The Planet That Wears Its Heart on Its Face
Showing posts with label pluto in capricorn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pluto in capricorn. Show all posts
Monday, March 20, 2023
The Beginning of the End ... or the End of the Beginning?
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Belated Happy 246th Birthday to the U.S.A. on the 2nd Pass of Its 1st Pluto Return
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Looking Back at 9/11 aka Sept. 11 and Its Fallout 20 Years Later
As much as I do not wish to be ruled by schedules or anniversaries or societally sanctioned nostalgia, I cannot pass up this rare opportunity -- the 20th anniversary of 9/11 aka Sept. 11 -- to break my astrological silence. It was a cruel summer, and even though the Delta surge seems to have peaked in the U.S., we are still in the grips of a Saturn-Uranus square (the hallmark aspect of 2021).
I perused some of my posts concerning that clear blue late-summer morning, though as I'd lamented in my "I lived below 14th St. and watched the towers collapse and smelled the death" 10th anniversary post 10 years ago, I cannot access the post I wrote on the actual day for a long-defunct blog sponsored by a long-defunct startup called Webseed. What stands out to me is the importance of the delayed response of harsh taskmaster and timekeeper Saturn, particularly when it aspects Uranus or Pluto: in May 2000, Saturn in Taurus squared Uranus in Aquarius, and in August 2001, Saturn in Gemini opposed Pluto in Sagittarius; not so coincidentally, this opposition formed on the U.S.'s Ascendant (Sagittarius) and Descendant (Gemini). All warnings about an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil were ignored as the 21st century dawned. On the day of the devastating attack, the Moon was in Gemini, the sign of the Twins (and two planes flew into the Twin Towers).
On November 16, 2009, posting on the waning square between Saturn in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn that referenced 9/11 and the Saturn-Pluto opposition, I wrote: "Americans are divided about the swine flu vaccine, and there's also a vaccine shortage. [...] On a global level -- well, to expect world peace may be a naive pipe dream, but issues involving the environment and pandemics (of which the swine flu is just the beginning) are just as important as all the futile, costly wars being fought."
In January 2020, Saturn caught up with Pluto for a conjunction in Capricorn that was the defining aspect of last year, ushering in the Covid-19 pandemic that is by no means over despite the arrival of the miracle vaccines, as most of the world is still unvaccinated and in the U.S., the pandemic was immediately politicized. The Delta variant did not originate in the U.S., but because enough Americans refused to get a free, safe, highly effective vaccine or mask up, this summer saw a surge that mainly ravaged southern states with low vax rates, though a high-vax state like Oregon suffered due to the environmental hazard of constant wildfires. And just like the first two months of 2020, not enough people grokked that Delta was not going to stay in India or other faraway countries like a good little variant.
The hard squares and oppositions involving Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto have all manifested in extreme polarization at every level, from neighborhoods to states to nations to the entire planet. Nuance has been flushed down the toilet. Everything and everyone seems black or white, red or blue, right or wrong, good or evil. Facts are opinions and opinions are facts. The U.S. briefly enjoyed the goodwill of most of the world in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; we squandered that goodwill in drawn-out, misguided wars and security theater. With Pluto in Capricorn since 2008/9, authorities and institutions of all kinds are no longer trusted due to their being overtly untrustworthy ... yet no one in power (Pluto) gives it up willingly. We went from the international (Pluto in Sagittarius) terrorism of 9/11 to the domestic insurrection of January 6 (Sun in Capricorn), and Trump wants our money again. Biden pulled the troops out of Afghanistan, facing mountains of criticisms for how the long-overdue pullout was implemented, while Texas implemented sharia law that may wind up overturning the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade in the U.S. And Biden's new national mask mandates, a big stick instead of a carrot that only went so far, may ignite a conflagration that will set off Civil War II.
With Pluto in the last half of the last decanate of the last Earth sign of Capricorn, this perfect storm of crises may be last call for humanity to mend our fences and tear down our walls (Capricorn), learn to live with one another at every level, and treat our home planet with more respect ... for Mother Nature always bats last.
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Jupiter Conjunct Pluto, Round Three: The Return of the Coronavirus That Never Left
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Election Predictions: Mercury Stationing Direct on a Jupiter-Pluto Conjunction...Will the Third Time Be the Charm, or the Perfect Storm?
With Mercury stationing direct on US Election Day, it is very unlikely that the results will be determined tonight or even tomorrow, particularly since Mercury will soon square transiting Saturn in Capricorn (indicating delays) and US Pluto in Capricorn (indicating all kinds of frightening, underhanded, violent, criminally oriented possibilites). Mercury is in Libra, the sign of the Scales (the symbol of justice), so it's also very likely that the Supreme Court will be involved.
Mars, the planet of war, aggression, and desire, is still retrograde in its ruling sign Aries until 11/13, the day after the final of three
Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions in Capricorn, so until then there is also a sense of pushing hard without quite breaking through. As I wrote earlier this year, I believe the signature of Covid-19 is the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn; each time this aspect that expands/magnifies (Jupiter) pestilence and death (Pluto) nears the exact conjunction (April 4, June 30, November 12), there has has been a corresponding wave or surge of this pandemic. This holds especially true for the United States, since Jupiter will also pass over US Pluto, though Europe is currently facing a second wave. The key difference, of course, is that the US government, steered by the Republican majority in the Senate, cut off aid to individuals and small businesses months ago; economic hardship (also symbolized by Jupiter in the sign of its fall) foisted on those who need the most help has effectively set up a lose-lose situation. Many claim that the cure (lockdowns and less extreme restrictions) is worse than the disease, yet the two undeniably depend on each other. The politicization of public health has been an unfortunate side effect of this heavily Capricorn year, though Saturn's three-month stay in Aquarius (from late March till early July) manifested in the highly unpopular social (Aquarius) distancing (Saturn).
