So it's Monday. It's January. And Mercury is stationing direct conjunct Pluto.
Well, then.
"One step ahead of reverse" may sum up the proceedings of this day (or the next couple days, to be honest), but keep inching your way through it. Tackle responsibilities like a champ, step-by-step, even if the steps you're taking are teeny-tiny. This will ease your mind and take some of the Plutonic pressure off.
Communication/intelligence planet Mercury will be in forward-ho motion at 14 degrees Capricorn by this evening (direct station at 3:50 p.m. CST).
Mercury's position (tightly conjunct Pluto in Capricorn and square Uranus in Aries) indicates that communication and information flow this week is all kinds of potent.
Pluto is pulling up some yuck, some buried energy or emotion, forcing potentially uncomfortable "air clearing" exchanges designed to move us beyond old sticking points and unsatisfactory ways of interacting. Mercury crawls forward in the zodiac this week, making one final exact conjunction to Pluto at 15 degrees Capricorn on January 29 (11:58 p.m.).
At the same time, Uranus in Aries is blasting us out of old physical and mental constructs in favour of a new vision, a breath of fresh air, new energy sources, new ways of doing things, a fresh start. Mercury will make one last square to revolutionary Uranus at 17 degrees Aries on January 31 (9:41 p.m.). We may see cracks opening or widening within the current structures for us to move through.
We're finding the catalytic words, perspectives, and ideas that propel us beyond the same old crap.
Some (possibly long overdue) speaking up may be necessary, but, with Mercury in Capricorn, we have to be strategic about it. Don't allow the Plutonic build-up to make you lose your cool or overstep your verbal boundaries, especially at work.
Love, money, values, and relationship planet Venus has also just taken up residence in Capricorn and will repeat the activation of the Uranus-Pluto square with a conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn on February 5 (7:15 p.m.) and a square to Uranus in Aries on February 6 (4:03 p.m.).
Things are a little unsettled with business plans, structure, love, and money!
Mercury will re-enter Aquarius on February 13, cooling our hot, little, Plutonically-charged brains. It will leave the retrograde shadow at 1 degree Aquarius on February 14.
"Named must your fear be before banish it you can."
- Yoda
(Mercury conjunct Pluto)
As Mercury backs into a prolonged, slow burn conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn (in effect strongly January 22 to 29), this post on what's it's like to be Plutonic is coming out of the vault, originally posted June 27, 2011:
I'm always surprised when people are surprised that I'm fairly
Plutonically hardcore (and so is this blog). It seems evident to me, but
with all the Neptunian projection that goes on on the interweb, a
disclaimer might be a good way to get it
out of the way.
As is the case with most Plutonics/Scorpionics, I don't put up with any
crap, and when people try to feed me crap (yes, I see them doing it, and
yes, I know it's crap), I refuse it and dump it back in their laps.
This generally leaves people miffed and/or stunned, but their crap is
not my responsibility.
Some would call me bitchy. I prefer witchy.
That said, Plutonic/Scorpionic types are generally deeply intuitive and
accepting of extremes, able to hold the energy of people in various
emotional and psychological states - usually because they have
experienced some variation of those states themselves. They don't shy
away from the more difficult aspects of life, including death.
If you're dealing with a difficult situation (or a difficult life,
period), if your life has just imploded, if you have a major case of the
transformational yucks, or if you are just royally and righteously
pissed off for some reason, someone with a good handle on this energy is
the person you would want in your corner. You can tell them what's
really going on for you - as long as it's honest and coming from your
own experience - and they can not only deal but work with it intricately
to help extricate you from the oppressiveness of it, all while
empowering you and keeping you out of co-dependency.
It should be known that Plutonics don't let up easily. A dog with a
bone. We're pretty close to relentless. We have to be. We're here to
expose power dynamics that have been kept buried for millenia as well as
the injurious, unjust, and deadly consequences of those buried power
dynamics.
We're here to figure out what's killing us so we can expose it and stop
it. We're here to reach critical mass, to hit the marks that catalyze
real improvement, real change, while providing such unerring,
unfaltering evidence that it breaks through the mass denial that has
been crystallized into insulating, deadened shrouds.
It's no easy task.
We're working with issues that people will do everything in their power
to deny. People will kill (and do) to keep this stuff covered up.
Most would rather deal with a slow, unexamined, day-to-day poisoning
that does not require anything of them than be faced with the raw truth
of the situation - something they would have to deal with.
Plutonics wouldn't, though. They can't. So they have to dig it out, and
they're here to get all of it. Nothing half-assed will do. Any tentacle
left behind will attach and re-grow.
Plutonic people can follow a thread for months or years through thorny
bramble bushes, over barbed wire, through mucky gutters, past armed
guards, finally reaching the root and clearing away the detritus around
it. In a lot of cases, as soon as they get it cleared, along comes a
boot to kick mountains of earth back over it. Then the boot plants
itself in their faces.
