Monday the Moon ingresses Capricorn at 3:29 am EDT and makes a conjunction to Pluto at 4:04 pm. Each time the Moon meets up with Pluto these days, that’s an occultation rather than a normal conjunction — it’s an alignment on two planes of space (longitude and declination) rather than just one. Said another way, the Moon eclipses Pluto rather than just breezing by, and the theme of this series of events (which we’re in the midst of, and which will go on for about another year) is emotional habituation.
Humans often react to their environment in ways that make robots seem creative. Much of what we do, we do in automatic mode. The combination of Moon + Pluto + Capricorn, expressed with precision, is a way of saying it’s time to get past that. Many of our automatic reactions are based on habits that have been built around past reactions to past experiences, and have nothing to say about what we’re looking right at, today.
The challenge being offered is to respond to the sensory information, the feelings and the interpersonal experience that we’re having right now. Said another way, know when you’re coming from a past perception, update your files and act as though what is true now is true now. This will help you out of old emotional habits and into new ones.
This may be a bit challenging, with Mercury retrograde — though Saturday we passed the tipping point of that process, as the Sun and Mercury formed the interior conjunction that is the peak of the cycle. Mercury stations direct on Aug. 8, in the second degree of Leo — that’s to say, almost back to the beginning.
To me, that describes a relationship to some inner truth that you may be working to uncover, or to express. That’s one way to think of Mercury retrograde — and in particular, the moments when Mercury changes directions (at the beginning and the end of the retrograde). Many times I’ve noticed an experience of ‘the truth comes out’ — whether the context is personal or collective, it’s like we get a perk of reality as Mercury appears to stop.