If you haven’t already, I urge you to read the article explaining how the zodiac may be seen as a collection of twelve psychological types and thus gain context.
First Mode: Cardinal
Forces: 1↑ Day and 6↓ Night
In the yearly cycle of human experience, the tenth phase corresponds to Capricorn, the sign that starts with the maximum sixth level of Night Force at the winter solstice, but which is also aware of the growing, albeit minimal, Day Force. Throughout Sagittarius, the nights grew longer and the Night Force stronger, and we were able to imagine a powerful collectivity that could solve the biggest problems and reach the broadest knowledge, once its diverse energies were given form and focused in one direction.
The solstices are moments of reversal in the sun’s direction. As such, they represent a duality. On one side, they are the culmination of half a year of effort and growth by one of the Spiritual forces, resulting in either an individuality at the summer solstice or a civilization at the winter one. They also symbolize the beginning of another half a year of effort and growth, this time by the opposing force. This is the reason a solstice requires an entire operative coupling: two consecutive signs, beginning with Aries and Taurus. The culmination phase for one force is achieved in the sign prior to the solstice, the root symbol of the coupling, while the seed phase of growth for the other force happens in the subsequent sign, the confirmation symbol of the same coupling.
As confirmation symbol for Sagittarius, Capricorn will give structure to the civilized society envisioned in form by that sign, producing a State that, ideally, will harbor diverse groups and their cultures so they flourish in Aquarius, the target of Sagittarius’ arrows. The visions of Sagittarius are made concrete in Capricorn as institutions, rules, norms, etc., that deal with generic members of society, which necessarily implies a lack of regard towards their individuality.
Imperial Power
The Night Force collectivizes. It expands the value of a single individual by the magic of human relatedness. It starts with the family at the symbolic summer solstice, in Cancer, the sign of the home. Leo is mostly concerned with the natural expression of the individuality so, even though it senses the importance of relating, it sees others as potential audience for his art or subjects over whom to reign. In Virgo, however, we relate with our extended family or peers at work: group relationships thrust upon us. Libra sees the Night Force becoming prevalent, urging us to participate in all kinds of group activities by seeking meaningful relationships such as romantic liaisons or business partnerships. In Scorpio, it impulses us to seek a deeper identity with as broader a collectivity as possible.
In Sagittarius, the Night Force enables the broad generalizations and discoveries of a civilization, developed by the linking of subsequent generations, diverse racial groups, and many philosophical and scientific achievements. The personality realizes that he (or she) is a relatively unimportant cell of the human society organism. Finally, in Capricorn, family cells, small tribes, even cities and nations, all disappear. In their place rises the powerful State who governs, epitomized by the Roman Empire and its symbol of power, the figure of Caesar, omnipresent in money’s corrupting power. Capricorn symbolizes any state organization encompassing great territories and diverse racial groups, and all that is implied by such organization, especially politics.
Birth of Christ
The empire has no interest or energy to concern itself with the needs and desires of the individuals, which become interchangeable resources, further diminishing their value. Just like in the middle of the Roman Empire we find the historical Christ fighting for what is now known as individual rights, Capricorn has the seed-archetype of the religious Christ, which is the Day Force. Christ is that universal power which impulses the individualization in men. All the democratic values, based on the spiritual equality and dignity of all human beings, have their foundation in the Christ principle of the Day Force. It is behind the evident truths of the US Bill of Rights and its Declaration of Independence. It is the center of “Human Rights”.
Caesar and Christ! Both operating in the sign of Capricorn. Caesar at the peak of his power, Christ but a baby. But, Caesar’s empire will fall while the power of Christ will rise through the value of community and rebellion against injustice in Aquarius, and the reliance on compassion in Pisces, until it will prevail in Aries as a nascent personality centered in our ego. In Capricorn the individual fights against his anonymity in the State but the Night Force triumphs. The great trajectories dreamed by Sagittarius for the civilization, soaring with the wings of philosophy or science, crystalize; and those who understood their implications are replaced by bureaucrats. Armies and administrators take care of the ever-changing borders of the empire, and a central government must enact laws to control the diverse peoples, ways of thinking and traditions inhabiting within those borders.
Collective Unconscious
Imperial Rome is no longer the City of Rome, or even the Republic, and similarly, in an individual who has successfully gone through the Scorpio and Sagittarius phases, his ego is no longer direct and aggressive, hiding its insecurities behind dramatic gestures. The ego has expanded from the many kinds of interactions with diverse social groups and through the identification with the wonderfully strange powers that emerge from any collectivity, what we call the collective unconscious.
The collective unconscious has been flooding the purely-personal ego with powers liberated by non-procreative social sex and by civilization. The individual may passively succumb to those powers and give into a busy life of ambition, or he can dominate them and become the adept in Scorpio or the philosopher in Sagittarius. Rather than expanding continuously, forever craving more power, knowledge, money, or sex, the ego will have undergone a true metamorphosis, surrendering its energies to a broader center of organization and consciousness, which includes his conscious mind and the subconscious around it. Such center is what Carl Jung called the Self.
If the personality stays centered on the ego, he will remain a limited organism, much like a small tribe, living separately from every other human being and enslaved by the pride of Leo. In such case, creativity becomes limited to his world of personal experiences and geographic locale, and his thoughts and feelings are centered on his own limited being. However, should he engage in social intercourse, education, travel, commerce, and love, he will discover another reference center and be forced to accept a different consciousness, abandoning the “strength” of his ego.