Although I believe that Biden will prevail in the end, due to his own natal chart lining up better than Trump's with the US's natal chart this year, over the next four years, with the United States coming up on its Pluto Return, revolution is inevitable, both from without and within. The United States must either regenerate and transform (Pluto actions) or die under a fascist plutocracy. Trump may wind up in jail, but the fact that almost half of the US voters continue to believe in his vision, as well as the rise in Far Right groups such as QAnon, is highly concerning. Over twenty years ago, I predicted that the US would have another civil war, despite the messy geographical boundaries. Now it seems more than ever that the US is headed for a messy divorce.
It remains to be seen if the US will wind up on the right side of history by the time the biggest global crisis since the Great Depression and World War II has ended with either a bang or a whimper.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Pluto-in-Virgo Generation: Transforming the Work Environment
Back in the day (i.e., December 1999), I published my first astrology article, "The Astrology of Generation X," in Dell Horoscope. That month, I regularly walked to my friendly neighborhood news stand, Gem Spa, which also made the best egg creams in New York City, to see my name featured on Dell Horoscope's final cover of the twentieth century. I was 29 years old and had every reason to believe that I was on the verge, that my thirties in the "aughts" (as I somewhat pretentiously referred to the '00s) would bring me over the threshold. To be sure, my upcoming Saturn Return chart looked ominous, with a pileup of planets in Taurus squaring Uranus in Aquarius. Yet I was still hopeful. It helped that the magazine almost immediately accepted another article and that I landed my first telecommuting job that winter (organizing a database for an online business dictionary), which necessitated my first desktop (a Compaq) with internet capability. To be sure, it was a gig (meaning the hours were just shy of making me eligible for benefits), but the hourly wage was decent, and my landlords at that time were my parents. The ruler of my 6th house, Uranus, was in my 1st house, so I was born to be my own boss, to freelance. If I was a patchwork worker, I figured I could cover myself enough to have a patchwork blanket.
In that first article, I wrote that the Pluto-in-Virgo group, born between 1956-57 and 1971-72, may have "bad job karma." This was in part a reaction to what the early Gen-Xers (and late Boomers) experienced in the workplace during the 1990s, trailing the Pluto-in-Leo mainline Boomers like Cinderella picking up after her diva stepsisters: we were either snubbed or bullied. The media painted us as apathetic slackers or stupid jocks; the smarter ones were nerds before geek was chic.
As the "aughts" wore on, however, the slacker image wore out like an artfully ripped flannel shirt. Pluto-in-Virgo workers got busy as transiting Pluto burned through Sagittarius. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, with Pluto entering Capricorn, the so-called Great Recession hit the United States, and most downsized Pluto-in-Virgo individuals had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of forty while also being left out of the fledgling Boomer-Millennial debate/pity party/pissing contest. Virtually every industry was cut to the bone; it was a "jobless recovery" that mainly benefited corporations and banks (Pluto in Capricorn) as well as people who were already rich (the so-called 1 percent). Freelancing and gig work became more common, with many people having to cobble two or three jobs together just to survive. (The only reason I was able to stay afloat as a freelancer in publishing for as long as I did was because I had worked "in house" for a few years.) Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic leading to unemployment levels in the United States not seen since the Great Depression, it will fall to the Pluto-in-Virgo group to transform the work environment.
It will be a tough task, as the Pluto-in-Leo generation isn't going anywhere, and they are far more likely to be at the top of the pyramid in terms of position and power. But in the decade leading up to this global health crisis, the younger Millennial generation (born with Pluto in Scorpio and Sagittarius) has been far more likely than their Boomer bosses to view white-collar office or "knowledge" work more as a thing than a place, thanks to the technological advances that occurred during Uranus and Neptune transiting Aquarius, from the World Wide Web and Windows 95 through smartphones. It is therefore up to the Pluto-in-Virgo group to transform the work environment, even if it means jamming the gears with our bodies.
For office workers, this will entail Pluto-in-Virgo managers convincing Boomer top dogs that health concerns (Virgo) matter more than face time and that actual productivity (Virgo again) matters more than the appearance of busyness. As all 50 states have reopened in varying degrees for business despite the warnings of epidemiologists, this is the optimal time to jettison the one-size-fits-all approach to work in favor of flexible arrangements that will suit everyone's different and often unexpected needs, including the most control-freaky Pluto-in-Leo bosses (when they consider how much money they will save on office space while still being able to monitor their employees' output via tracking software). The "essential" workers in the service industry who are grossly underpaid while risking their health face an even tougher battle for a living wage plus sick live, as well as the millions of Americans who will remain unemployed and, consequently, uninsured and at risk for all sorts of health issues, including malnutrition. I am hoping against hope that some Pluto-in-Virgo individuals will come out of the woodwork to engineer a pragmatic (Virgo) plan (Virgo again) that will clean up (yep, Virgo once again) the mess we are in.
At its worst, Virgo is myopic and pays so much attention to detail that it can't see the forest for the trees, but at its best, there is a purity of purpose that cares more about what works and less about ideology. It is worth noting that the US natal chart has Neptune in Virgo square Mars in Gemini, which can lead to poor judgment as well as erratic energy, lies, and scandal. Transiting Neptune in Pisces is within range of opposing America's Neptune, and in part this is manifesting as the United States being #1 in infections and deaths from a pandemic.
