Capricorn is an Earth sign, of Cardinal energy quality, feminine, ruled by Saturn and co-ruled by the new planet Pluto. It is Cosmic Midday, the Sun’s highest point, visible throughout the lands, the Divine bathing creation in his glorious light.
It can be said that the whole Zodiac is the horoscope of the Divine Mother, or the map of the evolution of manifested divinity in time and space. Each sign therefore refers to an aspect of the Mother, but this one particularly offers mankind the key to her essence and hence the summit of manifestation. Here the Shakti is visibly apparent in all creation; Capricorn lies in opposition to Cancer: there Prakriti, here Paraprakriti, or Mahashakti. We shall follow the story by degrees for this sign is the most mysterious of all. Its hieroglyph has been referred to as the Name of God, and when its message is revealed the reign of Light is said to have come.
The children are left at the foot of the mountain which symbolises Matter. For them it is also their very body, since what is without is to be found in man himself. (Capricorn, in fact, signifies the realisation in matter of the Divine; it is the sign toward which humanity now moves and will reach after a period of 2,000 years approximately.) From afar they see the Goat approach and in this pictograph, half-goat, half-fish, we understand the very essence of the sign: the unity of both heaven and hell, the abyss and the top of the mountain, soul and matter move from below to join the spirit-Sun descending from above.
Val and Pom-pom are brought halfway up and are there deposited, symbolizing the seat of the vital force just below the navel in the body, and it is this plunge they take into the abyss when they penetrate the mountain, “a gigantic, age-old tomb, never penetrated”; they go into the most obscure and unexplored recesses of matter.
That which was released in Scorpio is here met in its most intense manifestation; all the accumulation of past tendencies and hence future possibilities are unfolded, for Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, the planet of destiny, fate, karma, – mysteriously beautiful with its circle of light and many moons, the last of the ancient seven and the one toward which the children were headed in the beginning of the story, it must be remembered; the whole essence of Earthly existence is herein contained, as well as the ultimate goal. It is here that the secret knowledge is given. The plunge into their inner being seems to take them into hell, but this hell is “the very force that carries them higher”. In Capricorn Mars is in exaltation; thus the vital force is the key to the sign’s realistion. Capricorn is Power controlling and dominating the forces of death, a Power manifest within the very body.
For Val and Pom-pom the sign is an Initiation, and the only companion image they have at this point is the force that manifests within their very being. In fact, it is that which they embrace, this Lady who entices them again and again into the throes of their most secret desires, passions and failings, is Maya. She is another aspect of Hayala of Scorpioland, but in this sign there is an almost willful taking on of the veils of illusion. She appears to masquerade before them (similar to the Queen of Night in Cancer) all their weaknesses, that they may face them, reject them and ascend to the adode of Omanisol, the Shakti in her transcendental and most sublime aspect.
When they have viewed the play of Maya, which seemed to be their very essence, they are thrown into a state of total abandon and isolation: all that which they clung to, believing it to be real, is seen as mere illusion; they plunge ever deeper into the abyss of being and there are faced with the desperation of an apparent Void. Nothing remains of “them”, the ego is no more, but what is there at that moment?
The Father of Destiny appears, revealing himself to have always been a part of them, and he speaks of their true identity, of their mission, of the eternity of their essence – symbolised by the clock with the plus, minus, circle and no hands, indicating the timeless nature of being, the unity of positive and negative, masculine and feminine, the Sun and Moon.
He then opens the way to the Universal Mother, the essence of the very mountain and all that is manifest, the dark as well as the light; when necessary she makes use of even the ego to bring mankind to her abode under the luminous rays of Truth. In her presence they feel protection, for the children have realised that the darkness they feared is but the shade of the Mother’s light, the forces of decay were used to bring about a union with the Divine or, better said, these forces themselves are brought into the light and have lost there hold at the feet of the Power of God. They have come to know the simultaneous experience of the abyss and the heavens as One.
That is the secret meaning of the hieroglyph of Capricorn, and in the new planet, Pluto, its co-ruler, the key to the actual stage in the spiral of creation is revealed. Pluto points to the new creation; it is the solar and vital forces combined, the movement from below meeting that from above.
