CAPRICORN

DECEMBER 21 – JANUARY 20

“If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

                                                                                                       Martin Luther King Jr.

You don’t have to be a Capricorn to be Saturnian. Healthy types have a strong self-assured hand shake, firm hands, pale skin, flat square palms, and short stiff fingers and square fingertips with loop and arch prints. Dominant middle fingered folk tend to be the most serious and responsible of all types. The combination of prevailing middle fingers and first and middle phalanges make them very different from Aries, Cancer, and Libra types. Every thought and action must have a purpose. As great business leaders and managers, they embrace responsibility with commitment and dedication and carry out the specifics of everyday business while maintaining a long-range vision of their goal. As structured, focused, disciplined, and dependable individuals, they expect you to be on time and do as you say. They have very little patience for excuses. As natural skeptics, they don’t trust slick and flashy types. As workaholics, they don’t think twice about coming in early or staying late when a task needs to be finished. They can patiently wait until the right conditions present themselves.

Middle fingers should always be longest no matter what your type. Short middle fingers are lives out of balance and control. Middle fingers embody our need for structure and reveal our ability to focus, be disciplined, and responsible. We can see from our middle fingers how serious and reliable we are and how we manage our restrictions, obstructions, obligations, and guilt. Saturn types tend to be well organized, efficient, patient, dependable, and faithful. Stiff knotty joints, bent middle fingers, long middle phalanges, square tips, and short broad nails combine to reveal obsessive order, methodology, and punctuality. The most self-critical of all types, he habitually must learn to “lighten up and smell the roses”. Traditional music and dry humor helps. Practical, prudent, and persistent, Saturn types become easily frustrated and aggravated when their strategies don’t go according to plan. An overdeveloped sense of responsibility and obligation causes them to feel guilt, shame, and depression. Many have a cynical, sarcastic, or fatalistic sense of humor rooted in a pessimism they’d much prefer to hide. They become extremely defensive or offensive when they’re depressed. Pure types rarely stray from provincial, traditional, or conventional boundaries.

Dominant middle-fingered people are often tall, slender, and angular in appearance. They have dark hair, large bones, stern features, and bland complexions. They’re loners; needing private time, including from family and partners. Their prevailing physical sense is smell. Pure types love string instruments and prefer classical music with a tinge of sadness. Eventually, they have physical problems with teeth, knees, ligaments, rheumatism, hardening of the arteries, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, or deafness in the left ear. When the middle finger leans toward the ring finger, there’s a need for privacy and personal space. I guarantee that when Donald Rumsfeld is feeling confined or controlled, he gets cranky and irritable. You can readily see it on his face. A majority of scientists, technical individuals, conservative businessmen, researchers, writers, craftsmen, therapists, night watchman, undertakers, morticians, and derelicts have dominant middle fingers.

“Father Time” is a strategic planner. In ancient Greece, he was called Chronos. In Roman myth and western astrology, Capricorn is ruled by Saturn. Where structure, discipline, and focus are required, Saturn is always present. At best, he’s healthy, happy, wise, prosperous, and compassionate. At worst, he’s frustrated, controlling, greedy, and self-destructive.

 

 

The most famous Capricorn of all time was Jesus Christ. Jesus was the first not for profit Prophet. This self-styled Jewish self-help guru would have reformed the business of religion had he stuck around. Who needs codes, dogmas, and doctrines when they’ve got spirituality? Jesus shared God’s essence as he spoke the words “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Jesus was crucified and martyred for loving too much.

 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1/15/1929 – 4/4/1968) was martyred for his fervent beliefs. A Baptist Minister and passionate Social Rights Activist, Dr. King led the black civil rights movement in the United States from the mid 1950’s until his assassination in 1968. Dr. King’s mission was a pursuit of truth, peace, justice, and equality for all. Dr. King’s dream has become his legacy and a legal holiday.

