at one point? She was kind of like shaming people for not being responsible or like not taking care of the world and things like that. It says, “[She] and her straightforward and blunt speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticizes world leaders for their failure to take what she considers sufficient action to address…climate [change].” They’re all Capricornian words.
DRH: And she has the mutual reception between Mercury and Saturn, right? Like Saturn in Gemini with Mercury in Capricorn. So there’s very much that communicating from a place of, “Can you not see what is really happening?”
MD: Like we have the information, we have the facts. We don’t need to do any more research.
DRH: We don’t have to do research, we have to do action.
MD: Yeah, enough talking about it. Like why aren’t we doing it? Yeah, I think that bluntness is another good keyword for Capricorn, which is just like not sugarcoating the truth.
CB: Right.
MD: Not putting a positive spin on things. From her perspective, she’s like, “I’m on the precipice of adulthood. I’m being told that we have no viable future for humanity. What gives?”
DRH: Yeah, which reminds me of that bitterness, both in terms of taste, like actual taste, but also just the consequences. Like sometimes Saturnian consequences or Capricornian consequences lead to bitterness, right? So like a bitter statement of just, “You are fucking up my future. What are you doing? Why are you just sitting on your ass saying pretty words to each other without actually taking care of what you’re responsible for?” The intensity—it’s not the rage, like the hot, fiery rage. It’s very much that bitter, like cold fire anger.
MD: Mm-hmm. Like, “Oh, I guess you guys are just waiting for the next generation to get to work. Like you’re gonna continue to sit there and talk about it. And it is ultimately going to be up to us and so many more decades will have passed.”
DRH: And you’re wasting our time by doing that.
MD: Yeah, yeah. We see you, Greta. We see you.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, I was just looking at her. She has Mercury stationed retrograde at 28 Capricorn.
MD: So this retrograde is echoing for her.
CB: Exactly. And she was just in the news ‘cause Mercury just stationed. This isn’t gonna be very timeless for this episode.
MD: It was a sweet burn though.
CB: It was a sweet burn. There was like this misogynist, Andrew Tate, who tried to post a tweet saying something to her like, “I own thirty-three cars,” and he was like bragging or something or trying to take her on as a climate activist and just be a jerk.
MD: He’s like, “Give me your email address so I can show you even more cars.”
DRH: Just like being skeezy and terrible.
CB: Yeah.
MD: And her response was like, “Yes, please enlighten me. You can email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”
CB: Right.
DRH: And then like him and his childish response owned himself and ended up getting him arrested.
MD: Which adds the Saturn keyword of ‘karma’, the logical ramifications of one’s actions.
DRH: Right. It’s not punishment. It’s just the results of what you did.
MD: Exactly. Yeah, like she didn’t call the cops on you. You did it to yourself.
CB: Yeah, but that was pretty good and it was a pretty short burn using the least amount of words possible and responding pretty brutally. So that’s a funny, funny story.
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[end of video break]
CB: All right, let’s go ahead and resume from our break. Really quickly I have to mention part of the anecdote ‘cause everyone’s gonna forget about this probably in a month. But we were talking about the Greta Thurnberg thing because the guy she responded to ended up getting arrested like a day or two later, and he’s like sitting in jail right now. And there’s been speculation about whether her response and then his really pathetic response back to her was part of the reason why the authorities knew where he was and then arrested him for some potentially terrible things that he’s accused of doing. So anyways, I just wanted to wrap that up in terms of that little thing. We were just talking the recurring joke on the podcast #AstrologerGood when transits are so bad, but you’re just so impressed by the astrology. Yeah, it’s a little positive note on things that makes things otherwise not completely good. And you were talking about how maybe that’s part of what Capricorn loves about astrology or something like that.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think Capricorn just loves that sense that time does have meaning for one, and, again, the ‘time-boxing’ of being able to just divide and subdivide every moment of life into, you know, sections of compartmentalized time.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Like perceiving one’s life as like a tiny subsection of a Pluto cycle vs. a couple of Saturn cycles vs. nearly infinity Moon cycles.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, or maybe being able to plan things out in the future with like electional or something like that.
MD: Absolutely. Having that confidence that now is the good time or now is not the good time. I think it’s almost therapeutic for Capricorn to work with astrology.
DRH: Yeah, especially I feel like the longer cycles, like the long view. And demarcations or limitations are also very helpful, you know, to be able to say, “This is a transit that I’m experiencing right now, and I can describe what it is describing in my own life. And I can clearly see where the endpoint is for this specific transit.”
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: And whether that’s for good or for ill of just like, “I need to take advantage of this moment because the grain is really ripe and juicy and there’s plenty of it, so I need to harvest as much as I can.” Or from the standpoint of, you know, this is a necessary period of austerity, or this is a great time to not try hard in that particular area of life because it’s not favorable, you know. It’s just like, okay, it’ll stop being not favorable in, you know, two weeks or six months or whatever; it really facilitates the pursuit of things, but in tandem with a clear time structure.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: That you need to use time to plan things; that time’s an integral component to things and knowing when to do things.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Or when not to do things.
DRH: To use time wisely, to not waste time is facilitated by understanding the qualities of time as currently described by current astrological weather.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeha, and the lengths of those periods. Like knowing the end date and the start date.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: And that even feels like it gets into like Capricorn and Aquarius rising as being the people who are ruled by Saturn. You know, if your ruling planet is the slowest-moving, visible planet, what does that mean to the native in terms of how it naturally would focus on the long term vs. those natives who are ruled by faster-moving planets. Like you will get what your ruling planet is going to be doing, you know, for the coming year. You’re like, “Oh, it’s continuing to focus on the same thing it was doing last year.”
CB: Yeah.
DRH: Yeah, there’s an encouragement to do longer-term planning just because your Ascendant ruler is always doing longer-term work, you know. So to be able to structure every thirty-year chunk of life by where Saturn currently is hanging out, like, wow, that’s so handy. It’s like, okay, Saturn enters Leo, like what are you focusing on for three years?
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Like what’s the core understructure for those three years?
MD: And having that heads-up too. Like as we go into 2023, as this episode is being recorded, astrology in March. So folks with an eye to Saturn are able to prepare for that transition, you know, which feels really good if you imagine being a Saturn native out there in the wild, not knowing astrology.
DRH: You would be less able to feel much more like a victim of circumstance and time rather than a participant in circumstance and time.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we all remember life before astrology. It was so harsh.
CB: And it’s been a long six years of Saturn transiting through its own signs of first Capricorn, from like 2017 to 2020, and then Aquarius, from 2020 to 2023. So I was talking to Patrick Watson yesterday. We were talking about that transition of Saturn into Pisces moving into a Jupier-ruled sign for the first time since, you know, 2016-2017, and he was saying that it really felt—like the past six years—like a long, extended winter in some ways with everything that’s happened, obviously in terms of the pandemic but other things as well.
DRH: I wonder if we’ll get the next Game of Thrones book because winter has come and gone.
CB: Yeah.
MD: The next Game of Thrones book, ‘Spring is Coming’.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: The dream of spring. Well, that’s a great Capricorn phrase or keyword then that ‘winter is coming’. That’s House Stark’s motto in Game of Thrones. It’s very Capricorn.
DRH: House Stark is so Capricorn, I can’t even deal with it. Like so immensely Capricorn. Always planning for winter. Like even in the height of summer planning for winter.
MD: They’re out there at the boundary of the territory too.
DRH: Right, but they’re on this side of the wall. Like the wildlings are a little bit more Aquarius, right? But like the Starks are Capricorn tradition, structure, family; you know, family’s everything. Integrity is everything. You know, the downfall of the Starks throughout Game of Thrones is adhering so tightly to their own extremely high standards of behavior, even when everybody else is fucking around and finding out.
MD: Mm-hmm. Which really naturally leads into like we haven’t talked about, you know, Aquarius as the reaction to Capricorn.
CB: Yeah.
MD: It’s like two sides of Saturn that are so similar and so different at the same time.
CB: Before we get there, one last keyword to wrap up this section that I just came up with based on our previous discussions. But I realized it’s gotta be one of the umbrella terms, ‘to conserve’. And I think that really helps ‘cause it can be like to conserve energy, to conserve resources in many different ways. And, you know, that works as a super high-level archetype keyword because there’s many different ways that that can manifest in different constructive or negative or even neutral ways. But it seems like that’s one of the overarching themes we keep coming back to, the notion of Capricorn and the idea of to conserve something.
DRH: Absolutely.
MD: It’s almost like during Sagittarius season where there may be lots of holidays and feasts occurring, Capricorn is, you know, sitting there like quietly stowing away some of the resources so that, you know, once the party’s over we can actually last through the next, yeah, three months or however many months according to that geography of lean times.
CB: Yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes people think and wonder about this in terms of, you know, Christmas and whatever previous Roman holidays it’s based on, Saturnalia being around the time of the winter solstice. But I was thinking about that one point and thinking about how you can only have that winter feast in the middle of winter if you’ve done a good job of like building up storehouses of food during the summer, and if you didn’t then you’re not really having much of a feast.
DRH: Yeah, you have to know how much you can indulge.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Right.
MD: You have to put in celebrating the hard work, I suppose. That’s sort of a key phrase I guess with Capricorn, ‘delayed gratification’.
DRH: Absolutely.
MD: Like just putting it off, putting off, you know, indulgence until you know for sure that it’s safe to indulge.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Are there any chart examples that either of you would like to mention, or that you like to use for Capricorn, before we move into the section talking about the comparison with the different signs?
DRH: I mean, I love Dolly Parton. I love Dolly Parton.
CB: For somebody that doesn’t know Dolly Parton, how do you relate that?
DRH: Well, you know, Cap Sun, Venus, Mercury all in the 5th, and her career is one of the most long-lasting careers of any musician ever, and she has been very clearly herself the entire time, right? So it’s like Ascendant ruler in the 5th, Virgo rising.
CB: Okay.
