Rot and Roll: Transiting Pluto Opposing My Natal Sun, 2018-19

It's just another sign of the times, so to speak, that I was so consumed by my corporate job that I thought transiting Pluto had finished opposing my natal Sun for the third and final time last month.

I was so wrong it wasn't funny.

Nope, I am in for two more back-and-forths with Pluto this fall, and as someone with Pluto Rising, you can bet that I'm taking it personally.

My whole sense of "I am"-ness, aka the Sun in astrology, has been annihilated this past year. I keep thinking of that line from William Butler Yeats's masterful poem "The Second Coming" (from which I quoted in my last astrology post from 2016, before my two-plus years of radio silence): "The center cannot hold."

It's not just the obvious challenges of Pluto -- the power-tripping, the greed, the sense of being held down by The Man or Big Brother, the attraction-repulsion to just about everything vaguely interesting, the humorless intensity that makes Having Fun into as much of a challenge as scaling Mt. Everest.

This transit of Pluto has given me 8 cavities in the past year (Capricorn rules the teeth) that I have to get filled next week and will set me back thousands of dollars (even though I was able to get it financed). 8 cavities. How can this be my mouth?! I have about half that number of fillings acquired within my near half century in this incarnation. Can we say the rot has literally set in? Yes, let's.

What else? Well, though my job involves writing, it is about as far from my identity (the Sun) as a writer as I could get, and I find that it has hindered my ability to write For Real. The good stuff, the real stuff, which for me means fiction, poetry, and astrologizing. What I have been writing and so-called proofreading for the past year and a half may be helping some people, but it sure ain't beautiful, and it often feels like a dubious travesty that exists only to make boo coo Delores for the genius who saw a particular market open up (thanks to Resident Trump) and rushed to fill it.

It occurred to me tonight that it is not a coincidence that the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1993 fell within a degree of opposing my Sun, so that Pluto has been going back and forth over that point for the past year or so. 1993 was such a crisis-filled year for me that I suppose that I am lucky to have survived it. But in a strange, subtle way, I didn't.

That was the year I derailed myself from my trajectory -- MFA degree, English and/or creative writing professor, making good on my Golden Girl promise as an official adult.

I jumped because the alternative was to remain in Boston, where burglars broke into my nice little studio apartment in the Back Bay and stole my jewelry and my stash, a splinter infected my heel, and my middle-aged, married, lush of a writing professor (who at that time was also the head of the MFA program and editor in chief of a prominent literary magazine) hit on me 25 years before the #metoo movement.

And where did I land? In the heroin-chic grunge scene of Seattle to collide with fellow Pluto Rising Kurt Cobain? Nope, I landed in the house of my suburban childhood, just outside the only city that could just go by "the city" and you would know which one I was referring to, back to my screwed-up parents who showed not a drop of sympathy for what I had been through. I was also seeing a shrink who was so harmful I complained about him to the National Association of Shrinks, which of course didn't take me seriously. Hardly the best milieu in which to lick my wounds, so after some gratuitous verbal abuse from my father, who didn't like the look on my face one fine November day, I mainly stayed with my best (and only) friend, a much older man whom I'd met at a writing program two years earlier and had turned me on to astrology. He lived in a rundown hovel in the East Village when Alphabet City was still somewhat dangerous, and I got into shrooms and rediscovered my passion for drawing, which helped give me something resembling perspective and hope instead of giving up when both MFA programs I'd applied to rejected me the following spring, and I did not mail a piece of shit to my undergrad writing prof who'd refused to write me a new set of recommendations on the grounds that I had lost whatever was "goodhearted and true" about my prior work.

And speaking of work that year...I didn't, unless you count the handful of astrology charts I did that year for the first of my clients, mostly women from the baby boom generation who were irked yet intrigued that a so-called slacker like me, about half their age, could be so insightful. Would you count that as work? No, I probably wouldn't either -- not anymore, at least. That alone shows me how far I've fallen.