Capricorn Mel Gibson irreverently and irresponsibly exploited the dark side of love in his ‘The Passion of the Christ’. Jesus writhed as Mel punished us for torturing him. Maybe Mel can capitalize on Dr. King’s final moments. He can call it, LETHAL WEAPON 666 ~ even more reasons to spread shame, guilt, fear, hate, and terror. Mel would be much less harmful as a used Hummer salesman. He could market ‘already been road-warriored’ models, like worn jeans or distressed furniture.

Capricorns want to be number one. Muhammad Ali was King of Boxing. Elvis Presley was King of Rock ‘n Roll. Tiger Woods was Prince of Golf. David Bowie and Rod Stewart are mega-musical prodigies. Daniel Day-Lewis (Taurus / Saturn) played Abraham Lincoln, a pure Saturnian type. Clint Eastwood is a Gemini with dominant middle fingers. Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse were great Post and Neo-Impressionist French artists. Albert Schweitzer was a famous humanitarian.  Louis Pasteur was the father of pasteurization.

Master criminals ruled by Saturn don’t depend on cleverness like Gemini, or spontaneity like Aries and Sagittarians. Saturn strategizes every move and waits until the time is right. Scrooge is the epitome of Saturn’s stinginess, choosing greed over generosity. Relationships are only important as they relate to profit.

 

Ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future haunt Bernard Ebbers. As former CEO of WorldCom, Ebbers contributed to society by making telecommunications competitive. Too bad he compromised his principles to reach his goal of power and worldly achievement. Bernie played both sides against the middle and got caught in the squeeze.

Janet is a pragmatist with crooked middle fingers and separated head and life on her dominant hand. This combination of features makes her a very independent freedom loving perfectionist with an overly developed sense of responsibility, obligation, and guilt. There’s always a ‘should’ or ‘supposed to’ in the way of that adventure she wishes she was having. Janet was a high-powered corporate consultant in the publishing industry when I met her and took this picture.

During the late twentieth century, Uranus revolutionized Capricorn from 1989 to 1996. Political institutions and structures were transformed. The Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall were ripped down. On October 3, 1990, Germany was reunited as the political demarcation between East and West vanished. The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen republics in 1991. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discriminating against the disabled.

Uranus brought the Voyager space probe that successfully explored the outer limits of our solar system. Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years behind bars and successfully galvanized the Anti-Apartheid movement around the globe. Jean Bertrand Aristide, a radical priest, became Haiti’s first freely elected president. Ten months after his election, the military seized control of the government. After Asylum in the USA, Aristide returned to office in 1994, accompanied by 20,000 American troops. Operation Desert Storm liberated Kuwait from the Iraqi invaders. Bosnia declared their independence from Yugoslavia that resulted in a religious civil war pitting Serbs and Croats against Muslims.

At the end of Uranus’s transit, the US and the UN brokered a prickly cease-fire and did what they could to end ethnic cleansing. Representatives from over a hundred countries met in Rio de Janeiro in June of 1992 to discuss how to better preserve the earth. Good intentions haven’t worked. Johnny Carson retired after 30 years of hosting The Tonite Show on NBC TV.

Expect the unexpected. PLO leader Yassar Arafat shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to try to end hatred. The Irish Republican Army agreed to lay down its arms in exchange for a role in Northern Ireland’s political future. The Brady Bill for gun control was signed into law thirteen years after Brady was shot and paralyzed. The NRA became more powerful than ever. Smoking was banned in New York City restaurants. Women began smoking cigars.

When the planet Neptune transited the sign of Capricorn from 1984-1998, lines between chemical industries and moral responsibilities dissolved. A gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in India killed over 3,000 people. British scientists pinpointed a hole in the earth’s ozone layer. Two years later in 1987, seeing the hand writing on the wall, fifty-three nations signed a treaty pledging to reduce the number of CFCs in the atmosphere. The most serious nuclear accident in history occurred at Chernobyl. Thirty-one people died instantly. Another 40,000 were later diagnosed with cancer from exposure to radiation. The Exxon Valdez shipwreck was the worst oil spill in history. It contaminated hundreds of miles of Alaska shoreline and killed thousands of creatures.

Monsanto, creator of Agent Orange, PCBs, DDT, and Dioxins, launched their first “Round-up Ready” GMO soybean, which was approved by the FDA in 1994. ‘Frankenfood’ was a focus of environmental activists and comedians on late night TV. Mad Cow disease mysteriously appeared in the UK in 1996. The slim line between science and science fiction was crossed when the first sheep was cloned in Scotland in 1997. The FDA approved a drug called AZT, which was designed to treat AIDS. In 1997 and 1998, El Nino was attributed to bizarre bad weather conditions.

Neptune transformed the illusion of fatherhood. Bill Cosby was the most popular father in 1984. Saturn was in Scorpio. Bill wasn’t practicing what he was preaching or Saturn wouldn’t have punished him when it returned to Scorpio in 2014. Racial bigots Archie Bunker and Homer Simpson were wildly popular fathers. ‘Married with Children’ offered a warped view of fatherhood. Disney produced the father and son story, ‘The Lion King’. Murphy Brown revealed her powerful animus.

In the world of big business, Ivan Boesky preached virtuosity and honesty and then got busted for insider trading. A frenzy of mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers in the ‘1980s destabilized financial institutions. General Electric purchased media giants NBC and RCA. When the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) collapsed, regulators from 69 countries seized their assets and charged officers who had been hiding substantial losses from investors. History once again is repeating itself as the guys at the top escape scrutiny. Congress closed the House of Representatives Bank in the wake of scandal in 1992.

Neptune dissolves both political and financial structures. Mikhail Gorbachev reformed the controls that kept the Soviet Union together. Growing concerns over a growing federal deficit catalyzed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. The Reagan deficit soared to 2 trillion dollars (2X 1981). On Black Monday, the stock market suffered a mini-crash with a huge drop in stock prices. Texaco filed the largest bankruptcy in history.

Pluto entered Capricorn in 2009. Ninety-nine percent became aware of the power of one percent. Plutocracy, faulty financial foundations, and deceptive business practices were beginning a never ending journey directly to hell. Commerce, politics, and religion will transform as greed, corruption, and secrets are exposed on all levels of business, government, and religion.

Nostradamus made astrological predictions. His ‘whether’ forecasts for Pluto in Capricorn include the demise of the NY Stock Exchange and the bubble created by the illusion of social security. How can society prepare for widely fluctuating interest rates and inflation? How can we reform broken systems? Cyber-Terrorism can reach into anyone’s computer, cell phone, or electronic devices these days. Revolutionary new ways of managing our energy needs and environment must be implemented on a large scale. Recycling and reuse needs to be more practical and cost effective. More women must have positions of power. The Federal Reserve Bank, a Capricorn, will experience major upheaval. Its purpose was to keep the mega-rich from controlling all the wealth by forcing banks to keep certain percentages of their assets in the Federal Reserve. Neo-plutocrats own the majority of votes in Congress and the Senate.

Astrologers agree that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4 1776. There’s a dispute over the USA horoscope as to whether Gemini or Sagittarius is rising. Either way, our Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury are in the sign of Cancer. As Pluto opposes them, the USA will try even harder to control everyone and everything, but will have great difficulty maintaining economic power and its status as a world leader. The world will see our behavior like short sighted little children. NYC’s charter was signed January 1 1898 at 12:01 am. Pluto conjoined NYC’s Sun in Capricorn in 2013, creating chaos concerning physical and financial infrastructures, public transportation, and corruption. Future world challenges will include hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, and other unnatural anomalies. The USSR Constitution has Capricorn rising. It promises political and economic upheaval as Pluto highlights where real responsibility begins and accountability ends.  We will all learn the hard way that the bottom line cannot justify the means.