An older, independent picture-set for the degrees exists too: John Thomas, the Welsh astrologer who wrote as Charubel, published his own image for every degree in 1898, decades before the Balboa Park session. For this degree his catalogue describes a lofty building, with nave and massive pillars on each hand. Counting from Capricorn's start, this is the second degree, placing it in the sign's first decan. Its decan is ruled by Jupiter rather than Saturn, which colors the degree with something Capricorn does not supply on its own.
The narrower term division belongs to Mercury, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan. The degree symbols themselves date to 1925, when Marc Edmund Jones and the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler sat in Balboa Park, San Diego, and drew all 360 blank cards in random sequence so that no degree's image could be planned in advance. Jones published his findings in 1953, yet the reading in general circulation since is Dane Rudhyar's 1973 restatement, not Jones's own words, and Rudhyar's text is still in copyright and is not quoted on this page. Capricorn opens the earth triplicity's hardest test, initiating through structure, discipline, and long accountability. What a degree reading offers here is orientation rather than forecast, a way of naming exactly where in Capricorn's cycle a person or moment sits.