On October 11, Pluto makes a station, turns around, and heads for the Aquarian frontier for the last time. As you probably know, it’s been toggling between retrograde and direct motion while straddling the Aquarian cusp for quite a while. It was in Aquarius for ten weeks back in the middle of 2023 and returned to Aquarius a second time between January and September 1st of this year. That’s the day it re-entered Capricorn for a final time. After making its station this month, Pluto turns direct and arrives solidly in Aquarius five weeks later, entering it on November 19th where it will remain for the next nineteen years.

As ever, when a planet makes a station – in other words, stands still, about to turn retrograde or direct – its energies become very focussed and intensified. For that reason alone, October promises to be a very Plutonian month. On top of that, when a planet is the final degree of a sign – often called the anaretic degree – there’s an underlying sense of urgency to it. When you were in school, remember the way you felt the night before final exams? When it comes to studying, that meant it was now or never. That’s the feeling of an anaretic degree. With Pluto making its station in 29 degrees 38 minutes of Capricorn, we’re all in exactly that position – here comes our final exam.

This event isn’t just about “history” happening – it will have personal meaning for you too. Everything in the sky does. But everyone on Earth will be experiencing this radical intensification of Plutonian energy simultaneously. In other words, it’s not like a transit that hits one person very directly and misses someone else. This one is for everybody. As always, some of us will do well with it and some of us will do poorly. If “poorly” wins, it bodes ill for the whole planet. 

Don’t despair – surrendering to despair is simply one of the soul-cages dark Pluto offers everyone. 

We can do well with Pluto’s last stand in Capricorn. We can pass the test. More importantly, you can pass the test. And if you do, that’s one more person adding their weight to the helpful side of the see-saw. What happens on the stage of the world is nothing more than the sum of eight billion different people forming their beliefs, dealing with their issues, and making their choices. Rather than trying to predict what will happen, I prefer to try to make a difference with people one at a time. I’d rather be an active player than a spectator.

Pluto, the “Lord of the Underworld,” brings that which has been buried to light. It’s the master psychoanalyst. It’s the shaman who enters the hell-worlds inside us all and retrieves lost parts of our souls – although some of them slip through Pluto’s fingers and descend into terrible darkness. Pluto work takes tremendous emotional courage. It takes honesty and humility.  

• Every time you’ve come within an inch of popping someone who just told you something you didn’t want to hear, but didn’t pop them, you “made an A” in Pluto. That humble, truthful, openhearted grace is what it’s about.

As Pluto moves through a sign, humanity is invited to deal with the shadow-side of that sign – and of course every sign of the zodiac has a dark side along with its divine purpose. Pluto has been in Capricorn for sixteen long years, but that’s coming to an end. These things usually end with a bang. It’s not like they just peter out. 

Once again, welcome to final exams.

I’ve written and taught quite a lot about this Plutonian passage through Capricorn. I’ve got my own natal Sun, my Jupiter, and my Mercury in that sign, so this long transit has had my name on it in a lot of ways. If you’ve been following my work, some of what I’m about to explore may seem familiar. My aim in this essay is pretty simple: I want to create a kind of checklist for us all as we take our own inventories in terms of the Pluto work we’ve been invited to do since 2008. 

And remember – getting it right is not only a gift to yourself, it’s a gift to everyone else too.

EDITING OUR CORE VALUES

Capricorn, at its best, is about integrity. That means standing up for what we believe and living a life that makes us proud. Values such as honesty, personal responsibility, and showing up for the people we love are fundamental to Capricorn’s higher path. Those are traditional values – values with a long human tradition, in other words. But here are some other values which also have a long tradition and which have often been viewed as inseparable from personal morality: sexism, racism, and homophobia. They’ve been around for a long time too. What about the “traditional value” that God created the Earth for humanity to exploit – and that it was infinitely exploitable? What about “man shall have dominion over the animals?” 

