Capricorn Archetype
Core Insights for Capricorn
Mode: Outward (Activating, Initiating, Creating, Expressing, Illuminating)
Element: Earth (Form, World, Life, Structures, Nature)
Archetypal Images: Wise Elder, Executive, Advisor, Manager, Hermit, Ambitious One
Planetary Governor: Saturn
House Association: 10th House of Life Calling & Ambitions
Body Wisdom: Skeletal Structure, Skin, Knees, Teeth, Hair.
Spiritual Principle: Integrity “Plan Your Work & Work Your Plan”
Harmonious: Authoritative, Structured, Organized, Practical, Disciplined, Efficient, Cautious, Professional, Conservative, Serious, Responsible, Hardworking, Enterprising.
Shadow: Rigid, Controlling, Stern, Pessimistic, Cynical, Demanding, Bossy, Stiff, Strict Restrictive, Authoritative, Calculating, Cold, Ruthless, Insensitive, Repressed, Worrying.
Capricorn is the archetype of worldly attainment and accomplishment through disciplined effort and organization. Through solitude, caution, reserve, and an authoritative approach to life, Capricorn offers wisdom and integrity to life.
Planets in Capricorn naturally radiate an aura of professional drive and respect. Capricorn is primarily interested in dealing with and making strides in reality. Its ambitious goal is to make a lasting mark on the world. Capricorn creates stability and structure as well as patriarchal wisdom and patience. This is the archetype of time, the medium of life.
Capricorn and Saturn symbolize the experience of accomplishment through overcoming karmic residue through maturity, organization, and taking responsibility. Pragmatic Capricorn inspires you to work hard at achieving your ambitions so that whatever you create will stand the test of time.
The house with Capricorn on the cusp is where you need to practice organization, express self-control, and act mature and responsible. The same goes for the house that contains Saturn, the ancient lord of time.
It is in those realms of life experience that you can bring practical wisdom to others like the wise hermit. You need a daily dose of solitude in order to plan your methodical strategy out each day. Capricorn governs the skeletal structure, skin, knees, teeth, and hair. Without this archetype we wouldn’t have boundaries like time, space, skin, and breaks on cars.
When your Capricorn energy is misdirected you become cynical, materialistic, and restrictive. Transfixed by the bottom line, Capricorn’s shadow emerges making you rigid, lonely, and pessimistic. Learn to overcome the shadow through expressing the opposite sign Cancer, gaining compassion, sensitivity, and imagination. The key word Authoritative appears on both the light and dark sides of Capricorn.
The manager or boss who oversteps his boundaries as a worried, demanding, miserly authority figure does this sign a disservice. Capricornians are very status-conscious, success-oriented folk. Sometimes they get too obsessive about personal or group achievements and lose sight of human nurturing. The best kind of administrator is one who gets everyone organized but allows the workers to believe they accomplished the task at hand.
The Spiritual principle of Capricorn is integrity, the ability to plan your work and work your plan no matter who’s watching. Everyone knows their capabilities and ambitions deep down inside. However, people are also plagued with random urges that cause them to lose sight of the path they were born to follow. Achieving a sense of integrity entails aligning yourself with your highest ideals and visions and following through on actualizing your potential. This requires discipline, and discipline is Capricorns gift to humanity.
To be integrated you must learn to fuse your disparate parts into a unified whole, working on your weaknesses and polishing your strengths daily. This is the key to social responsibility. There is a lot of fascination with the desire for fame in modern society. Authentic living can reward you with honor and a reputation of achievement and integrity, but more importantly you gain a sense of self-respect.
The glyph for Capricorn is complex. The “V” represents the hermit delving down into the abyss of life to find natural truth after battling the dragons of falsehood and pessimism. Then he must sit in contemplation under the tree of wisdom to gain insights. After the illumination of nature, she must climb up out of the depths to bring a new elixir to society. Confronting popular rigid paradigms, she must plan her life work (symbolized by the loop) in order to ground the vision in reality. Then she must follow this plan with disciplined effort so that it reflects the truth found in solitude (symbolized by the arc).
Last updated on August 16, 2017 at 2:26 am. Word Count: 699
