posted December 21, 2006 03:07 AM              

All ye people who have wanted to know about the dark, mysterious and formidable planet Pluto, this is a thread just for you. Zala has graciously promised to post some material on Pluto here.

In fact she and HD have posted quite a lot of stuff on other planets too, which I am linking here:

For Saturn, check out:

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/011715.html
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/008975.html
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/011248.html

For Neptune:

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/008842.html
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/008523.html

ILWL

posted December 21, 2006 10:59 AM              

HD, we were wondering about you yday, abt when you will be back with more from liz greene, and here u are ! thanks!

posted December 27, 2006 10:15 PM            

An article from Mary Shea:
Pluto Transits to Personal Planets: http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/008524.html

posted December 27, 2006 10:18 PM            

THE SUN ITSELF
The astrological symbolism of the Sun rests on two physical observations:
1) The Sun is the gravitational center of the solar system. It thus harnesses the enormous momentums of the planets in their orbits, curving them into reliable orbits, giving order, form and stability to a system that would otherwise fly instantaneously into chaos.
2) The Sun is the ultimate driver of all biological processes, warming us out of the deathly deep-freeze of space, driving photosynthesis in the plants that feed us and all other creatures, and making the weather that allows life-giving rain to fall.

As above, so below. The astrological Sun is both the "gravitational center" of your psyche — your identity — and also the symbol of your basic vitality. Astrologically these two ideas are inseparable. Vitality and identity cannot exist without each other. There is something inside you to which you must be true if you are going to look forward to getting out of bed in the morning. That's the Sun. It symbolizes the path of authenticity and psychological truth in one's life — and anyone whose biography diverges too far from the spirit of his or her Sun shows symptoms of devitalization: the blues, the blahs, watching television forever.

PLUTO-SUN ASPECTS IN THE NATAL CHART
Any linking of Pluto with the Sun in the birth chart immediately suggests that one's identity (Sun) is inherently Plutonian. As always, we must recognize that the art in astrology lies in perceiving wholeness, and that the symbolism can often be misleading when we abstract a single feature out of a chart. Still, a person with Pluto-Sun contacts in his or her chart generally embodies much of the spirit of Pluto itself.

If such an individual lives consciously, the Sun-Pluto contacts suggest an intensity of character. Here is a person who finds superficiality uncomfortable, who tends to err in the direction of truth rather than gentleness, and who appreciates honesty and straightforwardness in others. He or she likely possesses considerable powers of concentration and a taste for delving deeply into all things hidden, mysterious, or taboo.

The Sun, as we have seen, points in the direction of our vitality, If we are true to the Sun-impulse in ourselves, we are full of life and verve; if not, we are dull, and more susceptible to our own "demons." Thus, the Sun-Pluto person derives energy from everything Plutonian. At the lofty end of the scale, we would observe a compelling psychological need for relationships and experiences in which strong emotions are welcome and unsettling subjects are aired. At the lower end of the scale, we see an energizing fascination with subjects that others might find disconcerting: occult interests, murder mysteries, horror genres, the affairs of the "low-life." I emphasize that we are still considering healthy, positive, life-affirming expressions of Sun-Pluto energy here; such people benefit from these kinds of explorations. They were not born to be "good" in any simpleminded, life-denying way.

For Sun-Pluto people vitality is optimized in situations in which one's actions are perceived as inherently meaningful... the simplest illustration being the notion of any kind of work that clearly contributes to some transcendent good in the world: feeding the hungry, guarding the environment, volunteering to help with a political campaign.

Meaningfulness and altruism are certainly related concepts, but they are not interchangeable. A Sun-Pluto individual might very well, for example, find the intense, virtually obsessive pursuit of excellence in chess to be meaningful — and for such an individual, chess is a sacrament in which he or she explores the highly Plutonian realms of "life and death" competition under extreme pressure, of strategy, of psychological calculation and the experience of recognizing treachery.

What if a Sun-Pluto person makes a less-than-optimal response? The basic Plutonian contract is simple to say: you go to the dark or the dark comes to you. Never does that idea signify that one must become "evil," only that one must face honestly the less comfortable aspects of human existence. A Sun-Pluto individual who attempts to achieve a sort of idiot-happy, Toyota-commercial "normalcy" in his life will attract the dark side of life like a bus station bathroom draws weirdos. Such a man or woman may seem to be a "nice" person who is the chronic victim of bad luck or catastrophe, or to have had more than a fair share of hard knocks, especially in the areas of love and friendship. He or she may become a sort of designated victim or scapegoat.

In situations of weak response to Sun-Pluto contacts where the person in question has a strong ego-structure, then we tend not so much to see the victim, but rather the victim's eternal partner: the tyrant, full of Machiavellian arrogance, paranoid suspicion, and destructiveness. There is also often a high susceptibility to fanaticism.

The bottom line is that Sun-Pluto men and women are intense people who thrive on experiences that would daunt and distress many of us. Their freedom — and responsibility — lies in directing that passionate energy into a conscious investigation of life's hidden dimensions.

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
When Pluto is conjunct the Sun in the natal chart — within say seven degrees — then the fusion of Plutonian energy with the identity is complete. Here is an individual who is "majoring in Pluto" in this lifetime, and to whom the above paragraphs apply without much modification.

Where will the Plutonian intensity be best expressed and what kind of journey will lead to its full, healthy expression? Much depends on the nature of the rest of the chart, a subject that is beyond the relatively narrow scope of this book. Still, a good place to start unraveling the mystery would be with a rereading of the chapter about the specific house position in which the natal Pluto lies. And since with Sun-Pluto conjunctions we are dealing with highly Plutonian people, the chapter about the sign in which Pluto lies will likely have considerable personal relevance as well.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
Squares and oppositions used to be called "bad" aspects or even "afflictions" — a truly poisonous idea. Nothing astrological is ever "bad;" all configurations are expressions of some high potential in the scope of life. "Badness" may very well be a reality in the world, but it is one that humans create, not planets. And as we will soon see, even the so-called "good" aspects contain ample room for dark expressions.

The hard aspects tend to force circumstances on a person, and with Pluto, initially the experience is often unpleasant. The good news is that laziness dissipates under that kind of pressure. Little will so fill us with the desire to move our foot as the discovery that it is in the fire.

People born under hard Sun-Pluto aspects may seem less Plutonian by nature in youth than those born under the conjunction, but their lives tend to collide with Plutonian realities which gradually move them in that direction. It would be inaccurate to underestimate the vulnerability here to shocking biographical developments which tend to "Plutonify" a person: disorienting deaths, betrayals, grievous losses. Such events do seem to occur with elevated frequency in such individuals. I hasten to add that others with the same hard Sun-Pluto configurations may not show such traumatic paths through life, but rather display an early attraction to Plutonian subjects — an attraction which comes at some cost socially or existentially.

The point with squares and oppositions is always that there is a shock and a price involved. But to keep perspective we must recognize that such challenges temper the steel in a human character, and the results are treasured.

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
Trines and sextiles between the Sun and Pluto in the natal chart jar the system less than squares and oppositions do. Typically, they are related to opportunities.....in this case, opportunities to make peace with life's fearsome side and to heal our own frights and wounds. We might for example find the existence in early life of a wise spiritual teacher, "official" or otherwise, who helps the developing child to come to terms with life's enormity: an inestimable gift. Similarly, we may find early experiences of death or disease or breakdown among people near enough to be visible, distant enough to be safe. In either case, the opportunity to lay down a solid, Plutonian foundation arises in the most painless way possible.

When a soft-aspect Sun-Pluto person feels the need to explore deeper or darker dimensions of life, help arrives. Dear friends show the way. Skilled counselors are available. Books fall off shelves into the hands, open to critical pages.

But: the horror of the soft aspects is our tendency to sleep through them, not benefiting from them in any way. Such an individual can miss a profound opportunity, cashing it in for sleepiness and a modicum of mere "luck" in the face life's inevitable losses: deaths, for example, may come at "convenient" times.....but we missed the chance to become the sort of person who can make a real difference at such mortal junctures. We stand mutely beside the bereaved person, unable to utter the words we sense somehow were in the script for us.

PLUTO-SUN EVENTS
When Pluto and the Sun interact through transits or progressions, your identity (Sun) is challenged to find new sources of elemental vitality, meaning, and spark in life. To accomplish that aim, you must typically wrestle with facts and truths that will rattle you.

No one experiences a great number of serious Plutonian transits or progressions to the Sun in the course of a lifetime. The decisive players here are the progressed Sun itself, the solar arc Pluto, and the transiting Pluto. None of them move very fast. If it weren't for the network of aspectual trigger points that the natal Sun and natal Pluto spread throughout the chart, it would be easy for a life to go by without any interaction between these energies. As it is, they'll certainly make a few contacts, at least through aspects.

