3 of Pentacles: Capricorn II
Hermetic Title: Work/Material Works
Decan ruler (Chaldean): Mars
Corresponding majors: The Tower (Mars) and The Devil (Capricorn)
Dates: December 30 - January 9

The deceptively straightforward 3 of Pentacles harbors a secret in the recesses of its two darkened doorways. Behind Door #1, the Tower! Behind, Door #2, the Devil! Not since the 5 of Cups, where the Tower met Death, have two majors of baleful aspect joined forces so powerfully. But here, instead of the Grim Reaper, the Tower meets the Master of Strategy - whose plans are set on winning, winning, so much winning! Why is the Tower's martial force so different in character here? We'll get to that in a moment.

The Devil and the Sea-Goat
To better grasp the Lord of Work, it behooves us to have a closer look at the mythic foundations of Capricorn [L. capra, goat + cornu, horn], the kingdom of the 2, 3, and 4 of Pentacles. Though there are many versions, all are animal tales. The original Capricornus was no mere goat, but Pricus the immortal child of Chronos ("Time") - a sea-goat with a fish's tail. Pricus fathered many sea-goat children, but on climbing out of the water, they transformed to ordinary goats and lost the powers of speech and reason. Their father - as any of us would do! - used his divine power to reverse time and bring them back, but they persisted in aspiring to land.

Note the archetypal curlicue! as seen on the glyph of Capricorn and the 2 of Pentacles.

In this myth we find many of the themes of Capricorn - the ambition, the rise from obscurity, the war against time. I connect the 2 of Pentacles with Pricus' spiraling fishtail, thrashing in the inchoate sea; the 3 of Pentacles with the irrepressible appetite to climb; and the 4 of Pentacles with the mountain that is every goat's sovereign domain.

Some tie the Capricorn myth with the she-goat Amalthea, who nursed the infant Zeus in hiding from his saturnine father, who had swallowed all of Zeus' siblings. We can see in the 2 of Pentacles (Jupiter! in Capricorn) the turning of the tide for the Olympian children; in the 3 of Pentacles the cornucopia Zeus fashioned from Amalthea's horn; in the 4 of Pentacles the aegis he made from her hide, which protected those who took shelter beneath it. And still others connect Capricorn with the Great God Pan, he of the goatish hindquarters.

Whichever goat-myth takes hold of our imagination, the Devil and the sign of Capricorn challenge us to acquaint ourselves with the Beast within: its urges and appetites, its shadowy dwelling-place, its insatiable craving for the light.

"Plays Well with Others."
In Capricorn, Mars is exalted by sign (the exact degree is 28°, which falls in the next decan). While he may be potent in his own signs, Aries (especially the 2 of Wands) and Scorpio (especially the 5 of Cups), here he is at his practical best. The Lord of the Game excels at finding work for idle hands, giving contractors their contracts and bondsmen their bindings. Given Saturn's cold stone and hard concrete, Mars' fiery passion can build wonders. The Devil may be the author of la règle du jeu, but it is the Tower's indomitable will that drives this card toward victory. Like the carpenter who quantifies his expenses as "time and materials," Mars knows the value of Saturn's gifts. The engines of industry may have been conceived in the previous card, but now, running on Mars fuel, the factory is in full production mode.

The war god is not famous for his powers of cooperation, but among the Mars-ruled minors, the 3 of Pentacles shows him making his best effort to be a team player. (After all, despite its calamitous fate, even the Tower of Babel was a collaborative effort!) There is a poignant line in the Orphic Hymn to Ares: ἀλλάξας ἀλκὴν ὅπλων εἰς ἔργα τὰ Δηοῦς - where we exhort the war god to "exchange the pain of weapons for the works of Demeter". We ask him to devote his drive and raw energy to problem-solving and peaceful tasks.

Though the signature of martial works is phallic and aggressive, they can be turned to peaceful and constructive ends. After all, the money brought in by Carnegie's steel foundries erected museums and libraries nationwide. DARPA gave us the Internet, didn't it? And when we're feeling a bit weak and anemic, doesn't an iron supplement help fire up our productive inner Mars? Mars the celebrity chef! Mars the imagineer! Mars the starchitect!

The Victory of Time
In the end, of course, all towers must crumble. Saturn, lord of Time, ruler of the Goat, the great architect with his hourglass and scythe, will prevail. Even the mountain sought and crested by the sea-goat's children will turn to dust. Pricus himself will petition his father to relieve him of his own immortality, and will retire to the heavens and take up his place between the cosmic archer and the cosmic cupbearer.

*“Vir stans et habens in aere ante se avem quasi augurium captans”*

I suppose that's why the Picatrix signification for this decan is "seeking to do what cannot be done, to attain what cannot be." Or, as Agrippa has it, "searching after those things which cannot be known". In the Astrolabium Planum, the restless spirit of this decan stretches his hands out toward a bird, as if striving to grasp an omen. It hovers just beyond his reach.

Perhaps all our ambitions and their fruit - even our very selves - are futile, doomed to return to dust in a few decades, centuries, millennia. Still, as we see in the 3 of Pentacles, there is a certain glorious hunger to our transient nature. We are gone in the blink of an eye, but as Aleister Crowley once said: "How splendid is the adventure!"

The Takeaway
When you draw the 3 of Pentacles, you have a chance to make your mark on the world! Channel your energies into something tangible - a project, a collaboration, an artifact to treasure.

It is wise to remember, though, that the passion and the effort are the treasure here - not just the resulting object. For this reason, people often find the 3 of Pentacles an effective remedy for its elemental opposite, the 3 of Swords (hence the phrase, "drowning one's sorrows in work"). While it is certainly possible to take this too far, most of us can benefit from a dose of the empowerment and sense of accomplishment which are native to the Lord of Work.

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.