angstoic.com Astrologer, Ang Stoic
After five months in retrograde, our dark, distant underlord of ‘death and regeneration’ slowly grinds to a halt. Pluto entered his new transformative shadow zone at the very beginning of this year, then backtracked in retrograde at the end of April, dragging us back through the morass for some deep, introspective processing for the past five months.
It’s been chance to stew in our own bitter bile, sit with the demons of our temptations and our sins. Lots to process. Pluto now slowly turns direct again. This third pass over the same 2-3 degrees provides us with an opportunity to come clean about what’s eating us, purge it all out and be done with it for good, or else become wholly consumed by it.
- Pluto entered the Rx zone at 20°♑38′ on 01 Jan 2019
- He stationed to go retrograde at 23°♑09′ on 24 April 2019
- He is now stationing to go direct at 20°♑38′ on 01 October 2019
- Pluto finally leaves his Rx Zone on 23 January 2020 when he passes 23°♑09′
So what’s it gonna be?
Pluto rules over all the dark, unsightly fragments of our psyche. Out in the open we present a cheerful, cultivated face – a mask that’s styled and cultured by our folks, whose whole design to temper down or to conceal our most grotesquely hideous desires, so that we ourselves do not attract aspersions and the calumny of others.
All that is hidden from you, banished and forbidden by your kind; all that you’re told is toxic, ugly and should therefore not exist, lays either buried deep in your subconscious, or else projected spitefully, enviously onto others. Such a disgust about what lurks there in our shadow results in condescension, terror and an urge for elimination. But regardless of how you try to kill and to dispose of it, is something that exists, be it in darkness, ever really dead and buried? Or does it haunt you blindly as a satyr and a saboteur till you acknowledge, make your peace with it and teach it to dance to the beat of your own drum?
What remains hidden, even from your own imagination, lies in the chthonic nether-realms of Pluto.
Through his transit in Capricorn (2008-2024), Pluto deals with our secret obsessions to acclaim extrinsic notability, some public stature, corporate or patriarchal power, materialistic wealth, fame and legacy. Deep interpersonal issues develop, especially when we feel like we are missing out. Societal or career failings develop into pessimism, depression, bitterness, spitefulness and jealousy of those who hold positions of authority over us.
These issues are harboured and suppressed, perhaps for years, until such times when they build into psychological crises. At these times, our willful intent to obscure, to misdirect, and to disguise our toxic concerns rise uncontrollably up to the surface to be seen and be dealt with. We show that we will not be frightened or overwhelmed and thus erupt into a furious rage that can take many and varied forms.
What we do not bring to light, refuse to acknowledge that is ours, only grows in the dark and threatens to possess us.
If we are to understand how these corruptive tendencies tend to take hold of us, we need to have enormous courage to go into the darkest recesses of our inner psyche and reflect on what it is that troubles us about our own social ambitions against the success of those who have mastered the lessons of self-determination, self-discipline.
Pluto in retrograde is particularly instrumental in assisting this deep introspective exploration of why we have subconsciously suppressed or denied the full scope of our social capacity. What is it about us that feels disempowered along the spectrum of humanity’s climb to the top of the social heap?
Is it an underlying guilt or resentment of our abject failure to best utilise our greatest potential which slowly eats away at us?
Is our guilt projected outwards, blaming others for our apparently stagnant or unattained triumph in life? We see society’s limiting, disqualifying systems of power and control; the patriarchy; the conspiracy of bankers and corporations; the papacy; or those who have ‘made it’ and now seem to rule over us as a problem. We feel possessed and oppressed by the weight of Pluto’s force.
It is the slow, often deliberate process of transforming from the inside out, where we may become confronted by the disturbing, uncomfortably frustrating elements in our lives, not knowing that the responsibility for such conditions is essentially our own.
Rigid attitudes, fixations and manias for control, power, fame, sex appeal, etc… take over our lives, and we feel given over to corrosive demons and temptations that have seized control over “the better angels of our nature”.
The retrograde periods in Pluto’s transit are useful in that they allow us to explore these things within ourselves. We need to ask whether the roles we play in society are useful enough to inspire others to improve their own lives, or are causing grief, suffering, contempt, jealousy and scorn. Utter denial of our upright, paternal duty to others and to society creates alienation, dereliction and social pariahs.
In mythology, the great Lord Hades (Pluto), ruler of the underworld, only ever showed his face in the middleworld on two seperate occasions without his helmet of invisibility.
Once was to commit an atrociously selfish and violent act with his rape and abduction of the young maiden Persephone. The other was to declare himself a sociopathic deviant, seeking healing from the wise Chiron for his grotesque and pathological behaviour.
As a society, we have used this retrograde period to focus on analysing those elements in our world that act both as corruptors of society but also as leaders and instigators of great change. Pluto in Capricorn means to identify these deviant, aberrant elements, whose intent for personal power and wealth is attained by hidden, stealthy means, conspiracy, smokescreens and red herrings, devious breakdown, ruthless elimination and decay of the true communal spirit of our societies.
Capricorn means business, so Pluto’s minions of darkness and corruption are more likely to be dressed in slick, designer suits, placed in otherwise estimable positions of patriarchal society and appear to be going about their business in perfectly ‘respectable’ ways. They are all powerful and their politically endorsed ‘respectability’ and corporate ‘success’ makes them hard to for the rest of us to resist, manage and control. They hold all apparent reigns of power and control and our force may struggle to fend against theirs.
As Pluto goes direct, he will turn his intention for supreme social dominance outwardly. Our own tendency to play blindly along with the products of his corporatism, through our own consumerism may be the way we seek remedy against boredom. Either our complicit patronage conveys a sense of fictitious power and supremacy, by thinking we are standing out from the crowd through the extravagance of our expenditure, or we lead by unravelling how the system is corrupt and patently unconstitutional to a well-functioning society.
Our corporate consumptionism has becomes an addiction, and we are the product. However, it might be cured – if the right remedy is administered: humbleness and dutiful responsibility to others is the only way we can avoid Pluto’s autocratic, tyrannical and enslaving “buy now, die later” routine through Capricorn.
© All rights reserved, Ang Stoic 2019
Tribe Members: Login to your account to read more on Pluto at the links below…