DRH: And then what’s also interesting is that Saturn-Mars conjunction right across the street from her Mercury, Venus, Sun. So the balance of Cancer and Capricorn is like baked into how she presents herself and the impacts that her music has and the impacts of her money, right? Like she is someone who has taken the resources that she has gathered to help children, 5th house, right? Like she’s a huge pro-literacy person, gives out lots of books, supports lots of libraries in the South. You know, there’s a generosity and a staying power simultaneously. She has also been really, really, really good at continuing to own her own shit, right? So in time periods when there were a lot of musicians being deeply taken advantage of, she didn’t experience as much of that in part because she was so locked in on what she knew was hers. So that conservation component like, “I am conserving my own resources, and I’m going to be very generative with those resources, establishing very substantial legacies while doing so.”
CB: That’s good. I like that.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Madeline, do you have any good chart examples you wanted to do?
MD: Yeah. Well, I recently saw the play Hamilton, like way delayed as it were. I was trying to decide if it was worth the money.
DRH: Capricorn jokes.
MD: And i was like, “Oh, well, my Mom will really enjoy it, so I’ll spend the money because she’ll enjoy it.” Anyway, it’s quality entertainment. I think it’s worth seeing. But I was very curious—of course as an astrologer—watching this play, just, you know, “What kind of natal placements did Alexander Hamilton have?” So there’s not a timed birth obviously, but there is a date of birth, and he has a Capricorn stellium with like a Sun-Saturn conjunction; I think Mercury as well. I think the Moon is solidly in there, like within that 12-hour or that 24-hour span rather.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: So in that play they’re just going on and on about his archetype as being someone who’s instrumental in the foundation of building the nation that will be the United States, and how he has sort of like a rags-to-riches story. Like he starts off very poor and then, you know, finds his goal, finds his focus. And they even talk about he’s this mastermind of the financial system that goes into the founding of the United States. Of course this is speculative, but you get the impression from the story that he’s a very mercurial person. You know, he does so much writing and communications, so you can speculate that perhaps that Capricorn stellium is in the 2nd or the 8th house, you know, one of the financial houses. So being a founding father of the Treasury, yeah, it was interesting to me.
DRH: Wow, that’s so good.
MD: In the play I’m just like, “He’s probably a Gemini rising. Maybe Sag rising.” And then I look it up later, I’m like, “Oh, then that would put Mars perhaps in the 1st,” and he’s a very martial person. Just doing that super astro-geek thing where you try to listen to all the key points in their life story.
DRH: Yeah, it’s also hilarious that the musical—which is Venusian—was happening while transiting Saturn was in that section of his chart, right?
MD: Absolutely.
CB: The Capricorn section?
MD: Yeha, because he has that Venus-Sun conjunction as well.
DRH: Didn’t it come out—wait, I may be getting this wrong.
MD: It was a little bit early I think it came out.
DRH: Was it while Saturn was in Sag?
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Okay.
MD: But I’m speculating that he could be Sag rising.
DRH: Right. Hilarious.
MD: In the musical, he’s like “I’m not gonna lose my shot.” So he’s very Mars is Sag, just like, “I’ve got a vision, I’m gonna go after it. I want to be on the frontlines.”
CB: And for the audio listeners, with the date of birth he’s got Mercury, probably the Moon, Saturn, Sun, and Venus all in the sign of Capricorn.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: That’s a pretty good stellium.
MD: What’s your favorite Capricorn chart, Chris?
CB: I have him—I’m trying to pull up the chart right now. So my favorite that I’ve used for years is James Earl Jones.
DRH: Ooh, yeah.
CB: We have a birth time.
MD: Darth Vader himself.
CB: Yeah, so the voice of Darth Vader. But then he has an interesting backstory related to that.
RDH: So, Mufasa, right?
MD: Yeah, Mufasa too.
CB: And Mufasa, yeah, yeah.
MD: ‘Big daddy’ energy.
CB: In The Lion King.
DRH: ‘Big daddy’ energy.
CB: And save that ‘cause I want to come back to that ‘cause that’s an archetypal theme we need to come back to that we haven’t before. So we have a timed birth chart for him and he has what is probably a night chart. He was born a little bit before sunrise with the Ascendant in Capricorn, as well as Mercury—on his date of birth basically it’s stationary—as well as the Moon, Saturn, and the Sun and the Lot of Fortune all in Capricorn. Sof for the audio listeners, just imagine somebody with like a big Capricorn stellium involving a lot of personal planets, including Saturn, and then having his rising sign also be there so that all that’s in the 1st house.
So a funny thing about him is that he had some speech issues when he was really young. He had a stutter or he developed a stutter which was so severe that for several years he refused to speak. So if you go on his Wikipedia entry, he says at one point in an interview, “I was a stutterer. I couldn’t talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.” So he literally wasn’t speaking for like this huge chunk of his life early on and was experiencing actual issues with communication or great challenges with communication. But then eventually he was able to overcome this and eventually he got into acting, and he said that poetry helped him to overcome this stutter.
And then it’s so ironic because as we all know, or at least most of us in our generation know, you know, once he became an adult, he ended up being the voice, the famous voice of Darth Vader, and then also the voice of Mufasa in The Lion King. And he just had this big, commanding, like booming voice that became very iconic as he got older. And there’s something about that that’s so striking and so perfect as a Saturn example of, you know, having an issue or a challenge early on in life, but eventually being able to overcome that to the point that it becomes actually a strength. What was initially like a sore spot or a shortcoming eventually becomes almost like your superpower in a way.
DRH: So good. And it makes me wonder if his first year of school might have been his applying Saturn square, and if his release from muteness would have been in the aftermath of a Sautrn opposition; his first Saturn opposition, which was also very close to his natal Jupiter. And so, just even this thought of like not only ‘de-restricting’, but it becoming big, you know, like this big voice.
MD: Going back to the archetypes that we were referencing. A moment for the #AstrologerGood.
DRH: So beautiful. So satisfying.
MD: So those archetypes of like Darth Vader and Mufasa, it reminds me of what I was trying to convey about Saturn as a paternal figure vs. the Sun as a paternal figure because both of those father figures, those roles, it’s like a father who is missing or who is taken away for whatever reason. Especially Darth Vader as being like, “It’s my father, but also it’s my archnemesis.”
DRH: Right.
CB: Yeah, he’s a bad guy, and then you find out that you’re related to the bad guy.
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Mm-hmm. And I feel like there’s also something with Mufasa. Like Mufasa’s absence doesn’t actually diminish the sensation of Mufasa’s presence, right?
MD: Right.
DRH: Like, you know, Simba kind of lives in the shadow of his father.
MD: Absolutely. But even just like that feeling of, “Oh, the king is dead,” that vibe that The Lion King is trying to convey, that’s Saturn. What do you do when the ruler or the icon, the person that you look up to, you know, the literal god figure of the son is gone?
DRH: Yeah.
MD: What do you do then? You gotta, you know, put on your big boy pants and go save Pride Rock.
CB: Yeah, I know when Saturn comes up, you know, a lot of people talk about the famous archetypal stories and the Greek myths about Saturn devouring his son and that famous painting and some things like that, and the dynamic between parents and children and the generational tensions.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Yeah, perhaps like a negative Capricorn trait of wanting to hold onto the structure that maybe one’s worked hard all their life to create, and so the next generation threatens that structure.
CB: Right.
DRH: Right. I mean, and even like the story of Pricus, of trying to turn back time, “If I can turn back time,” right?
MD: “If I could find a way.”
DRH: You know, just stealing his children back to the sea and just being like, “No, you don’t get to be born. You have to come back here with me.”
CB: Yeah.
DRH: And then even like turning that into something more of a metaphor, just like the way that Capricornian folks can do such a good job at not sharing their creations, at not completing and then birthing their creations, and allowing their creations to actually exist in the world as their own things, right? It’s just like, “Oh, no, it’s not good enough. I’m just gonna eat it. I’m just gonna eat it and pretend it happened.”
CB: Yeha.
MD: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, and generationally attempting to maintain the status quo. That actually brings up one of the things that always happens with society is people are often always either idealizing the past or idealizing the future; looking back to the ‘good old days’ when everything was perfect and when ‘x, y, z’ was happening and over-idealizing or always looking at the future, where the future’s gonna be great and all the problems are gonna be solved and everything’s gonna be different; as well as the classic ‘the youth are ruining society’ trope that, you know, we have records going back like thousands of years about. People in like Athens in the 5th century BCE like complaining about how the youth is ruining everything and they don’t respect their parents anymore, and all of the traditions are being forgotten about and neglected, and society obviously is just gonna end anytime now because of how the youth are doing.
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Totally. And as you were saying that I’m also being reminded of the concept of the ‘Golden Age of Kronos’, like the golden era prior to the rise of the Olympians. And it’s just like, yeah, there’s like endless time because we don’t have Olympians trying to use the time. You know, time is not constrained by the aims of whatever you understand the Olympians to symbolize. It’s just endless time, man. Uncaged time. All time is free time because time is free—that sort of utopian, golden age, rose-colored glasses look on the past. And I would say, you know, if we’re gonna contrast signs at all, it’s like Aquarius is maybe a little bit more future-oriented; like the eyes are on the traditions of the future rather than the nostalgias of a fantasized past.
CB: I think that’s totally correct. That’s totally right. And maybe the contrast is Saturn tends to be—or Capricorn is more perhaps backwards-looking to some extent. I mena, obviously there’s long-term planning impulses and other things like that, but Aquarius being a bit more future-oriented and future-looking.
DRH: I feel like the Capricorn, long-term planning is “I want to be able to look back and say that I did it.”
MD: Hmm-mm.
CB: Yeah.
DRH: Whereas the Aquarius long-term planning is like, “I want to see what’s happening then, and I want to build what I want to be happening then,” rather than the sensation of “I want to look back and be able to be proud of how I used my time.”
CB: Totally. That’s perfect. So eyes on the future vs. eyes on the past.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Aquarius as an air sign too is just like very happy to be in the theoretical, you know, just to envision the future and, you know, work on something that can create this theoretical, better structure, whereas because Capricorn is the ‘earth’ Saturn, it’s so hyper aware of what currently exists and working with what’s right in front of you, that creates that strong contrast and the archetypes as well.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Yeah, well, there’s so much more of a social component because Aquarius is an earth sign. Just looking back at our diagram here, the other earth signs are, you know, Gemini.
