| Capricorn Part One | [audio:http://planetwaves.net/2012/audio/RRR_Capricorn_pt1.mp3] |
| Capricorn Part Two | [audio:http://planetwaves.net/2012/audio/RRR_Capricorn_pt2.mp3] |
| Capricorn Part Three | [audio:http://planetwaves.net/2012/audio/RRR_Capricorn_pt3.mp3] |
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Reality Check for Capricorn and Capricorn Rising | 2012 Annual by Eric Francis
Of the many unusual things about 2012’s astrology is something I have not mentioned to you yet. Are you familiar with the concept of an occultation? I don’t mean Aleister Crowley mixing up bits of gold and newt in an old skull; I mean when one body passes directly in front of another. This is how eclipses work — the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun, in perfect alignment (for a solar eclipse). But the Moon can also pass in front of another planet, and that is called an occultation.
Squaring the Circle: Heaven In Earth. Painting by P.C. Turczyn
There is no stock way to interpret these in astrology, but they are worth noticing. I mention this because, as you have no doubt heard, Pluto is making a long, slow run through your sign that will last until 2024. What you have probably not heard is that on 19 separate occasions — once a month starting in April 2012 and ending in Aug. 2013 — the Moon will occult Pluto, every time it is in Capricorn. Basically, there will be an eclipse-like event in your sign every month for a year-and-a-half.
Events take precedence in astrology based on how unusual they are. Though this is happening 19 times in sequence, I have never seen anything vaguely like it. The pattern itself is what’s genuinely rare. The last time anything like this happened was a series of occurrences when Pluto was in Cancer, your opposite sign — that was between 1919 and 1934.
I’ve been thinking about this for weeks, about how to interpret this for you, and here is what I’m getting back. It relates, of course, to Pluto in your sign. This is a journey that began in 2008, slowly at first, then it picked up momentum that starts to peak in June 2012. Pluto in Capricorn is about you not only restructuring your life but also finding the passion and energy that is trapped inside psychic structures, from which you are breaking free. The action of Pluto can be both painful and liberating at the same time. It can range from ‘hurts so good’ to ‘enough already, I cannot keep up with all the changes I’m supposed to make’.
You can think of this as clearing space within yourself, liberating yourself from the past, or turning over the soil of your psyche so that you can access the fresh, fertile earth below the surface — a surface that has become a bit crusty, but the weathered, packed layer serves to protect the new, rich layer below. (In the next section we will see where this ‘releasing energy from below’ metaphor comes into play a second time).
Now let’s consider the Moon in Capricorn — a placement that is not supposed, by many astrologers, to be very happy, but one that has a distinct beauty. The quality of energy trapped in a structure is described by this Moon. It gives the feeling like someone has to act like a good girl to please their mum, but at the same time is desperately horny and wears no knickers to school. There can be that frustration not only of being pent-up but of having to please two masters — one’s biological instincts and then the need to conform to some social norms. In the end, this becomes a head trip, a kind of game. While you don’t necessarily have the Moon in Capricorn, there will be a potent effect this year as if you do.
The Moon occulting Pluto feels like she’s trying to hide Pluto, which is fine with him — he wears the helmet of invisibility and functions quite well in the underworld — the unconscious, which is the source of all dreams and desires. That Capricorn Moon is trying to put a veil of propriety over what is coming from the most instinctual, hormonal level. At the same time, the relentless quality of the exact conjunction, repeating so many times, is like something deep is trying to work out and work through your emotional body — or perhaps your mother’s emotional body that was imparted into you — as if some ancient emotional and sexual blockage is finally being softened and released. The Moon has to be ‘out of her element’ (in the sign opposite her native Cancer) in order to experience this.
Pluto is strong in Capricorn for many reasons. He is feeling good. But the Moon — the more she tries to resist, the more she finds herself giving in. She tries to deny (occult) him but in that moment they fuse; literally come together. When denying sexual feelings, the more you try the more you are overcome, and inevitably must let go into the beautiful surrender.
In letting go, the pleasure of resistance is released to some other deeper pleasure. The resistance was imparted, perhaps, to please someone, or to have the idea of doing so; so that whole thought form is what is being dissolved, or burned through, again and again. And finally there is penetration, and that is another way of saying transformation — the thing that Pluto is most famous for; and this is acting on emotional resistance, or the burden of over-structure, something that humans are most famous for. There is something here, as well, about letting go of old personality structures, elements of the past, and attachments from the past — and typically this does not happen overnight. But it will, you can be sure, happen steadily and dependably over the next year-and-a-half.
Uranus in Aries — The Revolution From Below
As you’ve probably read, we are entering the phase of the Uranus-Pluto square, which involves your sign because Pluto is in there. Yet Uranus in Aries is as personal for you as Pluto in Capricorn, or almost. You have Aries placed on an unusual angle of your chart — the 4th house, the house of security. (This is your solar 4th if you have a Capricorn Sun, and your 4th by whole sign if you are Cap rising.) This is an assertive, yang, even passionate sign to have on a house associated with caution and sensitivity. It’s a bit contradictory but it also represents the way that you radiate energy from your core, out through your layers.
Uranus in Aries amps that whole phenomenon up a few orders of magnitude, and then when you add the fact that Uranus will soon make a square to Pluto, tack on a few more points on the Richter scale. It’s as if your whole psychic and emotional body is convulsing to release the real you that is trapped deep within, and there is simply no way this is not going to happen.
Uranus in Aries may have you shaking at your foundations. You may be experiencing changes in your household. You may be feeling like you have to break free of the past. Most of all you may be feeling how much you have hidden yourself, or attempted to do so, in the name of being safe. Safety is not a value where Uranus transits are concerned, especially when the question does not involve explosives or heavy equipment and is more related to a question of psychology. In other words, you may be infused with a particularly brash sense of presence in your own environment, as if you’re waking up within your own insecurities.
You may also be having an explosion of that distinctly Capricorn quality of growing younger. It’s as if the little kid in you is well preserved and suddenly coming to life, busting free of all the expectations that were heaped on it. And your whole idea of ‘what is safe’ and ‘what is secure’ are completely reinventing themselves as your need to be free. So if you keep noticing that you feel confined, that you want to bust out, that you are restless as all living fuck, that you want to be the self you always were, and so on and on — well, it’s ALL true. And this astrology in many different forms is working on you six directions from Saturday night.
Let’s Talk About Air: Aquarius, Gemini and Saturn (in that order)
The Uranus-Pluto square has a resolution point; or a focal point. Imagine one of those scenes in a space war movie where laser beams all point at a gigantic mirror on a satellite and focus into one big laser beam that shoots down to the surface of the planet. That is how the Uranus-Pluto square is working, and that laser beam, when it focuses, lands in Aquarius — your solar 2nd house (or second house by whole signs, if you’re Capricorn rising — I will stop saying that; it applies to every house I use).
Basically, the sum total, direct result of all of this is a vast improvement in self-esteem. I don’t know how you feel about yourself, but I can tell you that the only deficit worse than self-respect on the planet right now involves the central banks. We live in a positively dismal time for self-respect. Anyone who can get over this — even most of the way — is doing great.
Your self-esteem is rooted, in part, in how idealistic you will let yourself be. Here again we have the exterior versus interior thing going on; you come off a lot more reserved and cynical than you are. You are what I would call a closet idealist. Yes, you are pragmatic, when you make the conscious choice to muster up the maturity, but you believe that life really should be egalitarian. You know it’s too bad that so many people are so greedy and abuse their power so casually, which raises the demand for the whole environment to function in a competitive way — but you know this does not have to be, and that it’s not in keeping with your actual values.
Now, the stronger you are, the easier it is for you to express your true values; but this can also be a matter of necessity. Let’s just say you’re really feeling it right now — you know that this is the time. You may not be feeling ‘all the way ready’ or totally steady on your pins, but that is the whole point. You are relying on a measure of instability so that you can actually exercise the freedom that you want. Your Capricorn cousin Janis had this song she used to sing about nothing left to lose — well, you don’t have to go that far; but once you decide that standing up for your values is worth more than pretending, or going along with the crowd, then the choice becomes obvious.
So, therefore, this is the time to deal with your conformist streak. It’s done enough damage in your life, caused enough delay, blocked enough potential, and had you stuck in situations that basically keep you in the company of immature people who in truth you cannot stomach; it’s just that it’s really, really important to you to be accepted. Now, it’s far more important to set that ‘need’ aside and bust out of that particular cage and be free.
I am going to take a totally wild guess and propose that the Occupy movement has you pretty juiced up. The Uranus-Pluto square, which is spurring that whole movement and the spirit of both pushback and egalitarianism that characterizes this uprising, is extremely personal for you; and what you’re doing, on one level, is looking for ways to embody the aspect. You may not have noticed a place in the world where you want to put your revolutionary/revelationary spirit to work, but if you pay attention, you will notice one — or it will show up in your life. The basic principles all involve fairness, a topic we will come back to in the conversation of Saturn.
One last Aquarius note — that would be the money angle of the 2nd house. The sign on this house describes the style in which you make the most money. And that would be doing something you think is idealistic, on the one hand, and that has collaborators. Your best resources are often accessed through groups. You can, therefore, treat any group as a potential resource — rather than as something that you must contribute to. You will contribute — that is not an issue. But if you are looking for what you can access, tap into or put to work, refine your leadership skills — though this does seem to be happening these days (again, apropos of Saturn).