Pluto has an extreme nature; it transforms or kills all matters relating to the sign it transits. The "tune in, turn on, drop out" credo of the late 1960s was born during the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo. Divorce peaked with Pluto transiting the marriage sign of Libra, while AIDS peaked during the Pluto in Scorpio transit, effectively ending the sexual revolution. Organized religion, higher education, travel, and zealots were all spotlighted during Pluto's transit of Sagittarius (9/11 occurred on the heels of the Saturn-Pluto opposition). Now, with Pluto in the last decanate of Capricorn, edging up to the US's Pluto's Return, individuals born between 1969 and 1972 are best positioned to work with this often frightening, harsh energy. Since Virgo excels at finding the perfect words for each situation, perhaps it is time to come up with 95 memes for a new reformation.
Sunday, May 10, 2020
When Predictive Astrology Fails and Why It Is Not Proof that Astrology Is Fake
I am not familiar with the astrologer Susan Miller, but apparently, according to a recent article in the New York Times ("Will Coranavirus Kill Astrology?" by Hayley Phelan, 5/9/20), she predicted in January that 2020 was going to be a wonderful year.
Cue mic crash
Oy. Ms. Miller later recanted this prediction on her website in mid-March, when COVID-19 was slamming into New York, her city of residence; this appeased her many disillusioned fans. She held Pluto responsible (a safe gambit, since Pluto is the OG badass of our solar system) and spoke of the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction that was also in effect during the Spanish Influence pandemic of 1918. She also predicted a second wave that would occur this fall and dissipate by mid-December. Her rationale? That with Jupiter and Pluto parting ways by the end of this year, the pandemic would depart for good.
Personally, I disagree with her assessment, as it was precisely with Saturn at the end of Capricorn and the beginning of Aquarius that the tipping point was reached, with much of the world being placed in lockdown mode. We have not even finished with the so-called first wave in most of America. We are learning more about the nature of the virus, but at this point we can't say for sure that antibodies constitute immunity, and that a vaccine or cure is just a matter of when, not if. Many states are currently reopening even as public health officials say that it is still too soon. And with the seemingly far-off Jupiter-Saturn conjunction at 0 Aquarius on the heels of the Winter Solstice, social (or, more accurately, physical) distancing will expand to the point of being normalized during the holiday season. Zoom and other virtual hangout platforms may very well recede when Saturn retrogrades back into Capricorn this summer, but they will return (with added features, perhaps Smell-O-Vision?) with Saturn once again in Aquarius.
Yet even if it turns out that Ms. Miller is correct, in which case I would be very glad to have been incorrect, the point I wish to make here is that it is very risky to be in the predictive astrology business. For even if an astrologer is uncannily accurate in predicting widespread societal events, these events will still affect individuals differently. Not everyone who contracts COVID-19 will die of it or even feel ill; not every person who then catches the virus from the first person will croak or experience symptoms, and so on. Not every person will lose his or her livelihood during the Great Depression II. Not every person will even know someone personally who died of the virus or who became unemployed. Certain individuals, as hard as it may be to fathom, will actually thrive this year by falling in love, or by figuring out how to live their best possible lives when lockdown lifts. Such individuals could have many natal planets forming a trine or sextile aspect to the dreaded Saturn-Pluto and Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions of 2020. Many more individuals will experience both harmonious and challenging aspects to Saturn-Pluto and Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions, so there will be something to cushion the worst-case scenario.
The thing about Capricorn and its ruling planet Saturn is that it is empirical, oriented toward the material world. It is a quantitative sign more comfortable dealing with the five senses than with mystical, airy-fairy mumbo-jumbo. As a Cardinal earth sign, Capricorn is far more at home with doing than with being. It would be unfair to say that Capricorn/Saturn has no inner life, but it would be fair to say that Capricorn/Saturn tends to look to the things of the outer world to define its inner core. So during this Capricorn-oriented time, it is more likely that astrologers, who are after all just people, are tempted to make outer-world predictions rather than inner-world predictions that will be invisible to almost everyone except to the person experiencing a profound psychological shift.
I cannot promise that I will shy away from predictions made by looking at planetary transits this year, but I do promise to study even more closely individuals' progressions, when everything unfolds in its own time. Even for those of us who have been home for the past several weeks, we do not live in a vacuum, but your own cosmic blueprint aka natal chart is something that no pandemic, political unrest, or economic collapse can take away from you.
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Astrology in the Time of COVID-19
Thursday, February 28, 2019
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).
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Election Day: Civil War II?
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
--William Butler Yeats (1919)
Dear readers, I plead guilty to the sin of procrastination. Yes, I have been run down, burned-out, too engaged in my paying work and with my drama-filled life, but I still feel obligated to try to make some sense of this crazy-ass election cycle...not so much to predict who will win the U.S. presidency today, or to reiterate what many of you might have already read about Mars being in the last degree of Capricorn on Election Day, and how the Moon will change signs from Aquarius to Pisces. Instead, I want to explore the U.S. natal chart and its progressions, transits, and its next Lunar Return (which happens today, 12:44 p.m. EST).
When I gaze a little ways down the cosmic road, I do not like much of what I see for America.
Over and over again on this site, I discussed the Uranus-Pluto square of 2012-15 and the more recent Saturn-Neptune square of 2015-16. I still believe these ridiculously horrendous aspects, operating on a mass level because they involved the outer planets, were what made this ridiculously horrendous election cycle possible.