A minor player in this category of astrological event is any contact of the transiting Sun with the natal Pluto. In the course of any year, the Sun will buzz through every possible aspect to everything in the chart. While the basic issues remain the same, they are here robbed of much of their significance by the brevity of the event. In practice, I'd encourage you only to pay serious attention the transiting Sun when there are other, more pithy Plutonian energies afoot. Then it may function as a useful timer, triggering events that epitomize the larger issues or bring them to a head.

Those larger Sun-Pluto issues revolve around the sheer pagan desire for heat in one's life. What fear stands between you and a fuller, more vital existence? Are you scared to admit hard truths about your marriage, your job, your religion, your family, your children, your sexuality, your health? How much are you paying for your attachment to your social standing? Your money? Your illusions?

Questions such as those are not for the fainthearted, but when Pluto and the Sun make contact, those are the kinds of fundamental self-scrutinies that must be accepted. If they are faced, there will be gnashing of teeth... and liberation, perhaps after a "descent into hell."

If one does not possess the moral courage to observe one's own life with that kind of shattering penetration, then we collapse into the classic dark-Plutonian scenario: the reenactment of whatever drama wounded us in the first place. We explored this notion thoroughly in the earliest chapters of this book. Here we find the abused child growing up and hitting his or her own kid — or arranging to get abused again by taking a job working for a gentleman who spent his last incarnation as an S.S. officer. Or the abandoned child betraying her own friend or lover. Or the person whose mother smoked a pack a day throughout her pregnancy who goes to work for the environmentally-crooked mining company, helping with the cover-ups. It's the dark law of the unconscious Pluto: the deadening repetition of the horror, further spreading the virus.

THE MOVING CONJUNCTION
For pure commanding force, there is no Sun-Pluto event to match the conjunction. Still, depending on the geometry of the birth chart, it is quite possible that a person could live to a ripe old age and never experience a conjunction of the solar arc or transiting Pluto with the Sun, or the alignment of the progressed Sun with Pluto. If it does occur, the preceding paragraphs convey the essence of the event. It represents a period of a couple of years from which the individual emerges either tired and bitter, or utterly transformed — wiser, deeper, more authoritative, and probably filled with an irresistible hunger for new life.

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
Transiting or progressing squares and oppositions between the Sun and Pluto tend to press the Plutonian issues to the forefront. They are impossible to ignore, although it is always possible to deal with them in a false, unconscious way. Here we often find forced contact with life's darker side: a child is discovered with a drug problem, crime occurs, disease makes itself felt, an intimate death may take place.

While I prefer to take a positive, encouraging attitude toward life and astrology, it would simply be dishonest of me not to report these realities. They often transpire under this kind of Plutonian stimulus.

Perhaps more commonly, at least among people working consciously on themselves, there develops an urgent sense that some inner work needs to be done; something dark and threatening is rising up out of the psychic depths and the wisest among us seek to meet that creature on their own terms rather than cringing before it like frightened children.
Among those who are less spiritually gifted, there is a fearsome tendency to lash out viciously under hard Sun-Pluto stimulus. The opposition aspect is especially prone to the psychological phenomenon called "projection," whereby the psyche imagines some external person or group to embody the very qualities in itself which it fears — and then does to them what it is in fact doing to itself: smashing, killing, maiming, shattering, torturing, taunting.

As Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." And sometimes in life we do, sadly, find ourselves at war with someone and the concept of projection alone cannot account completely for what is occurring. Having "enemies," in other words, may be a reality from time to time, and it might need to be faced squarely. But if you are experiencing hard aspects between the Sun and Pluto and simultaneously you find yourself faced with "adversaries," look penetratingly at the situation. Are those enemies real? Have they really done you any harm? Or are you falling into the seductive, profoundly convincing illusions that projection creates?

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
Transiting or progressing trines and sextiles between the Sun and Pluto offer exciting, empowering possibilities — if we can conjure up the motivation to seize them.

A young, working-class man finds himself out of high school, hammering nails when he can get the work. Abstractly, he'd like to attend college, but he sees little possibility of it, mostly for financial reasons. His grades don't warrant a scholarship, and he feels existence closing in around him — a classic Plutonian emotion. Then he sees an ad in a magazine: join the army, and they'll help you go to college when you've completed your tour of duty.
Such a course might not suit everyone, but it does in fact suit this young man's spirit and nature quite well. He's free to join. He is not encumbered by any countervailing responsibilities. The idea even appeals to him. What's to stop him from talking to a recruiter? Nothing — except inertia. He doesn't really have to join the army.….That is the way of the Sun-Pluto trines and sextiles here. A chance to re-orient and revivify one's entire perspective on life arises. But will we claim it?

What if our young man lets the chance go by? The cost is obvious in terms of the loss.....but there's more. Transits and progressions always appear actively somehow. If they don't operate in a healthy way, they'll operate darkly. Our hero is faced with a chance to go down the sweet road of decay, easily and cheaply at first. He falls in love with a glib young woman who's making a lot of money selling cocaine...

You know the rest of the story.

posted December 27, 2006 10:33 PM            

That order of perception, that style of intelligence, that set of human interests, motivations, and needs.….astrologers name it Venus: connection-builder, ease-bringer, heart-softener.

PLUTO-VENUS ASPECTS IN THE NATAL CHART
When the "Goddess of Love" encounters the "God of Hell," the prognosis might seem grim. A pessimist might imagine poor Venus ravaged, betrayed, and abandoned. An optimist, on the other hand, might envision Pluto transformed by love, revealing a pure, trusting heart behind the mask of sulfurous fumes and ravenous ferocity.

Both perspectives are naive for a variety of reasons, but most centrally because such an attitude assumes the necessity of confrontation between these two principles.

Pluto and Venus, in fact, are not enemies at all. They're soul mates. Pluto is always about looking into the dark. And nothing so motivates and compels us to do just that as one-to-one committed human love.

What love that lasts more than six weeks doesn't bring up "issues" for both lovers? Abandonment fears, performance anxiety, body-image concerns, control issues, pathological childhood dynamics — give love a little while, and those tricky places might as well be emblazoned as tattoos on our foreheads. If we've got them inside us, love will reveal them. Love's light is that bright. And to keep a good love in our lives, we've got to wrestle with our own monsters — and dance with the devils in our beloved.

Or the monsters and devils take the love away.

The same words and ideas apply to the best art. Not all great art must be intentionally "heavy," but art with the kind of passion, authenticity and soul that might grant it cultural longevity always invokes deeper longings in us. Who can listen to Bach without feeling, even without putting it into words, the terrible tension of daily life interspersed with ecstatic moments of visionary release? Who can read Shakespeare without grappling with the human propensity for madness, vanity, lust — and the kind of beauty that can melt a heart?

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
When healthy, a natal Pluto-Venus conjunction indicates a person whose natural lovers, mates, and deep friends are Plutonian souls — that is, they are people who look one right in the eye and tell the truth. Typically, they have done enough deep self-scrutiny to have achieved a degree of liberty from their own wounds.....for example, they are not controlled unconsciously by parental scripts of approval and disapproval. They are willing, early in the relationship, to bring up complex, emotionally charged subjects, to "cross lines of taboo." They are not necessarily dark or psychologically heavy people, but there is a distinct sense of impatience around them regarding shallowness, denial, and compulsive triviality.

When unconscious and unevolved, a Pluto-Venus conjunction can manifest in several ways, but they all have a single fundamental dynamic in their essence: a drive to reproduce earlier wounding scenarios in one's present intimate relationships. The woman whose father left home when she was a child feels compelled to love an irresponsible, betraying man — or constantly to hurt the men in her life by betraying them herself. Someone who was chronically shamed and weakened as a child compulsively attempts intimacy with critical, insatiable power-trippers.....or appoints himself or herself tyrant.

With this Venus-Pluto alignment, the natural flow of life depends radically upon allowing goose-bump intimacy and bone-chilling honesty to work their transformative magic upon the psyche.

Aesthetically, the conjunction often suggests a taste for "Plutonian" art — a little unsettling, uncompromising, and passionate. The words, "merely pretty" become a terrible malediction.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
Squares and oppositions in the birth chart between Pluto and Venus offer real rewards, but only for people who are attempting to live consciously, intentionally, and bravely. Otherwise, they are among the most painful of astrological configurations. Whether that's "bad luck" or "good luck" is a philosophical question I have no business answering for anyone else.

Sexual energy has subtle overtones, but in its essence it is hard to ignore — loud, compelling, and unavoidable. Trying to make sexual energy "go away" is not quite an impossible task, but it can only be accomplished through ascetic practices or the harshest of dark-Plutonian methods: constant shaming, sexual violations, and abuse. Otherwise, sex keeps coming back, as enthusiastic — and about as reflective — as a yearling Labrador Retriever. So: regardless of one's birth chart, the majority of us get involved in relationships. And with Pluto in square or opposition to Venus, we'll very likely trigger the replay of early wounding dramas in our sexual explorations. The only real question is: how long does it take for us to learn the pattern? We can "get it" the first time, and use the event as a springboard toward wisdom and change. Or we can go to the grave feeling like a victim of misfortune.….or more likely, go to the grave numb and hiding, imagining ourselves asexual.

