Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly. PARACELSUS

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. BERTRAND RUSSELL

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. CARL SAGAN

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. JULES DE GAULTIER

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other people!  A weird life it is, indeed, to be always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real! THOMAS MERTON

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.  But without it we go nowhere. CARL SAGAN

To live is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that is all. OSCAR WILDE

Logic will get you from A to B.  Imagination will take you everywhere. ALBERT EINSTEIN

The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it. MARCUS AURELIUS

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. BERTRAND RUSSELL

Only afterward, when the sobering influence of maturity returns, does Capricorn feel a vague sense of remorse and melancholy for having succumbed to the temptation of forbidden passions.

The Capricorn Love Mystery

Now the chilling blasts of winter grow more insistent, forcing the experience-weary soul to symbolically retreat back into the haven of the family circle, to submit once again to the meditative, negative-feminine Night Forces.  On the Capricorn level of consciousness, for the fourth and final time, the soul feels the powerful vibrations of Cardinal leadership.  But this time it leads through the stable Earth Element, from a position of strength inside the home, beside the hearth.  Why should the Goat expose himself (or herself) to the icy temperatures outside, just to be seen and heard – applauded and praised?

Capricorn souls, now sure of both their ability and their right to take command, no longer feel the need to display or aggressively flaunt their power – either for public adulation, or for inner security.  By this stage, the soul has learned that true peace comes from within.  Being appointed Leader is a responsibility to be handled as carefully as possible, with no special recognition due for doing what is obviously one’ duty.  The Capricon’s relatives (especially parents) now assume marked importance for either good or ill, because the symbolic “old age” of the soul has arrived – and along with it, a sense of  the priorities of life, the most important being the security of belonging.  The excitement of romance and the freedoms of youth are not nearly as enticing to the Goat as comfort and contentment with those he can depend on to care for him (or her).

Capricorn is both prepared and willing to impart the hard-earned Saturnine wisdom, but only when invited to do so.  Because the Goats know the folly of forcing people to mature before their time, they smile with the benevolent indulgence of a fond grandparent (whatever his or her chronological age) upon the playful antics of the still young at heart.  Secretly, the Capricorn soul longs to abandon duty but is by now resigned to the knowledge that sheer idealism is impractical – and spontaneous enthusiasm can never replace experience.  Acutely aware of the dangers of impulsive action, the soul has become more conservative – and the Goat’s refusal to either scatter efforts or to indulge in sentimentality brings on accusations of emotional coldness from those born into the Fire and Air Elements.  Capricorns respect authority because they see the law as necessity for the protection of human rights and safety.  They shyly worship the famous and successful because Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn, teaches them to revere achievement, knowing full well its price.

Although Capricorn may appear to be serious and unyielding to more liberal souls, Life has also taught the Goats its humourous side, and their subtle jokes are tinged with the irony of existence.  Because the new Saturnine duties as counselor to the foolish weigh heavily on their shoulders, they sometimes try to drink the last full measure of Life’s rare pleasures, calmly accepting them without false modesty or undue inhibition.  Only afterward, when the sobering influence of maturity returns, does Capricorn feel a vague sense of remorse and melancholy for having succumbed to the temptation of forbidden passions.  In this soul vibration there is a compulsion to acknowledge the necessity for being practical, as Capricorn admits, “I USE”.  But a gentleness of spirit softens the severity of the surface sternness commanded by Saturn, for the Capricorn consciousness brings with it a sympathy for human mistakes, born from understanding gained through ten stages of Life’s – and Love’s – mysteries.

Capricorn’s positive qualities are determination, stability, wisdom, dependability, sureness and tranquility.  Expressed in their negative form they become selfishness, narrowness, ruthless ambition, rigidity, snobbery, depression and loneliness.

To Capricorn, love is a quiet and undemanding exchange of personal gratification.  The Goats have fully learned the valuable lesson that love is not measured by excessive emotion.  But because they equate it only with the necessities of mutual need and desire, they have not yet experienced the release of its inner longings.

Robert Greene “The 48 laws of power” (page 20, Law 3)