PRAGUE ZODIAC WALKS

Direction: east-east-south

Period: December 23 - January 21

Element: Cardinal Earth

Planet: Saturn, Uranus

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Capricorn starts at winter solstice - at Christmas. The sun is at the end of its trek down the sky. But the end is always a new beginning.  At the solstice moment the Sun stops, standing silently in its lowest position, and then, slowly, it sets out on its new journey upward - and the Day starts getting longer again.

 

In the period of Sagittarius the vegetation has vanished underground as if buried. In spite of this fact, it is aware of the light above the ground, sensing it, yearning for it. After the winter solstice the Sun gives life to that which had been taken underground by it. The Sun rises up above the horizon a bit higher every day and thus it brings the evidence that the Light has won over the Darkness (or, in other non-dualistic words, that it never gets lost entirely in the Dark for both are two aspects of the same Thing…). The sprouts start to bloom in hiding beneath the ground, in invisible layers of Earth and get ready for the moment when they will break free from the ground to be finally seen and manifested in the Light fully. But the visible birth will not come about before the spring equinox, in the beginning of Aries.

 

Thus the winter solstice is a Well of Light. And therefore right here lie the roots of the ancient myths about the fight of Light with Darkness, and the later symbol of Jesus Christ, born at Christmas. Originally Christmas was the birthday of the god of the Sun Mithra (a form of Apollo or Svantovit) and Jesus birth was moved here from Aries by the actually ridiculous (and sometimes bloody) power-hungry effort of the Catholic Church to suppress pagan solar divinities. Yet, the Jesus story – for it contains the “General Story” of nature and human life in it, sucked in from the so-called “paganism”, is very deep and mystical.

 

As for its energy, Capricorn is a mirror image to Cancer. But now it’s the Night, the Collectivity, that is feeling the individual life waking up. We can imagine the Night as Caesar with his powerful state (collectivity) and the Day as Jesus Christ – a pursued newborn (individuality). And although the Night is at its peak – the moment of the longest night - its power, Christ will win in the end. Always. The Wheel of Life never stops. (For the Master knows, tere is no war at all…)

 

The boundary between Capricorn and Sagittarius is the solstitial line. Beside the church of St. Stephan the tower of the New Town Hall rests on it. The borderline between Capricorn and Aquarius goes through The Radio Free Europe, for instance.

 

In our Prague Zodiac Walk 1 we will guide you along Národní, Spálená and Mikulandská streets – the scene of the first scream of the Velvet Revolution. Here the voice of Christ - or, in other words, of the essence of Being, of the Source - was heard. Here it came to the memorable collision between the students (who gathered first in Sagittarius and visited Mácha’s grave in Scorpio) and police, after which the hated Caesarean (= totalitarian) regime of communism began to topple.

 

The spot is symbolic not only by its location in Prague Capricorn, however, but, moreover, the event was astro-topographically exactly predicted from an astrological point of view, as we will show you on its horoscope. Four planets, including both domiciles – Saturn (symbol of authority - the state, regime) and Uranus (the symbol of sudden revolutionary changes) were transiting over the location at that time. Two other planets were Mercury (the symbol of students) and Neptune (that gave the event a glow of spiritual, mystical depth).

 

Other examples of the magic Prague Zodiac in Capricorn are two dominants, both linked with St. Wenceslas: the equestrian monument of St. Wenceslas accompanied by statues of four other Czech national saints in the upper part of Václavské námestí (Wenceslas Square) and the neo-Gothic archdeacon church of St. Ludmila – Wenceslas’s Grandmother - in Námestí Míru (Peace Square) in Vinohrady. Over the church’s tympanum St. Wenceslas is depicted kneeling with St. Ludmila beside Christ. From the lower part of the long boulevard of Wenceslas Square – already in Aquarius – both buildings can be seen along the Square’s axis, one behind the other. There is to be added that St. Wenceslas is the leading national saint, a great spiritual authority and a traditional symbol of the Czech state. His ruling authority is sacred as he is said to have received it from the hands of Christ as his earthly delegate. Also in this symbol you can hear the deep strains of Capricorn. After all, when Czechs want to demonstrate against or for something, they gather in the Wenceslas square – and first they go to the Wenceslas’ statue.