DRH: Oh, air signs.
CB: Oh, sorry. Yeah, thank you, air signs. Gemini, it’s like communicativeness, or Libra with Venus and the socialness of that. And then you get to the third air sign, which is Aquarius, you know being traditionally ruled by Saturn, being a cold sign. We would think that it’s, you know, just a continuation of Capricorn in a sense. But being an air sign it brings in this informational or communicative, or to some extent, a social component.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: It’s interesting how Aquarius coming after Capricorn is like Saturn reacting to itself. Like Saturn trying to improve on how it was just doing things and maybe recognizing the limitations of the earthly plane and the limitations of what has been created before.
DRH: There’s also something about how actions participate in the creation and reaffirmation of beliefs. So I think about Aquarius quite a lot in terms of belief structures and worldview structures, right? These sort of intangible structures that actively participate in our perception of tangible reality, right?
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: And so, it’s like how is that altering or creating tangible reality changes our beliefs and understandings about what is reality.
MD: Mm-hmm. I mean, like once you’re in Aquarius, you then have a sextile to Sagittarius. So you’re able to welcome Jupiter back into your life.
DRH: As a warm-up thing.
MD: Exactly. Okay, Sagittarius, I’m hearing your ideas. Let’s come up with some plans to make them happen perhaps utilizing technology; Aquarius being so associated with technological innovations. Like perhaps we can accomplish a lot more than we could have with Capricorn where we were just focusing on, you know, moving the earth.
DRH: Right. We don’t have to hand-cut every stone for the building, we can use power tools to cut the stone.
MD: Yes, exactly. “No, but I love my handcut tools,” you know, the Capricorn older generation.
DRH: Handmade is the best way.
MD: Yes, it may be true, but think of how many more people are gonna be able to have tools if we improve this process a little bit.
CB: That’s such a great point ‘cause I’ve been thinking about that so much over the past month since we did the year ahead forecast. And since we’re getting to that third decan and Saturn’s making its final run through the end of Aquarius at this point, we’re just seeing the results of all of this technological innovation that’s been in development and brewing over the past three years that Saturn’s been transiting through the first parts of Aquarius. And now a lot of it’s just coming to the forefront really rapidly, including things like artificial intelligence.
And one of the main themes with that seems to be either humans using that or using technology in general to enhance what they do or enhance their abilities to accomplish things; or in other instances it’s being used in order to replace things that we do. But that notion of technology in Aquarius enhancing things and enhancing the work that you do that’s more grounded in the practical, just based on what you have at your disposal or that you have with your inherent abilities and skills with Capricorn, in Aquarius you try to find ways to leverage other tools that you can invent or come up with that can help you do things faster or more effectively.
DRH: Yeah, I feel like ‘efficiency’ would be a word I would apply to Aquarius, whereas Saturn in Capricorn, or Capricornian Saturn, might be more about the conservation of resources and energy and things like. Aquarian Saturn is more like it’s not about conserving, but using what we have efficiently.
MD: Mm-hmm. And being able to distribute it. That air sign being able to distribute the tools and resources so that more people can contribute, so that it becomes even more efficient.
DRH: Yeah, is it networked or is it solitary.
MD: Yes. There’s that aspect to Aquarius that is also solitary or that is hermit-like, where similarly in their youth, they might be isolated in terms of having that vision of what needs to change about society, or being so, you know, enamored with maybe tools or technology that they don’t socialize as much or socialize from a distance, like from the safety of behind their computer screen or what not. So sharing that isolation quality with Capricorn, but then using it towards reaching out into society with their impact.
CB: Yeah.
DRH: Also, it’s interesting to think about how both Capricorn and Aquarius are like dry in different ways, but there’s a rigidity in both of them. It’s like material rigidity vs. conceptual rigidity, right? Like the high standards of Capricorn are maybe like the high standards of achievement, whereas the high standards of Aquarius are more about high standards, you know, philosophically or definitionally, right?
CB: Yeah.
DRH: Or even like a moral or ethical high standard.
CB: It’s like material rigidity vs. intellectual rigidity.
DRH: Mm-hmm, yeah.
MD: Totally. And even like the burden of responsibility that Capricorn feels, I think Aquarius also feels, but towards the means of like, “I’ve got to enact my ideas of how I see the world,” or “My ideas about society are so important and useful,” that that almost becomes the burden that they carry.
DRH: It’s the responsibility of ideas vs. the responsibility of legacy.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: There’s also a continuation to some extent of Capricorn’s ability to say ‘no’ or to criticize things, and in that way to kind of critique or reject things. We see that in Aquarius, but more in terms of social conventions, where Aquarius sometimes just naturally stands out and is unique or weird compared to whatever the norm is, whatever the standard is. But that in and of itself, being unique, is partially sometimes through a rejection of social convention or saying ‘no’ to something.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely.
MD: I almost think about how the nocturnal signs ruled by malefics, like Scorpio and Capricorn, might be reacting to having been rejected or having been forced to be apart from society at some point in their lives, whereas the diurnal domiciles of the malefics, Aries and Aquarius, it’s more like a choice, where they’re a bit happier to go their own way.
DRH: Enacting rejection vs. receiving rejection.
MD: Exactly. Yeah, Aries is like, “I’m not gonna just sit around here and do nothing. Like there’s so much I want to do.” And Aquarius is like, “I’m not gonna sit around here and just do what everybody else is doing ‘cause they’re all idiots.”
CB: Yeah, for sure. That makes sense. And then connected with the, you know, diurnal vs. nocturnal thing and the idea of the Sun emitting things, emitting light, vs. the Moon receiving light in terms of that alternation of the signs.
MD: Yeah, the expressive fire and air signs vs. the receptive or responsive earth and water signs. Yeah, I think it really helps to understand the differing motivations perhaps of Saturn as Capricorn vs. Saturn as Aquarius, and why perhaps Saturn has more dignity by triplicity in air signs as being able to be proactive with its ideas rather than having to defend them I guess so much.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, it is interesting though as a contrast that Capricorn—although ruled by Saturn and a nocturnal sign—has that earthy component that is a little bit more organic in some ways. And when you get to Aquarius that’s one of the ways—with it being a Saturn-ruled air sign and a fixed sign—that we get the associations with technology, but then sometimes you get this feeling the technology can be cold and not organic in some ways. And I think that becomes a contrast between Capricorn and Aqurius as well, there’s a little bit more coldness to Aquarius than there is in Capricorn. Even though Capricorn can have that reputation for being cold or pessimistic or distant, there’s still a little bit more of a warmth there than you might expect.
MD: I was gonna say Aquarius might be like totally content with the idea of like living in virtual reality for the rest of its life, you know, or becoming a part-human cyborg, like distancing from the body because it’s all up in the head, the air sign; whereas Capricorn is just gonna be, you know, as an earth sign, so much more aware of like, yeah, you can escape to virtual reality, but down here on Earth things, you know, we’re still running out resources; we’re still, you know, on the verge of extinction, etc. It’s like Capricorn can’t escape the physical like Aquarius can.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. All right, so let’s transition into comparing the other signs and part of how we do this is by first looking at the modalities. And I know we’ve done a little bit of that already, but if we compare Capricorn to the other four cardinal signs that might be a partial starting point here. So Capricorn is one of the cardinal signs; the other three are Aries, Cancer, and Libra. So we’ve already talked a bit about the comparison with Cancer as the sign opposite and the Moon. Why don’t we talk a little bit about Aries and the ways in which Capricorn and Aries have tensions through the square, as well as some of the ways that they’re similar as a result of both being cardinal signs.
DRH: I was just gonna say one of the first things that comes up is like Aries is so much more immediate than Capricorn, right? Aries is very much of the present moment, whereas Capricorn is definitely thinking both backwards in terms of tradition and forwards in terms of building something that endures. Aries is like, “I’m just gonna do it,” right? Consequence is not as heavy for Aries, but consequence is absolutely heavy for Capricorn.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, when Aries runs into a wall, doing whatever it’s doing, it just goes, “Oh, that hurt, whatever,” whereas Capricorn goes, “I ran into a wall; I really should have prepared better.”
DRH: Like, “Why didn’t I bring my climbing gear to ascend this wall?”
MD: Exactly. And you might just sit there and be like, “All right, next time I’m gonna be able to get over that wall,” meanwhile Aries has already run its head into seventeen other walls.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: And also not cared.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, that impulsiveness is something that’s definitely more dominant in Aries, and I think could be a little bit annoying for Capricorn, not thinking through things ahead of time or not making some sort of plan ahead of time, whereas Aries just wants to dive in sort of head first immediately, and that can be a good thing or a bad thing. There’s also a tension, a fundamental tension there ‘cause one of the things we talked about in the Aries episode that I thought was really great is a keyword for Aries ‘speed’ and ‘quickness’, and like the need for speed and that manifesting in different ways, including sometimes just very simple things like driving fast, wanting to get somewhere quickly vs. with Capricorn sometimes wanting to be a little bit more cautious and do things slowly. Even though it’s still a cardinal sign and you’re still initiating action, there’s a fundamental difference there in terms of it being a Saturn-ruled sign that moves a little bit more slowly.
DRH: Yeah, totally.
MD: Absolutely. Like I think of whenever you’ve described on the podcast Mars and Saturn coming into alignment, there’s the, you know, stop-and-go, putting down the gas pedal at the same time as the brake pedal. When Aries and Capricorn are both enacted it feels very much like that. Yeah, trying to go fast at the same time as taking your time.
DRH: But, you know, it’s like whenever that square is more productive rather than obstructive, I guess, that’s like the judicious use of the brakes whenever you’re hitting a corner, right? It’s accelerating at the right time and braking at the right time to efficiently get around the track.
MD: Yeah, absolutely. So one is actually able to perhaps reach Capricorn’s goals more quickly if correctly applying some Aries speed, but balancing it with the Capricorn brakes.
