Capricorn I: Hope. springs. eternal.
By Christa de Mayo
In Neil Gaiman’s series, The Sandman, the main character, Morpheus, also called Dream of the Endless & Oneiros, is held captive by Roderick Burgess, an amateur occultist, Aleister
Crowley-esque figure who seeks power, wealth & immortality. Burgess intended to entrap Morpheus’ sibling, Death, but Morpheus is the one who became imprisoned instead. He was held captive for 70 years while his realm slowly began to crumble; the dreams and nightmares he created wandered out into other worlds and his kingdom was starting to be assumed forever abandoned. While held, Morpheus reflects on the damage that his absence is having on the waking “real” world when he says “The savagery of my captors bespoke a world whose dreams, in my absence, turned darker still” He is finally freed however and his task is to regain three magical talismans who embody his demigod power. Each of these vestments was taken from him during his captivity and to take control of his kingdom, to regain power & salvage his creations, he must reclaim all three vestments. One of these vestments is a helm that ended up in the possession of a demon in Hell. After discovering its location, Morpheus travels to Hell to challenge this demon but is subjected to fighting with the ruler of Hell itself, Lucifer Morning Star 1 During this challenge, Lucifer and Morpheus trade attacks through their storytelling.
Lucifer begins by attacking Morpheus as a dyer wolf, Morpheus attacks back as a “ hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing”, Lucifer attacks as a “serpent, horse-biting, poisoned toothed”, Morpheus becomes a “bird of prey, snake devouring, talons ripping” etc…They continue this battle, this hellish dance, in an exchange of words that become form until Lucifer becomes a “nova, all-exploding, planet cremating” destroyer all life, the “anti-life. The Beast of Judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds, of everything.” This is the end, for what can spring from the end of everything? Morpheus simply responds to Lucifer, both combatants on the floors of the throne room of Hell, surrounded by thousands and thousands of demons, whispering:
“…I am hope…”
This destroys every attack cast at Morpheus and he succeeds in this perilous battle. For what can defeat hope? Hope. springs. eternal. This is Capricorn I.
Jupiter enters into Saturn’s world. Dreams don’t die.
In the prior decan, Sagittarius III, we saw a Saturn-ruled decan in Jupiter’s sign. This round, we have a Jupiter-ruled decan in Saturn’s sign. This exchange between the greater malefic & the greater benefic, the constrictor and expander of the solar sect is curiously expressed in Capricorn I. Firstly, we have the image shown in the Rider Waite Smith deck of the Two of Coins. Coins are also called Disks or Pentacles in tarot, but particularly in this situation I prefer to use “Coins”. In most tarot traditions, coins represent the element of Earth and show the tangible ways that energy finds form. Capricorn is Cardinal Earth, the hinge on which the wheel of time turns. Capricorn I, shown as the Two of Coins, is called the Lord of Change.
The Two of Coins shows a jester-like character, dressed in a tall red hat, red-sleeved tunic with red leggings, and pointy green shoes. He is standing on a nondescript ground while two ships, at varying distances sail on a swelling sea behind him. He holds one coin in each hand and a green band wraps around the two in a figure eight shape, crossed over as a lemniscate. There is a geometric shape called the Devil’s Curve, a curve defined in the Cartesian plane that resembles the shape made by coils of wire that rotate from forces exerted by the magnets surrounding it. This is the shape made by the energy exchange of the two forces, the movement between the coins. The twos of any suit is the first break that begins after the Ace of said suit: Ace of Coins followed by the 2 of Coins. The Ace holds the quintessential nature of its suit and the 2 begins the dynamic tension caused by the first split. With tension comes stress, magnetism, a conversation, a back & forth, all forms of energetic interplay. This card isn’t necessarily showing the infinity symbol, it is showing the momentum created from the exchange itself. The flow of chi, if you will. This is the time of Solstice, the moment during the wheel of the year when hope has returned as the spark of light begins its long climb back to the top. This is the seasonal death of the Holly King and the return of the Oak King, the beginning of Yule and the Wild Hunt.
Tarot is how I learned about the decans. Before I began a serious study of astrology, I was reading copious articles in the Mountain Astrologer, before YouTube and podcasts (gasp, can you even imagine) I was learning about the relationship between tarot and astrology in books. Before I knew what essential dignities were in astrology, I studied the images of the tarot, and that has informed how I relate to the decans. The Astrologer’s Co+Op has been a beautiful example of how we all individually relate to this dignity and how important the act of transmission is for working with these tools of divination. (Not fortune-telling, but yes fortune telling.) It is connecting ourselves to the divine energy that imbues and surrounds us, weaves within our own stories and out through the words we tell each other. I practice both tarot and astrology as a joyful and defiant act to connect to the divine. That being said, I will speak on the tarot images of the Rider Waite Smith interchangeably with the decan and domicile rulers themselves.
