Capricorn

CAPRICORN

December 22-January 20 Birthdays

Births tone: Garnet

Best day: Saturday

Element: Earth

Type: Cardinal

Capricorn’s place in astrology is at the midheaven, the very top of the natural chart—and at the very top is where you always want to be. Ambition and aspiration are key words for Capricorns. You have an unerring eye for the practical application of everything you see, hear or learn that can help you in your steady climb upward.

You are reserved and cautious and shun flamboyance of method, preferring to build your plans securely on a firm foundation. For this reason you can do anything, no matter how boring, if you feel that the end result will further your plans for the future. This kind of foresight is one of your strongest qualities. You dislike people who act impulsively or who attempt some spectacular feat without adequate preparation; ft is sot in your nature to take that kind of a chance. Although you may secretly admire impulsiveness in those who are winners, to you ft is the most glaring fault of those who are losers.

You yourself are always surefooted and cautious about the next step upward. As a Cardinal sign you have plen­ty of initiative and, seeing an opportunity, you are_usuat-ly ready to step forward and pursue it more” quickly than most other people. But this quick action has noth­ing to do with impulsiveness; it stems from the fact that by an early age you know where you want to go—UP— and you have been preparing yourself since adolescence for the right opportunity when it comes along.

New and untried ideas do not appeal to you and you are definitely conservative in most of your thinking. So your quick action at times can be puzzling to other peo­ple; they find it difficult to understand how you can be so conservative in some ways and seemingly so daring in other ways. They do not realize that when you strike out boldly into something new, it is not something that is new to you. It’s the chance you have been waiting and preparing yourself patiently for all along and that per­haps, with your usual foresight, you have been anticipat­ing for months or even years.

Because people do not understand the depth and thor­oughness of your long-range planning, they are likely to misinterpret your expedient use of a new development You can get an undeserved reputation as a slick operator or as one who exploits others unmercifully. Actually you are not above exploiting people, but your motives are impersonal, not vengeful or malicious. Your eyes are on tne top of the mountain and anyone who gets in your way may suffer for it as you brush past them in your up­ward climb.

You are more willing than most to start at the bottom and will be quite faithful in your service to your employer, but you are ever alert for the right time to grab die next rung of the upward ladder. You don’t expect anyone to hand you a good job on a silver platter; in fact, if that happened you would be extremely cau­tious and would investigate to see what kind of strings were attached to the offer. It might not even especially please you to get such an opportunity, if you feel you are not ready for it; it makes you nervous to take a chance, because a sense of security is so necessary to you. You prefer to climb slowly and gradually toward success; in that way, you feel, you are less likely to raise and fall.

But if, in spite of all your precautions, you do fall and find yourself back at the bottom, you are indeed a sorry spectacle. You then develop a great sense of self-pity and it is very difficult for you to pick yourself up and start over again. You are as patient and persevering as Taurus as long as you are proceeding gradually upward, but you do not have the Taurus capacity to start re­building from the bottom toward the same goal with the same tools.

The thing that suffers when you fall is your sense of security, which is not very strong to begin with. One big failure can make you sure you will never succeed again, and it takes all your courage to convince yourself that what you did once you can do a second time. The way to start is to renew your self-confidence by proving you can overcome small obstacles successfully, and then you will soon be ready to tackle the big ones too.

As a worker or as a boss you tend to be a slavedriver. Often it is only yourself you push to the limits, but you can push others just as hard without letting up on your own exertions either. You have a tenacious concentration on work goals and can keep on almost inexhaustively. Accomplishment means a great deal to you, and of course the greater your production the higher your accomplish­ment, as a rule. While others are sometimes contemp­tuous of your nose-to-the-grindstone approach, they often are envious of your rewards—which are as higft as your fiercely concentrated drive can make them.You are something of a slavedriver at home too.

You food to role the roost, and you prefer the management of household affairs to have your stamp of approval Even though, with your business pursuits, you may be away from home as often as not, when you return you want everything in top working order. Consequently you strive to be able to afford at least a maid in order to~ maintain a standard of beauty and efficient service in your home.

