With Faith

Light Bridge for Capricorn and Capricorn Rising

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[audio:http://planetwaves.fm/podcast/LB-capricorn.mp3|titles=Capricorn audio presentation]

As I see it, the dominant theme in Capricorn’s charts in these years of your life is taking leadership.

While it’s clear that you’re in a process of dismantling certain elements of your personality that no longer serve you, and in other ways refreshing your passion and devotion to life, you must have the sense that these things feed a deeper purpose. It’s true that feeling good, getting through your days with the sensation of success, and being a productive person are all important to you.

You know you’re a passionate person, and both you and everyone around you benefit when you express your passion. Given how your whole orientation in this life is about getting stuff done and taking care of your responsibilities, the more passion the better. You will have more fun and be a better citizen in the same stroke.

By the way, this is my take on Pluto in your birth sign or ascendant: Pluto, the unstoppable force of the soul, is turning over the compacted layers of your personality. You are by all rights coming into contact with your fertility, creativity and drive to live. Admittedly, Pluto in your sign can have that element of tension and upheaval, but it’s worse when you resist the process rather than use it for creative fuel. Indeed, to the extent that you might be experiencing this transit as anything other than an invitation to live passionately, you’re probably overcoming years of inertia.

Pluto is actually the perfect compliment to the modern expressions of Capricorn, reminding us that your sign is by its nature oriented on growth and action much more than it is on tradition and antiques. As I’ve written a few times here and there, quoting my beloved teacher, the late Arthur Joseph, traditions need to grow and change if they are to be relevant and alive. Indeed, there is an enduring tradition of progress in the human story — we would be buggered otherwise — and no matter how much tyrants, despots and businessmen have tried to drink our wine, we keep making the stuff.

The crusty, old ego is no match for the impassioned soul, hot with the fire of creation. That, in my view, is Pluto in your sign: the regenerator, the bringer of youth, the palpable reminder of the pulse of life.

There are many outer planets working on you right now which are encouraging you to get in contact with the momentum and movement of existence.

The Theme of Leadership

Something is developing in your charts, and it’s presenting you with a rare opportunity right now. This is about leadership.

As a guy alive in the 21st century, aware of how ridiculous how many things are, every time I mention this theme for you I wonder what the heck I’m talking about and how it could possibly sound in a time when there seems to be so little in the way of respect — for anything. We live in a time when corruption seems to rule the day, and when the greedy go berserk trying to eat everything in sight, including their own hands and feet. So what relevance could leadership have? And isn’t it dangerous to display integrity in times like these?

Leadership has particularly vivid relevance right now, and while it may indeed be risky to reveal that you have any ethics, that too is an idea whose time has come and of which you are an ambassador. These days leadership starts with the open practice of ethics. While this may seem as vogue as being a vegetarian among cannibals, you’re up to the project.

Saturn, the planet associated with your sign, is in your house of achievement and honor. This is a rare gift from astrology, particularly given that you have a 10th house that is so suited to Saturn — you have Libra there, and that’s a sign where Saturn is happy. Plus your own sign is ruled by Saturn, so there is a natural affinity between the sign of your personal identity and the sign of your worldly life. The 10th is the house associated with executive authority, and in the life of a person not holding high office, to me that translates to leadership on a more down-to-Earth level.

The presence of both Saturn and Libra are truly a magnificent placement, with many other transits going on to support your growth and emergence into the world. There is a kind of gracious authority indicated by Saturn in Libra, as well as worldly success and a sense of having the respect of one’s peers. Yet this is not the respect based on fear; it’s based on conscious relationships and building an understanding with the world that you are a fair person, and someone to whom others can come when they seek honesty and equanimity.

In our world, at this moment, maturity is an act of leadership and indeed of defiance of what is becoming a prevailing anarchy and state of petulant childishness. Taking responsibility for your life, for your immediate environment, and for being a functional part of society are the rudiments of leadership now. Even though it’s set against a background of madness, this is a positive development in that we’re down to a basic concept — leadership is about being an authentic person.

The 10th always requires that we work for the respect that we get. It does not, contrary to many claims in 20th century textbooks, bestow fame. It creates a condition where it’s possible to earn recognition for who you are. Even if you’re a natural-born charmer, which you may well be — Capricorn at least bestows political skills, though they may go undeveloped — a 10th house transit will require you to walk every step of the path and often to forge your own way in the world.