DRH: Right. It’s like reaching not your most maximum, maximum speed, but your maximum sustainable speed given the terrain.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: I love that. That’s a great extension of that analogy that we always use of like hitting the brakes and the gas at the same time, which we’ve always used for like Mars-Saturn combinations—especially conjunctions—as a metaphor for frustration and inability and inaction, but actually there is a productive use of that. Like if you’re playing Mario Kart and you do like a power slide around a turn or e-brake on something, it’s like you’re drifting at that point, and drifting is like finding that perfect balance between momentum and stop-and-go in order to take a sharp turn as quickly as you can.
DRH: Yeah, exactly. It takes a lot of skill. You have to know what you’re doing.
CB: Yeah, it takes practice.
DRH: It takes practice and it also takes gas, right? You have to have the mastery and the fuel together.
CB: Right.
MD: Yeah, I love the ‘power slide’ metaphor. I mean, with my own Aries Sun, I’m gonna take that. How do we just drift into these things?
CB: Yeah.
MD: But it’s a great point because Aries, you know, would prefer the ‘as the crow flies’, like the most direct route possible to get to where it’s going. But that’s not always the actual most efficient route because there might be a quicksand pit, you know, in that direct route. So with some proper planning, you could find what’s truly the most efficient route by considering all of the possible things, the obstacles that could be there along the way.
CB: For sure. All right, I think that’s pretty good for those two. Why don’t we transition into talking about the other cardinal sign that we’ve only touched on briefly at this point, which is Libra, which is ruled by Venus. Cardinal, air, diurnal, a masculine sign compared to Capricorn. So in the notes, Camille said that Libra initiates partnership and collaboration and that’s part of the comparison with Caprirocn initiating strategy and long-term goals.
MD: You could see how that could be both beneficial for Capricorn in terms of like it could be easier to meet your goals if you collaborate or you partner with someone, but also potentially frustrating for that same reason. You have to take that time to really consider the other person’s opinion, and it might not be as efficient as just doing everything yourself.
CB: Yeah, Capricorn like knows the best way to do it and wants to do it its way ‘cause it knows what it thinks is the best way to do it, rather than having to share that with somebody else and have somebody else that may not be able to be as effective as they are.
DRH: Yeah, I think about Libra as also very interconnective, which definitely finds friction with the Saturnian isolation preference, right? It’s not just, “I don’t care about other people’s feelings. It’s like it’s more comfortable for me to just do it myself.”
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: And so, to be brought into an interconnective way of addressing things can be quite challenging.
MD: Mm-hmm. You can see the benefit too, whereas if Capricorn does learn to work with Libra, the results that it’s trying to produce are more pleasant or more charming or more aesthetic.
DRH: There’s more artfulness that Libra brings. And even just thinking about Saturn’s exaltation in Libra, I feel like Saturnian or like Capricornian dedication and hard work actually encourages Libra to reach levels of artistry that it maybe would not achieve otherwise, right? So it’s like the Capricorn part is like, “No, we have to put in the work on the ground. We have to put in our reps essentially,” and Libra sees the benefit by, you know, increased graciousness or whatever.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, like any fine artist will tell you, it’s not that they were just born naturally with this talent. You know, that might be an aspect of it, but it’s years of dedicated study, really focusing in. You know, for instance, like that piece of art that you have from Alex Mon behind you, it’s like I know that they’re meticulously studying the physical form in order to understand how to properly represent it in two dimensions and that takes years and years of practice and effort.
DRH: Plus, then there’s study of astrology in order to like translate astrological concepts through artistic representation. And this is also just making me think about Libra’s social component, you know, of just like initiating connections, there’s something about making sure that the connections are durable that Capricorn brings in. It’s like, are you introducing people because they’re gonna think each other is cute, but there’s really not any substance between them? Or are you introducing people who will be able to have mutually-reciprocal relationships for the long-term?
MD: Mm-hmm, right. Like Capricon doesn’t want to do just that superficial Libra thing of just let’s all just pretend to be nice.
DRH: ‘Cause it’s pleasant, I guess.
MD: Isn’t it just nice to be nice? Yeah, is nice actually accomplishing something? If not, then, you know, count me out. By the same token, I think Libra in that relationship to Capricorn is able to be like, “Hey, you don’t want to be like Aries over there and just be like a self-centered asshole.”
DRH: Right. There’s something about what is the strategic utility of kindness.
MD: Exactly, yeah.
DRH: Like kindness in and of itself is great, and also, it has positive, long-term consequences.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Totally.
MD: You’re gonna reach, you know, so many more people with this legacy or this goal that you’re trying to build if you incorporate social awareness.
DRH: Mm-hmm, yeah.
CB: Yeah. Also, that contrast between Capricorn and Libra, it makes me think of this post recently on Reddit where it was trying to explain to millennials how marriage is not just like a piece of paper. And it was explaining that in the context of somebody who’d been in a relationship for many years—for like ten or fifteen years—and I’m guessing they’re in their 30’s or something and they just never got married ‘cause they didn’t think it was important, and they lived together and everything else. But then the partner got sick and entered end-of-the-life stuff, so they ended up getting married. And they were explaining the legal benefits of that, of marriage, and that, you know, marriage comes with a lot of immediate legal benefits and how that’s one of the few things that like immediately makes two people who are otherwise not related family members and creates like a legally-binding document.
So then when the person died their family—who the person didn’t have much connection with—came out of nowhere and tried to take all the possessions and stuff of the deceased partner, even though that wasn’t their wishes, and while the partner was in hospice, tried to move them to another state so they could die where they grew up; except the partner didn’t want that at all. Neither of the two individuals wanted that at all. So it really explained that marriage in that context and creating that legally-binding structure of merging your two personalities in some ways or lives created a single entity between the two of you actually had a real practical value and justification beyond just, you know, a romantic or ideal justification.
DRH: Right. Marriage isn’t just the fairytale wedding.
CB: Right.
DRH: Marriage has very concrete and tangible consequences, some of which are very desirable. Some of which, you know, may or may not be desirable, depending on your situation.
CB: Right.
MD: True. Yeah, the commitment that involves a legally-binding nature gives the benefits, but then also creates the restrictions. You know, if you’re just going from the strict, like ‘getting the legal papers’ side of things, it can actually be much less expensive to get married than it can be to get divorced in terms of who you’re paying.
DRH: Way less expensive actually. Even just like with the court fees and things like that.
MD: Just the court fees.
DRH: Less than fifty bucks to get married and probably five hundred-plus to get divorced, and that’s not if you’re hiring a lawyer or anything.
MD: Yeah, exactly.
DRH: There’s also the reality that for some people marriage can actually create worse problems, right? So in the United States, if you’re somebody who’s disabled and on disability, if you marry, and your spouse’s resources increase your net taxes or income or whatever a certain level, you lose your benefits.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that can speak to Capricorn’s fear of perhaps partnership in that way of just like being aware that there are consequences to choosing to go in it with someone else.
DRH: To really commit.
CB: Yeah. And don’t you also take on the debt? You can take on the debt of your partner as well.
DRH: If there isn’t a sufficient prenuptial agreement, yeah, you can end up being responsible for hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of dollars of another person’s debt.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: That’s a great keyword for Saturn-Libra combinations, or for Capricorn-Libra combinations, ‘prenuptial agreement’.
DRH: Yes, absolutely. Yes.
MD: Let’s plan for the worst in case this doesn’t work out.
DRH: Yeah, I love you, and also, I don’t know who I’m gonna be in ten years.
MD: Yeah, let’s just think realistically. Things might not work out.
DRH: Yeha. What’s the disaster plan?
MD: Mm-hmm. Just disaster plan in general, Capricorn; Capricorn keywords.
CB: That reminds me of Steven Spielberg’s chart where he has Cancer rising, and he has Mars in Capricorn in the 7th house, and Saturn is ruling the 7th house and it’s in the 2nd house of personal finances. And he got married in like the 1980s, and they had a prenuptial agreement, but they wrote it on like a napkin for some reason. And when they got divorced, he took the napkin to the judge, and the judge was like, “What the hell is this?”
MD: It doesn’t count.
CB: Yeah, predictively voided the napkin prenup. And they were married in California, so then his spouse got half of what he was worth, and at the time in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it was the most costly celebrity divorce in history.
DRH: Wow.
MD: That sounds very Aries to be like, “Oh, let’s just write here on a napkin. That’ll do, right? Let’s go.”
CB: Yeah, well, here’s his chart. I never brought this component into play. I always looked at this as a ruler of the 7th in the 2nd house, night chart, Saturn example. ‘Cause the reason I even found this example was that somebody challenged me on this once with his chart, on the doctrine of sect, where they said, “This is this famous director. He’s one of the most famous movie directors of all time, and he’s very wealthy. But he has Saturn in the 2nd house in a night chart, so how could that possibly make sense?” ‘Cause we would think the doctrine of sect would say that he shouldn’t have money or something like that. And I was like, “Well, no, that’s not necessarily what it means. Let’s look at what happened when that Saturn placement was active and if ever suffer what he perceived as experiences of financial loss.” And sure enough, I believe it was like a 7th house Capricorn profection year when that divorce took place. But it’s also interesting, I just noticed…
MD: The square with Neptune.
CB: Exactly. Like Neptune at 10° of Libra squaring the Ascendant, but also the Descendant at 10° of Capricorn and that sort of ambiguity and therefore tension between those signs.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Wow.
CB: Yeah.
MD: There’s something there too that’s I think helpful for beginning astrologers to learn or to remember, that a placement of a malefic in a house or in a sign doesn’t necessarily mean that your entire life is a struggle, or there’s no room for accomplishment or achievement in that area of life. Like sometimes it is just a singular, very momentous or notable instance of struggle or challenge…
CB: Yeah, exactly.
MD: …that ends up telling that story or fulfilling that promise.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, exactly. It could be like a one-time thing, or it can be a thing that happens, for example, with James Earl Jones, where he had those problems speaking early on, but then eventually was able to overcome that and things largely became better and everything else.
