Clinging to the World
...On Pluto stationing Rx
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”
—Charles Baudelaire
Pluto stations retrograde today. It's a station I usually pay little mind to, yet this one has caught my attention. Maybe it's because it leads to the last trip to those rocky Capricorn degrees? It could be that the Moon was just with Pluto and it's been where we've been at. It's in the air. Or it simply could be that it's trine to my Sun? Whatever the cause, I have been pondering this station all day, and these are my thoughts on the matter.
As with all the outer planets, Pluto is retrograde nearly half of all time (roughly 5 months a year). Compare that to Mars who only does it every two plus years, and having experienced them both consciously, you will notice that a Mars retrograde usually will produce more obvious manifestations; when Mars is close, it can be in our face like back in the Fall of 2020, whereas with Pluto you are going to be hard-pressed for words or clear examples of the difference in your life between Rx and not. Though, like all things with astrology, if you are paying attention, great wells of meaning will be there to be drawn upon.
So here we are, with Pluto at the beginning of his long retrograde that will go all the way until October 11th when he stations direct back in Capricorn. The final visit of our lives. What is to be expected?
It began with the Great Financial Crisis in 08’ and seems to be ending at the peak of one of those capricious mountains in similar terrain. Most feel our ways are unsustainable—especially within the financial system—yet the trades keep happening, the lights remain on, and here we are interacting on our machines. It has been a time when many pills have been taken. Red pills have woke people up, black pills have made them nihilistic, white pills have made some optimistic, and even those orange pills have created a worldwide peaceful revolution. And yes, there are many other pills that have both saved and destroyed countless lives. Overall, Pluto's time in Capricorn has given us a lengthy gander behind the curtain, and it's still hard to process what we have seen.
Being that Pluto has much to do with power, it's good to consider the difference between Capricorn and Aquarian power. When Pluto is healthy with no desire for hiding much, it's the ideal of a well-functioning society; it's the miracle of civilization and its impossible complexities, well-oiled and seemingly progressing toward some elusive point in the future. When it's not, when it's the shadow that is expressing, we elect our leaders to match the contours of our shadow selves. Power concentrates in hidden places, the state becomes a cesspool run by criminals, and the people feel they have no power at all. This is the overly simplified spectrum of Pluto in Capricorn, but I think we can all agree that he was successful in showing a few of those skeletons that were floating about in the brackish waters.
With Pluto in Aquarius, the power shifts to the people. It's a response to the consensus reality that came before. Often violent at first, it then moves in waves and ends up becoming something else entirely on the other side of the transmigration. The ideal here is to decentralize power structures as much as possible and to use the technology we have to increase the likelihood of a successful transition. The shadow though, is just as immense. Censorship, blacklists, spam callers, trolls, shadow banning, CBDC's, and warrantless surveillance will continue to grow like a cancer in this environment. And so, we must hold fast to an ideal, know that there are ways of revolting without molotov cocktails and unnecessary violence.
Pluto is more shaman than devil. As anyone who has experienced a significant Pluto transit can attest, the way in which this unseen icy ball at the edge can summon all the demons and secrets and power games to the surface is unmatched. It offers a cathartic meditation on the nature of power. How we give our power away, how it is slowly leeched from us via taxation and inflation, and how our addictions siphon it off as well; these are all ways to track and trace his influence in our lives.
It's poetic to remember that as a god when he walks among us, we cannot see him. Not that we are seeing the other gods every day either, but often when traveling from his kingdom of the Underneath, he wears the Helm of Invisibility. We can feel Pluto, it's just hard to see him. For example, we always know when someone is lying to us; that is Pluto! That's the frequency. It's in our bullshit detector, it’s programmed into our intuition, and if we are lucky, the animals and the plants can help tip us off as well. Planets communicate in all forms. This is important to remember.