What I somehow missed was that transiting Pluto opposed U.S. Sun throughout 2015 (a classic power-tripping aspect that also points to nefarious underground, illicit activity). This opposition was heightened by the fact that U.S. 1st and 7th Houses were involved, lending a highly polarized "you vs. me" flavor. Pluto has been transiting U.S. 1st House since December 2000; it was conjunct U.S. Ascendant on the heels of 9/11, with transiting Saturn opposing it in Gemini, the sign of the twins (or twin towers). It is safe to say that for the past decade and a half, America has been going through a classic Pluto-transiting-1st-House identity crisis.
Pluto does transform -- but not always for the better. Pluto first entered U.S. 2nd House in March of this year and will go back into the 2nd House for good in the first week of January 2017. So right now, we are at the tail end of this particular chapter of U.S. history, of Pluto transiting the 1st House. And in so many ways, America has become unrecognizable...not just in its appearance (downside: obese; upside: increased acceptance of transgendered individuals; downside: crumbling infrastructure and chain-store-ification; upside: more underground/alternative scenes) but in a deep-rooted sense that is not at all visible yet still palpable on a psychic level. Aside from blossoming shamanistic healers, the vibe has been dark, menacing, hostile, morbid, nihilistic. In other words, Plutonian.
Transiting Uranus has also been making plenty of noise in the U.S. chart. As Pluto slips into the U.S. 2nd House, Uranus remains in the angular 4th House and will continue to square U.S. Mercury, as it did in the summer of 2016, till April 2017. Interestingly, Uranus comes within a hair's breadth of squaring U.S. Mercury again at the very beginning of 2018, but turns direct just before the exact aspect. Given the signs and Houses involved (Aries/Cancer, 4th House to 8th), I suspect that we will narrowly avert a disaster of potentially apocalyptic proportions right around New Year's Day 2018. However, we may not be so lucky on that front this coming April. That does not mean I am predicting THE apocalypse when spring comes, but it suggests homegrown terrorism and/or Civil War II. The climate is very ripe for such brutal, intransigent tragedy, the likes of which we have not experienced in America since the 1860s.
Even if we all breathe a collective sigh of relief in January 2018, transiting Uranus will have been squaring U.S. Pluto (June and September 2017) and will not finish doing so till April 2018.
So basically, Uranus has been, and will continue, triggering America's natal Mercury-Pluto opposition: one of America's worst aspects. (The other one is the Mars-Neptune square, which will soon be triggered by transiting Saturn in Sagittarius.) Uranus is genius but also insanity; Uranus is a rebel with a cause; Uranus is a lightning bolt that could zap America's collective brain, forcing some of us to wake up while encouraging others of us to succumb to violent paranoia and scratch an itchy trigger finger.
No matter who wins the U.S. election, I see the potential for mass deception, depression, and imprisonment, as transiting Neptune continues to conjunct U.S. progressed Sun in Pisces until spring 2018. (The conjunction began this past spring.) On the upside, I also see some wonderful movies, literature, dance, and other art forms being created and released -- though some of the art could well be banned or suppressed if it lacks the necessary propaganda and "spin." Another positive manifestation of this very strong Pisces conjunction could be increased medical or recreational legalization of marijuana in America. As you are probably aware, the issue of marijuana reform is on the ballot today for nine states. If all the measures pass, that would make almost a quarter of the U.S. population (not a quarter of the actual states) eligible to indulge in recreational pot use.
I see an influx of immigrants with U.S. progressed Moon in Sagittarius entering U.S. 1st House at the dawn of spring 2017, but also a wave of people emigrating due to religious or philosophical differences. More worrisome is the fact that U.S. progressed Moon exactly opposes U.S. Uranus in Gemini just two weeks after Election Day. Emotions will be running high and not at all rationally; at the risk of repeating myself, another read of this opposition is Civil War II. At the very least, some quarters will be experiencing a meltdown or nervous breakdown of epic proportions.
I implore those of you who can vote in the U.S. election to do so. Yes, the upcoming aspects are deeply troubling and downright alarming, no matter which candidate wins; but I am not saying that it does not make a difference who wins...far from it. It is also crucial that the Democratic Party regain the Senate. One cause I have for optimism is that the U.S. Lunar Return features the Sun and Mercury at the Midheaven in Scorpio, and Hillary Clinton is a Scorpio.
Capricorn is Rising in the Lunar Return, with Mars close to the Ascendant and U.S. Mercury exactly conjunct the 7th House Cusp. This suggests that women voters will be particularly important, but that some poll centers will be a very unpleasant experience, with or without police presence.
What my study of transiting aspects indicates is that no matter which candidate wins, the hatred, extremism, racism, sexism, greed, and xenophobia that have moved from the lunatic fringe to the alt-right (which I refer to as alt-control-delete, since that better describes their agenda) will not magically vanish in a puff of acrid smoke if Hillary Clinton wins America's next presidency. There are simply too many of them to discount, and not all of them are uneducated and poor, either. It is conceivable that the inconceivable could happen; consider how British voters did not come to their senses earlier this year, resulting in "Brexit." According to Bill Maher, this election is a referendum on decency. I would go even further and say it is a referendum on evil. Unfortunately, as Yeats put it so well nearly 100 years ago, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
It would be pretty swell if those of us who aspire to be our best selves (human beings who, for example, do not grab the best piece of cake and put barbed-wire fence around the rest) dare to be passionately intense, intensely passionate. Now is the time for those of us who are compassionate and curious to stop numbing ourselves out with various panaceas, pharmaceuticals, and passivity. It will hurt, because Uranus and Pluto squares and oppositions don't tickle. Nor would another Civil War tickle. But the alternative is allow ourselves to believe that the rise of the alt-control-delete movement in America is the new normal, to sleepwalk into the 21st-century version of the Third Reich.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
The Thing About Pluto in Capricorn...