Clearly, Pluto has been stirring up all this long-time-ago shit, of my first year out of college, the year I veered away from literary academia, the year I first became aware that I was in something called Generation X (up till then, I thought only baby boomers had a generation) yet set apart from it (Uranus-Neptune transit opposing my Sun). A quarter of a century later, determined to be autonomous and not depend on anyone ever again, to live in the city, my city, on my terms, I have made a chilling discovery:

I still have not found any measure of peace or true self-acceptance. I try to count my blessings every day, because I know how much emptier and more awful life would be without a home, love (even if it is fraught), my cats, and my few real friends. Yet at the heart of everything is my stomach-sinking feeling that I am making a living, but not truly living.

If life is suffering, I must find something in this life that is worth suffering for.

Do you hear me, Pluto? If you can't throw me a bone, send me a sign to help me find my way back to the self who still had hope (and an hourglass figure to boot).

The Astrology of the "Anti-Vaxxer" Movement

As an astrologer, I am very accustomed to be considered a non-scientific flake along the lines of readers of tea leaves, 900-number psychics, UFO cultists, and Creationists who believe in Intelligent Design. When I was a youngin in my twenties, flush with the enthusiasm of How Astrology Really Works, I spent a lot of energy trying to persuade skeptics that there was Really Something to This, that it went Way Beyond Nationally Syndicated Horoscope Columns, et cetera. Now, in early middle age, with a limited amount of energy at my disposal, I content myself with preaching to the converted. To those who refuse to let me do their charts, I sometimes mention a late twentieth-century French statistician named Michel Gauquelin who tried to disprove astrology but in the process wound up proving its validity, and published his findings. I can speak of Gauquelin in one breath, a reasonable amount of time to waste considering that most skeptics would never bother to read him or even Google him. (After all, the man was French, and therefore probably pro-butter and God knows what else.)

I do not have children of my own, but if I did, I would 1.) have them vaccinated per their pediatrician's recommendations and 2.) be incredibly worried that due to the narcissistic, non-scientific, borderline-child-abuse whims of a subset of affluent, so-called highly educated parents, my little darlings would be at much higher risk throughout their lives for contracting measles, polio, and various other diseases that were until recently eradicated, due to loss of "herd immunity" (that ensures the 5% percentage of individuals for whom vaccines do not "take" will be protected due to the immunity of 95% of everyone else). And in case you don't know what can happen when a woman contracts measles during pregnancy, let me assure you that it is not pretty. And how about traveling to distant (and not-so-distant) lands even beyond the Magic Kingdom without proper inoculation?

In the age of the Internet, people acquire "facts" via all sorts of sources: some highly rigorous and scientific, others not. Celebrities and charismatic charlatans often come off more humane and believable than nerds in white coats whose idea of a good time involves isotopes and leptons. Therefore, a long-since-debunked article by a long-since-discredited doctor not worthy of mentioning by name, a highly un-scientific study that linked vaccines to the increase of autism, matters not to the legions of "anti-vaxxers" who would apparently rather see their children, or their children's classmates, fall ill and possibly die or be scarred for life by contracting measles, polio, and so on. Anything to avoid autism! Their motto seems to be: "Don't confuse me with the facts; my mind is made up."

Babies being born at the time of this writing (indeed, since 2012) all have the Uranus-Pluto square in their natal charts. I am sorry to make this prediction, but given the current climate, a certain number of these babies and toddlers will wind up dying or being left deaf, brain damaged, or crippled from their New Age parents' refusal to protect them against diseases that had taken so many lives and ruined countless others prior to the 1960s. Perhaps this is part of what lies behind the saying "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it": parents of my generation (post-Uranus-Pluto conjunction, i.e., born post-1966) do not remember seeing kids our age in iron lungs or buried in little coffins. We were all inoculated, with the possible exception of those who were raised in hippie communes. Many of our parents of the late silent and early baby boom generation were also inoculated against polio et al. as soon as these vaccinations became obtainable. Apparently, in a country like Mexico, most children are vaccinated -- yet are less likely than U.S. children to land on the autism spectrum.