If you possess such a configuration in your chart, the people with whom you get close in this life are intense teachers for you. When the energy is tuned, their lessons arrive in conscious conversation and shared growth. Untuned, the lessons are hurtful encounters with the bleak or catastrophic dimensions of our existences.....or simply with some very damaged, hard-hearted human beings.

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
With a trine or a sextile aspect linking Pluto and Venus in the birth chart, people are drawn into one's life who freely offer opportunities to delve deeply into mysterious or psychologically charged areas of life. Here we find the early encounter with the "good witch." Or we make contact with the minister, priest, or rabbi who possesses more than a mere divinity degree. Or the profoundly reflective friend who was maybe Lao-Tsu or Carl Jung in another life.

As always, with these soft aspects, the challenge lies in waking up to the full potential of the opportunity and seizing it. Otherwise, the chance can be wasted, or frittered away. In a nutshell, the invitation here is to recognize those people who offer to help trigger real inner experience. That's half the work. The rest lies in seizing the brief moments in which such contacts are available.

Briefly, one darker dimension of these "easy" Pluto-Venus contacts exists: seduction. One might be "led down the garden path" by someone who embodies the fascination of the dark for us. Here lies the risk of being drawn by "love" into addiction, bad habits, boorish crowds, and self-destruction. What gets us into such a mess? Ignorance of our own shadow. And how did we wind up with such a critical mass of ignorance? By missing, through sheer laziness, the healing, consciousness-raising possibilities built into the healthier interactions we described in the early paragraphs of this section. As always, the pits are optional.

PLUTO-VENUS EVENTS
When Venus and Pluto interact through a transit or a progression, it is truth-time. What is real must be honored, sometimes at the expense of peace, kindness, or stability.

Two lovers gaze fixedly into each other's eyes. Something in them melts; they hug. It's eternal — and glorious. But look carefully: why do they hug? The simple answer — they love each other — is only part of the truth. Another part isn't usually discussed: long exposure to that kind of total psychic nakedness is extremely uncomfortable. We enjoy a taste, then we ground it out in the primeval, physical comfort of touch.

The dance of love always involves that kind of ambivalence: closeness — and walls against the closeness. We may love each other. But we hurt each other too, and frustrate each other, and annoy each other. The whole stew of forces makes itself felt in the alternating flow of closeness and space that exists even in the healthiest and most satisfying of bonds.

Even in the most benign of circumstances, when Venus and Pluto interact, it is a sign that those distancing devices have grown stale. Deeper layers of one's humanness must be revealed, however traumatic that process may be. Needs must expressed, anxieties and fears explored. And passion regained.

Under such moving aspects we must also be alert to the basic Plutonian paradigm: it may now be time to look at a wounded place connected with one's capacity to love, to trust, or fully to inhabit one's natural sexual vitality. In the most mentally inert version of the tale, we simply reproduce old wounding patterns of childhood or karma. In more conscious versions, we are presented with someone who tempts us with the triggering of the old program — but we see through the illusion and break the chain.

The relatively fleeting transits of Venus through aspects to the natal Pluto carry the significance we've just explored, but in a milder fashion. They are too brief to develop much meaning unless there are other, slower Venus-Pluto developments occurring simultaneously. What mainly deserves our attention here are the transits or solar arcs of Pluto itself through aspects to the natal Venus, or progressions of Venus to aspects of the natal Pluto.

One more image: in Celtic mythology, the doors that offered access to the world of Faerie opened only on certain nights of the year. It's that way in human love, too. There are moments that must be recognized and claimed, or they pass. Some of these special "nights of the year" are signaled by soft contacts of Venus and Pluto. In the case of the brief passages of transiting Venus through an aspect to Pluto, the "night" may be literally that — one night. In the slower, more important moving events, the "special night" might last a couple of years. Still, particular moments of magical intensity during those long cycles can often be recognized through "minor" events such as Venus transiting through a trine to natal Pluto.

THE MOVING PLUTO-VENUS CONJUNCTION
The ideas expressed in the previous few paragraphs apply in an unaltered way in this situation. Truth is revealed, either consciously or indirectly through intimate biographical developments. If anything rings false in one's circle of human connections, it must be restructured and aligned with actual psychospiritual realities. Courage is essential here. Everything must be open to question and investigation, even the future of a long relationship. The inquiries are fierce and frightening: do we still love each other? What secrets did we need when we were younger that we need no longer? Who are you really?

Not everyone is in a committed sexual relationship, but most of us have significant intimacies in our lives — deep blood connections, profound friendships. All these kinds of human linkings are Venusian — and all are subject to Plutonian scrutiny during these transits and progressions.

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
When squares or oppositions form between Venus and Pluto, intimate confrontations tend to occur. What drives them can take a variety of forms. It may be our partners who confront us — and that confrontation may be direct and well-intended, or it may take the form of the partner's Shadow-dynamics manifesting in a "colorful" way.

We may, on the other hand, confront our partners in those same ways: consciously and constructively, or through some "acting out" on our own part.

These transiting or progressing aspects are particularly hard on people who have striven to be "good" all their lives. "Goodness" in this context implies not so much true warmhearted compassion as formality, rigid "normalcy," and that common phenomenon, "good child" approval-seeking. Such individuals are often shocked at the intensity of the "taboo" needs and desires that arise under passing Venus-Pluto configurations, and they may break down under the pressure. The behaviors which then arise have little to do with individuality, reflecting more familiar, more tawdry archetypes: the straying mate, the minister caught with the prostitute, the psychologist having sexual contact with his or her client.

The point is that squares and oppositions are compelling. One must respond to them. Something in one's sexual or intimate life has reached a point of criticality. It can no longer be denied. Identifying it consciously takes courage and openness. Integrating it, accommodating it into one's life, is no simple matter. The costs may be great. But the result is worth the price: sanity, integrity, and authenticity in one's life.

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
Maybe you are currently experiencing a sextile or a trine linking Pluto and Venus temporarily in your chart. Maybe you've come straight to this section without reading the previous material. Well, God loves you anyway, but in this case please glance at the three previous paragraphs under the "moving hard aspects" heading.

Spooky, huh? Even at their best and most constructive, those harder Venus-Pluto times are not for people with weak hearts. What you have now, with a passing trine or sextile between Venus and Pluto, is a lot milder. Most of the issues are exactly the same, with one big difference: they are not so compelling. If you want to, you can probably get away with sweeping them under the carpet. In common with trines and sextiles in general, it's not hard to turn them into nonevents. If you go down that road, all that will happen is that you'll meet some interesting, if rather intense, people. They'll turn you on to something a little dark and mysterious, but harmless: Tarot cards, a new murder mystery writer, a night club on the edge of town.….

But you'll also set yourself up for a hellish experience later in life when Pluto and Venus come into a square or opposition. The point is that now is a great time to talk! So simple to say, so hard to do sometimes. You are ready to make a leap into far more honesty and self-awareness regarding your sexuality and intimate style. If you're in a committed relationship, the pattern of intimacy there is set to grow in harmony with those deeper changes in yourself. The opportunity exists. Your partner is as ready and receptive as he or she is ever going to be. Help is available, if you'd like to take advantage of it. Everything is in place, awaiting the trigger. And the trigger is that you must choose to seize the moment.

posted December 27, 2006 10:57 PM            

A king, but no tyrant, Jupiter offers blessings, abundance, and benign protection...yet he can fall prey to that age-old enemy of all those to whom life is extravagantly generous: pride, and the blindness it can engender.

JUPITER ITSELF
Optimism, self-confidence, and hope: clearly positive, desirable qualities. But not without their shadows. On one hand, we are inspired by seeing someone without a home, without a penny, without friends, who lifts himself or herself up from that dungeon and prospers in every sense. How is such a feat accomplished? In the face of those hopeless circumstances, what works the "impossible" magic? No short answer could ever be complete, but certainly no such transformation could ever occur unless it was first imagined. If hope does not exist in the heart, it cannot exist in the objective world of our biographical lives either. On the other hand, a century ago a lot of publicity-seekers went over Niagara Falls in barrels. Not many of them survived. But I suspect most of them had one attitude in common as they were sealed into their imprudent vessels: hope.

The psychological attitude that allows us to create brighter futures for ourselves can also turn us into fools. That's Jupiter. To the astrologers of long ago, it was a "good" planet, the "greater benefic." Far more accurately, we can say that Jupiter energy always feels good. Whether it actually brings us what those happy emotions promise depends upon the tempering of Jupiter's enthusiasm and bulletproof hope. To those qualities, we must add a mood of self-knowledge and horse sense, as well as a willingness to accept the less glamorous themes of hard work, prudent calculation, and strategic compromise.

PLUTO-JUPITER ASPECTS IN THE NATAL CHART
Sometimes we meet people who put our teeth on edge, and sometimes the relationship stays exactly that way. But occasionally an odd alchemical transformation occurs. Given time, that person whom we found so odious turns out to be one of our most intimate friends.

