On 10/13 Pluto goes direct, after being retrograde since May. Barely moving all month, it stops just shy of 1-and-a-half Aquarius. Find this degree in your natal chart to see where a mining operation is going on.
You’re being ushered underground, to hunt for treasure. The precious nuggets you’re digging for are bits of unconscious material which, when released, liberate stagnant energy.
Digging deeper
But it’s dark down there in the mine, and at first we may not like what we see.
If you’ve been following Pluto’s slow passage through your chart, you already know what house it’s in now. The Great Excavator has probably been exposing things that you and/or your society find in poor taste, at best, or unspeakable, at worst.
Pluto’s job is to break taboos we didn’t even know we had. Once we encounter them, our job is to keep digging anyway. This requires a courageous curiosity.
Supporting this expedition into the depths is Mercury is in Scorpio (ruled by Pluto) for most of the month (10/6-29), and the Sun’s entry into Scorpio on the 22nd. Let the Full Moon on 10/6 function as a spelunker’s headlight, illuminating uncovered gems.
Natural Law
Pop astrology tends to glamorize Pluto, associating it with transgressive human shenanigans like kinky sex, horror movies and other naughty adventures. But Pluto isn’t out to titillate or shock (rebelling is more Uranus’s gig). Pluto may flout cultural norms, but it’s not because it cares one way or another about them. Its allegiance is to Natural Law.
Pluto governs things like glaciers and mass extinctions, profound processes that follow their own slow, invisible, inexorable logic. Whatever is ready to be eliminated — whether in an individual psyche, a landmass, or the collective mind — gets eliminated.
To align with Plutonian Law, we first admit that something’s rotting; then we roll up our sleeves and dig. We rip up the floorboards, root around, and unsentimentally identify the source of the stink.
Transpersonal function
During its 15 years in Capricorn (nations, traditions) Pluto trashed a whole slew of sacrosanct governmental norms; especially in the USA, which is still staggering under its impact (discussed in this podcast).
Now in Aquarius (technology) from 2024-2043, Pluto is waking us up to the social, intellectual and existential breakdowns created by the digital revolution. It’s using AI to mess around with our longstanding assumptions about human intelligence (see this webinar).
All three transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) disturb our most bulwark assumptions. Not surprisingly, their transits tend to provoke all manner of fear and trepidation — to the extent that we miss the point, that is. This happens if we take them personally.
But we really ought not to make this mistake with Pluto. To do that would block our understanding of the planet’s teaching, indulging instead with the big daddy of all fears: the fear of death.
Things just keep on going
Death is discomfiting to think about. It seems so ultimate. We get attached to certain things in life, and then they have the nerve to die. Creatures and entities break down and seem to come to a halt. But, transpersonally speaking, it doesn’t come to a halt at all. It was always part of a bigger something, and that bigger something continues on.
In the Universe, there’s no such thing as just stopping. Planets (the word means “wanderer”) transit (”pass through”). That’s what they do. They
keep moving. From the tick-tick-tick of the degrees on the ascendant to the vast, inscrutable transits of Pluto, all cycles are fragments of larger cycles that keep going, spinning and wheeling along.
The problem, if there is one, is that Pluto doesn’t tell us what will arise in the place of what’s falling away. We humans don’t like this at all. Absent a faith in Natural Law, instead of meeting this great mystery with wonder and curiosity, most of us just meet it with fear.
Spooked by death
The key to working with Pluto is to recognize its hybrid symbolism: it isn’t the planet of “death;” it’s the planet of “death/renewal.” In fact, the “death” part could be thought of as just a subplot, leading up to the main plot, which is the creation of a new thing.
If we only focus on the dying part and not the rebirth part, of course it’ll spook us. Even so, being spooked shouldn’t be our main point of focus.
Astrologers, together with the physicists, believe that everything is made up of energy, and energy doesn’t disappear — poof! — just because there’s a shift in the form it’s temporarily taking.
Granted, Pluto transits are more drastic than the others. But, like every other planet, all they’re doing is ushering in change. What trips us up with Pluto is that this change is so very thorough: the new entity may be unrecognizable from the old one.
Like the difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly, or a bright green sprout and a crumbling autumn leaf, or a once-proud global empire and a diminished, flailing, partisan-riven nation state.
Superstitions
Use this month to dig beneath any superstitions you may harbor around Pluto, such as the old saw that says: If it’s transiting your natal Sun it means you’re going to die. Or that if it’s approaching your Venus, your lover or your beloved pet will die. Fear can have such a hold on us that we overlook the obvious fact that this almost never ends up happening.
Pluto’s deaths are rarely literal.
That would be too easy.
Realistically, the deaths being signaled are psychological and/or figurative. If Pluto is aspecting your Moon, for instance, descend down into the mine of your security needs. Dig beneath your resistance to see which of your emotional habits are trying to die. If Pluto is transiting your Mercury, chip away at your stubbornness and uncover which opinions need to die.
Minimize the accompanying drama. You did not need whatever is being killed off.
For the spiritually ambitious, use these weeks to challenge the silly notion of a this-is-it/ lights-out/ go-no-further Total Ending. Dare to question your fear of “death”.