I was shocked to learn that children without medical conditions like cancer were allowed to enter public school sans vaccinations. Perhaps the "politically correct" movement has gone too far -- you can't send little Sophie to school with a PB&J sandwich just in case her classmate who is fatally allergic to peanuts decided to take a bite, and you can't give little Taylor 30 cupcakes to share with his classmates to celebrate his birthday because cupcakes contain such evil toxins as sugar, chocolate, and flour, yet it is perfectly okay not to send your Precious Snowflakes to school unvaccinated. Why? Because some grade-B actor said so on a segment of Celebrities Without Cerebellums Sound Off. It is time for doctors throughout the U.S. to take a stand on vaccinations and say that yes, in this case, they do know better; that the uninformed opinion of nutjob parents is not, in fact, factually valid.

I wanted to bitch-slap the woman I read about the other day in a New York Times article who refused to let her sixteen-year-old daughter receive a rubella vaccination even if it meant her missing a semester of AP-level classes, and do worse damage to the mother who refused to take her young son for a tetanus shot after he cut himself on a metal fence because according to her, he had such a strong immune system (and she knows this how, exactly...?) and she didn't want to expose his body to unnecessary toxins (even though vaccines are not toxic). If you let your ten-year-old child walk home from school or ride a bike by himself, you may have to deal with a visit from Child Protective Services, but if you let your ten-year-old child heal himself from a cut on a metal fence, that's okay because it's "organic." Never mind that plenty of people died from tetanus and so on for decades before the U.S. government sanctioned the spraying of carcinogenic pesticides on apple crops.

In the same way I was embarrassed to learn that I shared the same sun sign as Bush the Younger and the same moon sign as Mitt Romney, I am embarrassed that a particular subset of my generation (which used to be called "X" but now seems to be called nothing at all) cannot seem to marry education and affluence with reason. Way-ass back in time, baby boomers accused my generation of being apathetic morons. We simply didn't care the way they did in the '60s. To which we replied, "Yeah, whatever." I remember at that time, as a know-it-all, overprivileged grad student dropout, thinking that if only my generation was collectively getting the same "starter" opportunities as our parents sans the ridiculous debt, recession, outsourcing, and wage freeze combined with escalating cost of living that ensured that only the strongest, best-connected, and luckiest of us would survive (if you were just average, too bad for you), we would face life approximating a fair fight. Now, to my mortification, it is the best and brightest of us -- and mostly "liberal" to boot -- who embrace anti-scientific anti-intellectualism when it comes to vaccinating one's kids. No better than the pro-gun nuts who will keep voting Republican, against their own best interests, until their homeless status renders them ineligible to vote.

Autism may very well be on the rise, but there are possibilities other than vaccines to consider: more diagnoses, for starters (whereas in prior generations a child might be labeled retarded or simply "difficult"). Environmental conditions. (We wrecked the weather, after all.) Addiction to electronic devices at a tender age. The increasing age of parents bearing children. The increasing surveillance children are under: forget "helicopter parents," we are now in an era in which chidren appear to need to be bubble-wrapped in order to make it through their day. There is little or no freedom, experimentation, recess, fun, art, daydreaming, or boo-boos allowed -- but plenty of pressure to succeed right out of the gate. To fail at anything is not an option. To be bored is not an option. It is the inalienable right of every child to be continously entertained, preferably at great expense, and also be given the message that they are the center of the universe. This may not be a recipe for autism, but neither is this rigid, smothering, consumer-oriented attitude a recipe for optimal mental health. And I hate to say it, but my Pluto-in-Virgo and slightly younger Pluto-in-Libra contemporaries are to blame for this attitude. Despite the inarguable, scientific proof that U.S. children are much less likely these days to be abducted, molested, or killed than in the 1970s and '80s, today's generation of parents have a different perception, refusing point-blank to allow their children anywhere near the same amount of collective freedom (which admittedly shaded into wholesale neglect at times) that they had (and mostly survived). Except, of course, freedom from inoculation.