Keeping everything in working order is a real fixation with you. You have a natural understanding of all gadg­ets and if you don’t know how to fix something you will soon learn (or keep the phone number of the right re-pairman handy). If a car is supposed to run or a toaster to pop up toast, that’s what you have them for; broken things annoy you with their uselessness. If you cannot repair something or have it repaired, out it goes to keep it from taking up space in your well-ordered life.

For this reason you are a capable assessor of merchan­dise, and you may amaze or even shock people by what you are willing to pay for, for instance, a household ap­pliance. But if in your estimation the cheaper variety is apt to break down after a few months, you can see the advantage of saving repair bills by buying something more expensive but better built You understand the full meaning of the saying “you get what you pay for” and you are willing to pay more if you feel you will gain in additional value over the years.

It doesn’t bother you if something is old if it continues to function properly. In fact you rather like antiques (real antiques, that is, not just second-hand furniture!). If you can afford it you may even go to great expense to establish a period flavor in your home. The house itself you prefer to be in a classical, proven design; no glass walls or ultramodern architecture for you.

Of course when it comes to status purchases you want to keep up with the Joneses. You get a sense of pride from the fact that your car is the newest, longest and shiniest on die block And though your home may be pe­riod in design, you wffl want it to be weD built and as impressive as you can afford so it will be admired and envied. Status is important to you; you always like to put on a good front in any area where other people can fudge you.

In your home everything has its place and there’s a method for everything—but you also have a resourceful­ness that enables you to improvise beautifully. Because of your clear logical approach to functioning and the use of materials, you are able to devise clever makeshifts, when necessary, to accomplish a household chore. You comprehend the interrelatedness of various household appliance functions; it would occur to you, for instance, to use a vacuum cleaner to scoop up scattered autumn leaves from the front walk when you are expecting guests and are in a hurry. You’re the kind, too, who can repair the record player with a hairpin when no one else can even imagine what’s wrong with it.

You possess an uncanny intuition regarding money and property. Your judgment in these matters comes from your constant alertness to experiences from which you can learn; to that you add an innate sense of values that is hard to beat for accuracy of assessment You are apt to be far ahead of other people in considering finan­cial possibilities, and there is a definite inventive streak in all of your maneuvers regarding property.

You also have an unerringly accurate eye for real es­tate development possibilities. Sometimes you can use this talent to make a great deal of money, when you buy property that is selling for practically nothing, in an old, rundown neighborhood, and use your initiative to redevelop the whole section into a fashionable residen­tial or shopping area.

Your early childhood may be difficult because of a built-in sensitivity toward those around you. Even while you are very young you are mentally alert and store up every possible experience—long before it would occur to another child to do so. Ton notice how self-cen­tered and selfish other children are and you adopt these rules of the game as your own—for life. With your un­changing, conservative outlook it never occurs to you that this is a passing phase which most children are gradually taught to outgrow. You go on thinking of the world as a place where it’s every man for himself—and from this stems your reserved, cautious attitude and your sense of insecurity.

Along with the insecurity goes a great tendency to worry. It is useless for anyone to try to convince you that, having provided, in your cautious way, for every contingency, you have nothing to worry about You are a worrier by nature, and it is actually better for you to have a real worry, a definite problem to overcome; it keeps your mind occupied. Without such a problem you can yield to a general sense of foreboding and depres­sion that strains your health and your nerves.

As one of the powerful Cardinal Signs, you will apply yourself forcefully to doing something about your wor­ries. You may use them either constructively, as a spur toward achieving your ambitions, or destructively. In the latter case you will try to forget those plaguing thoughts by overindulgence of your strong sensual appe­tites. This method gets you nowhere, as your common sense tells you—except perhaps that it can land you in enough trouble to give you something real to worry about.

