Capricorn and his ruler Saturn come to expression in the mythologic-folkloristic character of Senex, the wise old man:
An archetype which represents a chronological maturity and a combination of life experience together with intelligence (Rachel Hillel, The Old wise Zarathustra, Jungian Model for Clarification of Nietzsche’s Year 1978). The Latin word “Senex” refers to the old age, which means the end or weakening of the physical strengths that enables the beginning of wisdom. His mystical signs are: Sickle, Scythe (a clue for harvesting and collecting the crops after ripening), a dog, a skull (a symbol of ending) and a watch. The Capricorn Senex is identified with the Western cultural heritage of awareness, order, hierarchy and control. The Senex symbols repression, lack of spontaneity, conscience and guilt. It preserves the existing, it has signs of depression, prohibitions and punishment. The Capricorn Senex is connected with winter and dark images, night, stones, salt and maiden. In mythology, castrating the father Uranus and swallowing his children are a Capricorn characteristic of preferring the old over the new.
For Yong, the Senex is a historical character that brings the past and the tastes of generations long gone from this world. Saturn, as a wise old man, reflects the human need for meaning and discipline. He is aware that the lack of intentional goals and principles are not tolerated over time. Instead of the embarrassment and confusion of Pisces, he places order, discipline and an organized structure. The Capricorn delays are basically a process of maturation which aims to recruit the mental strengths in order to deal with stress, initiatives and actions. As an archetypal character in astrology, the Saturn-Capricorn in the old and wise image, the Sunkes is connected with the figures of a prophet, a preacher, a holy man, a philosopher, a spiritual father, a leader, a judge, a Rabbi, a priest, a shaman, the elder witness and a scholar.
Jung argues that the wise and old man actually represents the visible side of God and is the mediator between God and human, whom he sees as the figure of God himself. However, Saturn has duality that include forces identified with the devil such as, the Gnostic God- Abraxes. In this God there are the positive and negative, light and shadow. Contradictions have a psychological importance because they are a condition and choice for awareness and spiritual development. The dark side of Capricorn, the wise old Senex, is also evilly reflected and connected to the dwarves. In fairy tales, he is also described as an old man who loses one eye, a symbol of enlightenment, like Osiris and the German God – Votan. In Gnosticism, Saturn is the God of mystery. In Greek mythology, Hermes Trismagistos is comparable to him, who is considered the father of all prophets. Jung recognizes Saturn with a shadow, the same inferior function in his personality, but the confrontation with the shadow is an initial step on the way to a person’s meeting with himself. In the alchemy language, this is an experience with the “nigredo”. In the folkloric literature, this meeting is symbolized by a descent into hell. In a Saturn-Capricorn progress, Faust and Zarathustra are being tested. In simple words, the Saturn shadow is a result of the negative characteristics within us on the other. The devil, by Jung, is an archetype discovery of the collective shadow, that’s because the basis of Saturn is a patriarchal-father one, keeps values and ethics (the word ethics derives from the Greek language “eathos”, which means habit, law and order). The Capricorn has a dimension of fatality. The fatalist type might build, from his sense of fate, the time dimension: “there’s nothing to do, this is fate, this is what happens, this is destiny..”. Pessimism has an important role since it throws on the future, linear, moving forward to a clear destination which is defined in advance and has a specific meaning. In a “package psychological Capricorn deal”, pessimism, determinism, fatalism and apocalypse turn into invisible delegates which are buried deep into knowing humans, and serve the Saturn historical time, connected to Yanus. Maybe time is slippery, it’s unclear and needs to be confirmed through these categories, together with the judgment dimension.