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).

My Big Fat Midlife Crisis: Notes on Uranus Opposing My Ass

Being an astrologer does have its perks. At the same time, it can be like waiting for a delicately poised axe to fall and relieve me of my head.

In this era, the three aspects that launch one into midlife are the Pluto square, the Neptune square, and the Uranus opposition. (In other eras, Pluto is not a factor, due to its highly eccentric orbit.) Depending on exactly when you were born, these aspects can overlap, or not be anywhere near one another. However the timing plays out, it helps to think of these aspects as a process instead of isolated incidents.

In my case, I experienced the Pluto square first, at the relatively early ages of 35 and 36. With Pluto at my IC (aka Nadir, or the 4th House cusp) squaring my natal Pluto on the Ascendant, I feared that I would lose my home; instead, I slowly slid into credit card debt (Pluto). There was also a disastrous moneymaking scheme on my too-trusting father's part that eventually cost him his medical license and hefty lawyer's fees to stay out of jail. (Although the father is traditionally said to rule the 10th House, the family in general is to be found in the 4th, and this situation affected the entire family.) Sex became a battleground, but by the final square I had become far more emotionally honest about my needs and wants. What wound up alleviating the Pluto square was my natal Jupiter; on the heels of the square, Pluto formed a sextile to it. Though I was spending money I didn't really have, I was also very creatively productive (wrote my second book). On a shallow level, I looked surprisingly good; at least on the surface, the Pluto square agreed with me. Unlike just a few years before, I felt that my life was on an upswing; I was no longer mourning my lost youth, had a great apartment and some new friends, and felt I was growing younger, not older.

The Neptune square came considerably later, between the ages of 39 and 41. (This square, unlike the Pluto square, occurred five times instead of the standard three.) At age 39, with Neptune entering my 6th House, I began experiencing various minor but annoying health issues that compelled me to confront my physical vulnerabilities and jump off the Fun Train. Feeling extremely lost, a Nowhere (Wo)man in a Nowhere Land, my relationships expressed the dark side of my Neptune-ruled 7th House, with much masochistic behavior on my part in an attempt to hold on to those who were not worth touching with a ten-foot pole. I moved to a neighborhood that was more affordable but also very far away from almost everything and everyone I wanted to be close to. I further compounded that mistake by convincing myself (and not for the first time, unfortunately) that companionship trumped good sexual chemistry in a steady relationship, and that I could literally live with such a scenario. But it was a harmful pipe dream, and while I was smoking it, I gained weight; instead of applying my Plutonian willpower to dieting, I bought some trousers and skirts with elasticized waists and proceeded to pack on more pounds. I became increasingly morose and downright depressed at the same time that I was publishing erotica eBooks and poetry and attracting attention on the thriving Manhattan reading-performance circuit -- a typically Neptunian paradox, as validation for my writing meant very little to me when I felt so worthless. It was was midway through this nearly two-year period that I landed a part-time office job without even seeking it out -- and the job dissolved (Neptune transiting my 6th) just as mysteriously after the fifth and final square. This last square not so coincidentally occurred just a few weeks after getting together with my current boyfriend, a Pisces -- there was an air of fatedness and magic (Neptune) to the proceedings, as we'd had a date three years earlier, and on our do-over the NRE (new relationship energy) was off the charts. But the square forced me to see that far from being a pair of enchanted mythological creatures, we were fallible, just two sensitive souls with plenty of baggage that cannot be easily jettisoned. Similar to the Pluto square, I believe that my natal Jupiter acted as a sort of guardian angel and kept my creative juices flowing, as Neptune trined it shortly before making the square to my natal Neptune.

