The sign of Capricorn is the sign of the goat, climbing in search of food on rocky mountain peaks. As always, there are higher and lower meanings of symbols – material as well as spiritual expressions. So what does this symbol represent? In the lower sense the goat represents the ambitious person, the greedy seeker after the satisfaction of desire. In the spiritual sense it symbolizes the striving aspirant, seeking the satisfaction of their aspiration.

Another symbol associated with Capricorn is the unicorn. The unicorn is a mythical animal, having one long horn like a spear on its brow instead of the goat’s two horns. The two have become one, and thus the unicorn represents the initiate.

According to the legend of the battle between the unicorn and the lion, the unicorn uses its long horn to blind the lion by piercing its eyes, and then it kills the lion by piercing its heart. The lion, the king of beasts, stands for the personality. It is defeated by the emergence of the initiate consciousness, symbolized by the unicorn. This emergence of the initiate consciousness leads to the triumph of group consciousness, and of world consciousness, the victory of selflessness and illumination over self-consciousness and selfishness.  (EA:155)

Capricorn is an earth sign. This too has different meanings. On the one hand it can be considered as the most material and concrete of the three earth signs. And thus it confronts us with a supreme challenge and test. As we read in Esoteric Astrology, “Capricorn connotes density, firm foundations, concretization, the mountain of karma that holds down the struggling soul.” On the other hand, however, Capricorn symbolizes “the mountain of initiation that must eventually be climbed and surmounted.” In these two aspects Capricorn “signifies therefore the great force of liberation that both drives into experience and brings experience to an end.” (Id., at 435)

This is expressed in the old Commentary through the following beautiful and significantly symbolic affirmation, which can have deep meaning for every disciple on the Path of Ascent:

I am the densest point of all the concrete world. I am a tomb; I also am the womb. I am the rock that sinks itself into the deep matter. I am the mountaintop on which the [disciple] is born, on which the Sun is seen, and that which catches the first rays of light. (EA: 432-433)

Thus, the climbing of the mountain, the mountain of initiation, is the spiritual challenge of the sign Capricorn. The cyclic tide of Capricornian energies pouring in during this astrological month (December 21through January 19) is holding that challenge before us and assisting us in our climbing.

The first initiation, as we know and as we are reminded each year at Christmas, is the birth of the Christ consciousness, the spiritual self, born anew in the human heart. The cave in Bethlehem is actually the cave of the heart. It is within us.

This initiation of the birth has been prepared for during a long time of gestation, of building the “babe in Christ.” Then, “the first initiation marks the beginning of a totally new life and mode of living. It marks the commencement of a new manner of thinking and of conscious perception.” Quoting the Tibetan:

The life of the personality in the three worlds has for eons nurtured the germ of this new life and fostered the tiny spark of light within the relative darkness of the lower nature. This process is now being brought to a close [at the first initiation], though it is not at this stage entirely discontinued, for the newly emerging spiritual self has to learn to walk, to talk and to create; the consciousness is now, however, being focused elsewhere. This leads to much pain and suffering until the definite choice is made, a new dedication to service is vouchsafed, and the initiate is ready to undergo the Baptism Initiation.

Many thousands of individuals within humanity have already undergone this birth of the new spiritual self. It is an experience that, for all serious aspirants on the spiritual path – whether conscious of it or not, lies behind them, mostly in an earlier incarnation. “This is factually proved by the lives of those who are consciously and willingly oriented towards the light, who see a wider world than that of their own selfish interests, who are sensitive to the Christ life and to the spiritual consciousness in others and who see an horizon and vistas of contact unperceived by the average person; they realize a possible spiritual achievement, unknown and undesired by those whose lives are conditioned entirely by either the emotions or the lower concrete mind.”