Friday, July 4, 2014
Independence Day?
In recent years, let's say since Pluto entered Capricorn, I have made a point of reminding myself on a regular basis that as a woman, I am extremely lucky to be an American and not a citizen of a country where women are routinely abused, treated as chattel and as perpetual baby containers, must cover up most of their bodies so as not to incite the beastly lust of men who are not compelled to go around with lampshades on their heads, and/or must rely on the kindness of their male relatives or husbands to survive, if not thrive.
As an American woman, I still have a very high degree of autonomy; I can live on my own if I choose, at least in theory work in any field I desire, and manage my own finances. I also have the right to make decisions that pertain to my health and overall well-being. This includes birth control and abortion.
For the past week, however, I and many of my fellow American women have been feeling considerably less lucky. Two decisions reached by the Supreme Court on June 26 and July 1 have made it very clear that while corporations and unimplanted zygotes are people, women do not quite make that grade. I could make an unfunny joke about how this nation should rename itself the United States of Islam, but that would be doing a great disservice to Islamics who do not pervert the Quran to their own twisted ends. Perhaps the United States of Christian Fundamentalism would be more appropriate.
I am still perplexed as to the unanimous verdict of June 26 that struck down as unconsitutional the 35-foot "buffer zone" Massachussetts State law that protects women who are entering and leaving sexual and reproductive health-care facilities (and I feel compelled to emphasize here that women go to Planned Parenthood and other such clinics for checkups, not just pregnancy termination). I understand the concept of our First Amendment, i.e., free speech, and that sidewalks and the like belong to "We the People." Yet the Supreme Court building itself has an extremely generous buffer zone of 252 feet -- for the purpose, according to the regulations, of maintaining "suitable order and decorum" on the property. "We the People" are not allowed to congregate or protest anywhere near federal buildings, and remember what happened with Occupy Wall Street? Granted, there is a legitimate fear of political assassination -- but what about the safety of women and their health-care providers? What about the fact that there are lunatics out there whose God-ordained mission is to kill "baby killers"? My own father, a retired OB-GYN, had to deal with these nutjobs back in the 1980s when he volunteered at a nearby clinic on Saturday mornings. Police became a constant and necessary presence in the parking lot. And let's just cut the crap: "pro-lifers" do NOT want to conduct quiet, respectful discourse with women entering clinics. If they did, they would not be carrying bullhorns and signs depicting mangled fetuses. If they were truly respectful, they would understand that no woman wants to be badgered about a decision this personal and this upsetting, and also realize that no woman is unaware at this point of her other "options." And again, they never seem to take into account that a woman might be entering the clinic for a PAP smear or pelvic exam.
The Hobby Lobby case decision, coming on the heels of the buffer-zone smackdown, is even more upsetting, as it shows that the laws of the USA are basically in the hands of five old, white, conservative Roman Catholic men who may hang around another couple of decades to erode even more rights for women (and maybe some other "less than" groups -- but racism, anti-Semitism, even homophobia are simply not as tolerated in the US as antipathy toward women and poor people of both genders). The backup for this travesty is not to be found in the Constitution, but the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The RFRA was to apply to people; now that corporations are people (per the Citizens United case of 2010), the 5-4 Hobby Lobby decision states that RFRA applies to regulations that govern the activities of "closely held" for-profit corporations, and therefore such companies cannot be required to cover birth control and contraceptives.
Never mind that Hobby Lobby is hardly a "closely held" enterprise, with nearly 600 stores in the US; never mind that a corporation cannot attend church, temple, or a shamanistic peyote ritual; never mind that birth control is not the equivalent of abortion and is also used to treat such conditions as endometriosis; never mind that many of Hobby Lobby's wares are made in China, where contraceptives and abortions are necessary to maintain its "one child per family" policy; never mind that Hobby Lobby covers Viagra and vasectomies; never mind that pre-ACA (aka Obamacare), Holly Lobby apparently had no problem with covering women's health-care needs. Never mind any of that. Floodgates for futher indignities that will hurt REAL, ACTUAL people who have to work for a living, please open now.
You may be wondering when I'll start astrologizing. Okay, here goes: both of these Supreme Court decisions occurred with Mercury still retrograde in Gemini, which personally gives me some hope for a double overturn. (Gemini in general is adept at "flipping," and Mercury in Gemini in particular is an expert.) What's particularly troubling is that these decisions were made on an approaching opposition between the Sun in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn (exact today at 4 a.m. ET) and even more ominously, the opposition between Jupiter in late Cancer and US Pluto in 27 Capricorn (exact early tomorrow a.m. ET -- should make for some interesting fireworks and possible protests). Cancer is THE female de tutti females of the zodiac; Jupiter is law and religion (as well as philosophy, long-distance travel, gambling, and higher education). Pluto in Capricorn represents the conservative, status quo power, often winning by dubious, unscrupulous means. I do worry that things will get darker before they get lighter; we have another decade of Pluto in Capricorn, and almost that long until the first US Pluto Return (Pluto takes about 248 years to make just one orbit around the Sun). Pluto eventually kills off the compulsive, destructive side of whatever sign it transits; Capricorn is the domain of banks, CEOs, corporations, and government. The last time Pluto was in Capricorn, we had a little something called the American Revolution, which culminated in the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776.
Our Founding Fathers may be rolling over in their graves today, but all the same...Happy Birthday, America. The US Solar Return chart has Cancer Rising, Jupiter in Cancer exactly opposing US Pluto, and Moon and Mars in Libra in the 4th House, indicating that most of the harm done during the next year will be at home, and in the home. Mercury and Sun in 12th House indicate plenty of behind-the-scenes action and secrecy. I guess that means that whatever the public hears about, there's plenty more that's not being shared...but then, what else is new?