MD: Yeah, it’s almost like the larger-term perspective of time. You know, if you were able to look at your life as a whole, you know, once your life has closed its book, then you will see how perhaps all of the natal placements at a certain point told their story.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, I was trying to explain that to somebody the other day why it’s hard to do consultations for younger people because sometimes you’ll say something, but it may not be something they’ve experienced yet. So it may not land or it may not hit because it’s describing a sometimes singular or maybe even an event that happens a couple of times that still lies in the future.
DRH: Yep, absolutely.
MD: I think that’s another one of the reasons why they say Capricorn gets lighter with age. It’s almost like they’re relieved, like, “Now I know what my challenges have been. Like nothing can surprise me now.”
DRH: Evidence of survival goes a long way in reducing anxiety. Just being like, “Oh, yeah, I got through that. I’m still alive. After that, it did not kill me. That one actually made me better.”
CB: Right.
DRH: You can then look back on that and say, if not ‘thank you’, at least that wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t the absolute worst thing that could have happened ever. And then it’s like, okay, so these other things that are coming up, I don’t have to be quite as clinched around because I have proven to myself, or life has proven to me that even though I feel like I’m in the meat grinder, I’m not sausage yet.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Absolutely.
CB: Is ‘clinched’ a Capricorn keyword?
DRH: I would say so. It’s like that tightness, right?
MD: Oh, yeah.
CB: Right.
DRH: There’s the tension. I mean, as a former bodyworker, you know, I was a clinical massage therapist who focused mainly on fascia, which is connective tissue, which I think is extremely Saturnian. The tension in the body, the holding it together, that sort of sensation of responsibility that creates rigidity, that’s ‘clinchy’. You know, I think about Kaitlin Coppock’s wares. Like you don’t want a Saturn body butter; like that’s not gonna melt anything.
CB: Right.
MD: Even the embodiment I think, when you describe people who are Saturn natives, there’s maybe a tendency towards the hunched shoulders and more like the lean physique just because of psychically carrying all of that weight.
DRH: It can also be like really great bones, right? Like healthy Saturn is like healthy teeth and good bone density, especially Capricorn, you know, those structures being in good shape.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: But if that Saturn is not so great, it can look like osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.
MD: Right.
DRH: Cavities. Root canals.
CB: Makes me think of a famous Capricorn Moon with Cancer rising, Arnold Schwartzenegger, and just his whole bodybuilding career, and just like working so much to be in peak physical condition and peak physical physique.
DRH: Wow. And that’s another Saturn in the 2nd example and this understanding of like the body as a primary resource, and so needing to build the body over time as that primary resource.
MD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, a good way to show, again, like how the detriment of the Moon doesn’t mean that the body is gonna just like suck. Like it just means that the Moon is now working really, really hard incorporating those Capricorn components, instead of, you know, how in Cancer, the Moon might like to just lay around on pillows.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And what you were saying earlier, Diana, about the perils—not the perils—the advantages of, you know, being older and looking back and seeing the challenging events and having greater understanding of the context and being okay with them, the reverse is also true; and I actually came across a tweet that was very perfect today for Capricorn season along those lines. It was a quote that said, “Knowing too much can make one old too soon. All knowledge comes at the right time.” And this is from Shreem Astrology on Twitter who’s a Vedic astrologer, so a shoutout to that. But I thought that was really interesting thinking about that ‘cause that’s kind of true, and especially something we become familiar with as astrologers.
You know, one of the downsides I always say of trying to find out the future with astrology is knowing the future because sometimes that information can be kind of heavy. And that also makes me think of that phenomenon we were talking about earlier of people who were young that had to become old before their time, or had to grow up soon because they had older responsibilities earlier on. Even having knowledge before one normally does is a sort of weight on one’s shoulders that can weigh on you and age you much quicker.
DRH: Right. There’s something about how innocence is the absence of knowing.
MD: Ignorance is bliss.
DRH: Yeah, ignorance is bliss. It’s like, youknow, whenever you gain experience and you’re no longer innocent, you can’t go back. Like you can’t unlearn things. Like you can relearn things, you can learn things differently, but you can’t actually remove awareness from your system.
CB: Yeah, you can’t forget that Santa’s not real, for example.
DRH: Right. Yeah, you can’t forget Santa’s not real. You know, you’re never gonna…
CB: I’m sorry if I’m breaking that to anybody that’s listening.
MD: Oh, no. I think that’s the disclaimer on the Capricorn episode.
DRH: I feel like Santa’s real, but not in the storybook way.
CB: Okay. You’re right. No, I completely take that back because people do listen to this with their children. Santa is real, and I don’t know why I just said that just now.
MD: It was a joke. It was a funny ironic joke.
DRH: It’s a thing that a lot of adults say. A lot of adults crack jokes about childhood.
CB: That’s true.
DRH: Yeah, I forgot what I was gonna say.
MD: The whole ‘knowledge makes you old before your time’ is another thing that I consider about the millennial generation, the Uranus and Neptune in the Saturn-ruled signs, the experience of being, you know, the first generation to have access to the internet at home as children. I certainly know that in my personal experience that changed me. That gave me the ability at a very young age to know that the world was not what it seemed, to know that there were things going on that were heavy. Just the ability to expose oneself to all of the information on the planet from a young age does a change on childhood.
DRH: Especially to be youthful and learning very, very quickly and basically to surpass your parents in navigating the internet prior to being a ‘fully-cooked’ adult.
MD: Absolutely.
CB: Yeah.
MD: And I feel like that enables us, you know, to do more, to almost like—I don’t want to say evolve ‘cause I hate when people use that term without enough timespan that would actually justify evolution. But you think of just how the youth might critique or want to be different than their parents. People who have access to the internet from a young age just have the ability to hone in on like, what do I care about, what do I want to do, who are the people who are also doing that, just to find the path to their personal goals much more quickly or much more efficiently.
DRH: Yeah, I feel like there’s something here about the cardinal tension with that that can be articulated, where it’s just like, you know, here’s this tangible thing that I can do stuff with (Capricorn) that allows me to interconnect (Libra) with people who I might not otherwise interconnect with and pursue ideas and things like that that I might not get otherwise, which allows me to cultivate giving a shit in particular ways (Cancer) that might not be otherwise available in a way that’s all about my own personal pursuits (Aries).
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: And then one of the things that happens there is, where are the elders, right? You know, like the Capricorn component is like, “Hey, slow down kid. You gotta actually be in tune with reality.” You know, how many people have been radicalized–Like young people especially, like young men especially–have been radicalized down truly terrible pathways because of unsupervised access to the internet that isn’t grounded with actual tangible relationships in the real world.
CB: Right. Like incels and stuff like that.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, that’s true. Go ahead.
MD: I always think of authority, like authority figures, role models as a Capricorn archetype. And so, kids find their role models or their authority figures on the internet who are just social media influencers or famous podcast hosts.
DRH: And their life may or may not be what their life is presented as, as well. You don’t have that tangibility to confirm or deny veracity of presentation.
MD; But they’re more engaging than perhaps the authority figures or the role models that would otherwise be present in that person’s community.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: I mean, I think podcast hosts are a fine thing to have in your life and take parental advice from.
MD: Sure.
CB: But even just internet aside, you know, there’s lots of times when I think younger people sometimes find themselves in a situation—if they grow up with difficulties in their household—where they have to take on extra responsibilities when their young, or people that have to play the role of parent if, for example, there’s a missing parent or if there’s a parent that has, you know, a drug or alcohol abuse issue and they have to like raise their siblings on their own or something like that. There’s lot of versions of that archetype of the person that has to become the authority figure or the parent before they otherwise normally would; and therefore, that can kind of like ‘ages’ them up pretty quickly.
DRH: Yeah, totally. It’s like most people who are precocious, most kids who are precocious, didn’t choose to be precocious.
MD: Yeah, it was just a survival tactic almost.
DRH: ‘Mature for your age’ is less of a compliment than people think.
MD: Exactly. Also, the advice, while we’re at it, with false compliments to Capricorn folks. The advice of like, “Oh, why don’t you just stop being so hard on yourself.”
DRH: “Seems like you really have your shit together. I don’t have anything to offer you.”
CB: Right.
MD: Right.
DRH: “Can you help me with this?” instead of being like, “Oh, it looks like you might need help.”
MD: “I didn’t realize that you were struggling. You just seem like you’re mature than I am.”
DRH: “Yeah, you do a really good job at looking like you’re doing okay.”
MD: Right. Like high functionality despite whatever might be going on. Yeah, just because I’m highly functional doesn’t mean…
DRH: Doesn’t mean I like it, doesn’t mean it’s actually sustainable or good.
MD: #Burnout.
DRH: Like, honestly, I would say burnout is the most Capricornian. Like if I think about all of the signs, and I think about all of the signs who are the ones that burnout, I’m just like there’s nothing like Capricorn.
MD: But it feels almost like, again, the ‘Benjamin Button’ thing. Like after Capricorn’s great burnout, like hitting maybe their personal rock bottom, that might be when they’re able to take themselves or take life a little bit less seriously.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the shell has cracked and now it’s just a mess.
[break]
CB: All right, we are back from break. We have a perfect Capricornian issue, which is Diana’s computer is down to twenty-percent. So we now have a race against time and we have a deadline to finish this episode, which means we have to do things as efficiently as possible, so we’re gonna grind through the other sign comparisons that we haven’t done yet. First one, let’s switch to the triplicities. Taurus, first earth sign compared to Capricorn. Trine, so they get along. What do they share in common? Or what are their affinities?
MD: They share a slowness in common.
DRH: Substantiality.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Tangibility.
CB: Tangibility and materiality I think are things they share in common. A love for things that are nice. Nice things.
MD: Perhaps a bit of an inflexibility in terms of having their mind made about what is nice and what is good.
CB: Yeah, Taurus is interesting ‘cause it has very defined tastes. Like once it finds what it likes, it likes to do that thing like over and over again. And Capricorn has a similar thing in terms of maybe sometimes having more refined tastes or inflexibility in terms of its preferences perhaps.