CAREER POSSIBILITIES

Capricorn is the businessman’s sign, and you have the best possibilities of anyone in the zodiac of becoming the president of your company. You do it by hard, steady work, keeping an eye open for any opportunity thatelse has pioneered in » new field and you have learned that it pays off financially before you want to get in­volved in it Then yon will step in and reorganize, mod­ernize, enlarge the business and make it more efficient Besides being conservative, you are conventional; a fly-by-night or shady operation does not interest you.

Real estate is your special field, and you have almost a genius for spotting or developing properties that will pay off. In fact, anything to do with the earth and its re­sources satisfies your practical Earth Sign mentality. Miner, fanner, gardener, excavator or building contractor are possibilities for you, though you will always try to work your way up to the top of whatever field you are in.

Reaching always for the top, you often succeed in pol­itics. Richard Nixon, Woodrow Wilson, Germany’s Kon-rad Adenauer, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamil­ton were all Capricorn born. Status seeking, you know how to present your best face to the public, and this can help you succeed as an actor; Capricorn-born actors in­clude such stellar names as Gary Grant, Danny Kaye and Ethel Merman.

You like to pass on the knowledge you have absorbed through practical experience, and can be a good teacher. You also like to help those in need, though in an imper­sonal way; working for a charitable or social service or­ganization can be very satisfying to you. Being serious even about your hobbies, you may organize or do volun­teer work for such a group in your spare time, if you don’t do it as a career.

HEALTH

Capricorns are inclined to be sickly and small as chil­dren, but oddly enough they usually outgrow this tendency and become the hardiest people in the zodiac. In later years you have a cast-iron constitution, with an almost inexhaustible capacity for work. Your senses usually remain acute as long as you live; your eyesight comes your way and having an instinctive talent for being able to get along with and impress your superiors.

Conservative In your thinking, you wait till someone and hearing are as good at eighty as they were at twenty.Capricorn rules the bones and sinews, and this often shows in a certain ruggedness of the face and boniness in die figure. You are inclined to be lanky and angular, and putting on* too much weight is not likely to be a problem for you. In any case you do not have the self-indulgent tendencies of, for instance, the Venus-ruled signs.

You usually have an intense agility, but no nerves to speak of. There is no tendency to nervousness or nervous breakdowns in your sign. You do, however, have a great tendency to worry, and one of the things you often t worry about is your health. A slight physical disorder can be exaggerated into a big one in your mind.

Worry and a melancholy outlook, rather than physical disabilities, are your biggest health problems. At times you can literally “worry yourself sick”—or you can make yourself sick by your attempts to run away from the worries, with such remedies as drink or drugs. Drunken­ness is more common among natives of your sign than in any other.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Capricorn people never do anything without fore­thought, and certainly you would not dream of getting involved in something so important as marriage without giving it careful consideration. You are inclined to choose your marital partner on the basis of suitability in financial and social standing; ambitious even in mar­riage, you are quite capable of marrying for improved status or money rather than love or even friendship.

This can be a mistake, because you have the deep, strong feelings of all the Earth Signs and a marriage without affection can be very lonely for you. Reserved and undemonstrative, you more than most people need close companionship from someone who loves and un­derstands you.

You are conventional and like to keep up a good front, and if you are reasonably happy in marriage you settle easily into a domestic routine. You do not rebel against restrictions and accept those that family life brings with no regrets for lost freedom. Unless the mar­riage is extremely unsuitable you will not want to break it up by divorce.

An individual horoscope is necessary to determine the proper marriage partner for any person, but generally speaking you will find your most suitable mates in the other Earth Signs, Taurus and Virgo, who will share your material ambitions and your respect for hard work and social status. The Water Signs, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, can contribute softness and sympathy and will bring out the more protective side of your nature.

The Air Signs, Libra, Aquarius and Gemini, will seem to you too quick, impractical and unconventional in their thinking. With die Fire Signs, Aries, Leo and Sagit­tarius, you share no understanding, since their values are completely different from yours. They would upset you by sneering at your material ambitions, and they in turn would find your constant worry and melancholy tenden­cies almost impossible to bear.