Don't Believe Your Own Astrological Press. (Pluto in Scorpios, This Especially Relates To You Right Now.)

A little astrological prediction: I have a feeling the Pluto in Scorpio generation is going to start getting a disproportionate amount of play by astrologers in the near future. This will coincide with members of the Pluto in Scorpio generation (born roughly November 1983 to November 1995) reaching the ages where they will be taking a stronger interest in astrology and astrological information. It'll be one of those "creating your own mythology" types of things where the reality doesn't quite live up to the hype being outlined astrologically.

This echoes the disproportionate amount of play another Pluto generation has received - the Pluto in Leos. The Pluto placements of these two generations, not coincidentally, square each other, adding to the drama.

We've barely started the long, hard shift in power from Pluto in Leos to Pluto in Virgos, and instead of giving that shift some much needed attention and analysis, astrologers will be (and already are) turning their attention to the Pluto in Scorpio generation: its catalytic power, its transformative potential, how it's going to annihilate social taboos, how it'll absolutely shred every ounce of social facade or personality-level b.s., leaving bloody, raw, yet authentic! souls in its wake.

Personally, I'm not so sure about all that, and I have some issues with any Pluto generation being set up as the all-conquering, mythical generation.

This is how faddish astrology works. It's also how astrology is hijacked so that its energetic force and influence are wasted on things that really don't matter a whole hell of a lot.

Certain events, certain placements, and certain people with those placements are amped up and glamourized, drawing a disproportionate amount of astrological attention, and other events, placements, and people are skipped altogether, creating distortion, imbalance, and a seriously skewed version of reality.

Sorry, Pluto in Scorps. It's nothing personal, but you're not special on this front. As soon as you've been sucked dry as subject matter, as soon as you're not trendy anymore, it'll be onto the Pluto in Sagittarius kids. Or the Pluto in Caps. Or...oh, just WAIT until the Pluto in Aquarius generation comes of age! Then we're really going to see some big things happening on this planet.

Sigh.

It's actually a small minority of people within any generation that takes on the Plutonic work in any truly effective and sustained way. Digging in as deeply and as tenaciously as is required is heavy, frustrating, difficult, enervating, intricate. Often, the energetic commitment is all-consuming. There is no work other than that work. There is no life other than that life.

Committing to the process of letting your soul drive, come what may, committing to really seeing and intuiting the state we're in on this planet and then finding the most meaningful and effective track to address and move through it is a full body, full mind, full spirit endeavour.

Doing the condensed, hard-slog Pluto work - working to change long-ingrained collective dynamics through the personal life - is not all that glamourous. Doing what really needs to be done, what's been neglected by most others, is probably not going to make you famous. It might even get you killed. It doesn't make for a cool digital pic to show off the edgy angles of your post-post-postmodern awareness of it all. There are no guarantees that you'll receive all that much of an earthly reward for it at all, other than the reward of a satisfied soul.

A lot of people go part way. Not many push farther than that. This has been the case with every generation, and I don't see it changing with the Pluto in Scorpios.

So will there be a group of fine and talented individuals within the Pluto in Scorpio generation that really gets it and can really get the job done? Sure. Absolutely. There will be those who see through the pathology of the collective, cutting through it like a hot knife through butter and extricating themselves from it. There will be those who confront head-on the disconnect from and denial of death that run rampant, creating all types of idiocy, superficiality, and distortion. There will be those who see through any form of manipulation, exploitation, or abuse, who can feel out a dirty motive in seconds flat, who confront and head off the unexamined patterns of the collective, refusing to repeat them themselves. But I do think those people will be few.

The glut will fall into the same traps and the same patterns, using the same power plays and the same old Scorpio tricks to maintain the dominant paradigm or some variation therein, however "edgy" it may be.

They've gotten hold of all the "edgy" these days, you see.

Our Pluto placements relate to the ways in which our generation as a whole is manipulated by the powers that be. And the dark, the taboo, the sexy, the forbidden, the occultish and pseudo-occultish, the hidden, the twisted - these are all ways in which the Pluto in Scorpio generation will be manipulated into doing things, swallowing things, and furthering things that are not in its best interests.

Totalitarianism that lets you keep a job even though you have tattoos, pink hair, and are polyamourous is still totalitarianism.

The Pluto in Scorpios have plenty of poison to dig out and many false layers to shed.

Certain members of this generation are going to understand the ways things are oh-so-wrong on this planet because they'll experience the corruption and exploitation first-hand. But so have members of all generations before them. So do members of all generations living now.

