Capricorn
22 December – 19 January
The winter solstice — it builds for a date past the one it can see.
- Element
- earth
- Modality
- cardinal
- Ruling planet
- Saturn
- Keywords
- structure · patience · duty
Capricorn starts at the shortest day, in the part of the year that gives nothing back, and its instinct is to build something that will still stand later. A planet here works in structure and time: what is the real cost, who is responsible, what will hold.
Saturn rules it, and cardinal earth means it initiates in the most material register there is. Capricorn placements are where a chart is willing to be bored for years. The shadow is the ledger — duty taken on so early it was never chosen, and a habit of measuring a life by what has been finished rather than what was lived.
The other earth signs are Taurus and Virgo. Its meaning echoes in the tenth house, which covers the same ground as an area of life rather than a manner.
Where Capricorn actually falls in your own chart — and which planets are standing in it — takes about a minute to work out, free and without an account.