I’ve written about all these “traditional values” before and I don't want to be tedious or preachy about it. Let me just say that for all of us, Pluto’s passage through Capricorn has offered us a chance to sort through everything that constitutes our “moral compass” and separate that which is authentic and real for us from what we’ve inherited from the madhouse of human history.

Sexism, racism, and homophobia are big public issues, and they’ve been much in the news since Pluto entered Capricorn. As ever with Pluto, the possibility of real healing – and forces counter to that healing – have risen up during this passage. Whatever your gender-orientation or ethnicity is, I suspect that you are vastly more self-aware about the toxic air you’ve been breathing than you were in 2008. This represents serious human progress, and you’ve been part of it.

It’s important to add that there’s more to Pluto’s passage through Capricorn than this short list. You have also been invited to sort through your own private list of “shoulds.” The aim is not to dump them all, but rather to make conscious, individualized decisions about which ones you will keep and which ones are dinosaurs which need to go extinct in your own inner Jurassic Park.

You’ve doubtless swallowed some responsibilities that you’d be better off without. How have you constrained yourself with shame masquerading as morality? 

That was then, this is now. 

DEALING WITH DEATH

There is no subject more quintessentially Plutonian than death itself. Naturally, death is ever-present in life. We’ve all experienced some deaths in the last sixteen years – how could it be otherwise? We’re talking about something less obvious than that. Some of you with aspectual sensitivity to Pluto’s passage through Capricorn have probably lost loved ones in dramatic ways – in other words, we’re not talking about grandpa slipping away peacefully in his sleep at the tender age of 97. We’re talking about unexpected, seemingly “wrong,” deaths.

Personally, with Pluto crossing my Sun-Jupiter conjunction, I lost a beloved younger family member to suicide, for one example. And of course, during 2020 and 2021 death was everywhere due to Covid-19. In dark Pluto-fashion, some people choose not to remember what those times were like. But if your memory is true, you know there were scenes reminiscent of the Black Plague on television screens all over the world.

The synchronicity was flawless: we were all invited to meditate on mortality. Adding Capricorn to the mixture, the question of values comes up, traditional or otherwise. What’s our philosophical North Star as we contemplate end-of-life situations? How do we define right and wrong relative to death? What are our responsibilities towards others when they face such a moment? 

What about suicide? Do people have a right to end their own lives? Increasingly, people seem to be “voting with their feet” on that one. Quoting a study from earlier this year, “After a long, steady decline in national suicide rates, those numbers began steadily ticking up in the late 1990s and have generally risen ever since, with nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. taking their own lives in 2022, up 3% from the previous year.” 

Suicide to escape existential pain is one thing, but how many families have wrestled with medical “right to die” situations over the past sixteen years? According to a 2018 Gallup Poll, 72% of Americans support medically-assisted suicide in terminal end-of-life situations. In 1950, the number was under 40%. 

Please forgive my US-bias here, by the way. These are the figures I have available. I suspect the patterns and trends are similar elsewhere in the world.

The point is that even though death remains perhaps the most taboo subject in the world, people have been bringing an increasingly practical “Capricornian” attitude to it during this long passage. With Neptune in Pisces, I also feel that there has been more of a spiritual awakening regarding death as well – that it’s not the “final ending” that many imagine it to be. That spiritual perspective naturally changes our perspective on end-of-life scenarios.

So what’s the heart of matter regarding all of this as you take your own inventory over the next few weeks? How do you really feel about your own death? How are you preparing for it, both practically and spiritually? Have you invited your death to be your counselor, helping you clarify what’s really important in your life? If you had to make some “hard decisions” about exactly how to punch your ticket home, what values would guide you? Are those values your friend? Where did they come from? Did society force them on you or did they arise naturally from your own thoughts and meditations? Those are all Pluto in Capricorn questions.