DRH: Yeah, I feel like with Capricorn there’s more of a cultivation of preference and cultivation of taste like over time. Like the refining process is part of the pleasure.
MD: Saying ‘no’ to things.
DRH: Right, and I say this as someone with Venus in Capricorn, whereas with Taurus there is sort of this like, “No, I’ve identified what it is and that’s just what it is. Like I’m not trying to work on it because it’s fine. It’s perfect the way that it is.”
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Right. And that may be something that’s like extremely basic and unrefined but that Taurus just likes ‘cause that’s its personal taste.
MD: Taurus is also very hardworking, which is something they share in common. Taurus understands that in order to have the nice thing that it wants, that takes time. That’s like the motivation towards pleasure and security, perhaps more so than the motivation of Capricorn, which is towards that legacy or that impact on the world.
DRH: Mm-hmm. There’s something about once you get Taurus going, you’re not gonna make it stop once Taurus is in motion, and what generates that motion is more about preferences vs. impact. But like with Capricorn the motivation and the process is the point sometimes, right? It’s not about the achievement of the thing at the other end, it’s about the thing itself.
CB: Right. That makes sense. All right, I think that’s good for Taurus and Capricorn. Let’s move onto the last earth sign to compare, which is Taurus and Virgo. One of the things I talked about earlier was like a similar connection in terms of Virgo is able to focus on the small things and therefore is able to see when there’s something small that’s out of place. ‘Cause Virgo’s very good about sequential order and like the little things falling in order, like words and letters and sentences, so it can be really good at editing a written document, for example, whereas Capricorn is good at seeing the flaws in something and therefore has a sort of similarity in that way.
DRH: I’d say Capricorn is more like, “How’s your outline? Like what’s the overall structure and do we need to improve the overall structure?” Whereas Virgo is, “What are the details inside the structure and how do we refine the details?”
CB: Like the chapter structure vs. the actual sentences.
DRH: Right, yeah.
MD: Mm-hmm. Like Virgo might be really talented at writing in a particular style or crafting the thing or shaping the thing to be what it needs to be, but Capricorn might set that direction like, “We’re gonna need this type of style,” because they’re trying to do this type of thing.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Like this is actually something I help my friends with sometimes, just like, “Well, what is the point? What are you actually trying to achieve with whatever it is that you’re making, understanding that what you’re trying to achieve will determine the best possible structure and delivery methodology?”
MD: Mm-hmm. And they’re both able to—oh, sorry, go ahead.
DRH: And then Virgo is like, “Okay, but how do we refine that into the specifics of what’s being presented?”
MD: Mm-hmm. I was gonna touch on that Virgo is also very capable of self-flagellation and self-restriction, like self-denial, as it seeks to perfect itself or to refine away the flaws in whatever it’s working on; maybe not just the self. Virgo is very willing to do without anything that feels, you know, extraneous or less than ideal once it decides what it’s trying to manipulate or craft.
CB: Yeah, and they’re both signs that deal with specialization or mastery in that way. And maybe that’s connected to the fact that they’re both exaltation signs and both earth signs, where Mercury is exalted in Virgo and Mars is exalted in Capricorn, and they’re both earth signs.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Yeah, I think of what do Mars and Mercury do together if they’re on like a ‘dream team’. They very quickly and efficiently edit and define and articulate…
DRH: They cut to the chase.
MD: Exactly.
CB: Yeah.
MD: What are we trying to do here? What are we trying to say? Let’s do it. Let’s say it now.
CB: Yeah, and that’s what exaltation is all about, raising something up or being up to the highest level of something. So doing something at the highest level is part of the concept of exaltation, and I think that’s something that Virgo and Capricorn definitely both share in common.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Yeah, think of someone who’s like a chess champion, who’s like an exalted Virgo, exalted Capricorn kind of thing.
CB: Yeah, one example I was really annoyed and meant to mention—so I’m gonna throw it in here—in the Virgo episode and I forgot was the birth chart of Donald Glover how has Virgo rising, with Mercury in Virgo. And he wears so many different hats and there’s so many different fields that he’s gotten into and excelled in each of those different fields. And I’ve always been impressed—as an actor, as a musician, as a comedian—like he does all these different things, which is a very Mercury-type thing; like Mercury likes to wear many different hats. But also, having it in the sign of its exaltation and, you know, rising to the top of different fields, at different points.
MD: Yeah, Virgo could encourage Capricorn in that way to pursue multiple skill sets maybe rather than honing in on just mastering one. It’s being able to identify, “If I want to make a movie, I’m gonna need to be a director, be a cinematographer, be an editor.” I always think of Bo Burnham who has that Mercury in Virgo example. In that recent Netflix movie he did, he’s like, “I wrote and directed and filmed and edited and starred in it.”
DRH: He did all of it.
MD: Yeah, all of it while he was having his Saturn return.
DRH: That’s hilarious. One thing that I think is Virgo gives Capricorn the accessory work that will facilitate the big plan, the big project, right? Like when I think in terms of weight lifting or something it’s like, yeah, you can do squats and deadlifts all day, but if you never do accessory work you might not break through your plateaus. Like the accessory work is actually very helpful for furthering the project; it’s not a distraction.
CB: That’s such a good keyword. ‘Plateaus’ in working out is a great Capricorn keyword because it’s that thing where you go to the gym and you’ll start lifting weights, and you’ll see a lot of progress like really fast. Like your muscles will start getting bigger.
MD: Newbies, yeah.
CB: Right. But then at a certain point you’ll see it slow down, and all of a sudden you’re doing the same weights, but you’re not gaining muscle mass as much and it plateaus. So then eventually, what you end up having to do is find a different way to do it and push it in order to jump up to the next level.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: And there’s something about that initial push or the initial leap, sort of like a goat jumping up to like the next level on a mountain, that is really core to Capricorn and that archetype from the ‘cardinalness’ is the energy.
DRH: Right. And what’s interesting is that depending on why you’re plateauing, oftentimes the answers are eating more, sleeping more, or resting more, right? You might need to de-load, like de-load processes. You cut how much you’re lifting if half for a couple of weeks and then you actually come back stronger. Recuperation is what facilitates continued progress.
CB: Mm-hmm.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: That Cancer-Capricorn axis. And that’s also Taursus, right? Taurus is like slow down, eat.
MD: Feels very Taurus.
DRH: Eat enough and then you’ll actually be able to progress.
CB: Got it, okay. Cool, I think that’s good for Capricorn and Virgo. I mean, we could stay there for a while, butI think we can keep moving for the sake of efficiency and time. So what’s left now is sometimes we do the sextile signs, which are the other complementary signs. One of them is Capricorn and Scorpio and what they share in common vs. Capricorn and Pisces. Capricorn and Scorpio are a little bit easier because I think they share a little bit of a strategic outlook, like planning ahead or sometimes being able to see the weaknesses or the shortcomings in something. For Capricorn, it’s like in a critical sense of seeing the cracks and the systemic problems in something, whereas for Scorpio, it’s almost like seeing the weakness in somebody’s armor and therefore knowing where to shoot an arrow in order to hit that weakness, and I think those are similar energies between those two.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Efficiency and conservancy is part of that I would say, where Capricorn wants to fix things so that they’re least-energetically expensive as possible; you know, to refine the budget so we’re not wasting money or time. And with Scorpio, it’s like, “I don’t want to render myself more vulnerable than I need to be. So I’m going to be very specific and precise with how I’m doing whatever it is in order to be efficient in my emotional expenditures.”
MD: Mm-hmm. They also share just the awareness of, you know, the dark side of life, of not being able to turn away from, youknow, acknowledging that things are heavy, life is not all, you know, ‘flowers and sunshine’. I think that sextile really speaks to that perhaps because of the Capricorn rising chart with Scorpio as the eleventh sign, so ruling the place of friendship. You find that Scorpios and Capricorns are ‘birds of a feather’ in that way. They can be together just being super sarcastic or trying to find levity despite maybe the hardships that they’ve endured.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point that those are the two nocturnal, malefic-ruled signs basically ‘cause the other two malefic-ruled signs are both diurnal signs, Aries and Aquarius.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Yeah, I think Capricorn and Scorpio appreciate that about one another. Like there’s not bullshit between them. You know, “Just tell it like it is. Tell me how you really feel about me. Tell me, you know, what’s really going on for you,” that kind of thing.
CB: Sometimes there’s a bluntness to that and a willingness to just look at the negative side of things or the stark side, or sometimes even the gloomy, or what some people might consider like the morbid side of things.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s like an appreciation of the meaning-making qualities of death, which honestly I think also exists towards Pisces too, like if we were to bridge into the sextile between Capricorn and Pisces. Just thinking about the oceanic quality of Pisces, it’s not just the ‘cute’ spirit experience, you know, just like zoning out. It’s also getting completely subsumed by emotion, like grief. And I think that making meaning from those sorts of overwhelming experiences, that’s something that both Pisces and Capricorn can effectively do.
MD: And Pisces can give Capricorn that levity, that Jupiterian perspective. Pisces is also aware of, you know, all of the nuances of suffering and pain in the world. But the Jupiterian outlook is just like, “Isn’t that great.”
DRH: Right.
MD: Everything exists in the universe and it’s amazing.
DRH: Right. And Capricorn can ground whenever Pisces does feel very completely drowned by experience, like can’t find the Jupiterian levity, but just is in the oceanic experience.
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Capricron’s like, “Even the ocean has a floor.”
MD: Mm-hmm. Or in that, “I’ll be your rock in the storm.”
DRH: Yeah.
CB: That makes me think of both Capricorn and Pisces and a tendency to need to look to something bigger. And for Capricorn, you’re looking to something like an authority figure sometimes. You’re looking for an authority figure, like somebody you can follow or pattern yourself after, or something that you look up to vs. in Pisces, wanting to look up to something bigger in terms of meaning or like spiritual truth or something like that.
DRH: Yeah, and I would say that Capricorn doesn’t necessarily need a person, but like a purpose.
CB: Right. That’s a good one, yeah.
MD: Yeah.
DRH: Whereas Pisces doesn’t necessarily need a purpose, but meaning. And, you know, fine-tooth-combing those differences is kind of hard, but meaning isn’t so directed.
