What are the Capricorn dates?

In the tropical zodiac, the Sun is in Capricorn from about December 22 to January 19, beginning at the winter solstice. The boundary shifts by about a day year to year, so cusp births need a calculated chart. Indian sidereal astrology places Makara, its Capricorn, from roughly mid-January to mid-February.

What element and mode is Capricorn?

Cardinal earth: the element of matter and result in the mode that initiates. Capricorn opens winter as the zodiac's mountain and plan of ascent, founding, structuring, climbing, where Taurus holds and Virgo refines. Its cardinal siblings are Aries, Cancer and Libra.

Which planet rules Capricorn?

Saturn, in his earthy night seat: time, limit, structure and harvest as the sign's constitution. Mars is additionally exalted in Capricorn at the twenty-eighth degree, the tradition's statement that drive achieves most when discipline aims it.

What are typical Capricorn traits?

Bright side: discipline, responsibility, patience, realism, endurance and dry humour. Shadow: coldness, rigidity, status-hunger and pessimism. As throughout astrology, these describe how planets placed in Capricorn behave, most visibly the Sun, Moon or ascendant, not a box every Capricorn-born person fits.

Why is Capricorn a goat with a fish tail?

Because the figure is Babylonian: the Goat-Fish was the creature of Ea, god of the deep waters and of wisdom, and has kept its double body from the boundary stones of the second millennium BCE to the modern glyph. Greece added the story of Pan diving into the Nile mid-transformation while fleeing Typhon, caught forever half-changed.

What is the Tropic of Capricorn?

The Earth's southern line where the midsummer-southern sun stands overhead, named because the sun occupied Capricorn at the winter solstice when the naming was fixed, twin to the Tropic of Cancer at the northern solstice. The names preserve the tropical zodiac's solstice gates in every atlas.

What does Capricorn rule in the body?

The knees, and by extension the skeleton and skin: the body's load-bearing structure and boundary, tenth station of the zodiacal frame. Traditional medicine read stiffness, falls, and the ailments of age under the Goat, the anatomy of climbing and carrying.

What does a Capricorn rising (ascendant) mean?

The world is met composed, capable and already responsible; first impressions are of seriousness and reliability, often beyond the actual age. Saturn becomes the chart's ruler, so his sign, house and aspects set the life's terms, and the classic Capricorn-rising arc, old young, young old, follows as the early gravity pays its returns.

Who is Capricorn most compatible with?

Tradition looks first to the earth signs, Taurus and Virgo, and to the water signs Scorpio and Pisces, with opposite-sign Cancer as the warming complement. But sign pairs are the shallowest layer of synastry: real compatibility compares whole charts, and this platform treats compatibility as self-understanding rather than verdict.

Why are the Moon and Jupiter weak in Capricorn?

By the dignities: the Moon is in detriment here, opposite her Cancer home, feeling kept private and expressed as provision, and Jupiter is in fall, expansiveness taxed on the cold climb. The placements are not curses but assignments: they name the sign's inner work, warmth and hope carried up the mountain deliberately.

The tenth sign ♑

Capricorn, the Goat-Fish

At the year's darkest gate, the zodiac stations its climber. Cardinal earth ruled by Saturn, exalting Mars, opening at the winter solstice, Capricorn is the principle of ambition and structure: the long ascent, the earned authority, the form that survives winter. Its emblem, a goat with a fish's tail, has come down unchanged from Babylonian boundary stones, the oldest unbroken image in the zodiac.

Dec 22 – Jan 19: tropical dates
Earth: element
Cardinal: mode

The sign in twelve facets

One sign, read from every side: its ancestry, its rulers, its season, its body part, its myth and its meanings in the chart.

⭐

Ea's sea-goat

the ancestor SUHUR.MASH

The Goat-Fish is sacred to Ea, Babylonian god of the deep waters and of wisdom, whose creature it was: goat foreparts, fish tail, carved on boundary stones and listed in MUL.APIN. Of all twelve figures it has changed least in four thousand years, the zodiac's most faithful survivor.

🐐

Pan's escape

the myth Greek dress

Greece explained the hybrid with a comedy: the goat-god Pan, fleeing the monster Typhon, dove into the Nile mid-transformation, goat above the waterline, fish below. A god caught between forms by an emergency, and immortalised that way: improvisation under pressure, the sign's secret talent.

❄️

The solstice gate

the season where the light turns

Tropical Capricorn opens at the winter solstice, the year's longest night and the light's rebirth, which is why Earth's southern line of the sun's zenith is the Tropic of Capricorn. The sign inherits the turn: beginning at the bottom, in the dark, with everything still to climb, and climbing.

⛰️

Cardinal earth

element & mode the mountain

Earth that initiates: not Taurus's holding field or Virgo's sorting workshop, but the mountain and the plan of ascent, matter organised toward a summit. Cardinal earth founds institutions, sets foundations in frost, and measures every step by whether it holds weight.

