A Coal Pit, the Machinery at a Standstill, the Whole

It falls in the second decan of Capricorn (degrees 11 to 20), and is Capricorn's nineteenth degree. Its decan is ruled by Mars rather than Saturn, which colors the degree with something Capricorn does not supply on its own. The narrower term division belongs to Venus, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan. Capricorn opens the earth triplicity's hardest test, initiating through structure, discipline, and long accountability.

A separate nineteenth century source gives this degree its own picture. Charubel's 1898 sequence, unconnected to the later Sabian material, records a coal pit, the machinery at a standstill, the whole of the plant in a dilapidated condition. This is one of the 360 degree images that Marc Edmund Jones obtained in 1925 by drawing blank cards, shuffled at random, while the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described her impressions in Balboa Park, San Diego. Jones's own account followed in 1953, but the version generally read today is Dane Rudhyar's, published in 1973 as An Astrological Mandala; that later text is under copyright until 2069 and is withheld from this page rather than quoted. The value of a degree like this is less in prediction than in placement, a way of locating a moment precisely inside Capricorn's broader arc.