Now, as for the Venus transit of the Sun — which is in an air sign, Gemini. This is your 6th house, the house of your work and wellbeing. Capricorn is the original sign to carry two or more business cards. You may have an identity crisis around ‘what you are’ — which may veil a deeper reluctance to claim what you are. The Venus transit of the Sun represents a kind of fusion of all of your talents. You seem to make some kind of discovery that they fit together a lot better than you thought they did; in the past you may have feared that you were diluting yourself or not fully applying yourself — my take is that will turn out to be the opposite of what was actually true.
Check back to 2004, when the first Venus transit in this pair occurred. In ‘the shape of time’ these eight years were when you worked out something on a deep level about how you work, what you do, what you want to do, and how to deal with this sensation of a division of your role or personal gifts. The Venus transit of June 5 represents the completion of this process, and there is a kind of emergence — something that you were not expecting comes out of your equation, and I would propose that you will give up all notions that you were, in any way, competing with yourself.
Last But Not Least, All Things Saturn
Let’s consider one last transit — Saturn in Libra, soon to ingress Scorpio. Saturn has been in Libra through most of 2010, all of 2011 and will remain until early October. Saturn is important in your life — no matter what it does — because it is the ruler of your sign. That is, it’s the planet traditionally associated with your sign. Libra is your 10th house, one that is considered significant in the lives of Capricorns because there are so many themes of the 10th and Capricorn that overlap.
Yet you have a mellow, pragmatic sign here — Libra. This is just one more clue about how important the air signs are in your chart, by the way — even though you’re built of a super-solid, down-to-business earthy sign; the air signs make it easier for you to express yourself, to change your mind and to seek balance. All of the air signs are about balance and fairness, they all value communication and they help you ground in your intellect.
Saturn in Libra has been a kind of leadership training, and for you that means leadership by example. I have little doubt that your responsibilities have increased over this time, and that you’ve done a little moving up in the world — even if some of that has involved following your circumstances in a productive way. I think that more than anything, this has been about you making peace with responsibility, especially in the professional or parental sense of that word. You have likely come to terms with the fact that it’s not always smooth, that there are going to be some serious ethical calls you have to make, and that moreover, you can trust yourself in a position of leadership.
You can trust yourself because you understand fairness, you have actual political skills, and you’re not full of shit. It is, as you know, a little tricky to blend authenticity with political skills, but ethics is the supreme value.
When Saturn switches signs to Scorpio in October, your role will be less formal but equally important. I don’t know how old you are, but this feels a little like being an elder statesman or professor emeritus — respected mainly for your knowledge and leadership. As I am sure you’ve figured out, there are formal and informal leaders of all communities and all institutions. Your leadership is switching from the former to the latter — you are in more of a position of social influence now, which will grant you more freedom to be yourself.
Saturn in Scorpio may feel like it’s out of its element to some people, but not to you. You have Pluto in your 1st house — that has a personal Scorpio resonance for you. Plus there are going to be two planets already in water sign Pisces when Saturn arrives, and Pisces is your house of what you might think of as intuitive intelligence. You have many forms of intelligence to draw on, and you can be a clear thinker when you want, but ultimately you just know if something is true. You probably would rather figure something out by drawing a picture than by doing math. In truth it would be wise of you to do both — to use all sides of your mind. Chiron in Pisces is a symbol of applied science. Neptune in Pisces is like proceeding with the kind of innate knowledge more akin to Einstein, who was a rigorous scientist but also an extraordinarily intuitive thinker. He was spiritually open and that is how he got such good ideas, and why he was so humane. No matter what you ‘know’, it’s not true unless it resonates with you spiritually. Proof is no match for love.
Oh, About 13.0.0.0.0
Let’s not forget one thing about 2012: This mysterious last day of the 13th baktun, marking a span of time that goes back to Aug. 11, 3114 BCE, just so happens on the day that the Sun enters your sign in 2012. This is a kind of personal gesture from the cosmos. We can propose a few ideas — whatever this is about could extend back into history for quite a ways, which is natural enough for Capricorn. We’re talking about something that resonates inherently with the American continent — granted, a place called Mesoamerica, far from Kansas.
Consider that these Mayan math priests back 1,500 years ago would, or even could, orient their calendar on the winter solstice of 2012. They were kidding, right? And they start the thing thousands of years before they arrived on the scene. So for the purposes of a horoscope column I have not a clue what this is about.
It’s really a case of: you tell me.
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Additional contribution: Tracy Delaney
Your 2012 annual interpretation also includes an extended audio reading. That is available at the top of this page.
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