♄

Ruled by Saturn

the ruler the night seat

Saturn rules two signs, and Capricorn is his earthy night seat: the great teacher as time, limit, structure and harvest. He gives the Goat its patience and its gravity, its respect for what is earned over what is given, and its knowledge that form is what survives the winter.

♂

Mars exalted

the honoured guest the 28th degree

Mars is exalted in Capricorn, at the twenty-eighth degree, by the old Babylonian scheme: force honoured in the house of discipline. The doctrine's meaning is exact, drive achieves most when structure aims it, and the general outranks the berserker on every battlefield that matters.

🗿

The unchanged emblem

the iconography four millennia, one image

Bull and lion shifted styles; the Goat-Fish did not. From Babylonian kudurru stones through Greek gems and Roman coins to the modern glyph, the same impossible animal has marked this sign for four thousand years, iconographic endurance that is itself a Capricorn statement.

🧍

The knees, bones and skin

melothesia Capricorn rules the knees

Tenth sign, tenth station: Capricorn governs the knees, and with them the skeleton and skin, the body's structures of bearing and boundary. The old medicine read stiffness, falls and the ailments of age here, the anatomy of climbing, kneeling and carrying weight.

📋

Capricorn in the chart

the placements Sun, Moon, rising

The Sun in Capricorn identifies through achievement and builds an identity that can bear load. The Moon in Capricorn, in detriment, feels in private and provides instead of weeping. A Capricorn ascendant meets the world composed and already responsible, and hands the chart to Saturn. Any planet here sobers, structures and endures.

🕉️

Makara, the Vedic sea-beast

in Jyotisha sidereal dates

Jyotisha keeps the sign as Makara, the sea-monster of Indian art, mount of the river goddess Ganga, Saturn-ruled with Mars exalted, running sidereally from mid-January to mid-February. Its solstice festival, Makar Sankranti, still marks the sun's turn north, the old gate kept.

🦀

Cancer, the mirror

the polarity world and home

Opposite the Goat waits the Crab: the summit against the hearth, public duty against private care, the institution against the family. Capricorn provides what Cancer nourishes, and each starves alone, achievement with no one to come home to, care with nothing to live on.

🔑

The Capricorn vocabulary

the keywords light and shadow

Bright side: disciplined, responsible, patient, realistic, dry-humoured, built to last. Shadow side: cold, rigid, status-bound, pessimistic, working through its own funeral. The work of the sign is remembering what the climb was for, and that summits are for sharing.

The sign of the summit

Capricorn is the zodiac's tenth sign and its long ascent: cardinal earth ruled by Saturn, exalting Mars, opening at the winter solstice, the year's darkest gate and the light's turning point. Its principle is structure, ambition, endurance, responsibility, form strong enough to survive winter, and its method is the climb: patient, planned, tested at every step. In the chart Capricorn describes how a planet builds, endures and answers for itself; its gifts are discipline, realism and dry wit, and its shadows are the gifts frozen, coldness, rigidity, and the summit reached with no one left to share it.

The oldest image in the zodiac

Capricorn's emblem is the zodiac's most faithful survivor. The Goat-Fish, SUHUR.MASH, was the creature of Ea, Babylonian god of the deep waters and of wisdom, the same Ea whose rituals of release the namburbi page describes; it swims across kudurru boundary stones and through the star catalogue MUL.APIN essentially as the modern glyph still draws it, four thousand years of iconographic continuity that no other sign matches, as the Babylonian pages of this compendium show. Greece, needing a story for the hybrid, supplied a comedy: the goat-god Pan, fleeing the monster Typhon, dove into the Nile mid-transformation and was caught forever half-changed, goat above the waterline, fish below. The joke lands truer than it knows: improvisation under pressure, form held together in emergency, is the sign's secret talent, hiding under all that composure.

The solstice and the climb

Tropical Capricorn opens at the winter solstice, the longest night, after which light begins its return; Earth's southern line of the overhead sun is the Tropic of Capricorn for this reason, twin to Cancer's at midsummer. The symbolism organises the sign. Capricorn begins at the bottom, in the dark, with everything still to climb, and its cardinal earth is exactly that: initiative in matter, the mountain and the plan of ascent, foundations set in frost because spring is too late to start. The goat climbs and the fish-tail remembers the deep: the emblem's two halves are ambition and its hidden waters, the feeling life the sign carries below its own surface and rarely shows above it.

Saturn's seat, Mars honoured

Capricorn is Saturn's earthy night seat, Aquarius his airy day one, and the great teacher gives the sign its constitution: time as a material, limit as information, harvest as the only honest review. What Saturn builds slowly, Mars is honoured for driving: the war planet is exalted here at the twenty-eighth degree, by the Babylonian scheme of secret places, force celebrated in the house of discipline. The pairing is the tradition's compact theory of achievement, structure aims drive, the general outranks the berserker, and the mirror dignities complete it: the Moon is in detriment in Capricorn and Jupiter falls here, feeling and expansiveness both taxed on the cold ascent, which names the sign's inner work as clearly as any biography.