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Venus Retrograde in Capricorn: The Winter of Our Discontent / Mars in Libra: It's Just Not Fair!
Greetings, my lovelies and uglies. If you are not having a Happy New Year so far, relax. You happen to be in tune with various planetary factors that are combining to mitigate against the bluebird of happiness.
For starters, Venus is retrograde in Capricorn, and will remain retrograde till January 31. I am no meterologist, but the extreme weather conditions throughout much of the U.S. (a shit load of snow and record-breaking low temperatures rapidly followed by unseasonably mild air, then seesawing back to deep freeze) seem to reflect this particular planetary affliction.
Also, the government (symbolized by Capricorn) seems rather retrograde these days, in both senses of the word. Venus has as much to do with money as it does with relationships (due to its being ruled by Taurus as well as Libra), and the jury is still out on whether or not EUC (extended unemployment compensation) will be reinstated for over 1 million long-term unemployed individuals -- the Senate will vote on it this coming Monday. The official December jobs report is grim, but given the current chilly, uncompassionate, downright cruel climate, I am not at all optimistic that the EUC will be reinstated -- and if it is, it will surely come with a slew of grim Terms & Conditions.
I am the furthest thing from a Republican, yet I have become increasingly disenchanted with the Democrats, who did not include this crucially needed extension in budget deals last month before the long winter recess, despite their knowing that the Republicans would stonewall their asses off on agreeing to this extension unless other painful cuts were made to "pay for it" (unlike, say, the recent government shutdown or endless wars). People often speak of President Obama's excessive compromising with the Republicans, and how it reflects the challenge of Obama's being our first black president who cannot ever appear to be an Angry Young Black Man. However true this may be, this does not let off the hook all the other Democrats who are supposedly serving their constituents (i.e., We the People). Now, I am not by any means claiming that all Democrats are rat finks -- that would be like claiming that all baby boomers are evil narcissists, that all Gen-Xers are whiny cynics, and that all Millennials are entitled, selfie-and-social-media-crazed nitwits. But as a group, the Democratic Party has made a conscious choice to throw We the People under the bus. And why? 1. Because in this Pluto-in-Capricorn era, so many of them are in the 1% club and are in no danger of ever becoming unemployed. 2. Because they all depend on the same endorsements from the Big Bad Wolf of Wall Street that the Repubs also depend upon to get their fat-cat asses into power.
Ain't Pluto in Capricorn grand? Except for window-dressing issues that can turn on a dime or be compromised out of existence, and with the understanding that Democrats are more "Centrist" while the GOP has moved slightly to the right of Nero, are we in fact being served by the government we elected, or are we being perpetually bitch-slapped?
Which brings me to the fruitless lament of Mars in Libra: "It's just not fair!" It's fruitless because Mars is hamstrung in the sign of Libra. Mars in Libra is obsessed with the concept of fairness, but doesn't know the first thing about how to fight fair. Mars in Libra is a paradox: it is a trussed-up chicken ready to be thrust into a hot oven and basted with sweet-smelling compromises, but it is also a butcher. Mars squared (squore?) Pluto on December 30, will repeat this square with Mars retrograde on April 23, and happen a third time with Mars direct on June 14 (which happens to be Flag Day -- I wonder if this will translate into many flags being burned in protest?). To further complicate matters, Uranus in headstrong Aries is also involved with Mars and Pluto, resulting in a T-square. We have been dealing with the Uranus-Pluto square since June 2012, but I am very much concerned that this T-square will translate into escalating cruelty and outbursts of protest by increasing numbers of the desperately disenfranchised that may be squashed by Big Brother-style surveillance.
For the most part, Pluto in Capricorn has been a thorn in the sides of people who are not 1%-ers, at the tippy-top of the mountain (did you know that mountains are ruled by Capricorn?). It is small solace that eventually, Pluto in Capricorn will be the ultimate undoing of Big Business and corrupt governments -- just as Pluto going through any sign ultimately transforms or destroys all things associated with that particular sign -- because we are here now, and it fucking hurts. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has reached canyon-width proportions, and as of yet, there has been no WPA-style program to help the millions of so-called takers and moochers who are too goshdarned lazy or stupid to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become successful entrepreneurs (aka job creators, the geniuses who are sitting on record-breaking profits while refusing to hire, offshoring like crazy, and overworking and/or underpaying their current employees). I don't know if there ever was a time in U.S. history when the almighty dollar was not valued above all else -- but with Pluto in Capricorn, there seems to be zero pretense of anything else being of value. All that puritanical, no-pain-no-gain, I've-got-mine-so-screw-you nastiness is hiding, all right -- in plain sight, in plain business-speak. And perhaps saddest of all, the very people who are getting screwed over the most are the ones who are most likely to vote for Far Right puppets who would rather step in dog shit than consider the most basic needs of the neediest.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How quaint, and how out of date. Far more accurate would be Right to Life Until You Are Born, Liberty Savings Bank, and Happiness Is a Warm Gun.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Those Damned Plutocrats Are Giving Pluto a Bad Name
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."
-- Plutarch, AD 1
"Jesse, you asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I'm in the empire business."