The dogma around Pluto generations is ripe for abuse and manipulation - two Plutonic key words. The amping up of this or any other astrological generation is another attempt to create some "super special, super-human" generation of young people, as the "spiritualism" circles of the day love to do. At the tail-end astrological Piscean era, they're begging for an entire saviour generation. This follows in the line of the "indigo" kids, the "crystal" kids, the rainbows, the blue stars, the seventh rays, the Whodads, the Whatzits. (Sorry, got my wires crossed with a little Dr. Seuss there for a minute.)

It's a fairly small and concentrated group of individuals that sees the whole machine and how we're being manipulated within it, that strikes at the roots, rather than becoming consumed by whatever manipulated Agenda of the Day has risen to popularity at that moment.

The members of the Pluto in Scorpio generation have a lot of power to expose the corruption and the to-the-brink-of-human-annihilation situation we have on our hands. But they also have an almost overpowering tendency to get caught up, coerced, distracted, overwhelmed, consumed.

Their power can be misused and abused - or siphoned - quite easily.

Destructive obsessions and misanthropic tendencies can be stoked. Energy can be wasted in the nihilistic narcissism that Pluto and Scorpio do so well.

This generation has a big tendency to be enamoured of its own complexity. There's a tendency to self-absorption that has gone to an extreme I don't think another generation has experienced, facilitated to a great extent by internet, social media, and affordable digital cameras. Distracted by the gratuitous documentation of the absolute minutiae of their personal lives.

With the early Pluto in Scorpios came a sub-generation that was used as a gateway. This sub-generation involved the members who had Chiron in Gemini (1983-1988). The test group. Through this sub-generation's flooded synapses came the initial implementation of constant connection, constant stimulation, constant diversion, constant attention through cellular phones, cheap, accessible internet, iPods, social media, Blackberries, digital cameras, and computer programs designed to manipulate image. Through wounded Gemini circuits came a take-over of minds, bodies, and electrical impulses that has shown no sign of letting up since. And a new, encrypted language has developed within the Pluto in Scorpio generation, reinforcing its insulation.

There are a lot of layers to peel here.

Plutonic/Scorpionic issues of power, corruption, dishonesty, lack of integrity, betrayal, abuse, murder, manipulation, exploitation, oppression, suppression, and social taboo have been here all along. And there have been people working on this stuff all along, committing their lives, risking their lives, losing their lives.

There's a thread of people throughout time, space, and astrological Pluto generation that has taken on the work of deep, core-level change on the planet and has taken it on body, mind, and soul. They've done dangerous work, and for most, it was not a choice. This is about more than paying lip service to it or throwing some money at it. It's about living it, staying true to the course, even when no one is watching, when no cameras are flashing.

To set one group of people up as the most powerful, the most magical, the most catalytic is - to use Scorpio terminology - complete b.s.

To be at the most relevant point for the astrological Aquarian era, we have to shift out of the incessant desire to find and then exploit the next It Generation. This has become a dominant drive within a mainstream paradigm - fueled by the Pluto in Leos - that is enamoured of and obsessed with youth. It's absolute silliness. Anyone who is truly "hip to the now" will not be chasing tween, teen, or twenty-something trends. Aquarius goes beyond age and generation to the common threads that unite us in the struggle toward freedom and improved conditions.

Generation doesn't matter among comrades. It's a team effort. It always has been, and it always will be. The responsibilities, the pain, and the glories are shared.

Scorpio relates to soul lineage, and any member of the Pluto in Scorpios with the benefit of wisdom will understand his or her context within the long line of people working this stuff out. To understand yourself or your generation as something superseding that is to fall for a line that has been used countless times before.

Generational hype is a layer of detritus that inevitably slows the Pluto in Scorpios down, keeping them from their most effective points during this burgeoning astrological Aquarian era as part of the cross-generational, cross-cultural effort, fully aware of their context within that.

We're in a dicey little time on this planet. Those in positions of stolen power are attempting to purposefully replay an extremely nasty historical cycle.

To have any chance of righting this ship, we need all hands on deck. This means all Plutonic types from every Pluto generation, baby to senior citizen.

Through the Pluto in Leo generation, en masse, we had the proliferation of Sun sign and personality-based (Leo) astrology. This was fun enough, but it led, to a certain extent, to an excessive (Pluto) need to celebrate (Leo) certain placements, certain signs, certain personality traits, and certain people as special or important above the others, rather than focusing on how it all works together.

A new, more thoughtful and nuanced astrology has to emerge here, one that works with the real diversity of the astrological system as a symbolic framework of life itself, not just the most sexy or dramatic bits that will get the most web hits or sell the most books.

The astrological idols have to fall.

So Pluto in Scorpios, since you're a group that relates to the death of everything that must die, we might as well start the process with you before it even starts.