The final Uranus-Pluto square of this era is fast approaching (March 17), which could indicate a health epidemic as well as more global violence and brutality. Yet I fear that it will not be until the Saturn-Neptune square of 2016, with Saturn in Sagittarius (international law) and Neptune in Pisces (mass infection), which will create the awareness necessary for mass vaccinations -- due to avoidable tragedy.

Astrological Grab Bag

Moon's in the last degree of Virgo. Feeling jittery and scattered, yet in the mood to astrologize even though my thoughts are all over the place.

My progressed Moon is exactly midway through Gemini, and traveling through my 9th House. In that time (about 15 months), I have become simultaneously more interested in (and outraged by) politics and the failure of democracy in the United States (which seems to be more a reflection of 9th House concerns than Gemini) and...television.

For most of my teenage and adult years, I did not watch TV, period, with the exception of one or two guilty pleasures (Melrose Place; the local time-to-panic news hour). I preferred watching movies, MTV when they still showed music videos, and revolting public-access cable shows that by now have rightfully been flushed down the toilet of history. When I had an office job as an (il)legal secretary, I was able to contribute abolutely nothing to the buzz over Sex and the City. I was also unable to debate the true meaning of the series finale of The Sopranos. But since my Moon progressed into Gemini, I have probably watched more TV shows than I have in my first 41 years.

I only watch one of these shows, Mad Men (which I glommed on to from the very first season, with my progressed Moon in Aries), in real time. One of these shows is still on (like my newest addiction, 30 Rock). At least one was cancelled shortly after I got into it (Bored to Death). Some are vintage (The Fugitive, The Prisoner, The Twilight Zone). Some hail from the United Kingdom (Extras, Father Ted). It is tempting to credit my Roku box with my new interest in TV shows, but Roku has only been in my life for a couple of months. No, much of the credit goes to a few people in my life whose taste I mostly respect...and, I suppose, my own curiosity and desire to keep an open mind (Gemini). In a way, I feel retroactively embarrassed not to have watched some of these shows on television when they were new, but then again, even when I had cable, I lacked HBO (hello, Sopranos!). In another way, I am currently embarrassed that what soothes me even more than a good book (I am finally reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) is watching three back-to-back episodes of 30 Rock.

Television may or may not still be the opiate of the masses; after all, texting, sexting, Facebook, Twitter, and Wii are also vying for our glazed eyes and sore fingers. But in these uncertain, grim times, maybe it does make more sense to veg out with a good TV show...and there are more of them out there than I had previously imagined possible.

Lest this post turn out more focused than I'd originally intended, I am truly outraged that all this talk of the "fiscal cliff" is taking the focus away (once again) from the millions of people in the United States who are unemployed or underemployed. Back when I was a relative youngin and had my first astrology article, "The Astrology of Generation X," published in the December 1999 issue of Dell Horoscope, I noted that "Pluto in Virgo natives may suffer from lousy job karma." Keep in mind this article was written during the dot-com boom, so many people disagreed with me. However, the dot-com boom went bust, and turned out to be a big, fake-out blip on the radar.

Meaning no disrespect to the trillions of out-of-work baby boomers born in the 1950s who stand a snowball's chance in Hades of ever regaining gainful employment before collecting social security, I believe that my Pluto-in-Virgo generation was hit right out of the gates by the nation's 20-year trend of downsizing, offshoring, and an increasing unwillingness on the part of employers to train bright, educated individuals in the latest software technology that are destined to become obsolete in a year or two anyway. Things are only slightly better for the Pluto-in-Libra group because their relative youth (28 to 41 years old as of December 31, 2012) gives them a leg up in the hiring process, which may or may not result in their earning a living wage. And let us not forget those crushing student loans incurred by recent Pluto-in-Scorpio college graduates. But hey, it serves those impractical dreamers right for not majoring in Something Practical! We Need More Engineers! We Need More Entrepreneurs! The liberal arts really shouldn't exist at all -- although it's a nifty dodge for trust-fund brats and slackers who do not wish to enter the Family Business because they'd rather sleep late or work for a nonprofit or an art gallery or some such nonsense.