-- Walter White, Breaking Bad, 2012
Sometimes I get political in my posts. Some readers don't like that and have let me know in no uncertain terms that I should stick to astrology and leave politics out of it. But astrology does not exist in a vacuum, and neither do I. And since Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 (not coincidentally ushering in our most recent so-called recession from which most of us "little people" aka "takers" have not recovered) and the modern-day Plutocrats have gotten ever more out of control, like a rabid pit bull on a fraying leash, I find myself increasingly preoccupied with how the United States of America is increasingly resembling the ancien régime (you know, the one that ended with the storming of the Guillotine and the rolling of lots of filthy-rich heads, including Marie "Let Them Eat Cake" Antoinette's). The U.S. government may shut down on October 1 due to being held hostage by a minority of Plutopathological public officials in bed with various too-big-to-fail entities.
We are truly in trouble if Marie Antoinette's frivolous cluelessness looks almost compassionate compared with the likes of Robert Benmosche, Top Pit Bull at AIG (the ginormous insurance company that played an equally girnormous role in launching a global economic crisis and was given a huge bailout by the federal government). This week, he compared the understandable public uproar over AIG's continued hefty bonuses being paid to its execs to lynchings in the Deep South -- literally, not figuratively -- declaring that the bonus backlash was “just as bad and just as wrong.” This is even more outrageous than his comment made last year from his seaside villa in Croatia about how the European debt crisis combined with increased life expectancy should push up the age of retirement all around the world to eighty. Sounds fair to me, especially since we all know there are so many job opportunities for the laid-off post-fifty crowd and no one's body or mind ever starts to wear out till eighty-five or so.
But Mr. Benmosche has some competition for the title of Prickiest Postmodern Plutocrat. Back in 2010, Stephen Schwarzman, Head Cheese of the Blackstone Group (one of the world’s largest private-equity firms), compared proposals to close the carried-interest loophole -- which ensures that the incomes of executives at firms like Blackstone are taxed at a gobsmackingly low 15 percent -- to World War II: “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
Also in the running is Harry Binswanger, who wrote just last week that the 99% should gift the 1% with obscene tax breaks and engage in some serious ass kissing: "Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor." I'd be tempted to call this satire, but it appeared in Forbes, not the Onion.
Paul Krugman, my favorite columnist in the New York Times, describes our current crop of Plutocrats as sociopathic. I agree with him in the sense that sociopaths first and foremost do not feel any compassion or empathy toward others, but I feel he doesn't go nearly far enough. Plutocrats aka the 1% are addicts. Allowing them to control the distribution of wealth is like allowing a junkie to stand guard over a hospital's methadone supply or a warehouse full of confiscated smack. Yet this is exactly what has happened with Pluto in Capricorn. Corporations (not coincidentally ruled by Capricorn) have the same rights as people, though the reverse does not hold true (except, of course, if you're a 1%er), and thanks to the outcome of the United Citizens case of 2010, we can now get the best elected officials that money can buy. To quote Mark Twain, "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."
Today's Plutocrats, like their counterparts throughout the ages, are the very embodiment of greed run rampant and having to win at all costs -- and they, and I, do mean at all costs. No matter if America's economy, ideals, education, and very infrastructure falls apart -- no matter that there are people going hungry and homeless through no fault of their own. If the Plutocrats' gated communities are no longer safe enough, they can fly in their private plane to one of the many islands they bought for a song. What's the difference between having $900 million or $1 billion? Nothing -- it's not about the money per se, it's about keeping score and always wanting more.
Oh, but I'm not being fair to 1%ers like Bill Gates. Look at his Gates Foundation...working to privatize the U.S. public school system. Okay, so as I was saying...
The Pluto-in-Capricorn era did not invent Plutocrats, but especially in the midst of the Uranus-Pluto square era, these greedy, sociopathic addicts sure are giving my favorite planet a bad name. Pluto unhinged is indeed greedy, sadistic, power-mad, and must win at all costs, which means it does not fight fair. Of course, all planets have a dark side -- for example, Jupiter unhinged is a gambling addict; Mars unhinged is a bloodthirsty soldier; the dark side of the Moon languishes in self-pity and torpor; Mercury's evil twin lies and kleptos everything. Yet Pluto is so intense on its best of days that its dark side is way darker than any other planet in our solar system.
The last Uranus-Pluto square back in the early 1930s gave the United States a Great Depression but also a New Deal; Pluto's placement in Cancer (U.S.'s Sun sign) might have helped America transform in a more positive way concerning wealth distribution and the creation of such safety nets as social security and unemployment insurance. Now with Pluto in Capricorn literally opposing the U.S.'s Sun, these safety nets are in danger of being shredded into handkerchiefs at the same time that 95 percent of the post-recession gains have gone to the 1%, and especially to the .001%. This year's sequester, which was never intended to go through because its terms were so ludicrous and unjust, did not touch the salaries and cushy benefits of our elected officials -- just the well-being of the long-time unemployed and those who were hapless enough to work at jobs that were "furloughed."
According to Dr. Lawrence Britt, one of the consistent characteristics of fascism throughout history is the protection of coporate power: "The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite."
You might have noticed that thus far, I have refrained from savaging those evil, no-account "Republicons" and massaging those angelic, no-fault Democrats. This is because I am so cynical about politics that although I admit to being relieved that Mutt Rummy did not clinch the U.S. presidency, and although I freely acknowledge that President Obama has had to deal with an unconscionable amount of Far Right obstruction for the past five years, I do not think at this point it's about the conflict between our two major parties; besides, Wall Street loves Obama so much they sold a lot of Girl Scout cookies for his 2008 campaign.