The Wheel of Fortune, in tarot, represents Jupiter, the decan lord of Capricorn I and The Devil card represents Capricorn itself. Jupiter is considered fallen in Capricorn, as it exalts in the opposing sign of Cancer. But decan rulership speaks to the importance of the planet having something to offer the sign. Jupiter is here by design, to offer hope in the darkest of days maybe? To provide levity when we are feeling the heaviest? If we look at each of these cards, we can begin to build the story of the return of the light in these cardinal degrees of the cardinal earth sign. Let’s go.
The Wheel of Fortune
In Rachel Pollack’s book “78 Degrees of Wisdom'' she writes
“In many versions of the King Arthur legend, the king dreams or sees before him on the eve of his final battle, a vision of a rich and powerful king seated on top of a wheel. All of a sudden the goddess Fortuna turns the wheel and the king gets crushed at the bottom. Sobered, Arthur realizes that no matter how much secular power we accrue, our fate rests always in God’s hand.”
The image on the wheel card is of a golden disk, crossed with the sigils of each element. The Hebraic letters YHVH (Yod Heh Vau Heh) are on the outer edge of the disk and intersect with the spelling of T-O-R-A, meaning “instruction or law”. There are a series of animals that surround the card. A sphinx holding a sword sits at the top of the wheel, and hovering inside of clouds sits an angel and phoenix over the sphinx’s shoulders. To the left side is a descending serpent and to the right, rising up from the bottom of the disk is Anubis, an ancient Egyptian god of the dead shown as a man’s body with a jackal’s head. Below him, sitting in respective clouds in the corner are a winged bull and a winged lion. All of the winged creatures (suggesting the fixed signs in astrology) are reading from a book, indicating the wisdom that comes from being stable throughout the turning of the wheel.
The Devil
The Devil card, as depicted in the Rider Waite Smith deck, shows a curved horned creature with bat wings, a man’s naked upper body, and fur-covered legs with feet resembling a rooster’s. Set along a black backdrop, the face of the devil is humanoid with a fiery beard that travels up the sides of the face to the ears like a dog’s. He holds his right arm up with the palm exposed, reminiscent of swearing an oath in a court of law as his left arm is pointed down, holding a torch with flames licking up it. He perches on a black box affixed with a single metal loop. The loop has two chains extending from either side that wrap around the necks of two humans displayed at the Devil’s feet. Both humans are nude, wearing smaller more classically devilish horns (a la AC/DC), and possess tails that curl up behind them. The female is on the left side of the card, under the Devil’s right hand and she has a green tail that curls up in a bundle of red grapes. The male figure stands on the right side of the card and has a tail of fire touching the inflamed torch that the Devil is holding. To finish off the scene, our eyes are drawn to the pentagram that is set between the Devil’s horns penetrating his forehead.
The Devil is Capricorn personified. Capricorn is cardinal earth, showing a tangible or material shift in the narrative. Capricorns are motivated, but by which earthly desire is the question.
Motivated by ambitions of grandeur, lusts of the flesh, control & subjugation of others, or the containment of matter for material wealth? ¿Por qué no los todos? Through the cardinal nature, there is an invitation for something to change, some doorway to push through. I liken the cardinal nature to the hinge on a revolving door, opening up to new vistas with momentum to go in a new direction. Don’t Look Back. In this tangible earth sign ruled by Saturn, I would see an invitation for the mastery of a useful skill while at the same time, the Devil can also show the illusion of being bound (Saturn-coded) by material limitations. The desire for those limitations on one chain and the desire to be freed of those limitations on the other. Yes, the two figures are held in metal bondage, but with very little effort they could lift those chains off of their own necks. Yolked no more.
Capricorn I is the Lord of Change. Look at the ships behind him, traversing a rough and rowdy sea. Look at the coins that he holds and the movement of energy between them. The only constant is change, so the ironic trope goes. Like sharks moving in water that cannot be still, the currents of the ocean never cease to rush along with them. The currency around those coins is also endless, propelling an initiation of something new. All of the tropical/cardinal signs signal the shift in the zodiac, the place in the sky where the wheel turns. The constellations are placeholders of areas of the sky itself. The procession of the equinoxes has shown that the constellations have continued to move past where they were first observed, but what these constellations symbolize, and what meaning they teach, are ancient. It’s hard to see that the light has shifted during the season of Capricorn I because it is the day that is the darkest in the year (for the Northern Hemisphere). But it is within that darkness, that stillness, that we are able to see the quiet spark of what is to be born. It is the witnessing of that deep magic of the earth that we can begin again and celebrate that the light has returned. We need the darkness to see that there is light. Yes, the climb is long to ascend back to where we will notice its triumph in Aries I, but we get to take the first steps here.