In this sign and the following two a different quality is felt in the story. Unity is achieved; now the children must together open the doors. The personal has given away to the impersonal, the ego has receded, the signs reveal themselves in universal, cosmic terms; therefore the characters in each chapter are much less “humanly descriptive” than in the former nine. In effect, in what regards the journey of the soul, this is the rightful development, and we are concerned in this exposition with the esoteric meaning of the Zodiac, with this and nothing more: the mysteries of the evolution of the soul.
Chapter XI – Aquarius
Aquarius is an Air sign, masculine, ruled by Saturn and co-ruled by Uranus. It is of Fixed energy quality, thus the combination of fixed energy and the Uranian revolutionary force evokes the symbol of the tornado; the children are thrown into its still, unchanging centre where movement is arrested and they watch the cosmic force whirl with mighty power about them. The sign lies in opposition to Leo, and as Capricorn was the fuller development of Cancer, so Aquarius is the complement of Leo. Val and Pom-pom are witnesses not to the play of the Queen of Night in her personal aspect, but to the symbolic display of the Power of God in its mightiest manifestation. And this Power, this revolutionary force that descends upon creation from regions above is the new element announced by Uranus to transform humanity and prepare the way for that which is waiting to materialise. Though the Power destroys in its journey all that is rigid, dated, unsupple, refusing to succumb to the new creation which must take form in evolution at this time, the children have the protection of the Universal Mother and they move right in the midst of this Power, are carried on its breath and even embody its force so that they may contribute to the cosmic change.
This is the mighty beginning of the Age. The children are carried into the spheres where the new creation exists in essence, where subtle bodies of light are ceaselessly working to bring about the new and greater conditions for mankind. From there the force descends upon the realm of Omanisol: spirit, soul and matter meet. Capricorn was the realisation in matter, Aquarius is the descending force which flows into the receptive vehicles, filling them with the light of the Supreme. It is Shiva who has taken possession of his Shakti, – both join in a marriage which brings forth the Divine Child, the new race. Though as yet a penetration into these spheres is reserved for the select few, Aquarius works universally and never in fragments, it tends to a unity in action and a universal movement. Thus, what the children witness is the preview of that which will one day be manifest to all.
Chapter XII – Pisces
Pisces is a Water sign, feminine, ruled by Jupiter and co-ruled by Neptune. It is the exaltation of Venus and thus the three “benefics” of the planetary system join in this last sign to indicate, beyond any possible doubt, the ultimate goal of Manifestation, a conscious goal of the eternal perfection.
This is the last journey of the tornado. In Capricorn, a sign of Cardinal energy, the children were lifted with great force out of the land of Omanisol and carried away, hence the quality of the Cardinal signs of forceful change with impact and direction. In Aquarius, of Fixed quality, they are immediately thrust into the centre where it would seem movement is arrested. Here in Pisces, a sign of Mutable energy, they abandon themselves into the flow itself, and are found to be spinning right within the movement of the whirlpool, but each going in opposite directions and apparently without direction: the key to the quality of Mutable energy.
Now all resistances have fallen away. All that was seen, understood, accumulated in the way of experiences, no matter how sublime, dissolves in the waters of divine love – the ocean permeating and sustaining the whole of creation. Power (Capricorn) and Love (Pisces) join, – the indication was given already in the symbol of the Goat with the tail of the Fish – and on this élan the individual is able to dissolve completely and unite with the essence from which he sprang. He has attained unity of being, but it would appear that even an attachment to this very achievement must go, since what marked the passage into a unified realisation, Capricorn and Aquarius, also parades around the bubble in silent, timeless suspension, patiently awaiting the moment when the children will let them also fall, to be thus one with the Origin of all that is. In this act of abandon, of complete and total absorption in Love, the final surrender is accomplished and thus all that had fallen they regain in an even greater expansion, as they join in the whole Carousel which carries them on to a new birth. But from the true and sacred waters of Pisces, from a spiritual journey such as the one that has taken place, the only birth which can ensue is that of the child divine.
– Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, The Magical Carousel, 1970
Links:
Introduction: The Zodiac & the Perception of Unity
1st Quadrant: Aries, Taurus and Gemini
2nd Quadrant: Cancer, Leo and Virgo
3rd Quadrant: Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius
