The Lightening & Brightening of Capricorn

We've moved into the zodiac sign of Capricorn now. What's to say about this sign? On the whole it gets a bad rap, probably only second to Scorpio for negative reporting.

Keywords for Capricorn, the sign ruled by planet Saturn, include: serious, disciplined, careful, cautious, thrifty, cold, organised, solid, old-fashioned, conservative, business-like, and even the adjective coined from their ruler's name -"saturnine". Sounds boring, doesn't it?

A handful of well-known Sun Capricorn people who seem to fly against the keyword stereotype: David Bowie, Jim Carrey, Rod Stewart, Janis Joplin, LL CoolJ..........

I draw a blank from personal experience, regarding Sun Capricorn people, but I have this idea at the back of my mind that many of 'em have a wickedly dry sense of humour - I'm not sure from whence that idea springs, its roots are possibly in planets lying in neighbouring signs.

In any case, I suspect that Sun Capricorns do not embody much of the accepted stereotype unless every personal planet lines up in that sign. Sun Capricorns are liable to have two or more personal planets in neighbouring signs Sagittarius and Aquarius, both likely to dilute Capricorn considerably, and bring in a hint of happy-go-lucky Sagittarius flavour, or some whacky Aquarianisms. Conversely, it's quite easy to pick up Capricorn flavour in natives of those two neighbouring signs, where close personal planets are often found doing a turn in Capricorn.

I'd expect to see more typical Capricorn traits in a person with Saturn rising in Capricorn, the ruler rising in its own sign. That's when Capricorn is going to be more easily seen in public, even if that person's natal Sun and Moon are nowhere near the sign of the seagoat. It's unwise to place too much confidence in Sun signs, they are an easy label, a convenient rule of thumb, a fun grouping, but they are liable to be terribly misleading.

(Sir) Anthony Hopkins has Sun and ascendant in Capricorn - perhaps slightly more stereotypical than those people mentioned above. He comes over as fairly serious and disciplined, a little old fashioned. But even here, his Moon in Sagittarius and Jupiter in Aquarius tend to "mix it up and make it nice", added to which, Capricorn's ruler Saturn lay in Pisces as he was born, lightening its heavy influence quite a lot.

















Graham Chapman (of Monty Python- shirtless in the photo), with Sun and ascendant in Capricorn, Moon in Taurus, Saturn in Taurus sounds like someone Earthy and sensible - heading closer to the stereotype - but Venus and Mars lay in Sagittarius, which kind of knocks it all smartly on the head.



(Sir)Sean Connery (aka the original James Bond) is the nearest I can find to matching a typical Capricorn stereotype, yet his Sun and Moon are in Virgo, an Earth sign which doesn't tend to smother Capricorn completely. He has Capricorn rising with Saturn in first house very close to the ascending degree. Saturn is his dominant planet and Capricorn shares sign dominance with Virgo. The ususal culprits for messing up Capricorn's serious reputation, Sagittarius and Aquarius, don't get a look in in Connery's chart, by the way.

Hopkins and Connery both happen to have been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II - that in itself is rather Capricornian! However, Hopkins is unimpressed and says he only accepted it to make his (then) wife happy! Connery describes it as one of the proudest days of his life. He had been denied the honour for several years due to his passionate Scottish nationalism, and support for Scottish Independence.

I have to say that I'm with Hopkins on this!



POSTSCRPT: We lost a Sun Capricorn lady yesterday - Eartha Kitt. I wrote about her last year - here: "Carmen Jones, Eartha Kitt and Astrology". I noticed that she died as Jupiter conjoined her natal Sun. RIP.

Carmen Jones, Eartha Kitt and Astrology

I'm always intrigued when what starts as a simple Google search leads in an entirely different direction from first intentions. We had watched a DVD of Carmen Jones. I was pleased, for once, to see an astrological chart as a wall display in a scene in the movie. Talk of "bad luck in the cards" was included in the same scene. A character later threw a half-eaten peach across the room, it hit the first house on the chart - a bad omen indeed, as events unfolded - although a hit on eighth house might have been more astrologically correct.



I'm not sure what I was searching for in connection with this, but I somehow got sidetracked into reading about Eartha Kit(who was not in Carmen Jones!)

Here's what set me in a new direction - quote from a review of a 1959 movie "Anna Lucasta"

"I got a big laugh a few years ago, when Eartha Kitt was exposed as a pretentious know-nothing. In 1998, she made a public statement that she was a lifelong devotee of astrology: she had scrupulously followed her horoscope, and it had guided her through her successful career. Shortly after she made this statement, someone located Eartha Kitt's birth certificate ... and it turned out that, all these years, she'd been following the horoscope for the wrong birth date!"

After further investigation I found this (here):

"Eartha Kitt usually gave her birth date as January 26 in 1926 or 1928, as she was abandoned at a young age by her mother and did not know the real date. In 1998 students from Benedict College found her birth certificate and actual birth date, January 17, 1927."

Several on-line sources still mistakenly quote 26 January as Ms Kitt's date of birth. I was interested because, ever since first seeing Eartha Kitt in a 1950s movie "New Faces", I'd had a soft spot for her, especially as I too thought her birthday was 26 January, a day away from my own.

I expect it must have come as quite a shock to Ms Kitt to find that any Aquarian attributes she possessed did not emanate from her natal Sun. Aquarius does figure in her natal chart though, and if we knew her time of birth it might figure even more prominently. 12 noon chart shown below (no birth time available). Her corrected Capricorn Sun fits her first name very well, as it turns out - Capricorn being an Earth sign.




Her natal Venus lay at 10 Aquarius with Jupiter in the last degree of the same sign. Her Capricorn Sun closely sextiles Uranus , modern ruler of Aquarius (in Pisces).
It's not surprising that she recognised herself from descriptions based on Aquarius Sun.

From a list of Eartha Kitt's quotes, it's possible to see both Capricorn and Aquarius in her nature:

AQUARIUS:
Don't make yourself stressed out over nonsensical things like material things.

When we want to have our own style of living, it is nobody's business but ours. What we do in private is our private business.

Just because you are different does not mean that you have to be rejected.

And, from Sidney Poitier "Eartha Kitt is the freest spirit you have ever met."

CAPRICORN:

I always believe in living in the country, because that's where what I eat is what I can put back in the dirt.

I've always said to my men friends, If you really care for me, darling, you will give me territory. Give me land

Everything should be done with moderation and using common sense.