Pluto and Jupiter have that kind of association. Two planets more naturally inclined toward mutual misunderstanding would be hard to discover. Pluto is brooding and psychological, always quick to focus on complexities, pitfalls, and delusions. Jupiter, on the other hand, is merry and bright, full of laughter, grand plans, and encouragement. Picture Jean-Paul Sartre on a long flight to Katmandu, with one of those happy-face motivational speakers seated by his side. That's about it. If they begin to listen to each other, each can benefit from the conversation. Jupiter needs Pluto's knowledge of the dark; without that kind of tempered understanding, Jupiter is constantly tripping over human woundedness, human dishonesty, human error, and the misfortunes that are woven into life. Similarly, Pluto needs Jupiter's capacity simply to believe in the future.

Furthermore, as both planets heal and rise in consciousness, their agendas increasingly converge. Once we have faced the dark, Pluto is always the part of ourselves that holds the fiery vision, the source of life's meaning, its intensity, and its passion. At its best, it is always hungry to do something with total emotional engagement, to commit itself utterly and irrevocably to life. And that is Jupiter's language too.

Thus, when Jupiter and Pluto are linked through an aspect in the natal chart, true visionary potential exists...but only if the bright king spends a night naked, alone and impoverished, in a far country, seated among the crumbling tombs of forgotten rulers, under the vast and indifferent dome of stars.

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
Modesty and humility are pleasant, positive qualities. They tend to go hand-in-hand with a willingness to learn, an openness to listening, and capacity to make psychological space for others. A person utterly lacking in modesty and humility is the terror of every cocktail party, every family reunion, and every required social function. But when Jupiter expands the intensity of Pluto, and Pluto impassions the world-conquering spirit of Jupiter, modesty and humility are not emphasized in the equations. This conjunction can be presumptuous, overbearing, and haughty — unless it is aimed truly and consciously.

What cannot — and should not — be escaped is that there is a grandness of vision built into a Pluto-Jupiter conjunction. Life's "modest successes" are simply not enough here. Healthy kids, a bland but reasonably remunerative job, a mowed lawn: Jupiter yawns, while Pluto reacts like a snooty, cynical kid making "C's" in history and "A's" in cool.

Born under this alignment, a person must seek to integrate a very difficult philosophical concept: that there exist within the possibilities of this universe a psychological attitude we might term "healthy grandiosity." It is not vanity, not haughtiness, but a clear, confident sense that "I am capable of extraordinary, memorable accomplishments." Here, we find a soul having reached a point in the spiritual journey where it is necessary and appropriate to claim a degree of influence, "kingship," and authoritative responsibility in the world.

How is that different from simple egoism? Hardly at all — except that healthy Jupiter-Pluto energy is always based on a real sense of destiny rather than the tawdry array of insecurities and internalized TV-heroes that invariably underlie simple grandiosity. When it is sound, Jupiter-Pluto energy claims glory through accomplishments, not merely though postures, poses, and put-downs.

To get to the bright visionary world of real destiny, a Plutonian descent into hell is almost inevitably needed. Born under this alignment, it is a good bet that in childhood somehow the ability to think well and confidently of oneself was twisted. The hurt may have come from simple shaming. It may have come from some kind of stereotyping: sexism and racism are obvious possibilities. Even that beleaguered minority — middle-class, white, heterosexual males — often get stereotyped into cookie-cutter success stories that may have nothing to do with true fire or individuality.

Whatever the tale, a false vision was placed at the heart of the imagination, and enforced by a set of love-rewards and shame-punishments. Letting it go is essential, but that entails facing what appears to be failure, ostracism, and loss of face. This is the descent into the Plutonian dark. Navigated gracefully and faithfully, the underworld tempers the King/Queen's power with wisdom, and creates the two qualities which characterize the highest face of this grand energy: a willingness to risk everything, and faith that all can be re-created.

What if the person born under this Pluto-Jupiter alignment clings to the false vision? They generally succeed in worldly terms, but in a pointless way. And they feel such pointlessness viscerally. Paradoxically, it enflames them to claim more power, glitz, and "kingship." After a while, we observe one of those long-winded, vaguely hostile party-creatures from whom we are plotting our escape twenty seconds after the hostess introduces us.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
Squares or oppositions in the birth chart between Jupiter and Pluto suggest a biography characterized by distinct challenges to one's hopes and dreams for the future, and therefore ultimately to one's capacity to experience a sense of faith in life. The foregoing sentence could fairly be construed as a negative appraisal of hard Jupiter-Pluto aspects. Try to reinterpret the idea in a positive light...in so doing, you recapitulate in microcosm the spiritual journey of someone born under such a configuration.

The dreams we must fight to protect, the visions we will not let die no matter what the cost, these are the ones that run deepest in the life of the soul, and afford the sweetest victories. Under hard aspects of Jupiter-Pluto, we might find the young single mother, penniless but determined, who puts herself through law school at night. We might observe the short boy who practices his outside shot until the coach invites him to join the basketball team.

Vintners have a proverb, "Torture the vine, improve the grape." The best wine often comes from plants that struggle to survive, often producing very little fruit. These words effectively capture the spirit of hard natal Pluto-Jupiter contacts, when they are healthy. It's really very simple: the faith that has been challenged is the deepest.

Naturally, in our human freedom, there is a dark side available in these aspects. Resignation. Surrendering to bitterness. A life reduced to a whining catalog of complaints. And, as is almost always the case when Pluto-Jupiter energies go awry, we observe in the personality profile the archetype of the dark king: cruelty, pettiness, and the urge to impose limits or poverty at some level upon innocent others.

May God protect us all from the minor bureaucrat gone down that road!

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
With Pluto and Jupiter forming a natal sextile or trine, there is a panoply of supports for the development of one's vision and sense of possibility in life. Some element of "luck" surrounds the extension of one's will into the world. Money, or whatever other resources are necessary, is generally available. Wise Plutonian counsel is consistently handy. The wheels of the economy, the wheels of social need and mood, all turn in ways that open frequent doors toward self-improvement at whatever level such effort might appeal to us. As always, the fly in the ointment with these soft aspects is that we might leave the best possibilities unexplored and undeveloped — or develop them in ways that have little to do with our true individuality.

I have read that immigrants to the United States are about four times more likely to become millionaires than are people who were born here. It's poisonous to imagine that wealth is the natural focus of every successful life, but still the statistic does teach us something relevant. America is a prosperous, free country, full of opportunities: a statement that rings truest when we compare this country to the realities current in much of the rest of the world. A foreigner coming here may, through contrast to his or her own nation, recognize the "Jupiter-Pluto sextiles and trines" that are available in this society, and seize them. A native may, on the other hand, be "content" (that is, unmotivated to move) in a dull job or cradled in the social net. Always, that sleepy side of the "easy" aspects is the devil in the stew.

PLUTO-JUPITER EVENTS
When Pluto and Jupiter interact through transits or progressions, the existential traffic light has turned green — and there's an out-of-control eighteen-wheeler with no brakes coming up fast from behind. No clearer astrological signal that it is time to move can exist.

Tying Jupiter to Pluto links opportunity to desire, vision to intensity, self-confidence to a willingness to upset the apple cart. Gentleness is a precious part of life, but it is not particularly relevant to either of these planets, especially Pluto. Seizing destiny, claiming more territory for oneself, expanding one's bubble...these extensions are often greeted with mixed responses from the people around us. We may hear a chorus of "ouches."

Earlier, we used an illustration of a young single mother, penniless but determined, who puts herself through law school at night. Perhaps when she came to that decision, she was experiencing some moving contact of Jupiter and Pluto. She was sick of her narrow life, sick of poverty, sick of hopelessness — and willing to seize a chance to claim more for herself and her child. But to succeed in law school she would have to spend less time with her youngster, less time with her friends and family. Probably, they all squawk a bit. More darkly, it is not difficult to imagine "stuck" people who find her bid to improve herself threatening, and who seek to undermine her resolve with shame, criticism, and doomsaying.

"To hell with them," our single mother may say to herself. The sentiment might not be lofty, but it is not without Plutonian wisdom either. Under these contacts, bright new possibilities must be seized or life grows as stale and limiting as a prison cell.

Jupiter's transits through aspects to the natal Pluto are slow enough that they can indeed develop real significance. In this, they are different from all the planets we've explored so far. To them, we also must add to our considerations the solar-arcs of Jupiter to Pluto, or the solar-arcs or transits of Pluto to Jupiter. What we sacrifice are the secondary progressions; neither Pluto nor Jupiter move far enough in the course of a lifetime to be of much practical value there.

THE MOVING CONJUNCTION
When Jupiter and Pluto align in conjunction, much that we just explored in the paragraphs above applies very simply and directly. It is, above all, a Season of Claiming. It is time to take what is yours, to improve your lot in life, and to let others deal in their own ways with whatever feelings they may harbor regarding the developments.

