Degree Symbols Blog 1: 13 Capricorn

 

    The Chandra Symbol for 13 Capricorn is “A very old, wrinkled, brown paper sack.”  This seems on the surface ordinary, mundane, and unremarkable.  I had a vision recently about this degree in which a hand reached into it and pulled out a handful of cut diamonds.  I think the message of that image is that the most precious and beautiful things can be hidden in a container that one might not think would ever hold such wondrous items.

    Maybe the container is so plain because it’s a way of making safe whatever is inside it, for a container made of precious materials could call attention to itself, could appear special, and so draw thieves to it itself.     

    This sack is a bag of tricks, and is not what it appears to be.  It is the bag the Fool carries with him on the end of a pole in Arcanum XXII of the Tarot – the Arcanum ruled by Pluto.  That bag is sometimes likened to a scrotum which carries within it the whole past of the human race in the form of DNA. 

    I recently met a woman who has her Sun in this degree, and outwardly she is very approachable and casual – she definitely does not portray herself as being special, or in any way contrived, or above other people.  She is a Sufi mystic.  Her outward persona seems unassuming and common, but what comes out of her are stories of mystical and faraway places, holy people she has known, and many vivid and striking insights, and things come out of her in random and often surprising fashion.  This can be the wonderful surprises in store when encountering this symbol.

    The degrees are always working together and playing off each other, and I bring this up because one of the other degrees in her chart (her Mercury) is “Blackbirds flying out of a pie.”  Both the sack and the pie carry things inside themselves, and so these symbols seem to enhance each other.  And, of course, the blackbirds coming out of the pie are a surprise, as were the diamonds I saw in my vision.

    This Capricorn 13 degree has been holding onto me for some days now, and by holding onto me I mean it has been returning to my mind with great frequency as I try to see into it.  I’m sure this is partly because I’ve been thinking of writing about it, but I think there’s more to it than just that.  Always remember that the degree symbols are alive, they are conscious and they carry wisdom.  I don’t so much feel as if I’ve been conjuring up this degree in my mind as I feel that it has been seeking me out, because right now I need its energy.  I think I need to find out more about what is in that sack – what is in myself.  And rather than trying to second guess what’s in there, I need to just let it out – to allow it to surprise me.  There is far more inside of all of us than we’re aware of.

    This bag has been used a great deal, and the use has rendered it softer and more pliable.  It has absorbed some of the oils of the skin, which has made it more flexible.  The softening of the bag is the same thing that happens to us ideally as we age.  If we are in touch with what is inside us we grow softer, which allows spiritual forces to use us more fully.

    One of the ways I study the meaning of degrees is to look at the other sets of degree symbols to see how their energy influences and maybe modifies the particular Chandra Symbol I’m looking at.  In this instance, I will point out that the Pleiadian Symbol for Capricorn 13 is “A flame talking to a poet.”  There’s something breathtaking about that!  I think of the poet as the brown paper sack to which the flame is saying, “can you find me within you?  I’m there, eternally inside you.  I am you.  I want you to express my energy and wisdom through the poetry you write.”

    I’m thinking about what happens to the brown paper sack as it ages.  I suppose it will get used even more.  Will it tear?  Will anyone try to repair that tear with some tape?  Will it get thrown away?  These are thoughts about the death and destruction that comes eventually to everything.  Are we afraid of the flame inside us, afraid that it might burn through our exterior?  I have no sense that the bag has any urges toward self-preservation.  It wants to be used – delights in being used.  There is a joke that came to me about this:  Maybe as paper bags get used and thrown away they reincarnate as brand new paper bags.  This symbol speaks the truth that the outer vehicle of anything – it’s container, is not what’s important.  That idea is utterly contrary to the American mass consciousness, which believes that packaging and “branding” are everything.  We as a mass culture have gotten so obsessed with the surface of things that we’ve lost a great deal of contact with our inner selves.

    I get ideas to write prose poems about the degrees, which is how the 360 Omega Oracles poems and 360 Azoth Oracles poems came about.  These ideas come to me very quickly, and since I almost never write these ideas down as I get them, many of them have come to me then disappeared, like sparks that fly off a fire.  One idea I got just yesterday was to write a prose poem for Capricorn 13  about a culture that collects used brown paper sacks, and about how each one of these sacks is valued for its age and wrinkles, and the feel it has when one looks at it and contemplates and handles it.  Each one of these bags has developed its own personality over time, and still carries the vibrations of whatever it has carried around inside itself.  And the culture that collects these sacks can feel all these subtle differences between the qualities and energies of the bags, and appreciates them as an art form.