I would remind you of two things that you may already know. Your authority, such as you may create it, is not based on power. It’s based on fairness and respect for the beauty of life. Second, your power source is internal, not external — especially at this time in your life. Here is an image of that. Saturn is the planet that rules your sign or your ascendant, Capricorn. Pluto is working its way through Capricorn, connected directly to Saturn in your 10th house. The fuel that is powering your 10th house transit is coming from your Pluto experience, which is about deep personal transformation. That leaves zero room for hypocrisy. In the life of a consciously evolving person, the 10th is particularly unforgiving of double standards, but Pluto emphasizes this point boldly.

Walking your talk, practicing what you preach, being aware to see all sides of the issue, not using diplomacy as an excuse to lie about your real opinion: all of these count toward integrity and credibility. You don’t just want the appearance of being honorable; you want the real thing, even if people will try to convince you by their words and their actions that it’s not possible. You might not know, if you use Wall Street or Washington, DC as an example. You need other examples, and as you practice leadership as a kind of yoga, you will meet people who embody those examples.

Few want to be a ‘leader’ among their friends. If you’re an employee in a company, you probably have few opportunities to be leader-like, and about as much desire. I know someone starting off as a television journalist who is not even allowed to propose, much less select, her own stories. If you’re a manager you still have a boss and a lot of rules to follow. If you’re a boss, you probably have a few other bosses who set your agenda for you. But as you can see, true leadership starts on the most personal level.

And, given your current transits, I have no doubt that real opportunities for advancement are in the cards for you. I suggest, though, that if you’re interested, you put business before pleasure and community goals in front of personal goals, though remembering that it’s all meaningful and necessary; one feeds the other.

Confidence is Faith in Yourself

One way to consider this combination of transits is as a setup that is designed to help you build confidence in yourself. The nexus of Saturn, Pluto, Capricorn and Libra is offering you plenty of opportunities to take part in the world while you’re in the process of growth.

The Latin roots of the word confidence break down to con (originally com, or with, together) plus fidere (trust, fidelity). In my definition of leadership, this is really the essence; it’s about demonstrating integrity from the inside out.

We could take this as ‘trust in yourself’, or faith in yourself. So the question raised by the charts is: do you have faith in yourself, and do you see your life process as something designed to help you cultivate that faith? If you are seeking confidence — which is the missing ingredient in the lives of many — the way to build it up is to cultivate faith in yourself.

Pluto through your birth sign may be challenging that specifically. While I have a fairly high opinion of Pluto, it has some psychological liabilities. One of them is obsession, and in a 1st house placement that can translate to self-obsession. If this is happening for you, you’re likely to know about it only because people are telling you. Pluto can act quite subversively for a while, but sooner or later it will make its presence known. It will always do its work of pushing us to evolve.

Another way you’re likely to know you’re on the obsessive track is that you find yourself lacking confidence; that is, lacking faith in yourself. This could manifest as finding yourself involved in power struggles with others. It could manifest as bouts of conscious insecurity. This might go as far as feeling like you’re under so much pressure you cannot stand it.

Pluto, particularly in Capricorn, can have the sensation of enforced changes, and the changes may be coming from a deep level. Yet I have no doubt that the underlying issue involves cultivating faith in yourself, which means, in part, in your willingness to grow.

Confidence is built with practice, and it’s built through the conscious cultivation of faith. You have every reason to have faith in yourself, but you may have to look in order to see that.

Clarity of the Mind

One of the themes of recent years has been focus. It’s challenging for you to focus your mind, because (contrary to the usual Capricorn rap sheet) you’re so driven by your imagination and your emotions. This is about Pisces in your 3rd solar house — one of the most interesting features of your chart, and one which is coming into focus because of the ingress of Chiron into this house.

The 3rd house is one of two houses that cover one’s thought process. To me the 3rd is the mental environment, the place where we experience our thoughts, our logic and our thinking methods; and it provides a crucial tap into our creative process.

If you are Capricorn rising you have Pisces here. If you have a Capricorn Sun, you have Pisces in your 3rd solar house, which creates much the same effect. Pisces has a logic all its own, though most people would not say that the two concepts are compatible; the most watery water sign is supposed to be capable only of emoting.

If you blend Pisces and the 3rd house, you get a creative and intuitive thought process. You may be the kind of person who likes to have all your notes organized, know your facts and make crystal clear presentations, but deep inside that process is the ongoing, continuous intuitive leap. You have a way of thinking without thinking and, when the time comes to state how you actually got your answer, you may have to make up some logic because you didn’t use much in the first place; you used something better.

If we add Chiron to the mix, we get several effects. One could be the concentration of your thought process and creative process. Chiron in the 3rd house pushes intuition to a highly refined process. Chiron is a potent utility that can draw on the depths of Pisces like few things can. It’s like having a vessel to move around in through the midst of your imagination, documenting your trip.