We can easily trip over internalized scruples against "selfishness" during such Jupiter-Pluto events. There are many counter-balancing moral arguments that could be used here, but to me, the simplest and most compelling is that everybody gets to experience a number of these Jupiter-Pluto seasons in the course of a lifetime. If you're in the midst of one, go ahead and trust your appetites. The people who may complain today will have their day sooner or later. Interestingly, the more we begrudge other people their moments of such claiming, the harder it is for us to grant ourselves the same freedom when our own Jupiter-Pluto moment arrives.

The one proviso we must reiterate is that the heart of any wise response to Pluto-Jupiter possibilities is self-knowledge. Consider your dreams carefully; are they truly your own? Do you really want this new life you're envisioning? Does it give you happiness down to the tips of your toes? Or are you stumbling over some misinformation, wound, or limitation that life's dark side stuck in your psyche long, long ago? That new car — is it really worth the extra bill each month? Will you really enjoy it that much? Or are you imagining how you'd look in it to the kids who mocked you for a nerd back in junior high school?

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
Under moving squares or oppositions between Pluto and Jupiter, faith is embattled. Perhaps someone has gone down a road for the wrong reasons. A job that offers glamour, money and emptiness. A marriage of similar description. Maybe we're looking at a young person who's gotten accepted by the "cool" kids, only to discover a shallowness behind the veneer. Under these hard aspects, such illusions are challenged. And we hate it!

The trick lies in realizing that your life as you're living it is inadequate to meet your spiritual and emotional needs, and that half the reason that's true is that you've believed far too many lies all your life. The other half of the reason is that you've grown and changed, and what used to be satisfying and believable is now barren and false.

Keeping one's fire, enthusiasm, and faith alive is the challenge these squares and oppositions bring. Typically, to do so, one must pay a price. Comforting but phony elements of life must be released, and new possibilities seized under less-than-auspicious circumstances.
The first astrology book I authored, which has never been published, was written while I was experiencing transiting Pluto square my natal Jupiter. Each day, after my then-wife had gone to work, I would put on my heavy coat and scarf, turn the thermostat down to 45 degrees, and begin writing. That's how poor we were; and that's also how much I wanted to write that book. I'd been offered a position as political speech writer in Washington — a glitzy, phony path for me. I turned it down, and collected unemployment insurance instead. (I'm not proud of that, but this is truth-time.) The book, once finished, was widely rejected. One rejection letter I will remember always: "The thrust of astrological literature is now, and will probably always be, egocentric." I wish that I'd framed it. Obviously, this was not the breeziest emotional period I've ever experienced, but it was not bitter. Something precious was forged in me then: faith in myself as an astrologer and a writer...

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
...and by the time Pluto transited into the sextile to my natal Jupiter, The Inner Sky had been out a year or so, The Changing Sky had just been published, and Jodie and I, having just bought a house, were hard at work on Skymates, under contract.

The soft sextiles and trines between Pluto and Jupiter represent openings into better, more vision-charged futures. Resources, connections, and opportunities converge on such moments. Faith in oneself and a willingness to risk advancing are keys to successful navigation of such periods. The inner mouse must not be allowed to grab the steering wheel. Such events call for a degree of audacity and "ego" — qualities best enjoyed with a sense of humor and a vision of life's more theatrical dimensions.

If we drift through a soft Jupiter-Pluto time, changing nothing, it still feels okay. The rot of profound existential boredom takes a while to come to a boil. And by then, that happy constellation of openings and possibilities has evaporated.

posted December 27, 2006 10:58 PM            

SATURN ITSELF
Maturity — the very meaning of the word shifts according to who is using it. To the grammar school child, it might mean becoming one of those paragons of sophistication, style, and worldly wisdom: a teenager. To a person in college, it might suggest that far horizon: mid-life. To a man or woman of fifty, it begins to resemble Father Time a bit more: the Elder.

Always, maturity is the potential inherent in the next stage of the life-journey. Such potential is never realized automatically; only its physical reflection, getting older, is automatic.

To attain maturity, one must make an effort. At its heart, that effort is about altering one's nature in a highly Saturnian direction: an increase in one's acceptance of what is real and actual, greater integrity, wisdom, and a corresponding tolerance for life's defeats and compromises.

Saturn thrives on massive efforts and acts of will. It is the part of human consciousness that can make and keep commitments. Delayed gratification, persistence, sober assessments, and conservative judgments are central to it. Handled well and consciously, over the years Saturn breeds dignity and self-respect in us, as well as a quality of natural authority. These virtues are typically forged in Saturnian times, where mammoth do-or-die efforts are made: geographical moves, periods of strenuous education, marital commitments and recommitments.

Handled in an uninspired way, Saturn energy is that part of us that prefers defeat to making the efforts success entails. It is quick to say words like "no," "impossible," and "it won't work." In the short run, it is frustrating. In the middle run, it is depressing. And in the long run, a weak response to Saturn is nothing less than a resolution to be dead.

PLUTO-SATURN IN THE NATAL CHART
An aspect connecting Pluto and Saturn in the natal chart forges an indissoluble bond between the Plutonian ideal of a passionate, vision-driven life and the Saturnian ideal of hard work and commitment. It is not an easy association — but the word "easy" is too readily equated with "positive" or "good." Saturn is the part of the human psyche that in fact does not much enjoy anything "easy." It is the part of us that likes to make an effort, that appreciates real excellence and character.

Under such a linkage, powers of concentration are often very high, as is the capacity to sustain focused effort. An outlet for the energy is essential, and that outlet must appeal to the Saturnian predilection for skill, commitment, and self-discipline.

Think of a concert pianist. Years of training and practice come to a focus moment-to-moment on the night of the performance. An incredible, almost superhuman, feat of dexterity and memorization unfolds before our eyes. And yet, if the pianist is truly a virtuoso, he or she "makes it look easy," as though the expression of those glorious emotions through the keyboard was only marginally more difficult than simply feeling them.

That's the spirit of Saturn and Pluto together. They seek that same marriage of passion and hard-won excellence. The avenue of expression does not, of course, need to be artistic. It may unfold in a marriage, in a business, in the skillful practice of any craft — from dentistry to computer programming to stock-trading.

If such a planetary linkage goes sour, then the narrow focus and self-control of Saturn interact morbidly with the Plutonian affinity for the dark. Without a healthy outlet, the combination of these two planets can become very bleak. Despair can fill the consciousness like a candle flame in darkened room. Then the mind begins to obsess; worries and fretfulness blossom into fear and sullen fantasy, complicated eventually by a monomaniacal focus on some aspect of the taboo: the furtive, compulsive masturbator, for example.

These glum possibilities are real, but quite unnecessary. With Saturn linked to Pluto, ecstasy is available. Just look at the face of the virtuoso pianist.

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
A consideration of the house that holds the two planets provides a solid foundation for interpreting the conjunction of Pluto and Saturn in the birth chart. Reading the earlier chapter of this book that describes Pluto alone in the relevant house might be a good start. The inner healing to be done and the outward fruit such work can bear are outlined there. Adding Saturn to the mix amplifies the centrality of the issue in the life, and also adds the uniquely Saturnian dimensions of self-sufficiency, discipline, and the need to accomplish some visible "great work" in the process of doing the Plutonian delving.

Psychologists have given us the term "depression," now very much a part of street language everywhere. Like most words, it can obscure as much as it reveals. Astrologically, it would be impossible to define a "planet of depression." One reason is that depression is pathological state and no planet is inherently pathological. Another is that depression arises when a truly basic need is chronically and inescapably thwarted. Since every planet represents a unique basic need, any of the planets can lie at the heart of a depressive episode.

Pluto and Saturn, however, tend to figure more prominently than the others in cases of depression. Why? Simply because they are the planets that most actively represent factors that thwart desire. Each represents a different kind of thwarting, though. Saturn's blockages tend to be based in circumstance — "I'm depressed because I can't seem to get over this damned cold!" Pluto's blockages, on the other hand, are harder to understand. "I'm just depressed, that's all." But why? If Pluto could talk, its answer might be, "You're depressed because your primary relationship is falling apart and you haven't admitted it to yourself yet!" If we're depressed for Plutonian reasons we haven't truly faced, we tend to concoct or inflate Saturnian "reasons" to explain our condition: "If only I had a little more money..."

The point is that, when Pluto and Saturn lie together in the birth chart, two potential drivers of depression are allied, and if they get off their track and start cross-emphasizing that quality, the result can be devastating.

Born under such an alignment, it is imperative that a person define mountains to climb in accord with the symbolism around the conjunction — and once again, the house position of the pairing is a productive place to begin framing the nature of the mountain. Such a life, lived in a healthy way, may have features in it which critics will decry as "obsessive" or "unbalanced," but that verdict reflects nothing more than the narrow masturbator. For the Pluto-Saturn person, a life lived without that kind of passionate focus is a depressing life. The brilliant pianist who practices many hours a day but hardly ever reads a newspaper: is she or is she not a "good citizen?" We might fault her for not keeping up with what the scoundrels are doing — that's arguably one of the duties of a citizen in a democracy. On the other hand, her concerts bring people together for a shared experience of the soul of their civilization.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
With Pluto and Saturn linked by a square or an opposition in the birth chart, issues of character and morality take center stage. Pluto is passionate, and Saturn is controlling, so there is natural tension between them in that regard. Such tensions are aggravated and emphasized by the inherently tense qualities of these hard aspects.