Today marked my second Uranus opposition. (The first one happened this past April, just two months before the transiting Uranus-Pluto square). Falling in my 1st and 7th Houses, from Libra to Aries, the question of how to balance my relationships with the people who are most important to me are on my front burner -- but so too is a sense of wanting to make some pretty big changes that are incompatible with current realities. I have no idea how this dilemma can be resolved. Maybe it can't. I don't really know what else to write about my Uranus opposition; combined with the notorious Uranus-Pluto square, it's just too much to fathom, and unlike the Pluto and Neptune squares, my Jupiter is not there to cushion any blows. Perhaps its true meaning won't become clear to me until after the final Uranus opposition occurs, which is just two months away. I have a very strong sense of champing at the bit and being very frustrated with all the limitations in my life, at the same time that I am aware of how thankful I should be. I feel that a window is open, that this may be my last chance to steer my life in the direction I want it to go, but at the same time, I am terrified to climb through this window because it would entail letting go of just about everything and everyone dear to my heart as well as everything and everyone I want to leave behind.

If you are going through the same midlife aspects, I would love to hear from you. It would also be interesting to hear from those of you who emerged on the other side of the Uranus opposition. If you do not wish to leave a public comment, please email me at plutorisingastrologer@gmail.com.

'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.

My So-Called Midlife Crisis (Part I): The Pluto Square

In common with my "X" generation, I experienced one major outer-planetary aspect a full half decade earlier in life than the Silents and Boomers who may or may not have raised us: the Pluto square. Transiting Pluto in Sagittarius squared my natal Pluto in Virgo three times when I was but a relatively fresh 35- and 36-year-old (as opposed to the prototypical Boomer, whose Pluto square occurred after age 40).

At that time (the mid-zeroes, the mid-aughts, the mid-naughties?) I was terrified at the fallout that would surely occur on this long-awaited-for and equally dreaded-for square, as my Pluto is not only conjunct my Ascendant, but almost exactly square my 4th-house cusp. I was more than half convinced that with transiting Pluto entering my 4th house on a square to my natal Pluto, I would lose my home in some violent way (meteor shower, misguided bombshell, terrorist attack on my building), and that this loss would effectively murder my self-identity (as a Cancerian, my home life to a large degree is my self-identity).

Since the 4th house is also the domain of family, I was also counting on attending at least one, more likely two funerals: my father's, who had been fighting stage-4 melanoma for the past five years, and my EG's (evil granny), who had been diagnosed with dementia (the very definition, in my non-humble opinion, of redundancy).

I also worried that the sexier side of Pluto would take a powder, and perhaps never return.

Not one of my predictions for the Pluto square occurred.

What did happen during this transit was mostly positive from my Plutonian perspective. I was on fire creatively, cranking out many short stories I dubbed "neurotica," as they were both sexually explicit and psychologically oriented, which formed an as-yet-still-unpublished collection of stories, and was test-driving these stories at a very good reading series in Brooklyn's nabe-of-the-moment Williamsburg. Far from being a loner, I was socializing much more than I had at the beginning of the decade. Workwise, I was getting plenty of freelance projects without having to hustle too much for them. I was generally satisfied with my outer appearance; I ate what I pleased yet remained slender, in part because I lived on the 4th floor of a walkup building and so had a built-in StairMaster. My love life was...well, let's just say it was neither nonexistent nor boring. Sure there was plenty of Plutonian drama, but for me it was BAU (business as usual).

I am sharing all this with you for a reason other than self-absorption: if you happen to be a Dear Reader in your mid-30s and are anticipating that the fit is going to hit the shan when Pluto squares your Pluto, ask yourself how well you tend to use Pluto's energy. In other words: How comfortable are you with plumbing the depths, with opening yourself up to inner transformation (as opposed to simply dying your hair blue or getting a sleeve tattoo)? Do you own your power in a, well, empowering as opposed to ruthless and unprincipled manner? Do you express your sexuality in such a way that it revitalizes you instead of drains you? Are you honest with money, or are you a goniff?

What I am saying is that it's entirely possible that the Pluto square will give you more strength and inspiration instead of only taking things away from you, as the cookbook-type astrology books would lead you to believe.

Or maybe I was just lucky and dodged a bullet back in 2006, because the following year was a far rockier road, almost unredeemably sucky.

Stay tuned for "My So-Called Midlife Crisis (Part II): The Neptune Square."