These ten days of Capricorn I have a special place in the halls of myth. I’m unaware of one singular decan that has a story dedicated to it like this one does. The story of The Wild Hunt is one of a spectral, nocturnal horde recorded in folklore throughout European history, notably written down by Jakob Grimm in Deutsche Mythologie. It is a folk tale shared throughout several European countries that dates as far back as 1127 in England. Concentrated in Germanic myths, The Wild Hunt is a time when a leader spearheads an otherworldly swarm to race/hunt/parade through the countryside. This horde is sometimes mingled with earth spirits, faeries, and the like. Odin, for example, leads a hunting party through the Nine Worlds, including the world where we mortals live, on his eight-legged steed, Sleipnir, on quests of a shamanic nature. That sounds fun! In another tale, Frau Holle is said to be cursed
“because she expressed to prefer the eternal hunt rather than go to Heaven, and her daughters, who expressed the same desire, were transformed into small dogs who either pull her sled or serve as hunting dogs. She visits the homes of humans during the Twelve Nights of Christmas and punishes the lazy while sometimes rewarding the virtuous.”2
What does it speak to us about this time of the year? Is the Wild Hunt relevant?
Due to the offset nature of the solar cycle and the lunar cycles, our two luminaries do not align completely in a year. There are about twelve full moons in one year, which isn’t enough to account for all the days between one winter solstice and the next. In an attempt to align these two together, the 11-12 days after the winter solstice (where we most likely get the 12 Days of Christmas) are intercalary days, a time that is outside of the lunar calendar or outside of the mundane time. It is time for revelry & communion with the magical spirits, not to be used for the daily activities that keep us occupied on any other day of the year. It is more of a 12H ritual than a 6H ritual. It is a time ripe for magic, one where you may see a mob of spectral lights dancing furiously through the woods or witness a predictive pattern from birds in flight.
See: Ornithomancy. It is a time to seep into the dark world of meditation and find the sparks that seek new kindling. It is a moment when we are given the chance to connect to the bottom of the wheel so that we can ride up again. We ride at dawn.
The Wild Hunt and the Omen Walk.
I am new to the astrologer Hawk Astrology and for the past three years, I have participated in the Omen Walk that they lead. It is reflective of what a modern Wild Hunt practice can look like. The full concept can be found here as a guidebook for purchase, because if you value the work then value the creator with coins (see: energy finding form above) The tl;dr is that on these intercalary days succeeding the winter solstice, the ten days of Capricorn I (and a day on each side, flanking this decan) you’re invited to go on your own spectral walk through the proverbially haunted forest. While you are in there, you will invite the friendly spirits to surround you and ask them to help you. Ask that they illuminate the omens along your path that portend your next year. I won’t give too much away, as it isn’t my creation, but I will attest to the potency of this magical act. Ask me how I know. It is within the darkness of this time, these 10 days outside of lunar time where we find ourselves ripe for magic.
To close, we return to the three cards in view within this decan, The Wheel of Fortune (as Jupiter, the decan ruler), the Two of Coins (as 0°00’-9°59’ Capricorn), and The Devil (as Capricorn) and what do we see? A seesaw action, a back-to-forth movement, a lack of stillness and impetus to choose. The movement of an endless circular path whether it be from the loops of chains that secure us, the circles of change that tempt us, or the orbits of the planets that we are bound to, we are always moving. Sometimes within this decan, there can be paralysis because of all of the moving parts happening at once. The push of Jupiter and the pull of Capricorn, the endless movement of the wheel in conflict with the bondage of the Devil. What lemniscate do you find yourself in? With what wave of inertia are you caught? And as you ride the wheel and discover yourself as a “ hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing” or a “serpent, horse-biting, poisoned toothed” you’re at least on the wheel. At this point in the darkness, at the magical bottom rung in the story of light, the only direction to go is up.
“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
1 In the written series, The Sandman Preludes & Nocturnes, Morpheus battles Choronzon, the demon who had possession of the helm. In the Netflix series The Sandman, the creators, including Sandman author Neil Gaiman, changed the narrative so that Lucifer was chosen by the demon to fight on its behalf. The words are the same in both written & film depictions, but the combatants were altered.
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frau_Holle
About the Author
Christa de Mayo
I have been a student of astrology my entire life, folding in the practice of studying the stars with my herbal and artistic practices. Coming out of a scholarly existence and into the world as a consulting astrologer has been a beautiful reflection of my nativity. I love to see the power of astrology become accessible to everyone. Sharing practical ways to fold astrology into life is something I love to do, because, like herbalism, Astrology is the people's medicine.
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