Earlier, we expressed the notion that Pluto was intimately connected to anything that gets an individual "hot." That means Pluto represents appetite and ardor at their most intense. Naturally, such highly motivated psychic states sometimes have primitive biological dimensions, although we must be quick to add that such "heat" can arise in a hobbyist on the way to the model train convention or the musician on the way to an exciting jam.

Human beings renew themselves through the experience of such heat from time to time. We all have a basic Plutonian need for ecstatic release. Sex may provide it. So may art, or religious ritual, or immersion in dance or parties or creating a business.

But Saturn can overcontrol that passionate need. This is an extremely delicate notion. To attain the "great works" characteristic of the highest expressions of these Pluto-Saturn aspects, some degree of sublimation and delay of one's hungers is necessary. But too much obstruction of them can create a morbid condition in the psyche, just as too much self-denying "goodness" can incline a traditionally religious person toward witch-hunting regarding other people's pleasures.

The moral challenge of hard aspects between Saturn and Pluto lies in finding a kind of personal morality or integrity which is psychologically sustainable, and then living it. In nutshell, such a person needs to learn pacing and balance. He or she will definitely need something into which to get his or her teeth; some manner of great work is always the natural expression of this potent planetary linkage. But such a man or woman also benefits from long meditation upon why God saw fit to create the weekend.

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
Seriousness and depth of purpose characterize these sextiles and trines. Normally, in looking at soft aspects, we must be cautious about their inherent propensity for laziness. But neither Pluto nor Saturn are inherently lazy, so that trap is less of a threat here than with most other soft planetary combinations. Saturn especially relaxes by working, and Pluto can simply add a dash of passionate intensity to the stew.

Still, the key to keeping Pluto-Saturn energy healthy always lies in keeping both planets busy and challenged; the signs and houses in which they lie offer insights into the particular forces that must be brought together in that department.

Generally speaking, it is not easy for human beings to look steadily into the Plutonian dark. Almost by definition, it makes us nervous and uncomfortable, and inclines us toward denial or escape. Under these soft aspects, there is often an easy matter-of-factness regarding life's frightening threads: death, disease, catastrophe, grief. It is easier for such people than for most of us to accept the "facts" under such circumstances. At its best, this quality can make for an individual who is a real treasure in times of need — the steady Rock of Gibraltar who helps us through a bleak season. At worst, the same factors can come together to suggest someone whose insensitivity, bluntness, and apparent coldness can be destructive, hurtful and alienating.

PLUTO-SATURN EVENTS
Astrologer Grant Lewi, decades ago, began to speak of Saturn as "the cosmic paycheck." His implication was that under passing Saturn symbolism, we would all "get what we deserve."

That phrase — "get what we deserve" — is something of an inkblot test. Some of us may hear it ominously, others encouragingly. And both possibilities are on the radar screen when Pluto links to Saturn through transit or solar arc.

Either way, there is a D-day sense about these two planets coming together. It's a make it or break it time in which a certain confrontation, both with oneself and with circumstance, has taken on a quality of inevitability or "fate."
Pluto is our craziness, insofar as we are all made "crazy" by the unconscious material that influences our behavior and view of life — the compass-turning "beer cans" of which we spoke early in the book. And when Pluto forms a moving link with Saturn, we are ready to confront and defeat our craziness in a decisive battle, thereby creating an existential turning point for ourselves. That's the "cosmic paycheck;" if we've earned it, now we collect it.

But what if we've been overindulging in denial, projection, and laziness? What kind of paycheck can we expect then? Here, we see the dark side of Pluto-Saturn possibilities: the craziness we've carried inside us crystallizes in our biographical life. Our worst fear comes true. The "one thing we know we just couldn't handle" looms in our face.

THE MOVING CONJUNCTION
Say you're embroiled in one of these Pluto-Saturn turning points. Ask yourself, what would the wizard inside me do in a situation like this? Or ask it another way: imagine that you've grown old, much older than you are today. Imagine that you've matured wisely and gracefully, making nothing but smart choices at every level. Visualize that wizardly version of yourself, vastly more sagacious and experienced than you actually are in this moment. What would he or she say to you about the crossroads at which you are looking? From that perspective, in that higher consciousness, what would be your best move now? How about your dumbest move?

That kind of thinking is useful under the moving conjunction of Saturn and Pluto. You are poised on the brink of an evolutionary leap. At its center is the process of maturation, a considerable part of which is connected to our noble effort to become less crazy over the years — which is to say less controlled by unconscious factors you deny, distort, misunderstand, or simply know nothing about.

At the crossroads you face, there are two choices. One is old and familiar, the other is unprecedented in your life. The first choice is driven by worn-out patterns of woundedness in you, patterns which you are now ready to drop as naturally as you dropped your childhood. The second choice is more empowered, more confident, more akin to the road of the Elder...and you can prove that to yourself by squinting your eyes until you make out that gray-haired, caped figure in the distance, beckoning you...

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
When Pluto and Saturn form squares and oppositions, there is crisis in the air. Neither of these are "mellow" planets, and when they form a stormy aspect to each other there is often a spirit of trouble in one's life.

The trouble, though, is old and familiar: it is a crystallization of an old pattern of self-delusion or self-limitation that has been afflicting you for a long while. Lifetimes, maybe. And it has now come to a head. To say you have no choice would be misleading; we always have at least one choice, and that is whether to be conscious or not. A conscious response to passing hard aspects between Pluto and Saturn involves acting creatively and unexpectedly, throwing a novel element into the old logjam. That novel element is a new level of wisdom on your part, and some of the wizard's power. You may be called upon to use force in your own defense; you may be named "hurtful" for doing so. The pattern needs to be broken at whatever cost. The alternative is only to repeat it.

The inner work connected with healing oneself during a hard Pluto-Saturn event can be eased and accelerated dramatically by seeking out the counsel of another "wizard," ideally one older than yourself. Saturn epitomizes a nearly-lost archetype: the Elder. Throughout much of human history, no culture existed without an honored class of gray-haired guides and teachers. Merely aging did not automatically qualify a person as an Elder, either — experience had to be digested, not just endured, in that life-long initiation. While we've lost a lot of the rituals and institutions around our Elders, such beings still exist. And if ever you might benefit from a long talk with one of them, it is during a hard, moving aspect of Saturn and Pluto.

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
Maturing, moving toward wisdom, evolving and not just aging — these processes always require effort. But it would be unduly harsh and pessimistic to say they are invariably difficult. Sometimes, in fact, such maturation can be a joyful, natural development in which the needed efforts feel more like fun and celebration than an ordeal. Such is typically the case when Pluto and Saturn form moving sextiles and trines.

Under such configurations, it is beneficial to prime the pump by thinking of where you are in the life cycle. For starters, reflect on one fact: you are older today than you've ever been in your life.

This is one of those notions that is striking equally for its wake-you-up shock value and its patent silliness. But it's true: you are getting older by the minute. Yet we tend to maintain static, memorized images of ourselves... images that are invariably and inescapably rooted in what we used to be.

Society encourages us to be neurotic and insecure about the maturing process. Women often complain, with compelling arguments in their favor, that they are unfairly devalued as they age. As a sympathetic male, I have to agree: I see those magazines whenever I shop — here's the face of sixty-year-old man, here's the body of a seventeen-year-old girl/woman. All I would add is that men pay their dues to the cultural madness too, but on a different schedule: there's a balloon-payment that comes due around retirement age. It kills a lot of men, literally.

The point is that we have made aging a Plutonian reality in that we have made it taboo. And with Saturn's very direct link to the maturation process, moving events between these two planets very often have the realization and integration of one's place in the life cycle at their heart. They provide a classic signal that we are ready to "give up childish things," accepting with as much faith as we can muster the cyclic realities of the human journey. And under the sextile or trine, opportunities to do just that abound. Older role models are available, chances to be taken more seriously exist, along with the attendant increases in responsibility. Claim them now, and profiting from the harder aspects that will eventually form between Pluto and Saturn will be proportionately less exhausting.

posted December 27, 2006 11:00 PM            

PLUTO AND NEPTUNE
Here's a useful fiction to which most of us subscribe in order to deal with the world: I am my personality. But the central mystery of our humanness is that all of us are capable of entering other frameworks of selfhood: sleep, and the dream-self. Meditation, and the spirit-self. Imagination, and the fantasy-self.

To enter those worlds, there is a door through which we must pass. Astrologers name it Neptune.

NEPTUNE ITSELF
Consciousness. The blank slate. Mind without thought, without an object of focus or concentration. The smooth wide open sea of pure awareness. The still pool of being. The language sounds mystical and exotic, but the experience is universal.

