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From the book "Astrology for Lovers," written by Liz Green.



Capricorn


If you're not a socialist by the age of twenty,
you have no heart, 
but if you're not a conservative by the age of forty,
you have no brain. 

The Capricorn goat is no ordinary billy-goat munching grass in the pasture.  Look closely at the symbol for this most mysterious of the earthly signs, and you will see that he has a tail, a kind of cross between a fish and a serpent.  The goat who climbs the awesome mountain of worldly success and material achievement also has another entirely different and usually hidden side to his nature.  People who think that Capricorn can be summed up by mundane ambition are sadly mistaken.  If we look at ancient symbolism, we find that the serpent is one of the oldest representations for instinctual wisdom and the secrets of the earth itself.  And the fish is also a creature that swims in the depths of the unknown waters of the psyche.  Our mountain goat - hard-working, plodding, cautious, materialistic, shrewd, ambitious - is also, in his secret heart, a kind of magician, a seeker after mysteries.  To manipulate and organize the stuff of the world is no mean feat, and takes more than just patience.  Whichever realm Capricorn achieves in - the inner or the outer - he applies the same principles to it, and those principles can be summed up in one word:  mastery. 

It isn't easy to get to know a Capricorn.  For one thing, he's usually learned by the tender age of about three that you let the other guy show his cards first, and that sometimes it's necessary to keep an ace or two up your sleeve.  There is a curious thing about Capricorn children; sometimes you can look into their eyes and be startled by the little old man peeping out from the childish face.  Many Capricorns follow the classical goat's pattern of having to carry responsibility or hardship very early in life.  The goat doesn't take kindly to having his secrets probed too quickly.  He must first know exactly where he stands, and exactly who you are, and exactly what you want, before he is willing to show his hand.  Suspicious?  Yes, you might say that.  Suspicion is a natural propensity with Capricorn; sometimes it goes the wrong way and becomes profound mistrust of life and people, but the better face of it is caution and realism.  Capricorns learn from childhood on - and childhood for them is often no childhood at all, but a too-early initiation into the hard facts of life - that one should always check one's capital and assess one's possible losses before entering any deal.  And anything to Capricorn is a kind of a deal, even when his motives are the noblest and most altruistic ones.  Remember that the keynote of all the earth signs is realism. 

This is, in a way, the sign of the ulterior motive.  It's also a sign of immense subtlety:  never imagine you've worked out all his motives, because there's always one you haven't thought of.  Nothing is ever done by a Capricorn without a purpose.  All that canny waiting and

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