But in other cases, not. In other cases, they find the spaces to move
through and bring it up to the light of day. This is happening more and
more. It's getting easier.
I'm not a fearmonger. I'm also not "negative," "dark," "pessimistic," or
any of the other words used to discredit my point-of-view.
As I've said before, I don't see the world through the New Age
light/dark, positive/negative filter. I believe that paradigm is an
artificial one set up to keep people from their own authentic experience
while denying the authentic experience of others - where the power is.
Incidentally, the denigration and demonization of "the dark" has its
root in black/white racism and Aryan supremacy - something the New Age
is intrinsically connected to.
From Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States:
"The colour black was considered distasteful in England. The Oxford
English Dictionary defined it as: "Deeply stained with dirt; soiled,
dirty, foul. Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant; pertaining to or
involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister. Foul,
iniquitous, atrocious, horribly wicked. Indicating disgrace, censure,
liability to punishment, etc."
The colour white, on the other hand, was often used, especially in
poetry, to mean beauty, purity, chasteness, what's good and right."
(Black is my favourite colour.)
I'm well aware that the power and spiritual energy of righteous people
is stronger than the nasty deeds and tactics being used by the
criminally insane/inhumane who call themselves our leaders. That has
never been in question.
But I also know the ways in which people's most potent energy and
awareness is being diverted, manipulated, and used for ends that are not
in their best interests.
I know fascism when I see/feel it. You can dress it up, Photoshop it, call it enlightened - it's still fascism.
So I strip the layers, bit-by-bit, as people kick and scream and fight to hold on, to stay comfortably blanketed in them.
What a Plutonic person knows is that in order for things to change this
stuff has to be brought up and fully integrated into collective
awareness. People have to be living as if it's real, as if it affects
them, and as if the wrongs being brought down are being brought down on
them - because this is the case. Decisions have to be made, courses have
to be changed, using this awareness, so we keep uncovering and
providing it. We keep finding the cracks to widen.
And I guess knowing it can make people feel helpless and hopeless
because we're dealing with issues that don't fit into the
problem-reaction-solution model - another artificial construct. There
are no easy, quick-fix answers. It's almost impossibly complex,
complicated, tangled.
But working with this bottom-line reality is what I find meaningful.
It's what I find exciting and interesting. Sometimes it's even fun. And
it's what makes me a good astrologer.
The soft, sleepy Neptunian clouds are maybe pretty to look at, but I do beauty, not pretty.
I know what has been brought down on the people on this planet, and I
know what is still being brought down. The injustice of their injuries
and deaths burns in me because it's my own. This is not the ancient
past. We are not "ascending" out of it. We do not simply "transcend"
what has gone on and what is currently going on. The slaughters and
poisonings were brought down 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, a
century or two. It's the blink of an eye. It's yesterday. It's just the
other side of the Neptunian veil dropped over the eyes of the willing.
It's a single step outside the Aquarian virtual realities holding rapt
attention.
I know the people who have been hurt because they are me. These are the
people whose hearts are with mine. What has been brought down on them
has been brought down on me, on us. That's real Pisces - not the
separation and transcendence and lovey-lighty, awakey-ascendy glossing
over that's being preached and sold these days.
All this smoulders and burns until it is rectified. And until it is out
in the open, understood, felt, loved, and dealt with en masse, so do I.
So does anyone who feels it as their own. The Plutonics.
At this point, holding the awareness of what has gone on and what is going on is
doing something. Making changes and decisions in your own life based on
it is doing something. Most people are not doing so. It flits into
their minds for a minute or two, maybe, and then it's onto something
else.
So for all the Plutonic consciousness comrades out there:
Don't doubt yourself.
Don't ever let them reframe your experience into something more palatable and comfortable for them.
What you're doing, reaching the points of authenticity and honesty that
you are reaching, is highly effective, and that's why it's such a threat
to those who wish to maintain the establishment status quo as you go.
Photos: Willow
Well, 2016 is off to a bit of a creaking start under the Mercury retrograde station. It's always a little difficult to get back into the swing of things after holidays, and the communication/information/connection planet standing still in the zodiac is not helping this cause all that much.
Mercury standing nearly still on the first degree of Aquarius, like it is now, does set our sights on the future. It just doesn't let us jump too far ahead. As Mercury changes direction in early Aquarius (the retrograde station was January 5), our focus is held on the earliest phases of the blueprints that take us through this year and closer to a future vision for our lives, for our communities, and for this planet that we'd actually like to live through and experience...
There are some practical and gravity-laden challenges associated with getting to that future vision, however. (The current state of toxic, illegitimate, injurious, and deadly power structures on the planet would be a major one). The rest of Mercury's retrograde period will bring us into contact with some of these challenges.