Each night as you slip from waking to sleep, you pass through that territory. Mostly, the passage unfolds unmarked and we are soon in slumber. But from time to time, unaccountably, we are startled by it. We jolt back to wakefulness, having "caught ourselves falling asleep." Mystics and shamans enter that border-land intentionally, and inherit traditions full of techniques for invoking it: fasting, prayer, mantra, vigil, vision quest, the ritual ingestion of hallucinogens. Artists enter it as well, using their own rituals.

Why does anyone bother? It's hard to answer the question, and perhaps ridiculous to try. A ten year old upon first learning of the mechanics of sexual intercourse might ask the same question: why bother? And we all smile. These higher states of consciousness offer their own ineffable rewards. Words pall, but we might speak of inspiration, a sense of the presence of God, spiritual renewal, bliss.

Anything so strange and powerful must possess a baleful shadow. That is certainly the case here. Neptunian realities can seduce us away from this atoms-and-molecules world of real people and real responsibilities. They can, paradoxically, trick us away from the scene of most of our actual spiritual work. Here we find escapism in all its multitudinous, ever-mutating forms: drug or alcohol problems, television problems, glamour, glitz, or money problems, the ten thousand faces of addiction.

Thus, the twin Neptunian archetypes: the Mystic and the Drunk. And sometimes, distinguishing one from the other is a perplexing exercise.

PLUTO-NEPTUNE ASPECTS IN THE NATAL CHART
If either you or your mom can sing all the words to a Beatles' song, you've got a Pluto-Neptune aspect in your birth chart and it's a sextile.

The two planets move very slowly. Around the middle of the Second World War, they formed that sixty-degree angle with each other and they've been more-or-less that way ever since. The aspect won't last forever— they'll form their last true sextile in this cycle on February 26, 2032 at 9:42 in the morning, EST, and drift gradually out of orb over the following few years. But since World War Two and until then, everyone born on Earth shares that same basic feature in his or her birth chart.

Imagine a world in which suddenly one day everyone woke up with a craving for the color chartreuse. At first the change would come as shock, but gradually it would be taken for granted, as though that predilection were a self-evident dimension of human nature. After a generation or two, no one would have any notion of how odd the circumstances were in comparison to human norms over the millennia.

That's our situation. As I write these words, for everyone under about fifty years of age nothing could be more natural than the easy blending and mutual enhancement (sextile) of Pluto and Neptune. The meaning of that statement is complex and multidimensional, and not everyone brings it to focus in the same way. But for one and all, there is a linkage of Neptunian mystical transcendence and our encounter with the Plutonian dark.

In this section, we'll be using a slightly different format than in the previous ones. Since the Neptune-Pluto sextile is so universal, we'll explore it in detail. And since there is almost no one alive born under any other aspect between the two planets, those energies will get short shrift. (The only other aspect represented among living humans — the conjunction —occurred in the spring of 1892.)

The heart of the Neptune-Pluto matter, in terms of the evolution of human culture, is the blending of two previously unrelated notions: our spiritual journey and our psychological work on ourselves. The first is Neptunian, the second is Plutonian.

Formal Jungian psychology may or may not have a long future in the world, but it captures very well the spirit of our age in this regard. No one can immerse himself or herself in Jungian writing or analysis for very long without encountering a sense of spiritual vastness and transcendent possibilities. But neither could such a person avoid an uncomfortable, humbling contemplation of his or her personal demonology. Furthermore, a failure squarely to face the latter would be recognized as an insurmountable block to the flowering of the former. This basic attitude or value is the essence of the Neptune-Pluto sextile in its conscious manifestation.

In understanding your own experience of the aspect, the key is to accept that your direct experience of your own spirituality is enhanced or blocked according to how effectively you are responding to the challenges afforded by your natal Pluto. Negatively, your inner cosmos will be populated by false gods, some frightening, others seductive, and those gods will tie you in knots whenever you attempt to explore the Infinite. Positively, the sheer energy released into the psyche by intentional Plutonian work can empower unimaginable leaps in consciousness.

What about these "false gods" that can entrap us, preventing our spiritual growth? Here's an example: A boy never gets anything real from his father. Dad is always at work or in front of the television. His son never enjoys any teaching, any shared play, any sense of specialness. In modern nouveau-psychological language, the son never experiences any male "initiation" or "bonding."

This child grows to physical manhood, his wounds never explored or acknowledged. His Plutonian energies, in this case twisted, interact vigorously with his spiritual perspective through the Neptune-Pluto sextile. What kind of God does he then imagine? Various answers are possible. Perhaps the man sees a universe that is a direct reproduction of his paternal drama: an indifferent or nonexistent deity rules over a cosmos in which a mere bug such as himself is perfectly inconsequential. Such a metaphysical perspective would be especially likely to arise if the rest of our protagonist's birth chart suggests any degree of passivity.

If his birth chart suggests more susceptibility to anger, then perhaps his unprocessed fury at his father for failing him would shape his Neptunian spirituality. "God" would be an antagonist, bent on creating misfortune and loneliness. Or maybe we would observe a hellfire-and-brimstone Fundamentalist, spreading damnation hither and yon in a gaudy externalization of his own unconscious guilt, shame, and "unworthiness."

There is another Neptunian "soul-cage" we must avoid: this is the planet of glamour. The word has a modern ring to it; we think of "glamour" magazines, for example. Ask a high school class today if they think they'd appreciate living a "glamorous lifestyle" or being viewed as "glamorous" by their peers, and I suspect most of the young people would express some degree of enthusiasm.

Funny — and revealing — how the meaning of words evolves over time. Glamour is actually an old Scots term that referred to a demonic power of deception, typically used to create an aura of beauty or value around something intrinsically worthless, tawdry, or evil.

Pure, high Neptunian energy is that door of perception through which we experience our spiritual natures. One message brought to us by such perceptions is that we are all so much more than we seem to be. How "glamorous" to be an ancient being of light and energy! But that well-founded feeling of spiritual upliftment can be turned easily into a bleaker, Celtic kind of glamour. We begin to slip into dark-glamorous imaginings about ourselves, or into the worship of dark-glamorous gods of illusion.

Examples? Under our long-running Neptune-Pluto sextile, any unprocessed inner feelings of worthlessness can immediately translate, through glamour, into reactive grandiose "spiritual" imaginings — "ah yes, I remember it well ...in a previous lifetime, I was a great yogi in Benares." The fantasy feels good and compensates psychologically for low self-esteem, but does it help anyone grow? Probably not. More likely, it blinds us to the realities of our own actual karmic predicament.
Similarly, unprocessed Plutonian feelings of powerlessness can manifest as "spiritual" power-trips. How many poor souls do you know who imagine themselves, against all evidence, to be "gifted with healing powers," or to be "psychic?" How many confused people imagine themselves to be "shamans?" How many are "channeling?"

An abandoned or abused child often longs to be dead ...or radically, permanently numb, which is essentially a mask for the death-wish. Should such a Plutonian psychic wound go unresurrected and unexplored, how will it link into one's Neptunian transcendence-circuitry? The answer is sad, and visible everywhere today: the hunger for sheer oblivion. Drugs or alcohol, misused, can create such a state. A person starting a slide down that familiar road may at first sincerely mistake numbness for spirituality.….it feels exactly like the "god" for which he or she longed so piteously as a child.

These are delicate matters. I am not advocating cynicism and knee-jerk disbelief in everyone's spiritual story, nor I am advocating Puritanism. But under the near-universal Neptune-Pluto sextile, we are experiencing a collective plague of such psychological distortions. Any fears, insecurities, or deeper psychological damages that have not been honestly explored will immediately, automatically begin to interact with one's faculties for spiritual perception and image-formation. And a sextile is a soft aspect, so the tendency is toward laziness and uncritical, simple postures. Furthermore, the sextile itself has a giddy, exciting quality, which can sometimes resemble the spirit of an enthusiastic teenager, drunk for the first time, and suddenly possessed of a "fantastic idea."

The effects of the trine are similar, but without quite the same giddiness and extremity. The next trine between Neptune and Pluto will occur between 2087 and 2091— back burner material, unless you're really into organic vegetables.

Neptune and Pluto will move into a square aspect a little sooner, between 2061 and 2065. The last time they formed that aspect was early in the nineteenth century, between 1816 and 1820. Here the psychological and the spiritual are again linked, but the quality of tension between them is emphasized. Spirit vs. flesh themes arise, with a corresponding deification of "otherworldly, "transcendent" expressions.

Note that the current sextile is distinct from these other Neptune-Pluto events in that it embraces fully eight decades rather than the more typical period of a few years. The reason for this huge disparity is fairly simple to understand. Pluto's orbit is quite elliptical. When it swings closest to the sun, it is moving relatively fast — fast enough to match pace with Neptune, which normally is the quicker of the two. When Pluto happens to reach that fast part of its orbit, Neptune could be anywhere. This time around, however, it turned out that when Pluto got synchronized with Neptune, it was about sixty degrees behind in its orbit — thus, the incredibly long-running sextile, which astrologically is perhaps the single most unique feature of our historical age.

