A Man Desponding, Standing on a Barren Plain with Leaden

Charubel, the pen name of the Welsh astrologer John Thomas, catalogued an image for every degree in 1898. His entry for this one describes a man desponding, standing on a barren plain with leaden coloured clouds overhead. Counting from Capricorn's start, this is the eighth degree, placing it in the sign's first decan. Its decan is ruled by Jupiter rather than Saturn, which colors the degree with something Capricorn does not supply on its own. The term ruler here is also Jupiter, so the finer division agrees with the decan rather than adding a separate voice. Behind every one of these 360 degrees sits the same 1925 event: Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler in Balboa Park, San Diego, drawing blank cards in random order and setting down what she saw. Jones's book came out in 1953.

What is usually quoted today, however, is Dane Rudhyar's later reworking, published in 1973 as An Astrological Mandala, a copyrighted text this page does not reproduce. Capricorn opens the earth triplicity's hardest test, initiating through structure, discipline, and long accountability. What a degree reading offers here is orientation rather than forecast, a way of naming exactly where in Capricorn's cycle a person or moment sits.