The way things are being done by the establishment does not make logical sense to anyone with a fully functioning heart and soul.
This is hard on a brain. It's hard on a heart. It's hard on the emotions. Accepting the reality of this is one of the requirements now, one of the ways we succeed during Mercury's retrograde period.
As Venus (values) forms a conjunction to Saturn
(establishment/structure/patriarchy) in Sagittarius on January 8,
influencing Mercury as it slides back into late Capricorn, we're cementing
our own value systems and guiding philosophies as the over-arching
righteous force in our lives. We're cementing love as the over-arching righteous force in our lives. Love is the deepest and wisest and most enduring sage. Committing to love and to the loving path (Venus), no matter what, positions us for long-term success (Saturn) now, while also helping us to overcome any fears that may be holding us back in this new year.
Fear is no match for love.
Fear is no match for the love that rings through every cell of your body, radiating from its Central Sun, from the centre of the galaxy that is you.
Under this Venus-Saturn conjunction in Sagittarius, we're committing to the righteousness of what's in our hearts, and in a system intentionally designed to disconnect us at the heart, that alone is a radical act.
We may also be confronted by the values of
the current establishment (both what is declared and what is displayed
in practise), forced to reject whatever proves false or illegitimate to us.
We're wrapping our minds around all this during the Mercury retrograde (January 5 - 25), extricating our own brains and logical processes from the systems and structures that have run us off a cliff.
We're protecting our own mental health and the mental health of our loved ones from systems and structures intentionally designed to entrap, poison, manipulate, divert, distract, and control.
Mercury will now backtrack to a conjunction to Lord of the Underworld Pluto in Capricorn where it will station direct January 25, still within tight conjunction. This creates an extended, slow-burn Mercury-Pluto conjunction that is strongly in effect during the last 10 days of January, with exact aspects January 22 and January 29.
The protection of our mental space over the next weeks could require the elimination of certain media, contacts, information sources, thought patterns, or communication. It could also force some uncomfortable but necessary interactions as buried feelings, grudges, and resentments come spinning off and up to conscious awareness. A clearing of the air that leaves everything lighter and fresher, like the aftermath of an intense thunderstorm.
Mercury-Pluto contacts are transformative, bringing us to empowering points of steely-eyed clarity. Remember the Plutonic method behind the madness when things get tough.
Mercury in Capricorn will also fuel itself up via dynamic squares to Uranus in Aries, exact January 20 and January 31. We can expect some charged insights about the way forward as our brains process the energized and erratic impulses of Uranus. Ruminate on your forward-ho vision around these dates. Ruminate on how that vision fits into the collective scene. And allow space for lightning-bolt insights and realizations that change everything.
(More astro analysis of this Mercury retrograde can be found in this patron article: Mercury in Capricorn Triggers the Uranus-Pluto Square Just as it Enters the Retrograde Shadow)
It may seem that "the way things are" is stepping on our vision and plans in a big way. But the clusterfuck of hell that is the current establishment power structure (trickling down to workplaces, family structures, and personal relationships) is actually giving us the fuel, the motivation, the smarts, and the propulsion to go all the way with it.
We can go a different way - a way that feels better, a way that feels loving, a way that feels right. But we have to know exactly what we're dealing with, exactly where we're starting from, in order to make the right moves.
Our minds are heading back into hell, to a certain extent, as we move into 2016. Our minds are (temporarily) locked on this hell that we must work through, this hell that is really and truly going on on this beautiful planet, this hell that is intentionally being brought down on us, on our loved ones, and on all the precious life on this planet.
Our minds are going back into that clusterfuck (temporarily) so we can understand it from all angles, so we can gain full mental possession, so we aren't scared.
So we aren't too scared to do what we need to do.
We're mentally working our way out of the last tendrils of manipulation and maya and mindfuckery. How refreshing. How empowering.
And Pluto is all about empowerment, when it comes right down to it. Pluto shows us the dark and dirty so we don't waste our precious time as dupes, as less effective that we truly are or could be.
Mercury re-enters hard-nosed, all-business Capricorn on January 8 just as Venus conjoins Saturn in Sagittarius. (Mercury will re-enter Aquarius on February 13, crossing out of the retrograde shadow just in time for Juno Day on February 14.)
Immediately following Mercury Rx's re-entry into Capricorn on January 8, we experience a Capricorn New Moon at 19 degrees (February 9 at 7:30 p.m. CST), and we really don't have much time for lollygagging at that point. The holiday's officially over coming out of that Capricorn New Moon, and we need to get back to being large and in charge of things in order to feel good about ourselves and our progress.
Until then, slide back into the working grind gradually, allowing plenty of slack-cutting for your fine selves...
Happy 2016, WWA readers! I'm very happy to be your anarchist astro-reporter again this year, pulling news and views out of the cosmos for your navigational assistance. Keep making this planet great!