PLUTO-NEPTUNE EVENTS
When Pluto and Neptune interact through transits or solar arcs, one cardinal principle dominates: don't do anything! The idea is exaggerated of course, but not as negative or even as simple-minded as it sounds. Here is the deeper logic behind it: Neptune is fundamentally a planet that refers to our capacity to navigate inner space. As such, when it is stimulated, our awareness of subtle intuitions is heightened. Neptunian events coincide with an intensification of our capacity to visualize and imagine, and an extension of our faculty of concentration on those interior landscapes. In other words, Neptune excels at helping us improve a wide range of skills that are extraordinarily useful when it comes to mapping our inner topography and receiving inspiration and insight.

Such inner developments have profound indirect relevance to decision-making and action. But when they are the focus of attention, our intelligence is not directed toward the outer, material world, nor should it be. We are adjusted optimally for the navigational requirements of another world entirely — the inner one.

Which means that we are prone to dumb moves in the outer realm of events. Hence, the dictum: don't do anything.

With Pluto in the picture, Neptunian visualizations and realizations may take on the tonality of any psychic woundedness we have not yet integrated. No matter what the aspect, this is a powerful time for intuitive self-discovery in those uncomfortable areas. Methods involving symbols are particularly productive then: Tarot cards, dream work, and astrology, for example.

As we advance, the higher, happier dimensions of Pluto come into focus: images pop into the mind regarding inspiring new directions and possibilities in one's life, promising deeper degrees of emotional engagement and authenticity. Again, the triggering agent for these liberating images may well be symbolism of some sort. But even there, we must be cautious. These Neptunian inspirations are probably not ready to be enacted as they are visualized. They come into consciousness packaged as metaphors and archetypes — Neptune stuff. Invariably, they require grounding, horse-sensical scrutiny, and compromise.

THE MOVING CONJUNCTION
With Neptune and Pluto fused together by transit or solar arc, an extraordinary opportunity exists ...but one which may fill you with ambivalence. A cloaked figure appears at your door on a lightning-slashed night, the Full Moon over his shoulder. "I have a secret," he says, and you're immediately solid goose bumps from head to toe. "Ask, and I will tell you…..but only if you ask."

So what are you going to do? In your bones, you have the feeling that learning the cloaked man's secret is going to have some unforeseeable implications.….

Maybe you should leave it well enough alone. But on the other hand there's a gravity to the situation, a sense of destiny. Could you ever sleep well again if you send the man away?

The "cloaked man" in our parable can manifest in a variety of ways. Many times, they have an “occult" sense. You're given a chance to have a reading with a well-recommended psychic. You're tempted to buy some Tarot cards or take up astrology. You are presented with an opportunity to do some manner of deep inner work: a vision quest, a sweat lodge, profound psychotherapy. A hypnotist specializing in past-life regressions is coming to town, and exerting a strong pull on your imagination. Perhaps some kind of body-centered or breath-centered therapy enters your field of possibility, promising to bring to the surface some long-buried.....what?

All these are faces of the Neptunian-Plutonian cloaked man. All promise the delivery of secrets. None offer any guarantees of comfort, safety, or even success. Sometimes the spiritual journey reaches such crossroads. Then the fierce face of God and the Goddess emerges, the one that guards the higher secrets and the deeper knowledge, challenging rather than encouraging, menacing rather than comforting, cooler and more indifferent than the benign Santa Claus they sell in churches on bright Sunday mornings.

This is the Season of Initiation.

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
Spiritually, you are tripping over yourself - that is the warning of the moving square or opposition between Neptune and Pluto. Your Neptunian intuition is attempting to deliver a message, but a wound in your spirit is blocking reception. To receive the message, you must heal the wound.

Is your inner image of the universe twisted? Maybe mom smoked cigarettes while you were in her womb. Maybe the amniotic fluid was rendered toxic by the nicotine — and that simple fact built a paradigm into your deepest psychological stratum, a paradigm of a toxic universe. How might that manifest in adult life? All-pervasive fear, mistrust, and foreboding. Under a moving hard aspect here, the time has come to make that unconscious attitude conscious. Why? Because otherwise a message of hope and possibility cannot break through into your awareness — your "God" won't let it.

If something beat you down when you were young, then under this moving hard aspect you may find yourself unable to move forward into your true spiritual inheritance because of an unnatural, unnecessary shame-faced humility. If, on the other hand, something hurt you by inflating your ego when you were young — you were a "spoiled" child, for example — then this aspect suggests that arrogance or pride may be blinding you.

As always, squares and oppositions suggest strong evolutionary pressures and the need for committed effort. Handled consciously, they suggest a breakthrough.

In an unconscious scenario, hard aspects between Pluto and Neptune imply that we'll get our "karmuppance," to use Ram Dass's delightful phrase — our "stuff” catches up with us, and we find ourselves in painful or embarrassing circumstance of our own creation.

This is the Season of Rectification.

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
With moving trines or sextiles linking Pluto and Neptune, a gentle hand reaches across the abyss. Below, white water boils over jagged rocks. Do you grasp the hand? Do you leap? Well, that would be the smart move. But you are understandably scared. And the place you're standing isn't so bad…..a little boring, a little limited in possibilities maybe. That's better than being dashed to pieces on those jagged rocks.….

Nothing will make you jump. That's not the way of the soft aspects. They only offer the opportunity and the assistance.

There are inner secrets, probably some inner wounds, you would benefit from exploring. It won't be easy. Such work is never easy. But it won't be hell either. You're ready. Help is available. Your circumstances in terms of doing what you need to do are as optimal as they are ever going to be. The fears you feel are, in this case, inflated. Once the work is done, you'll look back on them with the same attitude you feel toward your childish horror of the "man in the closet" and the "monster under the bed."

And the continuing vibrancy of your spiritual life is at stake.

posted December 27, 2006 11:10 PM              

so how was your holiday....btw r u sure u took a break? u r indefatigable!! (or untirable....or whtever word means tht!!!) ohh...just looked up the diccy, indefatigable is THE WORD for u

posted December 28, 2006 01:13 PM              

Thanks for this contributory post everyone hehe!

I was just pondering my Sun/Pluto conjunction the other day. I was kind of meditating on this... I mean 'kind of' because I was thinking of the large, warm brilliant, and huge Sun in my mind's eye. And at the time of my birth the small, yet powerfully felt, dark, and mysterious planet Pluto was just 1 degree away my Sun. I saw this really awesome picture of this conjunction of these 2 planets in my mind's eye and it was fascinating to me. A tiny dark speck (or freckle hehe) on the Sun. Hardly noticible to the human part of my vision but so powerfully felt! I'm thinking that my words cannot describe how ...ummm... neat this was!

Isn't it, when a planet is so close to the Sun, called 'combust'?? What would a Com-busted (hehe) Pluto mean since it in itself is so powerful even despite Them not calling it a planet anymore?!

Z ~ I loved the interp for the Pluto - Sun Aspect, haha!! This is The bestest line ever:

quote:

---

A Sun-Pluto individual who attempts to achieve a sort of idiot-happy, Toyota-commercial "normalcy" in his life will attract the dark side of life like a bus station bathroom draws weirdos.

---

posted December 28, 2006 01:41 PM            

I know how that goes, so true!!!!!

------------------
Sun in Libra
Moon in Cancer
Jupiter in Cancer
Venus in Virgo
Mars in Cancer
Ascendant in Cancer

posted December 29, 2006 12:30 PM              

- in 1H
- square Sun
- opposed moon
- trine a Venus-Saturn conjunction
- sextile a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction

And I am in the middle of a Sun opposed tr Pluto period, which I swear is trying to kill me.

Some days I am just plain tried of being so "Plutonian." Grief? Check. Losses? Check. Betrayals? Check. Weirdo magnet? Check. Never-ending tunnel of darkness? Check. Hey, it's my party - I'll cry if I want to.

posted December 29, 2006 11:18 PM            

Hiya ILWL ~
The Indefatigable and Unflagging Madame Zala Returns!!

Would you care for a large helping of Jeffrey Wolf Green?? Please save these pdf’s as I’m going to have to start taking the older ones down soon to make room for new…..
The following is from “Pluto – The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul, Vol. 1” ~

Contents & Preface/Intro
The Evolutionary Journey
Pluto Through the Houses
Pluto Aspects, and Pluto in Aspect to:
Sun
Moon
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune

4-day weekend ahead to play in the Libra-ry!! Back soonish with SF's & JWG’s Pluto in the Signs and Houses

posted December 29, 2006 11:42 PM            

Okay, if someone can help me, please.

First of all, my sun is 24* Sag, and my asc is 28* Sag. I'll be entering a Pluto/Asc conjunction in January that will last through October 2008.

Question #1-- is there an easy way to find out what the time period was for my Pluto/Sun conjunction? And how is it likely to differ from the Pluto/Asc conjunction.

My feeling is that with Pluto having such a powerful influence and Sun/Asc having similar qualities to one another that these two conjunctions will likely seem like one looooooooong date with Pluto???