The world is dominated this winter by the Mars-Pluto opposition. Notorious for power plays (see last month’s SkyWatch), this transit pits the planet of ego against that of decay and renewal, a.k.a. Natural Law.
Be on the lookout for things that are ready to die (Pluto), whether living beings, societal constructs, or parts of our inner psyche. They will probably not be hard to find. They may camouflage themselves as vital entities, but the transit strips them down to their raw essentials.
No matter how well rouged and powdered, dead things begin to smell. Our job is to identify them as having passed their expiration date and let them go.
Not going gentle
But Mars’s involvement suggests that whatever is deteriorating may not go gently. Like great dumb beasts, dying entities may flail around wreaking havoc.
Do not go gentle into that good night…
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. — Dylan Thomas
How best to approach this clash between the forces of breakdown (Pluto) and the personal will (Mars)? We accept the inevitability of irrevocable endings.
What will not help is resistance, which brings out the transit’s ugly face.
War with many battles
This will be a long contest with several pitched skirmishes. Among these are the opposition’s three exactitudes, when it clocks in with a zero-degree orb. At the first exactitude (11/3) Mars was at the
last degree of Cancer/ Capricorn. At the second exactitude (1/3/25), both planets will be at the 2nd degree of Leo/Aquarius. At the third and final exactitude (April 26th 2025), they’ll be at the third degree of Leo/Aquarius.
This month, the opposition may be most palpable around Dec 6th, when Mars stations retrograde. If your chart features planets around the seventh degree of any of the fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius), you will probably feel the transit as a deep undertow. You will know it by its intensity.
It makes things easier if you pinpoint where in your life Mars and Pluto are currently active: check the houses of your chart being transited. Mars, a personal planet (that is, a relatively conscious part of the psyche), is the easier to recognize. It fights for what it wants, and often plays out on a bodily level, as anger and agitation; or more positively, as vitality and activation.
Or it may manifest as confrontations with an adversary in the outside world. After all, every opposition needs an opponent.
Helmet of invisibility
Pluto, a trans-personal (not conscious) planet, is harder to put our finger on, and all the more formidable for that. In the old myths, this god sported a helmet of invisibility. We may feel it as a background sense of destructive forces, looming beyond our control.
But these are the very forces which empower us when we engage them with awareness. When they are harnessed expertly, they rejuvenate and regenerate whatever they touch. The god of death turns into a god of rebirth.
Buzzing swarm
As the quickly-moving planets move through Sagittarius this month, they oppose Jupiter in Gemini while squaring Saturn in Pisces. Mercury and the Sun both make this T-square 12/4-7, and 
Mercury does it again on 12/26, this time moving forward.
It makes for a skittish combination when one mental planet (Mercury: communication, info-guzzling) faces off against another mental planet (Jupiter: the restless quest for knowledge). But this confrontation is about more than just our cognitive processes.
Saturn is squaring them both from Pisces, a winsomely emotional sign. The transit insists that we take responsibility for how we feel. And not just about our own little lives, but about the world in general.
Taking responsibility
This is Saturn’s last hurrah in Pisces (Mar 2023 – Feb ’26), the sign that understands that everything is linked to everything else. If you’ve been feeling a lot of pressure from the transit, it’s from Saturn trying to get you to tune into the part of yourself that feels the interconnectedness of all things.
Deep down, we all know that what Pisces is saying is true: that all separation is, ultimately, an illusion. But merely intuiting this truth isn’t enough for Saturn. It’s been trying to get us to somehow take responsibility for it.
Saturn has had us scrambling to make some shape out of the buzzing chaos of the world, and Jupiter (ideologies) has been offering up a veritable onslaught of worldviews (Gemini) to try to explain it. These two urges have been bumping into each other all year via a 90° angle, which peaks again on 12/26.
Chaos
For the 2 1/2 years Saturn has been in Pisces, we’ve all been struggling to get the bits & pieces of our lives to cohere. Jupiter entered Gemini this past May, introducing a confetti storm of information. Both are insisting that we step up to the plate and pay attention to what’s going on.
As oppressive as Saturn can be, it is a great ally in times of chaos. It’s stiffening our spines, providing the discipline we need to not only survive but make meaning out of the messes in our world.
Images
Mars engraving, N. Dorigny, 1695, after Raphael, 1516
15th century alchemical manuscript, British Museum
Saturn; from Astrology, Your Place in the Sun, by Evangeline Adams (1927)
Images:
Tiny Tim, by Norman Rockwell