    I thought about writing another oracle poem for this degree in which a particular brown paper bag makes it through many centuries, maybe even several millennia, but never disintegrates, or even tears, and everyone wonders why that is.  Then we are told that a seer once said that as long as the bag continues to be put to spiritual uses it would last forever.

    I just had the impulse to write explanations of the meaning of these stories, but I want to stay away from such intellectual activities and veer always toward going deeper into my own subjectivity.  I love the softness and pliability of the brown paper sack, the texture of it.  Others might say, “Oh why are you even thinking so much about something so worthless?”

    I’m thinking of these bags they put candles in and then line walkways and roads with in Santa Fe, New Mexico, especially around Christmas.  They’re called, I believe, luminarias.  They are like the flame inside the poet.  The bag protects the flame from being blown out by wind.

     Another one of the degree symbols for Capricorn 13 is the Omega one, which is, “Singing and dancing in a desert oasis.”  Here the sack of the other symbol is like the desert, and the oasis is the flame, is what’s concealed in the desert.  The softness of the pulverized rock of desert sands mirrors the wrinkling and aging of the paper sack.

    I think if a person has problems with self-worth and self-confidence, and they have this degree in their chart, then they need to be encouraged to be open to the truth of their own immensity, The sack is magical, and therefore infinite on the inside.  The person with this degree needs to know that there are endless worlds inside themselves to discover.  As they allow their inner beauty to shine forth, self-judgment will fall away.  As they get more and more on the wavelength of being of service, egoic worries and concerns will evaporate.

    The Azoth symbol for Capricorn 13 is “A man dreams of the Lords of Karma.”  Now this certainly is one of the most generalized and abstract of the degree symbols, for karma is everywhere and influences everything in a multitude of ways.  This subject invites vast and intricate intellectual speculation, which I’m going to attempt to completely resist.  Going on just what my instincts tell me about this, I would say that if the depths of the brown paper sack are plumbed, then many riches can come out of it, and spreading these riches to others will generate great and good karma.  Whereas if we make the assumption that we are limited, then we limit ourselves, and do so unnecessarily.  By the same token, if we fail to use what is in the paper sack because we do not realize the worth or it, or because we fear it will not be accepted or not gain us approval, then we cut ourselves off from the world, and the karma of this is stuck in a loop of isolation and alienation.

 

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    Let’s look at the seed degree symbols for this degree.  The seed degree of Capricorn 13 is Virgo 4.  The seed and fulfillment degrees of any degree can be difficult to interpret, because so often the connection is not obvious, but will reveal itself through meditation and intuition.  The Chandra Symbol for Virgo 4 is “A small piglet dressed in baby’s clothes.”  This degree is about things that are strange, unusual, or don’t make sense.  As Ellias Lonsdale points out, Virgo 4 is about being drawn to what is shadowy, what is denied, and what is suppressed.  Whatever we try to get rid of will come back on us, and must be heard, felt, known.  We may end up hiding it for a time in an old brown paper sack.

    So if this is the energy the wrinkled brown paper sack is being born out of, I would say that the sack conceals those denied and suppressed energies.  And maybe a person feels that these denied and supressed things have to be concealed because of other peoples’ non-acceptance of them, their denial concerning them.  What is in that bag is unfinished business, and anything and everything we’d like to forget.  This degree has the power to hold those things for itself and for other people until such time that people are ready to acknowledge and deal with them, so that they can be integrated back into their world.

    The brown paper bag is about carrying around within ourselves things that we and the world at large need, and often those things are not ones that are easily received and accepted, though the fact that the container of them – the paper sack – is so common and humble can be a great help.

    The fulfillment degree for Capricorn 13 is Libra 24, whose Chandra Symbol is “A chameleon with moving pictures on its back.”  The chameleon has the power to reflect everything around itself, and so it is a living mirror.  This reveals great freedom, especially from any sort of habitual grooves.  It feels as if the sack has finally been worn away, or has become completely transparent, allowing  the self the freedom to connect directly with the whole environment in which it finds itself.

    What I’m getting from this fulfillment degree is that there is a need to clean out all the heaviness and stuck karma from the sack, and that is what optimizes the possibilities of those potent forces of magic within the bag to manifest at their fullest.

    And so this degree moves from the piglet in baby’s clothes – which is completely outside normal social standards and pictures, and so, in a sense is a picture of alienation, to the chameleon, who is capable of connecting to everything through its reflectivity, and which completely heals the illusion of alienation.