CB: That’s tricky because I think Pisces—even though it’s in sextile—would have some tendency to be a little annoying to Capricorn because of the lack of direction.
DRH: Unseriousness.
CB: Yeah. Right.
DRH: And Scorpio would be annoying to Capricorn from the perspective of like, “Why aren’t you doing anything?”
MD: Exactly. “Why are you wallowing in it?’
DRH: “You’re literally just rolling around in the swamp. Come on! Let’s go.”
CB: Right.
MD: Yeah, tp both Pisces and Scorpio. Capricorn is just like, “All right, are we done crying now?”
CB: Right.
MD: Like, “Take all the time you need.” Especially Pisces to Capricorn is like, “We do have physical bodies. I’m sorry I have to remind you. You’re in a life. You’re in a physical form. We’re gonna have to take care of some necessities.”
DRH: “You can’t transcend just because you’re heartbroken, I’m sorry.”
MD: “Not yet. Like we will die. It’s fine. We will die one day. But for now, let’s keep living. Let’s keep doing the thing.”
CB: There’s definitely some escapist tendencies with Pisces, which I think Capricorn, being more grounded, would have more problems with.
MD: Yeah, Capricorn can never fully let go of reality in that way that Pisces can. Like it cannot permit itself to totally escape.
CB: It’s too risky to do that. ‘Cause there’s also like a timeless quality to Pisces: time is like boundless; to escape to an imagined realm with Pisces. You know, with Capricorn, the closest you get to that would be like the world-builder. That would be like the one that’s building an imaginary world or something like that, like Tolkien or George R. R. Martin or somebody like that.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Mm-hmm. And it’s interesting that Capricorn has that relationship with Pisces where it has the aversion with Sagittarius. So it’s almost like it likes Pisces’ dreams and ideals more than it likes Sagitarrius’, perhaps because Pisces is more concerned with other people or with a bigger perspective. Sagittarius might, as a fire sign, be a little bit more self-focused. Yeah, something I was just thinking about is why does Capricorn get along with one Jupiter sign, but not acknowledge that the other one exists?
DRH: I mean, they’re also just sitting together. Sagittarius and Capricorn, they’re sitting right next to each other.
MD: But just kind of thinking of the notion of aversion as, yeah, they’re sitting right next to you, but you’re just like, “Yeah.”
DRH: You’re thinking about something else. Yeah, you’re talking to someone else.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: So speaking of aversion, that takes us to our last two signs I believe, which are Gemini and Leo and how they relate or do not relate to Capricorn, since they share none of the same qualities in common. So why don’t we start with Gemini, if we can. What do you think?
DRH: Whenever I think about Gemini, I think about butterflies, and I cannot think of a less Saturnian creature.
CB: Right.
DRH: Right? Or even like mayflies, right? Like these little winged beings whose life is like 24 hours. Like they’re barely here. Like they’re here, they reproduce, and then they’re done, they’re gone; that’s it.
CB: I’ve never heard anybody critique butterflies and their existence before until this episode.
DRH: I love them. They’re so necessary. They’re so pretty, they’re so flitty, and they disappear instantly. They’re like barely around.
CB: That’s so funny. You’re like, “What a useless bug, a butterfly.”
DRH: They pollinate. They do have a purpose.
MD: They do.
DRH: They do have a purpose.
CB: I feel like you’re backtracking.
MD: They’re just very efficient. Yeah, they get the job done.
DRH: It’s like they do not endure, right? They do not endure and their lives are spent mostly, literally in the air, like not grounded.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: So just from that perspective, it’s just like the antithesis of Saturnian-ness. Like ephemeral and ungrounded.
MD: Like mutable air, diurnal. Obviously like just having nothing in common with the cardinal earth.
DRH: One of my favorite perfumes is called The Butterfly, for the record. So no shade on butterflies.
MD: No shade. I just want to quickly clarify too, no shade on Sagittarius. I’m sorry I keep like harping on how much Capricorn hates Sagittarius.
DRH: I mean, as a Capri-Sagittarius person, I’m just like, “I don’t know. I feel like we’re friends.”
MD: No, we’re totally friends. It feels like Sagittarius just has it so easy sometimes.
DRH: Too easy. It’s true.
CB: Yeah. So back to Gemini. So there can be sometimes a surface level or almost shallow quality to Gemini. I think that would be a tension with Capricorn, that wants to be more serious, wants to dwell on more serious, long-term matters, whereas Gemini, like Aries, is more quick and short.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s also something with the way that Gemini can like collect and disperse information, but sometimes without that much discernment, which I think can be troubling to the, “What is the substantial thing to say and share?” that Saturn has. You know, I even think, like right now I’m even imagining the Ents in The Lord of the Rings.
CB: The tree people.
DRH: Like Treebeard, yeah, like these living trees. They’re very old. Their speech is so slow that it takes them forever to make a decision. And then you have these little hobbits—where there’s two hobbits; they’re Gemini—coming in, being like spicy and fast.
CB: And they’re all like talkative and they’re talking very quickly, and the Ents are like talking very slowly and very deliberately.
DRH: Right. And the hobbits want a quick decision. It’s just like, “We need to go get Saruman right now.”
CB: Right.
DRH: And the Ents are like, “Now is a very fast time.”
CB: Yeah. Yeah, and they have to go and have like a meeting and everything else.
DRH: It takes them all night just to say ‘hello’.
CB: Right. Yeah, I love that.
MD: It’s very much Capricorn being like, “Wait. What are you actually trying to say, Gemini?”
DRH: Yeah.
MD: “You’ve just said like a thousand words, but what were you trying to convey?”
DRH: “What was the meaning in that?”
CB: Terrific. All right, well, that’s gonna be our animal. We need to replace that goat-fish. From now on Capricorn is gonna be the Ents or like the tree people from Lord of the Rings.
MD: Yeah, very relatable.
CB: Okay. So, you know, that tension can also be good. And sometimes why aversions are good is because even though they don’t naturally relate or have that affinity, they can sometimes drag each other into directions that can be useful, so that’s the positive.
DRH: Disrupting the status quo.
CB: Mm-hmm.
MD: And like diversifying maybe the source material that Capricorn was drawing on for making its decisions.
DRH: Yeah.
MD: Gemini might be like, “Wait. But have you considred that your perspective that the world is fucked might not actually be true?”
DRH: It’s like, “The world is fucked. And also, have you listened to the latest Lana del Ray album?”
MD: Yeah, exactly, the levity is helpful.
CB: Yeah, and just the flexibility. I think Gemini can help bring flexibility to Capricorn a little bit more than it would be otherwise, or to lighten up, which is also a quality Sagittarius helps Capricorn out with in terms of lightening up.
DRH: Yeah, I mean, I’m even thinking now of the studies that have been done about elderly people. Like old people have a better quality of life and improved cognitive capacities whenever they are regularly spending time with children. And children are also benefited by spending time with old people, like solidly old, totally retired, not necessarily mobile, limber people. Like there’s a mutual benefit there even though logically you’re just like, “But why would there be a kindergarten inside the old folks home?”
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Like that’s actually good for everybody.
MD: There’s a great show about that actually.
CB: That was probably the best analogy, up there with the ‘tree’ analogy, in terms of the contrast between Gemini and Capricorn, as well as how those contrasts and those tensions or differences can sometimes be productive.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Yeah, every Capricorn needs a Gemini around to keep them young.
DRH: Yes.
CB: Right.
MD: But also, just really quickly, that phrase ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ and how often that’s applied to Gemini and how maddening that is to Capricorn.
DRH: Capricorn’s like, “No, master of one.”
CB: Right.
DRH: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MD: And if you have Gemini placements and Capricorn placements, how difficult that can be to reconcile. To be like, “Every new interest that I take on, I need to master it.” Like what an impossible task that can be.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeha, for sure.
DRH: Staring at Mars in my 6th house right now.
MD: Oh, I know.
DRH: It’s like the lesson for all Capricorn risings right now: “Have you tried doing less?”
CB: All right, let’s move onto our final contrast, I believe, unless I totally skipped a sign, which is Leo vs. Capricorn. I know we touched on that.
MD: Last, but not least.
CB: Right.
DRH: Saving the best for last, Leo.
MD: There you go. That’s why we were doing it.
CB: Yeah, definitely not least. So Capricorn’s a cardinal, earth, feminine sign, and Leo is a masculine, fixed, fire sign.
DRH: So one of the things that immediately comes up for me when I think about Capricorn and Leo is how both Capricorn and Leo have a similar, but different singularity of focus. Like with both of them, there’s like, “I’m going to be sovereign in some significant way for myself.” And with Capricorn it’s like, “I would like to be a sovereign in order to accomplish a legacy,” and blah, blah, blah, whereas I think with Leo there’s like solidity of self for its own sake, right? There isn’t necessarily a purpose beyond that experience of solidity of aliveness, you know. And I think that can be a little confusing for Capricorn where it’s just like, “What do you mean you’re just being yourself?”
MD: Mm-hmm. “I’ve just gotta get my story out there.”
DRH: Right.
MD: “I’ve just gotta tell my story.”
CB: “I just have to shine.”
DRH: Leo’s like, “Why are you working so hard? Why don’t you just be yourself?” says Leot to Capricorn.
MD: Yeah, and Capricorn’s like, “Because my self is not good enough.”
DRH: Yeah, it’s like, “‘Cause my self is kind of boring and it’s actually the evidence of myself that matters, a.k.a., my legacy and work.”
CB: Mm-hmm.
MD: Mm-hmm. “Yeah, we can tell my story after I’ve accomplished something noteworthy.”
DRH: “The biographer can take care of the story part, like once I’m dead.”
MD: Exactly.
CB: That’s a really good analogy or metaphor combination of just the biography or the autobiography of a person who’s lived a long and successful life doing many different, interesting career things, and they’ve built themselves up until they were somebody. Or they made themselves into a celebrity where they’re sort of like the center of a little solar system in their own life.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Mm-hmm.
