22 December to 19 January · Cardinal Earth · ruled by Saturn
The tarot cards of Capricorn
Cardinal earth, and the sign of The Devil.
Capricorn is cardinal earth: ambition, structure and the long climb. The Devil is its trump, and the attribution is pointed rather than insulting. Both concern the things we agree to be bound by. The chains in Waite's image are loose enough to lift off, which is the card's whole argument, and Capricorn is the sign most likely to keep wearing them because the arrangement is working.
The decans are the early Pentacles: the Two as juggling more than is comfortable, the Three as skilled collaboration, the Four as holding on past the point where holding helps. Saturn rules the sign and The World, so Capricorn's territory bookends the deck's account of what structure gives you and what it costs.
The trump
The Major Arcana card that carries the sign itself.
The three decans
Each sign covers thirty degrees, divided into three ten-degree decans. One numbered card each, and they run in order through the sign.
The court card
The figure who carries the sign. Court attributions vary more between traditions than any other part of this system, because the Golden Dawn courts straddle two signs rather than sitting inside one.
The other eleven signs
Where these attributions come from
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in the late nineteenth century. They mapped the whole deck onto the zodiac, the planets and the Hebrew alphabet, and the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was built on that system, which is why most modern decks still inherit it.
It is a system rather than a discovery. The fifteenth century Italian decks had no astrological scheme at all, and other traditions map the cards differently. Every attribution on this site is the Golden Dawn one, and where a card is disputed its own page says so.
Capricorn in an actual chart
This page is about what the tarot tradition attaches to Capricorn. The astrology itself, calculated from real ephemeris data rather than described, is on our sister site.
Capricorn on Memento Astra