And so when it comes to Baudelaire's "greatest trick," it's never been more true than now. In a post-modern world where God (or the gods) are dead to many, it's safe to assume the devil doesn’t exist either. I hear it all the time. It's likely because he has taken over the whole thing (Capricorn). He is in everything. He is everywhere. And that's the point!
The way forward is always into the dark forest. When a planet stations retrograde, it comes close to us, and whether we choose to become its ally or its foe is completely up to us. It’s always preferred to have an ally, not an enemy with us while wandering such a place though. With Pluto, there is no better friend to make in my opinion. The sooner we heal our relationship to our fears, to death, and the shadows we cast all over the place, the more powerful we will become. The ideal is to never tell a lie, to treat secrets like hot potatoes, and to contemplate the beauty of impermanence daily. There is hope, and it is found along this path. There is so much clinging to this world, Pluto tries to help us not do the same. Cherish it, praise it, be taken by it all, but don't allow the world to have power over you. This is the ideal. This is the Pluto way.
Enjoy the retrograde!
*If you'd like to have a reading with this as our central focus, I'm here for you. Links below.
Facts:
Pluto station RX: May 2nd; 2º06' Aquarius
Pluto station Direct: Oct 11; 29º38' Capricorn
Eudaimonia,
Adam
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I don't have the line up of planets in Cap that my daughter has (6+Rahu), but I've watched her grow up under Pluto's watchful eye as he started with her Sun (0° Cap) and still has one more pass over her Rahu at the same time as he almost makes it back to my Saturn. Given that she was only 18 when he started there and it included her Saturn return, it's been quite a thing to witness as she's grown more and more into her power. At 18, I guess there's only so much shadow material one can have accumulated (most of us anyway).
My own passage since '08 included my second Saturn return and Saturn moving through my first house. That passage hasn't been any picnic - lots of confronting issues of power and tests of authority, internal and external. I don't honestly know how I'd have made it without astrology to keep me sane. It's so easy to feel like I must be doing it all wrong or I'm totally on the wrong track without the chart to tell me, "this is the way it's supposed to be right now".
That said, what a trip it is to watch it play out in the collective - a pretty harsh trip! I'm glad I mostly raised my children in the 90's and early 2000's before everything started falling apart.
Good stuff as always, Adam.
Having Mercury at 0 degrees Capricorn, the Sun at 14, the North Node of the Moon at 16 and the Moon and Jupiter at 18, yeah, Pluto transits over personal planets was certainly a theme of my life these past 16 years, though I didn’t know this until a few years ago when my astrological studies deepened.
Speaking of those studies, I believe one of this transits greatest gifts to me was bringing “Cosmos and Psyche” into my awareness (maybe at the end of Pluto in Sagittarius, I don’t recall the exact dates), and then, around 2019, as Pluto was moving out of that 3 degree orb with the Moon and Jupiter, astrology finally grabbed me by the balls, ha ha, and wouldn’t let me go. Fortunately, I told it to hold on move its grip on my heart and we are in a much healthier (and more comfortable) relationship now.
As for how it has shown up in the collective, it’s been quite the trip hasn’t it. I really liked your succinct summary of it, which includes the positive, because I think because the Capricorn structures of our world are in such a state of rot, too many of us newly astrologically aware folks have focused all of our attention on how Pluto shows the shadows of a sign when the reality is it surfaces the underbelly of a sign and if that sign is healthy it’s a whole different experience than when it is sick.
Anyway, it will be fascinating, and I’m sure sometimes scary and sometimes enlightening, to watch both Pluto’s final dip into Capricorn—just in time for the US Election, yippee!—and then to experience its run through Aquarius with no more looking back to Cap.
Your comment about the technological aspects of the Pluto in Aquarius transits has me curious to do some historical research to past Pluto in Aquarius transits to see how the technological innovations of those periods transformed the world. Have you looked into that yet? Might make for a fascinating podcast—hint, hint—or, at the very least, another article or four.
As always, I’m grateful to have you along as one of our co-creative guides through this journey and I look forward to whatever you decide to put your eloquent mind to!