The Two of Disks/Two of Pentacles corresponds to the first decan of Capricorn. The last decan/card (Ten of Wands) was a Saturn ruled decan of a Jupiter ruled sign, and here we have the inverse, as Saturn rules the sign of Capricorn and Jupiter rules this specific decan. The card is known as “Change” in the Thoth deck, or by it’s full title of Lord of Harmonious Change in the Golden Dawn tradition.

Capricorn is a sign associated with old age, for it’s ruler Saturn is associated with time and has the longest orbit of the classical planets. While Jupiter isn’t well placed in Capricorn, up here in the lofty realm of the Twos in Chokmah, it doesn’t seem to hinder him much. It just makes him work a little harder, his drive for expansion continually challenged by Saturn’s contraction. It is this cycle of expansion and contraction that creates motion and change in the material world. The course of the average 80 years of a human lifespan has many ups and downs. This is a card of progression over time. Austin Coppock’s 36 Faces gives name to the decan as “the headless body”. I personally also associate this decan with embodied incarnation.

The decan spans the winter solstice (in the Northern hemisphere) – the point of maximum darkness. In the horoscope this can be represented by both the zenith (Capricorn) and the nadir (midnight). From here in, the light can only increase, over time, as the Oak King and Holly King exchange places. We approach the New Year, and look both forward and ahead (January, Janus). It’s a time and a card of changes and polarities, yet ever a life moving on.

777 lists the decan image as “A man holding in his right hand a javelin and in his left a lapwing.” Why a javelin, and why a lapwing? Javelins are designed to be thrown and to achieve great distance, perhaps reflecting the striving nature of Capricorn and the distance of a life? Lapwing comes from Middle English lapwink, hoopoe, lapwing, from Old English hlēapewince : hlēapan, to leap + *wincan, to waver. To leap, and to waver – an echo of to expand (Jupiter) and to contract (Saturn)?

[coming soon]