On a related note, I propose that we have a ceremonial burning of the phrase "the new normal." It lets far too many people and philosophies off the hook, and is even more objectionable than "it is what it is."

Although I am highly educated and only in my early 40s, my job applications are routinely ignored. But by now, I should be used to the constant stress of freelancing. With Aquarius on my 6th-House cusp and its ruler, Uranus, in my 1st House, perhaps it was inevitable that I wind up working for myself. And with Gemini on my MC, having more than one career at once is in the stars. I have to juggle all my aspirations, dammit! Yet when all is said and done, I am a Cancer Sun, and Cancer can get pretty damned insecure even on a sunny day. And with Uranus still opposing my natal Uranus, I am beginning to crack under the strain. I try to keep focused on my current creative project -- my version of the brass ring, the Golden Ticket that could change my entire life for the better. But constantly having to hustle for my next gig, and not even being able to relax when I land one because it won't bring in enough money for me to do anything more than tread water, can be a real energy drain. Plus, the grim implications of Saturn in Scorpio transiting my 2nd House are scaring the shit out of me. Especially when Saturn goes over my natal Moon next October. (It gets really close in February, but retrogrades within half a degree of the conjunction).

I think I'll close this helter-skelter post with this appeal: if you are looking to have your chart read by a compassionate, experienced, true-blue astrologer, please check out my testimonials on my homepage and contact me for my rates. Yes, I do astrocartography. Yes, I do relationship charts. Yes, I am the real deal.

'Twas the Night Before the Uranus-Pluto Square, and All Through the House...

...or shall I say "houses"?

A few posts ago I wrote about the upcoming Uranus-Pluto square; the first of seven (!) is exact tomorrow, June 24, 4:14 a.m. EDT.

I turn now to you, Dear Readers, to further enlighten (or endarken) me on this major aspect -- for although outer-planet aspects are collective and global in nature, the world is comprised of individuals.

If you know your birth chart, please write in and let me know in which houses the Uranus-Pluto square occurs, as well as any pertinent details as personal as you care to make them.

If you do not know your birth chart, but have been reading about the Uranus-Pluto square, how has this square been affecting you?

I am interested to hear from you whatever your sign, age, or experience of the square, but am especially interested in hearing from those of you who were born during the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1965-66, for the Uranus-Pluto square marks your official entry into midlife. Any interesting crises to report? Any predictions on the trajectory of your "X" generation?

How about those of you who were born a decade later, 1975-76, with natal Pluto at 8 degrees of Libra (which forms a stressful T-square to the already-stressful Uranus-Pluto square)? Post-Saturn Return but pre-midlife, are you energized or are you burning out?

And what's up with you even younger upstarts born in 1988, with Neptune at 8 degrees of Capricorn (conjunct transiting Pluto and square transiting Uranus)? Are you having a spiritual awakening, dissolving any walls or defenses, or are you having a full-fledged waking nightmare?

Okay, I will share first: the Uranus-Pluto square falls in my seventh (Uranus) and fourth (Pluto) houses. I have just moved (for the second time with Pluto transiting my fourth house of home), and it was extremely traumatic despite the overwhelmingly positive "realities" (location-location-location, plus cheaper rent). My relationship (seventh house) feels uneven and unstable (Uranus) partly due to the move and partly thanks to unexpected (Uranus again!) and unwelcome health issues brought on by too little sleep and too much stress (my sixth house of health and work is 29 degrees of Aquarius, and so is ruled by Uranus). And speaking of work, I have lost much of my freelance (oh, you're still here, Uranus?) momentum; I have little energy to hustle for projects, which is at least half the freelancer's battle. At least today, on the Sun-Neptune trine, I had a good day with my Neptune-ruled sweetie, first at my new place (Sun in Cancer) and then at the beach (Neptune in Pisces), though I could have lived without the annual Mermaid Parade crowd. Too bad my energy later drained to the point that I ended the night alone (oh, you Neptune, you).

Your turn. I thank you in advance for your candor.