DRH: Yeah, I think that’s where if Capricorn and Leo are successfully, I won’t say blended, but like merged in some way, it’s the “I’m eighty-years-old and I’m having a ghostwriter do my autobiography while I sit and talk with him and eat cookies.”
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah.
MD: Very much—oh, go ahead.
CB: Just to talk about oneself is the Leo part, but to talk about one’s accomplishments is the Capricorn part.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Yeah. The Leo-Capricron integration as well could be kind of recognizing that one has to become the role model that they want to see in the world. Because with the Leo placement, people will be naturally maybe noticing you or looking up to you, you know, or you’ll feel that call to like put yourself out there. But then with Capricorn needing it to be a substantial reason that people are looking at you, it’s like, “If people are looking at me, I better make sure that I’m…”
DRH: Worthy.
MD: Exactly. “I’m someone who’s worth looking at.”
DRH: Right. And that worth is actually interesting since Leo is the eighth sign from Capricorn. So from Capricorn’s perspective, Leo being the 8th house, it’s like, “How am I sharing these resources with others?” and, you know, that sort of interesting relationship between owing other people things and being one’s self. So there’s almost like, I don’t know. Like I think about this tension quite a bit in terms of the real thing that you’re sharing is the work that comes through you specifically; it’s not just the work as a standalone.
CB: Mm-hmm.
MD: Right.
DRH: And so, sometimes bridging that gap is that recognition of like, “I might not be special, but there’s no one else that’s like me.”
MD: The unique combination of your story or your life history, your skills, your ideas of what needs to happen.
DRH: Your mastery too. Like that’s what you’re giving the world is that whole combination of things, not just, you know, if you’re a cabinetmaker or something. You’re not just giving people useful cabinets, you’re giving people the cabinets that only you can make.
MD: Mm-hmm.
CB: The Leo-Capricorn combination makes me think of the role of like a movie director on a film set, and how it’s like this singular person who’s at the heart of everything and is sort of the center of that solar system that you have all these other people doing their jobs sort of revolving around, but also who’s playing this role of the person with the plan, the person that is the authority figure, that the buck stops here. They say what goes, and they are the one that everybody looks to for guidance and direction on, you know, how we’re gonna get through this and how we’re gonna accomplish what we need to accomplish. Yeah, that’s what it makes me think of.
DRH: Yeah, absolutely. Unless you’re Bo Burnham or whatever, you’re also not on screen in the end, right? Like most directors aren’t in their movies. But they’re also all over their movies, right? It’s like you know when you’re watching a David Lynch film.
CB: Right.
MD: Mm-hmm. I just had to point out that Bo Burnham is a Leo Sun.
DRH: Oh, that’s hilarious.
CB: So he’s a Leo Sun. But he has three planets in Capricorn?
MD: Yeah, the generational Capricorn stellium, but then Mercury in Virgo. So just like a really good example of what happens when the Sun is in Leo and Mercury is in Virgo, along with the Capricorn stuff. It’s just like, “I will do everything, I will be at the center of attention, but it will nearly destroy me.”
CB: Right. And he was a funny example of somebody that did that and rose to success very early through his talents, like when he was just a teenager. And I just remember him sitting on a panel of comedians several years ago, and they were all like older comedians in their 50’s and 60’s and 70’s and stuff. And the contrast between them was just really interesting to see. Yeah, it’s a funny image.
DRH: Mm-hmm.
MD: Mm-hmm. And then that awareness of the self, the flaws, the critiques of the self, reflecting on how to improve the self—that seems to be a lot of what the content of that movie Inside is about. It’s like he’s going through a Saturn return, and he’s realizing that the cheap shots that he would take at people who are from less advantaged social groups, he’s like, “I’m recognizing now that that was inappropriate, and it’s my responsibility as a straight, white, man to be as good of a person as I can.”
DRH: Mm-hmm.
CB: Yeah. Yeah, that was one of the best Saturn in Capricorn, Saturn return stories, it was interesting. I’m gonna have to do a Saturn returns in Aqurius one here pretty soon now that we’re getting to the end of that. But speaking of getting to the end of things, I think we’ve gotten to the end of this episode and to our comparison with the different signs of the zodiac, unless there’s any I’ve forgotten, but it looks like we did pretty well. This has been an amazing conversation. I really liked it. I’m sad it’s over. ‘Cause it’s a funny Saturn in Capricorn thing where once we got warmed up and got going, I feel like we started covering a lot of really amazing stuff and really got into it. And we could go forever, but the limits of time and space and other Saturn things are going to force us to come to a conclusion here. So tell me what each of you have going on and where can people find out more information about you. What do you have going on, Diana?
DRH: I’m currently working on some things that I can’t talk about quite yet, but I also have a lot of previous things that I’ve done, like lectures and workshops that are available on my website. I’jm continuing to do stuff on my Patreon. And every now and then I say interesting things on Instagram. So that’s kind of it for now.
CB: Nice. What’s your website URL?
DRH: DianaRoseHarper.com, which will immediately convert to ddamascenaa.com, but it’s easier to spell DianaRoseHarper.
CB: Nice, okay. And what do you have going on, Madeline?
MD: Mostly working behind the scenes on Honeycomb Collective, my business. Yeah, it’s a two-person business.
CB: I actually forgot to introduce you at the very beginning of the episode, so that actually would be worth doing. So you’re actually one of the two heads and the founder of the Honeycomb Collective and the Personal Astrological Almanacs, which we’re huge fans of here on the show.
DRH: Best things in the world. Buy one now.
CB: That’s your brain-child, right?
MD: Yeha, exactly. My partner, Colin and I, just…
DRH: Are geniuses.
MD: I mean, he’s the Aquarius stellium, so we’ll give him the ‘genius’ credit. But no, it’s something funny. Sometimes people think that we’re like a big company, maybe because of just the proliferation of the product within the astrological community or the polished presentation of it. But yeah, it’s the two of us. So if you ever write to our customer support, it’s one of us that’s gonna answer it. If something happens to your product, it’s one of us who’s gonna deal with it. Whenever people are like requesting new features and what not, I’m like, “We will try to get to that.”
CB: Nice. So you sell personalized astrological almanacs based on a person’s actual birth chart. People enter in their birth data and then it actually prints up a custom, personalized almanac that lists your transits for the year and things like that, right?
MD: Exactly. So essentially we’ve created software that will automatically generate the personalized book, which we then will, you know, mainly review or refine when necessary. But yeah, it’s like we’re kind of a technology company. This is like with our Aquarius-Capricorn synastry, just like a ‘bringing technology into physical form’ sort of vibe. But yeah, so you can find more about that at Honeycomb.co, which is Honeycomb-dot-c-o. Yeah, and I’m hoping to do more being in front of the camera this year because we get a lot of requests for workshops and tutorials, you know. You can follow some of our instructional information on Instagram at H-N-Y-C-M-B_C-O, which is just ‘honeycombco’ without the vowels.
CB: Nice.
MD: Yeah, and it’s me doing all of that Instagram stuff if you’re ever wondering who’s writing the content.
CB: Awesome.
DRH: The things you make are always brilliant, the little infographics.
MD: Thank you.
CB: Yeah, I love your infographics and memes. Some of the best meme game in the business.
MD: That’s high praise.
CB: Yeah, so I’ll put links to both of your websites in the description below this episode, either on the podcast website or in the description below the video on YouTube. As for myself, I’m just gonna keep doing the podcast. I’m almost finished with this series and it’s been a lot of fun. If people have enjoyed this work, or if you’re learning a lot from it, consider signing up to my Patreon in order to support the series, as well as future episodes I’m gonna do. ‘Cause I’m starting to think about what comes after this zodiac series since we’re gonna be wrapping that up here in the next few months and maybe doing an ongoing series on the houses, and starting a series on each of the 12 houses after this.
DRH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, we’ll see what happens. All right, well, thanks both of you for joining me today.
DRH: Thanks for having me.
MD: Thanks so much. It’s been awesome.
CB: All right, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time.
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The astrology software that we use and recommend here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is available for the PC at Alabe.com. Use the promo code ‘AP15’ to get a 15% discount. For Mac users we recommend a software program called Astro Gold for Mac OS, which is from the creators of Solar Fire for PC, and it includes both modern and traditional techniques. You can find out more information at AstroGold.io, and you can use the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ to get a 15% discount.
If you’d like to learn more about my approach to astrology then I’d recommend checking out my book titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune where I go over the history, philosophy, and techniques of ancient astrology, taking people from beginner up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. You can get a print copy of the book through Amazon or other online retailers, or there’s an ebook version available through Google Books.
I also recently published a new translation of The Anthology of the 2nd century astrologer Vettius Valens, which is one of the most important sources for understanding the practice of ancient astrology. You can find that by searching for ‘Vettius Valens, The Anthology’ on Amazon or other online book retailers.
If you’re really looking to expand your studies of astrology then I would recommend my Hellenistic astrology course, which is an online course on ancient astrology where I take people through basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over 100 hours of video lectures, as well as guided readings of page texts, and by the time you finish the course you will have a strong foundation in how to read birth charts, as well as make predictions. You can find out more information at courses.TheAstrologySchool.com.
I also recently launched a new course there called the Birth Time Rectification Course where I teach students how to figure out your birth time using astrology when the birth time is either unknown or uncertain. You can find out more information about that at TheAstrologySchool.com.
Each year the podcast releases a set of astrology calendar posters for the coming year, and we’ve just released our 2023 Planetary Alignments and Planetary Movements Posters, which are now available on our website at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/store. There you can also pick up our 2023 Election Astrology Report where Leisa Schaim and I went through the next 12 months and we picked out the single most auspicious date for each month using the principles of electional astrology. You can get that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2023report.
And finally, thanks to our sponsors, including: The Mountain Astrologer Magazine, which is a quarterly astrology magazine which you can read and print or online at MountainAstrologer.com. Finally, thanks also to the Northwest Astrology Conference, which is happening May 25-29, 2023, just outside of Seattle. This year’s conference is going to be a hybrid conference where you can either attend online or in person. Find out more information at norwac.net.