2020 made its intentions known from day one. Beginning with an eclipse and a Saturn/Pluto conjunction, the omens signaled a year that would make its mark. Challenging aspects (like a conjunction) between Saturn and Pluto tend to intensify themes of repression, restraint, and the inadequacy of our overarching financial systems. Of these times, in Cosmos and Psyche, Rick Tarnas writes “An atmosphere of gravity and tension tended to accompany these … periods, as did a wide-spread sense of epochal closure: ‘the end of an era’, ‘the end of innocence,’ the destruction of an earlier mode of life that in retrospect may seem to have been marked by widespread indulgence, naivete, denial, and inflation.” The last time these two made a conjunction (1981-84), the identification of AIDS was made.
This is era-defining astrology. The kind that you look at with decades in mind, not just the day, week or month it happens within. The planetary patterns that have and are occurring are events that astrologers pay attention to. They are red flags telling us that the power dynamics in play are more likely to be foul; the difficulties faced by entire populations exaggerated; that illness is to be expected, and downturns are a given.
With first Saturn and now Jupiter passing over Pluto in Capricorn multiple times from the top of the year until the end of it, our collective fate demands that we travel through the underworlds of grief, loss, and letting go of a world we knew. Capricorn demands we get grounded if nothing else.
Saturn represents the structures we live in, restriction and the bounds we can’t transgress. In Capricorn and in Aquarius (where it currently is until July when it returns to Capricorn for 6 months), Saturn is unabashedly itself. It tells us no, it cuts us off, it is denial, it is quarantine, it is deprivation, and it demands that we mature through the harrowing experience of being an adult.
Saturn can crystallize our fears, but only in the hopes that we find the strength and wisdom within to move through them. As keeper of time, Saturn speaks to the finality of things.
Mortality is the greatest equalizer and Saturn is always willing to remind us of our inevitable end.
Pluto is the deity of the underworld, death, and buried treasure. Pluto’s domain has its own rules. Corruption and abuse fester here. Hidden gems, reserves of energy, and sources of power also live here. Long-lasting transformations take place when we have to venture into and out of Pluto’s palace. We can never come to understand the full impact of this planet’s transit the moment it is made. Pluto’s movements are part of a longer arch of our collective unfolding. Pluto asks for everything. Every shielding that we have required in life is rendered useless when this planet is at play. Pluto demands that we dig for something much deeper. Nothing superficial stands the tests of these times. Each one of us is now asked to go below the façade of our roles and props. Below what we have and what we give.
Down to the core of who we are.
Pluto tends to amplify, deepen our awareness of, and pronounce whatever it touches. First it was Saturn and now it is Jupiter. Currently, Jupiter and Pluto are in an exact conjunction at 24° of Capricorn, holding true to 2020’s themes of endings, loss, grief and, possibly, a process of renewal.
Jupiter in Capricorn is in its fall, meaning that the usually good-natured, bounty-bringer is now deficient in funds and good feeling. Brought to its knees, Jupiter doesn’t get far on its charm and optimism alone. In Capricorn, Jupiter works overtime to get ½ the results. Jupiter conjunct Pluto (a transit that occurs every 12 years or so) always asks us to examine the core beliefs we adhere to. If they are able to withstand the toughest of times, we will know we can lean into them with even more of our weight. If they are faulty, we will be left empty-handed and in need of a new way to frame the challenges we face.
Tuesday’s
Full Moon in Libra squares the Jupiter/Pluto conjunction. A normally light-hearted, socially-minded, and good-natured lunation gets deep. Pluto brings us under the surface of things and here is where we are asked to dwell right now. Having been socially isolated for a minute (a situation that is anti-Libra in practice and sentiment), we are collectively feeling the burden of distance from each other. We are in this together-alone. Having this concentration of time with ourselves makes us more intimately aware of what is always awaiting us just below the business of life. Our defenses have fewer accomplices. Our vulnerability has more to teach us. As our layers peel off, exposing the things we buried, tucked away, or refused outright, we get a better understanding of our general operating system.
Pluto’s skin-shedding influence on this year and this Full Moon is non-negotiable. There is no more time to borrow. There is only this moment and sinking deeply into it. There is only wondering what it might be like to be present to life instead of demanding it be as we think it should. Wondering what it might be like to embrace the inevitability of death as a way to fully live life. Wondering, dreaming, and imagining what it might be like to exchange status for sincerity, rugged individualism for interconnectedness, and corporate capitalism for communal care.
Pluto’s caves and caverns are the deepest; moving through them means getting to the root. Working with this planet is radical because it falls for no flirtation. It wants us to know, more honestly than ever, that at our core we have the wisdom needed to meet this situation and feel our way towards its solutions. Inch by inch and a little at a time we will come to trust ourselves, our intuition, and creative responses to this moment. More and more coming to understand that we are in control of none of it, but in relationship to all of it.
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