Another effect, though, could be a sense of debility. Many with Chiron in the 3rd house feel like they don’t quite have what it takes to think along with the big boys. This is an effect somewhat like the asteroid Psyche: an injury to your faith in your own intelligence. While this is probably more significant as a natal placement, in part because it would have influenced your early childhood development, transits of outer planets can be just as significant as anything in the natal chart. If you were born in the 1960s (between early 1960 and early 1969) you very likely have this placement.

Whether we’re talking a natal placement or a long transit, the thing to remember is that you think differently. You do so partly on account of Pisces, such an intuitive sign, being located in your 3rd house. I assure you: you are no less intelligent than anyone else, and in fact, you have the kind of mind that dry intellects envy. You are capable of original ideas in a way that they are not. You are capable of thinking visually. You’re able to think in color and you can add emotional inflection to your ideas in such a way that makes them more potent.

Chiron in Pisces is here to accelerate your awareness of this process. You may find that you become increasingly mentally restless as this transit develops, and I suggest you give yourself creative outlets, both visual and written. You may be strongly inclined toward visual or kinesthetic means of self-expression such as photography or sculpture. Writing pushes us to focus our thoughts in a way that is not necessary with an image or three-dimensional representation of something.

For you, Chiron’s presence may feel like imposing a linear process over that which is simply not linear at all. That’s writing, kids! It’s about translating the ineffable into something that another person can understand. As you do so, you see your thought process in action; you refine it; you put it where others can see it; and you enter a feedback loop wherein you constantly learn through a process of refining your ideas, sharing them and hearing what others have to say in response.

This will help you build faith in yourself. Pisces at its most essential is all about faith — in the unseen, in the numinous, in that which transcends rationality. Your gift for communication is strongly focused on something creative, rather than something merely useful.

There is something invisible about the gifts that you have associated with the 3rd house of your chart, and Chiron’s presence seems perfectly designed to help you not only see what you’ve been missing, but to experience it as well. The beautiful thing about Chiron is that once we get the benefits, everyone else gets the benefits as well. Your affinity for beauty, creative process and for sharing your gift will be a win-win for everyone, but I suggest you start by gaining the benefits for yourself.

A Bit More From the 3rd House

The 3rd house involves communication and mental process, but it has two other themes I want to check in on briefly before this transit develops too far. The themes are siblings and community. I won’t get into either too deeply, except to propose a basic systems check on both, and to suggest some of the themes that might come up.  We are looking for themes associated with both the 3rd and with Pisces.

The first theme of the 3rd involves your family of origin. The 3rd is the ancient house of brethren, so let’s look at the theme of siblings. If there are any with whom you’ve been out of contact for a while, this might be a productive time to get in touch. It’s possible that your relationships with siblings have had a deep and undocumented effect on your relationships with friends and neighbors, and you might want to sort out how you’ve been influenced in this way. Who in your life reminds you of your siblings? The Pisces presence suggests that some discernment will be necessary; Pisces can represent that which is invisible, cloaked in a fog or otherwise difficult to see clearly.

One question that comes to mind is, were there people in your early childhood environment who intimidated you? Anyone who trounced on your sensitivity? Check the Sun and Moon signs of your immediate family and see if they overpowered you in some way — and consider how this describes your life now.

One last: were there any people who had issues with alcohol or substances in your early environment, up till about age four? The 3rd house can represent things encountered by kids in their early environment during the toddler years. If there was an alcohol influence, I would suggest putting this on your checklist of matters that you can resolve during Chiron in Pisces.

The second theme is your local community, in your current time of life. Chiron in the 3rd house is going to call your involvement in your immediate area into focus. You may decide you don’t like where you are; or you may have taken it for granted over the years, and suddenly find yourself falling in love with your local region. What is changing, more than anything, is your awareness. So you may have some opportunities to clarify your view of history, which is not merely an exercise in understanding the past. It’s about getting a handle on your thought process now.

That said, as Chiron works its way into Pisces, your past is going to come into focus, and understanding your personal history will be a theme of your healing and growth process.

Who is The Other? Kronos 4th House

Let’s consider your relationship house, the sign Cancer. This is a challenging sign to have on your relationship angle because the nature of the Moon is so cyclical. No doubt there is something here about learning stability, and moving with others as they go through their changes.

There’s also going to be a strong maternal connection in your relationships. Some developments of the past two years have made you aware of that, as well as your desire to clear the energy of the past in your current relationships. You can consider any shakeups that have come through your life during this time as designed to help you do precisely that.

