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different path.
Peculiar people, these Capricorns. With a powerful and faithful ruler like Saturn, it's no wonder they're difficult to know. There's another strange paradox, too, in Capricorn: the conflict between society and individual will. Many Capricorns are unusually sensitive to the opinions and values of the world, and pay a lot of attention to things like good credentials and acceptable training. The right clothes are important - never too flashy, but always good quality, the sort of thing that's understated and always in impeccable taste. The right neighbourhood is important, the right schools for the children, the right social image. Capricorns often have a remarkable skill at appearing to be the pillars of society, and although in youth they are rebellious and iconoclastic as any young person can be (remember that Capricorn is interested in the world, and often in changing it) they usually become increasingly conservative as they grow older. It was most probably a Capricorn who said, 'If you're not a socialist by the age of twenty then you have no heart; but if you're not a conservative by the age of forty, then you have no brain.' You'll also often hear the famous, 'What will people think….' Out of Capricornian mouths, for the goat is often unduly concerned with not being noticed within society's protective embrace. Sometimes Capricorn can be downright crushing with his insistence on obeying the silent dictates of what is right and appropriate. Yet deep within, he's a fierce individualist, and his game with society is usually yet another of his immensely subtle methods of making sure that the world around him doesn't disturb him while he works out his own particular destiny. It's based on the principle of rendering unto Caesar what's Caesar's, and rendering unto oneself what's yours.
The pattern of Capricorn's journey usually divides his life into two distinct halves. Often in the first half - which includes that frequently restrictive or burdensome childhood - the goal is frustrated or thwarted by some responsibility, and is in a sense at the mercy of society or of his tasks and responsibilities. Hardship - inner or outer - seems to be part of Capricorn's training in the school of life, and if life doesn't offer it to him then he'll take it himself. You often see Capricorn's entering a kind of voluntary bondage in the early part of life, as though they actually wanted to experience this term of frustration. It might be taking care of ill or ageing parents, or working at a job they dislike intensely, or embroiling themselves in a restrictive marriage. Whatever the nature is of the restriction, there is a curious kind of psychological hair shirt which Capricorn dons for a time. In medieval mysticism, the hair shirt symbolized the individual's way of purifying himself of his carnal sins in order to prepare him for the experience of God. Capricorn's symbolic hair shirt is a kind of perpetual self-punishment or self-imposed labour. Try to get him to enjoy himself and he'll give you a thousand excuses why his responsibilities won't permit it. And like the British officer of the old school, he's convinced that what tastes bad must be good for you. No allowances made for luxury or sybaritic indulgence. He can show an ascetic streak even when there's lots of money around to be enjoyed. He's more likely to horde it and live as though he didn't have it, then spend freely like the Leo or the Libra on beauty and pleasure.
But those first thirty years of training serve a purpose. Even when it's happening at a deep, unconscious level, Capricorn is planning his ultimate destiny. He may be a nobody, someone who has to take orders from others, or work at things he detests which offer no challenge to his real capabilities. But watch him when that term has passed and he's released from his self-imposed prison. All the while a powerful determination and ambition have been breeding in him, and an immense strength of will. It might be a worldly goal of envisions - to run his own business, to make enough money to buy a piece of land, or whatever. It might be ambition in a creative sense - to develop a formidable skill as a painter, a writer, a musician. It might be an inner ambition - self-understanding, or something more occult. You can see this side of Capricorn in such people as
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