In yesterday’s Daily Astrology post, I focused on two squares, all of which have their respective planets occupying 11+ degrees of their signs. The sense I got was that it’s time to clear some ground — and some unneeded beliefs — this week. Today continues the theme in its own way, and it’s worth noting that there are a few other planets in that general vicinity of their respective signs. The broader message is to look at this present moment and know you’re looking at something unusual, something special.
On the most palpable, easily understood level, we’re coming up on the last quarter Moon. This is the halfway mark between the amazing Libra Full Moon of last week and the following Aries New Moon next week.
The waning Moon enters Capricorn at 1:35 am EDT this morning (Tuesday). Almost 24 hours after doing so, it makes a square to the Aries Sun (the quarter Moon). Just like squares between other planets, a Moon-Sun square urges action. This means moving forward whatever projects began around March 11 (the last New Moon), or that picked up steam with the Full Moon.
In the context of this week’s Sun-Pluto square (tilling the earth, moving away the boulder) and the Jupiter-Chiron square (allowing negative, limiting beliefs to be released and asking for help in establishing productive, expansive ones) this is good news. If the work was feeling overwhelming yesterday, or as though everything was falling apart, perhaps you can feel the quarter Moon as a wave you can ride as it crests (exact just after 12:36 am EDT Wednesday morning).
Between now and the last quarter Moon, the Moon participates in an eclipse-like event. It’s one that has become so regular, we slacked off on reporting it every month: a Moon-Pluto occultation. This is when the Moon passes exactly in front of Pluto (from our perspective here on Earth) as they make a conjunction.
We’re in the midst of a string of 19 consecutive Moon-Pluto occultations — and the first one was a year ago this month. Here’s some of what was written in Planet Waves about these events last May:
“As a point of background, we are all living through Pluto in Capricorn, which has many different manifestations — principal among them being the underlying sensation of constant change we’re experiencing; the sense that the very ground we’re standing on is shifting.
“One attribute of the occultation energy involves the primal, instinctual, sexual, change-urging force of Pluto penetrating the ‘good girl’ façade and mother-related emotional body of the Capricorn Moon. The Cap Moon is one of the most complex of the lot, representing an emotional body conditioned by cultural and religious forces from the past.
“The Moon occulting Pluto over and over again, season after season, suggests that we’re being called now to begin transgressing the boundaries of that conditioning. The primal, elemental nature of Pluto is gradually dissolving the emotional patterning conditioned in the Moon.
So we have another version of the themes we’ve already called out this week and — surprise! — they are related to much longer cycles and deeper emotional patterns in our lives. For a cultural illustration of what a Pluto-in-Capricorn breakthrough might look like, consider the seemingly sudden traction that the whole gay marriage issue has.
Eric commented to me last night, “It seems like yesterday we were dealing with rampant homophobia. Now a solid majority is all for gay people doing what they want with their relationships.” And he asked me, “Just for contrast, did you know one ‘out’ gay kid in high school?” I had to admit I did not — and neither did he. Today, there are not only out gay kids, but also out transgender kids. Pretty much any orientation imaginable is represented by a teen who is not in the closet.
That’s not to say that all kids are out or that homophobia is dead — far from it. But we really have come an appreciable distance since the 1970s and ‘80s in that regard, and it seems only recently that the gay marriage issue reached escape velocity. It definitely counts as a Pluto in Capricorn breakthrough.
That issue is also about how what we believe is the thing that seems true. That’s a theme emphasized right now by Mercury (still in Pisces for what feels like forever, and only leaving its post-retrograde ‘shadow’ or ‘echo’ phase this weekend). Mercury is currently conjunct the minor planet Borasisi. This is the planet named after a fictional god in a Kurt Vonnegut novel; the planet that has to do with something being true simply because we believe it must be so.
We see this idea take a negative spin all the time in politics. This time, however, it seems to be coming down on the right side of a human rights issue. Better yet, it’s right in the nick of time for you to get a little boost in releasing your more Chirotic beliefs about yourself (as described by Philip Sedgwick in yesterday’s post), laying them on Jupiter’s altar, and choosing something more empowering to believe about yourself. The Moon and Pluto are here to move you along.
Thank you Amanda for your article. If I them allowing me to give my opinion for me gay marriage is against nature and certainly reflects a profound crisis of our current society.
Yes courage and breath. And what is particularly relevant to me in this time of deep emotional and spiritual breakthroughs these aspects seem to be expediting, is keeping the vision that personal endurance is necessary in aligning contribution to the ultimate collective purpose.
“….a double process is going on with consciousness raising. To put it simply, we cannot survive the depth analysis of the journey to the Underworld without the synchronous experience of the vibration of the higher self. You can clear yourself and try to clear your emotions all you want, but it will never work without the experience of the rapture of the soul. So Pluto work is a process of evolution, and Chiron is the choreographer until you are ready to be master of the show yourself.”
Chiron is a teacher, Pluto is naked mojo. A hurricane doesn’t stop to enlighten you to the techniques of riding crocodiles without being eaten, but a good teacher has this as their main function. Mastering fear is necessary to pass the crocodiles and while embodied as a human mindful breathing is at the core of emotional regulation. As far as I can tell deep breathing practice while embodied creates grooves in the mind that can come in handy even when walking in dream worlds. Your mileage may vary.
Regarding our releasing and empowering ourselves, and your two poignant articles Amanda, I had a look and sure enough, along with the collective aspect, I am also experiencing influence Chiron transit opposition natal Pluto. On one interpersonal level, currently i ‘ve got a real ‘charmer’ coming at me and rearing his ugly head (yet again) it feels like the North Korean stance around here. Well I am not going to play! All this good, karma in our face is really just a catalyst to healing if you stay alert and open to choosing, is for the taking.