CAPRICORN THE ELDER

Capricorn and its ruling planet, Saturn, have always been seen as the symbols of old age. Have you detected any signs of fear of aging in the news lately? Life-extension themes, talk of the possibility of physical immortality, and proliferation of various cosmetic procedures and remedies to at least “put a Band Aid” on the evidence of the years passing – they are all classic “scared” Pluto-in-Capricorn memes regarding getting old. “The Lord of the Underworld” brings both the boogie-men and the more positive archetypes to the surface. 

Certainly one dimension of this has been the increasing attention directed to the conditions around elder care. Why do we tend to isolate older folks and separate them from the mainstream? Why do so many of them do that to themselves? What about “storing” old people, often drugged and neglected, in so-called rest homes? I’m not sure how much has actually been done about it, but it’s been in the collective conversation and that’s the point.

• Remember: with all of this, if you’re not a little uncomfortable, you are probably not really dealing with Pluto. Making the unconscious mind conscious always involves struggling against deep-seated resistance.

There was a flutter on Facebook a few weeks ago. Some young idiot had suggested that all the old astrologers step aside and make way for the younger generation to take over. I hardly know where to begin on that one. Let’s start in time-honored fashion with Old Man Steve whispering some precious wisdom in this young fellow’s ear: in the blink of an eye, you’ll be old too. Planning to “identify as a young person” for the rest of your life is not the smartest career move I’ve ever seen. 

Let me add that whatever your age, the wisdom you have now will only grow as the wheels of your life turn. Older people are not automatically wiser than young ones – the age of the soul and the age of the body are unrelated. But a wise young person is very unlikely to turn into a foolish old man or woman. Very likely, that person will be even wiser down the road. 

Back to your Pluto-in-Capricorn inventory over the next few weeks. Whatever age you are, naturally you’re getting older. How are you doing with that? Can you see that your beauty is simply changing, not disappearing? Can you feel your wisdom growing? Can you be thankful for that? Can you embrace your emerging inner Elder rather than letting the world’s fear-and-shame projections rob you of the only meaningful future you actually have? 

DEALING WITH THE DARK FATHER ARCHETYPE

Traditionally, Capricorn has been taken to represent the Father. Right away, it’s imperative that we take gender out of the equation. “Father,” traditionally, was “the head of the household.” Increasingly that’s a role that women often find themselves playing. It’s about authority and responsibility – and the potential dangers that such power over others reveals. 

One can engage with such a “fatherly” position in a loving, wise, and benign way, of course. But with Pluto in Capricorn, we have all been invited to look at the dark side of the archetype – what I call the Dark Fathers. Run a mental slideshow of the current leaders on the world stage. Put the term “Dark Fathers” in your head and see who lights up. Who abuses power? Who clings to it for its own sake? Who crushes dissent? Notice how these people – mostly male – have seemingly bred like fleas on a dog since Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008? 

Going deeper, notice how some of these Dark Fathers attract a kind of desperate devotion? And as you contemplate those who are in the thrall of these dark fathers, how many of them bear the wounds of being “fatherless children?” How much of their hunger can we understand that way?

Meanwhile, what does any of this Dark Father stuff have to do with you “taking your inventory” over the next few weeks? Start by realizing that these corrupt world leaders are just the tip of the iceberg. There are Dark Fathers pontificating in half the dysfunctional families in the world. Some of these “fathers” are female. Have they hurt you? Have you surrendered your own power to them?

We all benefit from the counsel of wise elders. We all benefit from the guiding hand of worthy “fathers” (of either gender!). They are precious. Two sets of Plutonian questions arise however:

• If you have been damaged by dark, destructive figures of authority, have you paid too high a price for silently defending yourself from them? Have you lost faith in your ability to be discerning about who you can actually trust for guidance in a positive way? 

• Have you allowed yourself to become devoted to any guide, hero, or role model who is simply not worthy of you? Have you been deceived by a wolf in sheep’s clothing? 

Many questions! Not all of them will be equally pressing on everyone, but collectively these are the healing meditations of the next several weeks. Here’s how we harvest the benefits of all we have been through since 2008 – and how we prepare for the new world we will surely be creating as Pluto wends its way into Aquarius. 

 

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