I recognize that this has been a challenging time for you where these personal bonds are concerned, and there have been times when some of them were seriously tested. I trust you’ve learned that in relationships, flexibility is your best friend.

One remaining relationship influence exists that may be of some therapeutic value to discuss, which is the way you tend to perceive others as being more important than you. My take is that this is a relic of having grown up in a narcissistic era of history. You were made to feel less important than others, and because you were reasonably confident as a child you could accept your ‘role’ for the sake of the greater good.

I suggest that in the current phase of your relationships, it’s about learning to be the equal of the people to whom you’re emotionally bonded. This has been challenging for you, though many of the developments in your chart that I’ve described above are finally putting you in a position where you can stand up to the people around you. Part of how you’re doing that is by cultivating your emotional, financial and circumstantial independence from others, to the greatest degree possible. The most significant thing is that you learn to be your own person, all the time.

Stirring Your Roots

There is one last group of transits to cover for this year’s written portion of your reading.  These involve the ingress of both Jupiter and Uranus into your 4th house, Aries.

Capricorn is sometimes considered the sign of eternal youth. It’s also the sign of ‘all things old’, though there is a connection between the two. Capricorn children often seem unusually mature, and older folks can grow nicely into a childlike perspective on the world. One illustration of this mix of young and old comes from Aries in your 4th house. In a way similar to the 3rd house, the 4th represents the past, though it’s an even deeper picture of the past. The 4th also is one’s emotional foundation, and Aries is where we seek a sense of identity. Though other planets will help tell the story, you have a solid emotional foundation, or you certainly can — though you need to balance your need for security with another need to take chances on who you are, and be present in the moment.

A positive reading of this mix would say, the more daring you are the safer you will feel. Also, the more emotionally independent you are, the safer you will feel.

The 4th house represents the home, one’s root into the world, one’s sense of grounding, security and (like the 3rd) the early influences of the family of origin. It will also represent the non-dominant parent, typically the father. And it represents your general outlook within your childhood home, which then grew into your adult self like an acorn grows into a tree — however, you still have a strong memory of the acorn you once were. What that acorn is saying is that in your early family environment you were the one who was the true individual. You were the one whose identity was not compromised by the family drama. This might have caused you a lot of stress, but you learned to hold your own even among over-towering adults.

There is also the implication that your sense of self (represented wherever Aries exists in the chart) is best accessed through cultivating a trusting emotional state. Aries is happiest when it’s a little naïve. Trust, in turn, is something you equate with self-awareness.

You may also equate it with something else, which is feeling, and being treated like, an outsider at times in your life long ago. Which is to say, you potentially felt like the odd person out in your family.

To activate your self-awareness may come with the idea, which is a relic of the past, that you’re going to experience some form of reprisal or the attempt to shut you down. Or you may have felt so distinct in your self-awareness that you felt alone because nobody else would relate to you directly. If any of these scenarios are true for you, it’s vital that you recognize any such response or reaction that you feel today as being a remnant of your child-self — it is not part of your adult state. I would note that the adult state, as described by various forms of therapy, is not something that too many people are familiar with in our era of history.

The transits of Jupiter and Uranus are here to teach you how to feel safe as an adult, and by that I mean as an adventurous, sometimes impetuous, adult. Indeed, for the early part of this phase you may find yourself being a little more adventurous than you feel comfortable being, taking chances you would not normally take, particularly with your feelings.

There is the potential that you will shake up your roots in some way, such as moving to a new place or renovating your home. The time is right for making improvements to your home base and security base, however you define that. These changes will be an outgrowth of your emotional state, as well as feed your process.

Everything that happens in the home has the quality of commencement; it is the place where you begin, and the astrology at the moment strongly supports this aspect of who you are. As you rediscover yourself, you’ll discover the desire to make adjustments — some of them revolutionary — that you may have delayed for a long time. I would note that this is a sensitive time for you, when you will be moved by your feelings, perhaps to extremes.

You can fall in love forever — or you can be devastated. I suggest that, as much as possible, you take a slow approach to bringing new people into your life, and a gradual approach to figuring out who they are to you. Extremes are the basis of cardinal fire, which is Aries, which is where you have your house of emotions. Mars energy is informing the emotions, and you can take things extremely personally. You’re probably pretty good at being angry, which means you can feel your anger and let it go (rather than stuff it and hold onto it). And from that same well of passion you can draw absolute unbridled energy. That’s a good thing in this tired world. Be careful to pace yourself, and make sure that you put a little more emphasis on letting go than you do on holding on.