Capricorn (Makara) sign in Vedic astrology: traits and lord

The profile table packs several traditional classifications into a few rows, so here is what each one means.

Capricorn is a movable (chara) sign. P.V.R. Narasimha Rao (PVR), author of Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach, says their nature is 'to move and to be dynamic'.

Fixed signs are 'stable and constant', and dual signs alternate between the two.

Earth as an element suggests 'a constant and solid state', in PVR's glosses.

Guna means a quality of nature; the three are sattva, rajas and tamas. PVR classifies Capricorn as tamas.

Each sign is also a day sign or a night sign. Capricorn is a night sign, so it is read as stronger at night. PVR notes that of the two signs a planet owns, one is a day sign and one a night sign.

Signs also rise differently at birth: some rise head first, others with their feet or back (prishthodaya). Capricorn rises with its back, and it is even-footed.

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS, R. Santhanam's translation), chapter 4, describes Makara in a short list: ruled by Saturn (Shani); mostly tamas; earthy; belonging to the southern direction; strong at night; rising with its back; a large body; variegated; resorting to forests and lands.

Its first half is four-footed and its second half footless, moving in water. BPHS closes by saying the twelve signs are described this way 'to evaluate gross and specific effects'.

The symbol carries that image further. In Light on Life, Hart de Fouw and Robert Svoboda write that 'Capricorn's symbol in Jyotish is the makara, a word which is usually translated 'crocodile' but also indicates a sort of generic sea-monster.'

PVR lists traditional indications for Capricorn: places and things such as marsh lands, watery places and bushes, and qualities such as witty, perfectionist, patient, organizer, cautious, secretive and pragmatic. He explains that signs stand for situations and influences in one's life, while planets stand for people.

B.V. Raman, in Hindu Predictive Astrology, cautions that such descriptions 'are only general in nature and should not be applied hastily'. Read them as flavours, not as verdicts on anyone.

A sign's lord is the planet that owns it. In any chart, the lord of the sign falling in a house is that house's lord, so Saturn's condition matters wherever Capricorn appears. Saturn owns two signs: Capricorn and Aquarius.

The dignity table shows how planets fare in Capricorn. A planet is exalted when it is at its strongest expression in a sign, and debilitated when at its weakest, with a specific degree where that peaks.

Here Mars is exalted, deepest at 28 degrees, and Jupiter is debilitated, deepest at 5 degrees. BPHS chapter 3 and PVR's Table 6 agree on this arrangement.

One pattern sits behind the table: each planet is debilitated in the seventh sign counted from its exaltation sign. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, the seventh sign from Capricorn, so it is debilitated here; Mars, exalted here, is debilitated in Cancer.

Kalapurusha means time personified: an imagined cosmic being whose body is mapped onto the twelve signs. BPHS chapter 4 and PVR both give Capricorn as the knees of this body; PVR specifies the knees of Lord Vishnu's body.

This is sky-lore, a way of seeing the zodiac as one living form. It is taught here as tradition and imagery, not as a reading of anyone's body or health.

The three cards above show the three ways Capricorn can sit in a birth chart: as the lagna, as the moon sign, or as the sun sign.

For the sun sign: each year the Sun enters sidereal Capricorn on 14 or 15 January and leaves on 12 or 13 February (IST, True Chitra Paksha ayanamsa). In Skybond's computation for every year from 2000 to 2050, the entry date falls between 14 and 15 January.

Western (tropical) sun-sign dates differ because of the ayanamsa, the offset between the two zodiacs, so the Vedic sun sign is often one sign earlier.

Time to rise is a separate measure. B.V. Raman lists Capricorn among the signs of short ascension for places north of the equator (he notes the order reverses south of it), so as an ascendant it takes less time than average to rise above the horizon at birth.