The "We" Regeneration: The Pluto-in-Libra Group Faces the Pluto-in-Capricorn Challenge

Pluto’s energy is primal, compulsive, and willful—it deals with both eros (sexual desire, which ensures the survival of a species) and thanatos (the death wish). People tend to obsess over and repress Pluto issues; a few years ago the International Astronomers Union literally demoted Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet.” Yet Pluto’s power refuses to be diminished.

Pluto calls upon us during crises to evolve and survive, or die. Due to Pluto’s eccentric orbit, different generations experience transiting Pluto’s square to their natal Pluto position at varying stages of life—or not at all, when Pluto passes through the slower-moving signs. The square is an aspect of inner conflict. As Pluto passes through Capricorn (2008/09–2023/24), the group that will have the most challenges to face during this very challenging era is Pluto in Libra (1971/72–1983/84; please consult Astrodienst.com’s free ephemeris for exact dates), the younger half of Generation X (born 1961–1981, according to highly regarded social historians Neil Howe and William Strauss).

Most who have Pluto in Libra will have similar timing with their square as the Pluto-in-Virgo group (born 1957/58–1971/72), and be in their mid- to late 30s—but to different effect, due to the different signs involved. The Virgo/Sagittarius Pluto square was about health, work, and obligations (Virgo issues) conflicting with sky’s-the-limit expansion, ethics, and globalization (Sagittarius issues)—which resulted by 2008 in too many obese, sick, unemployed, outsourced adults in their late 30s to early 50s with ruined credit and foreclosures.

The Libra/Capricorn Pluto square features relationships (particularly contractual ones) challenging institutions and structures. Because Pluto is slowing down in its orbit, the last of the Pluto-in-Libra group (1982–1984) will be in their early 40s when their Pluto square occurs—signifying a generational shift that will give them something in common with their Pluto-in-Leo Baby Boomer parents, whose Pluto square also coincided with the early 40s “midlife crisis” aspect: Uranus opposing Uranus.

Yet for the majority of Pluto-in-Libra individuals, the Pluto square occurs before the Uranus opposition. The Pluto square is such an intense aspect that it could make the potentially explosive Uranus opposition a half decade later somewhat anticlimactic. My take on this: Gen X, from front to back, had to grow up fast in an increasingly fragmented, R-rated, accelerated culture, and is now entering its prime earning years during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Many soon-to-be forty-somethings will not have the luxury of experiencing the type of midlife crisis in which the Silent and Baby Boomer generations often participated.

Now that Pluto is in Capricorn, trading in your reliable but boring wheels at midlife for a hot sports car, your reliable but humdrum job for something more exciting, and your reliable but sagging spouse for a younger trophy wife (or the buff UPS guy) seem like relics from a bygone era. Perhaps as Pluto passes through Capricorn, it will be more common to see the Pluto-in-Libra group shun cars that utilize fossil fuels (Capricorn) in favor of “green machines,” and respond to chronic unemployment by finding something beautiful (Libra) to craft or build (Capricorn), which will result in more indie arts & crafts sites like Etsy.com.

I predict that even well-off Pluto-in-Libra individuals will choose not to flaunt it if they got it—especially if the growing numbers of desperate have-nots transform from frightened, fragmented individuals to angry, mobilized mobs. We may see quite a few “Bonnie and Clyde” couples (Libra) who rob banks (Capricorn) while minding their manners (Libra again!). And they will be seen as figures of romance, now that almost everyone on Main St. loves to hate Wall St. Marriage is likely to be an all-or-nothing proposition for the Pluto-in-Libra group; many will create an entirely new set of vows, and advocate for same-sex marriage. Since Libra rules the arts, there may soon be more depictions onstage and in the movies of gay couples that are more about love and relating, less about activism and AIDS.

When Pluto passes through a sign, everything concerning that sign is brought to the surface, obsessed about on a mass level, and transformed—or killed. Looking back to Pluto’s transit of Libra, “the term ‘relationship,’” as Jim Ryan puts it in his hilarious cartoon book The ’70s: Life in a Dumb Decade, “came from the ’70s need to categorize what Joni Mitchell was having. [Relationships] were thought about…talked about… discussed… worked out…opened up…taken on the Donahue Show.”