I found this perspective by Barbara Hand Clow on the influence, insightful and helpful. It is from her book, “Chiron-Transforming Bridge Between the Inner and Outer Planets”.
“In 1978, Pluto’s Moon, Charon, was sighted. It would be tempting to view Chiron as the bridge to Pluto work, but the sighting and naming of Charon right after Chiron’s discovery is a potent warning not to do so. The Ferryman to the Underworld in Roman mythology is Charon, and Charon is therefore to remain as the Ferryman in Pluto clearing. But Chiron is the catalyst who sears the body with the piercing of the higher self, pointing out that a double process is going on with consciousness raising. To put it simply, we cannot survive the depth analysis of the journey to the Underworld without the synchronous experience of the vibration of the higher self. You can clear yourself and try to clear your emotions all you want, but it will never work without the experience of the rapture of the soul. So Pluto work is a process of evolution, and Chiron is the choreographer until you are ready to be master of the show yourself.
Jeff Green says, “if each person understands what his or her own evolutionary requirements are, and operates in such a way as to actualize those requirements, then the collective evolutionary necessities will be developed in a non-cataclysmic way.” Pluto rules volcanoes, and we can have cataclysmic eruptions or slow release of inner Earth energy. Chiron is a primary ruler of ecology, and it has been since 1977 that we have seen that no living thing will survive unless we begin to operate as a wholistic collective. Pluto work makes it possible to identify the evolutionary needs and begin deliberate clearing work in order to trigger slow and progressive growth. And it is the higher self, the glimpse of the divine potential, which offers us the energy to do the work. Chiron rules holographic attunement, which means we attune with the collective as we progress. Actually, we cannot move without this identification of the collective working with the individual, and we only have access to that level with comprehension of Chiron’s way of working, or divination.
Chiron rules divination, and divination is the only way to alignment with the collective. So, as we begin work with Pluto, it is critical to see that the relationship of Chiron to Pluto has to do with moving the deepest inner forces in tune with the hologram. Pluto shows us that we cannot even begin to align with Chiron until we have first done the hard work of depth clearing, and we can’t make it through the depth clearing without the vision of the higher self. So, as we enter depth clearing, at first we use our intuition as a guide; then once we have learned to trust our intuition, we will find a divination skill which will attune us to the collective. Then finally we will begin to identify the hologram of the individual soul within the larger hologram, and then we can let go of the little self. Aspects between Pluto and Chiron will yield many clues into how to clear the self in attunement with the vision of the higher self.”
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/006807.html
(I mean natal Pluto with natal Moon).
Wow. So intense.
I highly recommend Eric’s article about Pluto, in the ‘astrological resources -> minor planets’ section. It’s so full of precious information till the last line.
I have Pluto conjunct to the Moon, and today I was thinking of that, as I felt the awareness of a facet of this aspect with focused precision.
Then I found this article. !
I think we’ll never get to the end of really grasping what Pluto represents.
And these 11s… degrees, hours, dates… I did’t know it would go on for so long!
Thank you, with gratitude, Amanda and be and all.
My natal Mercury is one degree away at 12 Cap, but little asteroid Eros is right there with Pluto at 11. Eros-Mercury conjunction…singing vibrating the demons of the old guard to awaken in present time. My Saturn is retrograde on the Cancer solstice and only 2 or 3 degrees from my south lunar node- starting in a family dutifully transmitting the fears of the European empires and the American Dream exploration discovers roots beneath the pavement, vibrations from other cultures, music from Africa and first nations America showing me what biophilic human voices can sound like. Yep, the Empire’s roots aren’t very deep at all. Speak to the trees, the rocks; they can remember a time before the jackboots began to march on the free and loving creatures of Earth.
yes, be — i’ve found them fascinating, too. especially since the first half dozen or so were quite near a friend’s natal moon.
thank you for bringing in the sabian symbol. it really is incredibly apt!
I was intrigued from the git-go when you (Eric and all) first brought this series of Moon’s occulting of Pluto to light Amanda. I saw the Moon (feminine, absorbant) taking a little bite out of Pluto’s (deep-seated snake-brain masculine-dominate unconscious-but-powerful) pile of poop each time she drove by him. Kinda like a steam shovel taking up a scoop of earth, or maybe a dumpster truck hauling one load of garbage away. . . once a month for 19 months in a row. It began in April last year and after today’s garbage pickup, it only has 5 more loads to carry off. Today’s pickup and last month’s took place while Pluto was in the 11-something degree of Capricorn, and the next two pickups will also be from that degree since Pluto will be retrograde.
The Sabian Symbol for this degree is all about the science of nature; what we were taught and what we believe. How appropriate that Mercury would be conjunct Borasisi today as so much of what we have taken to be ‘what-is-true’ about Earth, is being scooped away as trash, primarily the notion that we humans have ‘mastered’ Nature, or that She is here to serve Us, rather than the other way around.
Let’s hope that after the Moon has finished her excavation of crap and regurgitated it all into the recycle center, she (Earth) and we will be on the road to recovery and regeneration. That will happen on August 17th, just as Venus winds up her stay in sanitary Virgo and enters beautiful Libra, and just as Jupiter (wisdom) at 11+ Cancer (Mother Earth) trines the North Node (evolutionary path) at 11+ Scorpio (transformation). Oh what a relief it is (or will be)!
be