What this is about is class war, and to make matters worse, the 99% is not fighting back -- at least, not yet. The widely ridiculed Occupy Wall Street movement two autumns ago was a blip on the radar screen, and in each of the three national elections that have taken place since Pluto entered Capricorn (2008, 2010, 2012), far too many of the have-nots have continued to protect and enable the have-everythings against their own best interests. Sad to say, this is mostly because so many of the "working poor" (a nice euphemism for the Pluto-in-Capricorn era) plan to win the lottery or invent something useful like air, and thus be able to ascend Capricorn Goat Mountain and join the 1%... at which time they will not want to deal with the lazy, inferior, mooching 99%. No wonder I am a self-identified misanthrope.
There has been a bit of recent grumbling in the media about the increasingly entitled, insufferable attitude of "kids today"; how the spawn of the Boomers and Gen X are hurtling unchecked through college and Kindergarten, restaurants and other public places, like little dictators who cannot and will not be polite, share, or work for good grades, and how especially the younger ones, the so-called Precious Snowflakes or Homeland Security Generation, cannot be expected to be held accountable for any of their bad behavior lest their feelings be hurt. Instead, they are all awarded participation trophies and told how "special" and "unique" they are -- and more for their parents' benefit than the kids', since losing at anything, no matter how minor, is something to be avoided like the Black Death, and so many parents these days treat their little geniuses as extensions of themselves.
True dat, so why can't the media, and the rest of us for that matter, stop worshipping the Precious Snowflake Plutocrats, who make those little brats screaming their heads off at the local multiplex or slugging their mothers in supermarkets for failing to add Frosted ADD Flakes to the shopping cart look like saints, and start holding these 1%ers accountable for their increasingly bad behavior instead of constantly making excuses for them and bailing out their sorry asses?
It is no longer enough for the Plutocrats to have everything; they want the rest of us to bow down before them, too (especially the ones born between 1937 and 1957 with Pluto in autocratic Leo). What if the 99% walked away from them, instead? I realize how unrealistic and naive I must sound, for as of 2013, Americans are either too scared of losing their livelihoods or too tired and beaten down to fight. But history has a way of rhyming, if not exactly repeating itself. The American Revolution occurred with Pluto in late Capricorn; Bastille Day, July 14, 1789, occurred with Pluto in Aquarius. We can only go on for so much longer living this gross imbalance of power before something snaps on a collective level. And the longer we wait, the more carnage and devastation there will be on both sides.
Friday, March 5, 2010
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
Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturn Square Pluto: Tear Down the Wall!
This has been an unusually dark Dark of the Moon in Scorpio; Pluto, ruler of this capital-I intense sign, has been squaring Saturn. If this were a boxing match, it would be the heavyweight division: Pluto, Lord of the Underworld vs. Saturn, Lord of Karma.
Although the square is officially over (exact 11/15 at 9:42 a.m. EST), and I don't think either planet "won," I have found that aspects involving Saturn reverberate for quite some time, possibly because Saturn's action delays.
A prime example of this would be the Saturn/Pluto conjunction of August 2001, which culminated in the events and long, bloody, morally bankrupt aftermath of 9/11.
Planets are more powerful than the signs they inhabit, yet it is always important to consider the signs of an aspect. Saturn entered Libra just before Halloween; for the next two and a half years, all legal, contractual relationships will take on more structure and grave importance, and require greater maturity in order to survive. It is worth remembering that the last time Saturn was in Libra, the early 1980s, the divorce rate peaked in the U.S. Big business, which ushered in the "greed is good" decade, was also on the rise, and not coincidentally, in 1982/83 was a Saturn/Pluto conjunction...solidifying plutocracy, anyone?
Certainly, with Saturn squaring Pluto in early Capricorn, there is much pressure within relationships that are unbalanced in some way. One person, party, or group has been abusing the other person, party, or group for far too long, and something's got to give. Libra, the sign of the scales, is all about justice; the law ideally should mete out justice to any and all who have abused their power and goodwill. (Of course, this is no guarantee of what actually occurs.)
On a personal level I can speak for no one but myself; just a few weeks ago I placed far too much trust in someone who had done nothing to earn any of it, and I am still dealing with the fallout.
On a national level, we have been dealing with disturbing developments in our long-awaited, hopelessly bogged-down health-care plan, in which women's rights are taking a backseat to the status quo (in this case, the male-dominated Congress and the Roman Catholic Church). Americans are divided about the swine flu vaccine, and there's also a vaccine shortage. We have also been hearing all about the end of the recession even though unemployment is up, because Wall Street (Pluto in Capricorn?) is doing so well that bankers are using $100 bills as toilet paper. On a global level--well, to expect world peace may be a naive pipe dream, but issues involving the environment and pandemics (of which the swine flu is just the beginning) are just as important as all the futile, costly wars being fought.
About forty years ago, John Lennon and Yoko Ono advised people to "think globally and act locally." This seems like more timely advice than ever. Instead of only focusing on national or global problems, take a good, hard look at your own relationships, within your own environment. If you don't like what you see or feel, there is no better time to be honest about your perceptions and act. If you try to renegotiate the dynamics of your unhealthy, unsatisfying relationships in a reasonable way and it doesn't work, it may be time to leave such relationships behind entirely. It's possible that you have literally become sick of them; the mind-body connection is not a myth. Far better to tear down (Pluto) the wall (Saturn) of oppression keeping you from your true self and desires, even if doing so leaves you vulnerable and alone, than stay in any contractual relationship, whether it's a marriage (Libra) or professionally based (Capricorn), that is doing you harm. Otherwise you run the very real likelihood of becoming increasingly resentful (Pluto), rigid, depressed, numb, and ill (all Saturn specialties).
They say that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I say, screw that puritanical crap and take a stand for yourself, because even though Saturn is now in the sign of justice, life just isn't fair, and you may have to be your own judge, jury, and executioner.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)