As many states implemented “no fault” divorce laws, divorce rates in the U.S. skyrocketed, finally peaking in 1980; many of those born with Pluto in Libra were young children of divorce. Libra is ruled by Venus, the planet women are said to be from; “women’s lib” during the 1970s resulted in more women entering the workforce and fighting for equality (Libra) with men. Although the Pluto-in-Libra group may take equal rights for granted because they were born into an era of feminism (and Mattel’s “We Girls Can Do Anything” ad campaign of the ’80s endeared the Barbie doll to young Pluto-in-Libra girls), there are deeper, more disturbing currents afoot that could potentially result in a new battle of the sexes.

Because the U.S. has lost much of its manufacturing and IT base, and its infrastructure has been allowed to crumble, more men have lost their jobs recently than women—to the extent that this recession has been called a “man-cession.” Men also have fallen behind women in educational achievement. Although the dual-income household has been the norm in the U.S. ever since Pluto transited Libra, the concept of the husband as main breadwinner is currently being turned on its head. Perhaps one challenge the Pluto-in-Libra group faces as Pluto passes through Capricorn is how to navigate marriages that feature more involuntary “househusbands.”

Look back at an earlier ’60s and ’70s era in America: the 1760s and ’70s, which just happened to be the last time Pluto passed through Capricorn. As hard as it might be to believe this early on in the transit, another revolution is coming. This revolution may gain momentum on MoveOn.org and social network sites like Facebook and Twitter (which certainly reflect the Pluto-in-Libra style), but it will need to move into the material world in order to take root (Capricorn).

Interestingly, George Washington was born with Pluto in Libra—which exactly squared his Moon in Capricorn! I for one hope that our next George Washington, regardless of gender or political affiliation, will soon come forward and play a huge role in saving our nation from its own corrupt government, poisonous pollutants, and out-of-whack institutions—including the Tea Party movement that many alienated Pluto-in-Libra extremists will be tempted to join.

The concept of depression as a psychological state, as well as its treatments, will undergo a transformation as Pluto transits Capricorn. Due to the Pluto square I described earlier, this will be especially relevant for the Pluto-in-Libra group, who came of age during a time when antidepressant drugs were not only being prescribed, but overprescribed. Long-term users of various mood elevators are becoming worried by the tolls these drugs may take on their physical health; combine this concern with the escalating costs of prescription drugs in general, and we may be looking at an era of mass withdrawal from the antidepressants that were so widespread when Pluto transited Sagittarius (tellingly, a sign that does not tolerate depression). Talk therapy will make a comeback, and there is also a growing belief in evolutionary psychology that depression serves a purpose, that “sadder but wiser” has the ring of truth.

Over the next dozen years, the Pluto-in-Libra group is most likely to take the hardest knocks from Pluto in Capricorn. Yet this group is also the best situated to transform itself by not only thinking of itself—and in so doing, just might go down in history as the “We Generation.”


T. C. Gardstein is a Brooklyn-based astrologer and writer. She is especially pleased that this article is included in the 2010 International Astrology Day Blog-a-thon (March 19-21) because her favorite planet is Pluto. T.C. has published articles in Dell Horoscope and Mountain Astrologer, and created and managed an astrology website, PlutoRising.com, for the now-defunct dot-com company Webseed. Her novel, Circuit, is available for purchase on Amazon and Xlibris, and her eBook of erotic verse, The Poetry Prostitute, has been published by Paper Bag Press (audio book forthcoming). T.C. is available for private astrological consultation as well as parties. Contact her at PlutoRisingAstrologer@gmail.com.

Sources:

Astrodienst.com
Generations, Neil Howe and William Strauss
Etsy.com
The ’70s: Life in a Dumb Decade, Jim Ryan
MoveOn.org
“The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged,” Frank Rich, 2/27/10, NYTimes.com
“Depression’s Upside,” Jonah Lehrer, 2/25/10, NYTimes.com