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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.
2
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.