Full Moon Watch: The Pluto in Capricorn Mindfuck

End of Days? Sure, why the hell not?

Armageddon has been looming since, well, Beginning of Days. Though, doesn’t our particular doomsday scenario feel different? Like there might actually be something to it.

And who doesn’t want to live until the very last bastion falls? The sentiment runs like this: “When I go, the whole goddamned world’s gonna go with me.” And that’s why Armageddon has been due to arrive any day now — since the beginning of time. No one wants to think that when he dies the world will keep spinning without him.

We’ve reached a distinct threshold, as a culture, with our particular timeline’s mythology. As James Hilman has said, our culture doesn’t have many stories to choose from that would help us through the process of disintegration. All we’re left holding is what our Judeo-Christian forefathers have handed down to us: The Book of Revelation. Not the most soothing of reads. As the writer Chris Kelly puts it: “American Evangelicals love Revelation, because it doesn’t make a lick of sense and then everything explodes.”

Boom!

We need a new story. And as the three outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto continue their slow glide through the signs of the zodiac associated with culmination and closure — the completion of the great cycle — it makes sense that the lens we view the world through is dark, or at least gray. The current movie we’re in is just now moving towards the Fade To Black phase. Look at the signs where all the big outer planets are traversing: Aquarius takes us out of present time, leans us towards our future — via visions, prophecies, inventions, inspirations and new ideals.

And with Pisces there is an opposite movement — towards dissolution, dissipation and dissolving. A return to the oceanic waters from which, as the Koran declares, all life begins. So we’ve a pull towards the future and a sinking towards origin. The catch in this equation is Pluto, the planet associated with death and undoing, transiting the one spot in the zodiac that we normally gravitate for a sense of safety, security and well-being. The tried and the true realm of Capricorn. The sign associated with Daddy. Or more literally: The State. Corporations. Institutions. Experts and authority figures. Hmmm, I wonder what’s off with this equation? Quick! Somebody channel Eugene O’Neill.

Endless puffs of effluvia have been written about the ongoing Pluto transit. And most of it reads like catchphrase castoffs from Sylvia Brown’s dog ‘n pony show. Very few astrologers have accurately conveyed the grimy, gritty essence of this transit, as mirrored in tangible, real life events. The best material I’ve read on Pluto in Capricorn comes from the sociopolitical-minded astrologer Jessica Murray*, especially as detailed in her outrageously good book Soul Sick Nation: An Astrologers View of America. Want a manual for maneuvering the times ahead? Order her book now.

Because we actually live and move within the Capricorn holon, the sign’s ‘coloration’ could be said to be experienced everywhere. Capricorn corresponds to matter itself. You sit on a chair, your ass experiences the realness of the jammed together atoms and the manner in which the seat (hopefully) doesn’t yield. Place Pluto in the section of the zodiac associated with organization, solidity, tradition — what I call “consensus reality” (the mass hallucination that we all agree to play and participate within) — and you can see where things become complicated.

Do the mashup. We end up with organized decay, structured death, systematic discharge. We keep trying to lay cement over the septic tank, and each new outpouring finds the previous layer sinking deeper. (Haven’t we all lost track of how many zeros trail the top numbers of our National Debt?) How long can you keep Dad’s dead body down in the fruit cellar? That’s the key question right now. Eventually it’s gotta go. And that’s what no one’s able to face. Planets, like signs, have their ‘agendas,’ each a different facet and expression of the Universal Will. The cosmic ‘function’ of Pluto is to purge any system of the superfluous and outworn, facilitating further evolution and, for human beings, a more concrete relationship to truth. What hides the truth, Pluto removes. Ruthlessly.

So, stop for a minute and get real. Assess your life. Do a reality check. It’s true, isn’t it, that you’re burned out on the familiar, the habitual, the rote in your life? And yet, it’s not enough to plan a diet, a vacation, a redesign of the living room, career shift or meeting the man or woman of your dreams. That’s the ego’s old mental runaround that says if you get something different, become something different, you will be different. That’s old Capricorn style materialism. Sorry, but we’re shifting into an entirely different paradigm. It’s time we caught up with the fact and faced the paradox: We’re hankering for change but haven’t any notion as to where we are headed. No distinct sense of direction. Poets have always understood this predicament, and this is why someone like T.S. Eliot could spell it out so concisely — the specific effects of moving, step by step, through vague happenings.

In East Coker, from his Four Quartets, he wrote:

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

Uncertainty? Yes, but if you allow yourself to settle (take a deep breath) in the quietude you’ll sense a primordial sort of vitality at your core, fearless and willing to engage. Ready to slay, too. Eager to kill-off. If you’re sincere, you’ll acknowledge that you wouldn’t want to land on familiar terra firma even if you could. Sure, you’d feel safe — but stagnant. Secure, but oddly disconnected and out of synch. Moving towards where you think you should go simply won’t work. It’s not aligned with the bigger picture that is evolving all around us.

Astrologer Robert Hand once described crisis as “a moment in which the past has the least hold on the present and the present has a maximum hold on the future.” I think that’s a good equation to work with — as a way to foster trust and open more fully to The Unknown.

Last night’s Full Moon in Taurus brought all of the contradictory desires to your table, like a big boisterous, wrangling, family gathering. The lunation set off a mean Grand Square within the fixed signs: Taurus, Scorpio, Leo and Aquarius. Grand Squares (four or more planets in hard angles to one another) are difficult enough configurations, but add the fixed, stubborn nature of those four signs and you have a crash car derby within the psyche. Taurus is brooding for security and silence, Leo is demanding action; to be seen and acknowledged, and Aquarius telegraphs: ‘This is so fucked-up and unfair.’ And Scorpio, well Scorpio wants to damage or destroy whatever is not succumbing or at least cooperating.

As with all fixed sign calamities something must be sacrificed or let go of for any sort of resolution to take place. The beauty of this predicament is that by the end of this week you’ll definitely know what to omit and commit to in your life, and the best ways to attempt that dance. You’ll also be in touch, deep down, with what you’re really made of. Sue Tompkins in her excellent book Aspects in Astrology has this to say about a Fixed Cross pile-up: “The fixed type knows all about the difficulty that the immovable object has in moving the irresistible force. The fixed person has great will-power and enormous energy at its disposal once it gets going, but all too often fixity chooses to conserve energy rather than expend it. Little wonder that change comes rarely but usually quite drastically and explosively to the fixed type.”

OK, so there were some tears. At least you lived to see another day. Or End of Days. Make the most of it, honey.
 

Filed Under: Astrology and Full Moon Watch