An Imperfect State
Unfortunately, the glitter of the great metropolis, the fullest expression of social life, may seduce him to become a member of a powerful court or a faceless cog in the wheel of societal expansionism, a passive participant of the empire’s glory, experiencing its grandeur. Capricorn is the sign of the politician, as mentioned earlier, but also the sign of the oriental yogi who, in spite of living alone, has formed a personal cosmos over which he exerts a particular control while possessing the riches of society, allowing him to be a member of “transcendental armies”.
It all begins in Cancer, where the peak “I” expression is complemented by a permanent partner with whom he establishes a home. However, such peak includes the seed of that which, in time, will overpower his individual ego, for the eventual triumph of society over personality is implicit in the conjugal union that seemed like a purely personal feat. Similarly, all societal and collectivizing forces appear insurmountable in the all-powerful State, and individuals obtain a profession and assume a public role with rigidly established social functions, seemingly forever.
States have inertia, so making change very difficult if not impossible, yet society is not a static organism but the result of fluid relationships and a changing environment full of opportunities that upset the social order. New inventions and the achievements of the younger generations cannot be assimilated, which produces friction and leads to revolutions—all being archetypes of Aquarius. Thus, we have the inevitable failure of the State, for it is based on far-away factors that pretend to expand indefinitely and which completely ignore the needs and desires of the individual.
The Aquarian Rebellion
Whereas a small tribe may survive for millennia in a relative sameness, the empire must change its borders. Politicians must compromise with those who have tasted the power available, desiring more. To increase their wealth, the elites must educate the masses and turn them into technicians capable of working the machinery of production, or into willing consumers of what that machinery produces. This means that civilization itself, Capricorn’s god, must constantly destroy itself so as to keep expanding into new horizons.
Such destruction will be led by people who are never happy with what the State provides, they are the reformers and dreamers whose minds are never satisfied and whose souls bear the mark of Aquarius. Why do they rebel against the State? Mostly because the Day Force has grown just enough to empower the oppressed classes, the seed of a new breed of humans that cherish our distinctness under the Christ principle.
The Dark Side
As we have seen, the problems facing the Capricorn native stem from having a nearly imperceptible Day Force that is not receding further as it did in Sagittarius. Persons of a Capricorn type carry a living seed of a Christ individuality but are unable to identify with it, making them feel alone and frustrated. Desperate, they embrace the “social life” and its activities, intoxicants and stimulants as a way to forget such uncomfortable situation. They crave power which won’t satisfy them, and they know it. To combat the emptiness, they turn to lust and many eccentricities. They are often labeled “egoists” because they wear a mask that they simply cannot shed, fearing the loss of their social status and ambition.
Every Capricorn native has inside a potential Caesar Augustus, or a Nero! But, deep down inside him lies the seed of a Christ individuality fighting for human dignity. Unfortunately, he often behaves like Herod, afraid of baby Jesus and clinging to the structures of the empire. Such clinging to social structures, or to traditional-cultural, ancestral or religious forms of living, is caused by spiritual deafness.
Gift of Personal Integrity
There is a constant struggle between the psycho-mental and the spiritual aspects of men. The former is always striving toward bigger and more inclusive forms of organization, unfortunately taking in more than it can assimilate, while the latter is forced to counteract with a new word or logos, a new spiritual quality incarnated. And thus, Christ was born in the empire of Caesar. The current Anglo-American democracy, with roots in French thought, is the modern Roman Empire. It doesn’t “fit” in Asia or Africa any more than the empire fit in Syria or Egypt centuries ago.
Man is essentially triune. His psycho-mental aspect gives rise to mature forms of individual character over an instinctual physiological life with half-repudiated ancestral traditions. They will only make sense once they are integrated by an act of Spirit. Rather than more or better rules, a larger organization or more people working for the State, we need a new spiritual quality. It is not about building new or better social or political institutions, or about the thoughts and feelings of individuals. Spirit doesn’t deal with declarations of independence or with democratic institutions any more than Christianity dealt with Roman magistrates. As the Galilean said: “Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and unto God what belongs to God.”
The mind of the new civilization may embrace diversity but the mind is unable to integrate it. The fact that integration can only be achieved by Spirit, the integrating Principle of Wholeness, is a perennial lesson for mankind at large, and Capricorn in particular, who is often blinded by the worship of the biggest and most efficient political machine produced by civilization. Yet, as Rudhyar wrote: “man keeps yearning for what no pattern of social organization and no planned society can provide: the clear realization by every individual, and within the individual, of his essential identity”. Such realization may be called a sense of personal integrity, a sense of being an integrated whole, from which derives also a sense of personal responsibility and individual destiny.
Identity, integrity, and self are words of the Spirit, not products of the human mind. Our current faith in the omnipotence of social institutions and forms of organization is a delusion. Man is constantly making forms, but forms become prisons when devoid of the animating power of Spirit. They may compel but cannot integrate. They can destroy the decaying past but cannot breathe the life of tomorrow to anachronistic cultures or ancestral traditions. Our faith must not be placed in procedures or institutions, but in the spiritual contagion of our example. If democracy is to prevail, it will be from emulating how we live it in terms of personal integrity and responsibility.
Always Love. 🌹🙏💖
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