Love on the Tracks

By Len Wallick

Today the Scorpio Sun forms a harmonious relationship with Pluto. You read that right. Pluto and harmony in the same sentence. It’s not just because Pluto’s reputation is a bit overwrought, it’s the signs.

But before we do that, let’s check on two other things. First, the other train running in the opposite direction, Mars. Just yesterday our focus was Venus and its brief but meaningful conjunction with Mercury. This was one of a series of contacts with the rest of the Scorpio stellium that distinguishes the first stage of Venus’s retrograde period. Mars, Vesta, Mercury and the Sun are also in that sign together for less than a week, with only Venus conjoining them all while they are there.

Mars on the other hand has one foot out the back door of the sign it co-rules. Taking a cue from austere asteroid Pallas, Mars will be jumping from the frying pan into the spiritual fire of Sagittarius. Indeed, one wonders what Scorpio will be like without its host, but Mars is not done there quite yet. Today, provocative as ever, the Red One embraces asteroid Eros in a hot conjunction that keeps the pan sizzling as the squeamish squirm. At the same time it taunts Arachne in the opposing sign of Taurus. There’s something about that bad boy Mars that Scorpio is going to miss.

One other thing before we get back to the ins and outs of Sol and Pluto. Remember those four goddess asteroids that all jumped signs about the same time earlier this month? We have already mentioned Pallas Athene is on sabbatical in Sagittarius, waiting to show Mars that she is not to be trifled with. It will be an interesting conjunction to start Thanksgiving week. Meanwhile, the other three goddess namesakes are intimately involved with Sun and Pluto, so let’s get back to our aspect du jour and see where they fit in.

Previously, we discussed how each sign is associated with one of the four elements of western natural science and later, alchemy. Earth, air, water and fire alternate with each other going around the zodiac until each is represented three times in a manner at once arbitrary and sensible. We have also reviewed how signs of the same element get along perhaps too easily in a relationship that can be characterized by the word flow. The good relationships do not stop there. Alternating signs — every other sign on the wheel of the zodiac — also get along very well, and are best characterized by the word harmony. The two elements that form this sort of aspect, called a sextile, would be either water and earth or fire with air. Today, we are dealing with the first two.

While flow can take place pretty much by itself, harmony must be achieved. Both parties must apply some effort to the final result. It’s work, or rather teamwork that makes it happen. When it happens right, it’s very much like flow. But it only looks easy. The results are earned of volition, not through either duress or serendipity. That is what makes a sextile the first, and perhaps best, aspect.

And what object in astrology better expresses the quality of volition better than the Sun — the star at the center of our solar system from which all the elements of astrology are ultimately derived? The Sun is the light at the center of our being, shining out in the world from which our expression, qualities and creativity are derived. The Sun is very well suited to sextile.

And Pluto? Well, there is the reputation that precedes. It’s not entirely impertinent. When it comes to people, places and situations that confront us, Pluto can often inform whatever improvisation we are called upon to perform in response. But it’s also a modern planet. Discovered only 80 years ago, it has not been integrated and interwoven with the abstract in our consciousness like the classical planets. It is for us to define and in doing so we are defined in turn.

Today’s sextile is from the Sun in a water sign to Pluto in an earth sign. Water nourishes the earth, the Sun nourishes the life that water enables. It can be that kind of a day, an affirmation of life. If we can do our part to make it that way, Ceres is on hand to help us make it count.

Now classified as a dwarf planet like the Pluto-Charon binary, Ceres was featured in the astrology as the incredible tale of the Chilean miners unfolded for nearly all of humanity to witness. As the binary and the former asteroid approached conjunction in Capricorn, people both above the ground (Ceres) and below (Pluto) chose life over death and embarked upon an unprecedented mission. It may never happen again, but it did happen for real a first time and that means, yes it can.

Today, Ceres is separating but still functioning in unity with Pluto as it conjoins the north lunar node, the dragon’s head, the repository of dharma. If we can affirm life today, Ceres is there to cast it in stone and make it the theme for how we further characterize both Pluto and our own future. To say it again, yes we can.

To affirm how we are to achieve this lofty goal, we need only refer to another water-to-earth sextile connecting Scorpio and Virgo over the next couple days. And that, dear friends, is where we will begin again the day after tomorrow.

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