Capricorn in the chart

The Sun in Capricorn identifies through achievement: such people are what they have built and carried, and their self-respect is load-bearing. The Moon in Capricorn, in detriment, feels deeply and reports rarely: care is expressed as provision, and the inner weather is private property. A Capricorn ascendant meets the world composed, capable and older than its years, growing paradoxically younger with age as the early gravity pays off, and gives the chart to Saturn, whose sign, house and aspects then set the terms of everything. Mercury in Capricorn thinks in plans and speaks in conclusions; Venus here loves loyally and shows it in acts and structures; Mars, exalted, is the zodiac's finest commander. Any planet in the Goat is sobered, organised and put in for the long term.

The knees, Makara, and the kept gate

In the zodiacal body Capricorn takes the knees, and with them bone and skin, the structures of bearing and boundary: the anatomy of climbing, kneeling and carrying weight, tenth station of the frame whose Babylonian roots the micro-zodiac page traces. India's sidereal wheel keeps the sign as Makara, the sea-beast of Indian art and mount of the river goddess Ganga, Saturn-ruled with Mars exalted, running mid-January to mid-February; its festival Makar Sankranti still celebrates the sun's turn northward, the old solstice gate kept under another name. Across every tradition the sign guards the same door: the year's bottom, where the light turns because something patient kept climbing in the dark.

The mirror of Cancer

Capricorn's axis runs to Cancer: summit and hearth, institution and family, provision and nourishment, the world's demands and the home's. The Goat builds what the Crab warms; the Crab shelters what the Goat finances; and the solstices anchor them, midwinter's turn toward light, midsummer's turn toward home. The dignities trade accordingly: the Moon rules Cancer and is in detriment in Capricorn, Saturn rules Capricorn and is in detriment in Cancer, Jupiter exalted in the Crab falls in the Goat. Each pole alone is a caricature, achievement with no address, care with no means, and each matures by the other: Capricorn remembering what the climb was for, Cancer learning that love also needs a roof that holds. Between them the wheel states its economy of duty and belonging.

How to read this page

The cards above give the sign's twelve facets: ancestry, myth, season, element and mode, ruler, exaltation, the unchanged emblem, body, chart placements, the Vedic parallel, the polarity and the working vocabulary. For the rulers' own pages, see Saturn and Mars in the planets library; for the system, the twelve signs library; for the deep history, the Babylonian pages. Capricorn and its eleven companions are part of the Tarot Academy compendium in all fifty-two languages.

Frequently asked questions

: In the tropical zodiac, the Sun is in Capricorn from about December 22 to January 19, beginning at the winter solstice. The boundary shifts by about a day year to year, so cusp births need a calculated chart. Indian sidereal astrology places Makara, its Capricorn, from roughly mid-January to mid-February.
: Cardinal earth: the element of matter and result in the mode that initiates. Capricorn opens winter as the zodiac's mountain and plan of ascent, founding, structuring, climbing, where Taurus holds and Virgo refines. Its cardinal siblings are Aries, Cancer and Libra.
: Saturn, in his earthy night seat: time, limit, structure and harvest as the sign's constitution. Mars is additionally exalted in Capricorn at the twenty-eighth degree, the tradition's statement that drive achieves most when discipline aims it.
: Bright side: discipline, responsibility, patience, realism, endurance and dry humour. Shadow: coldness, rigidity, status-hunger and pessimism. As throughout astrology, these describe how planets placed in Capricorn behave, most visibly the Sun, Moon or ascendant, not a box every Capricorn-born person fits.
: Because the figure is Babylonian: the Goat-Fish was the creature of Ea, god of the deep waters and of wisdom, and has kept its double body from the boundary stones of the second millennium BCE to the modern glyph. Greece added the story of Pan diving into the Nile mid-transformation while fleeing Typhon, caught forever half-changed.
: The Earth's southern line where the midsummer-southern sun stands overhead, named because the sun occupied Capricorn at the winter solstice when the naming was fixed, twin to the Tropic of Cancer at the northern solstice. The names preserve the tropical zodiac's solstice gates in every atlas.
: The knees, and by extension the skeleton and skin: the body's load-bearing structure and boundary, tenth station of the zodiacal frame. Traditional medicine read stiffness, falls, and the ailments of age under the Goat, the anatomy of climbing and carrying.
: The world is met composed, capable and already responsible; first impressions are of seriousness and reliability, often beyond the actual age. Saturn becomes the chart's ruler, so his sign, house and aspects set the life's terms, and the classic Capricorn-rising arc, old young, young old, follows as the early gravity pays its returns.
: Tradition looks first to the earth signs, Taurus and Virgo, and to the water signs Scorpio and Pisces, with opposite-sign Cancer as the warming complement. But sign pairs are the shallowest layer of synastry: real compatibility compares whole charts, and this platform treats compatibility as self-understanding rather than verdict.
: By the dignities: the Moon is in detriment here, opposite her Cancer home, feeling kept private and expressed as provision, and Jupiter is in fall, expansiveness taxed on the cold climb. The placements are not curses but assignments: they name the sign's inner work, warmth and hope carried up the mountain deliberately.

All twelve signs

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