STARFIRE

February 2008

February 2008 - Pluto in Capricorn – The World Shifts Gears--Maybe.
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Pluto in Capricorn - The World Shifts Gears—Maybe

So whatare we to make of Pluto? For more than 75 years, while it was a planet, Pluto’s shifts from one sign to other signaled massive, generational changes. Pluto in Cancer: The rise of massive nationalism, including Hitler’s Faderland and Aryan race obsessions. Pluto in Leo: Atomic and laser energy. Pluto in Virgo: Wars as police action, shift toward preventive medicine and personal health control. Pluto in Libra: Implementing civil rights, changing relationships at home and work forever. Pluto in Scorpio: AIDS and weather-related disasters. Pluto in Sagittarius: Religious wars, but also a massive shift in information access from media to internet.

And then we decided it was a dwarf—although astrologers failed to see any diminishment in its effects.  Now it’s moving into Capricorn, marking the beginning of more generational changes. So what do we expect?

With Pluto, expect the unexpected. It’s about massive, pervasive changes in human consciousness.  When Bill Gates talked about having a computer on every desk, Pluto was talking *S*

One thing I’ve noticed as I was ruminating on Pluto for the last few weeks: When Pluto moves, our first experiences and memories of Pluto are about massive power wielded by the wrong people or events.  By the end of Pluto’s movement through a sign, power has shifted in some way from the hands of a small minority to the hands of large groups of people.

We don’t always see the shift while we’re experiencing it.  We’re often overwhelmed during important Pluto transits to our personal charts and boggled by the events of Pluto’s mundane movements.

Pluto’s ways of shifting power are not pretty.  Pluto reminds us that there’s no creation without destruction.  Writers’ words destroy white pages. Painters destroy blank canvases to produce masterpieces. Environmentalists can give you a long list of the ways society destroys nature.

It’s safe to assume our major international corporations and governments will change during the new era of Pluto in Capricorn.  It’s safe to say we probably won’t like the centralization of power in governments and corporations (large and small) over the next few years.  If, by the end of Pluto in Capricorn, we’ve become a world of small businesses again, it probably won’t have been a fun, easy process that any of us liken to a trip to Disneyland with the family.

Change is inevitable. Whether your “personal business” is being an employee or an entrepreneur or a self-employed professional, the first step is to understand that your business and your government will be radically changed over the next decade.

The second step is to embrace change, to explore opportunities for change, whether they are initially welcome or not.  Plants that bend and buildings that move on their foundations survive hurricanes.  Rigid structures fall apart.  My favorite affirmation for times like these is “I am open and receptive to change on all levels of my being.” (And thank you, Catherine Ponder, for that idea.)

Third, build relationships—which are organic—not just contracts and organizational charts. Leave room in your calendar to discuss changes as they come up for your family, your friends, and your associates.  Form mastermind groups with people you trust—and include some people who are not in your personal industry or line of work so that you don’t all take the blows of Pluto at the same moment. (When I help employers with staffing questions, I encourage diversity of age so a company doesn’t have all its top executives undergoing Saturn returns, for example, simultaneously.)  The same principle applies to Pluto.)

Fourth. Take baby steps and explore as you go.  Your 75-page plan is unlikely to be implemented without change.  For my coaching clients, I recommend taking a long look 7 to 10 years ahead (the dream), but working on detailed plans for no more than a year ahead. 

And Finally: Leave time for laughter.  You might as well enjoy the trip because it’s not optional. A good sense of humor about my own faults and foibles has gotten me through some important Pluto transits in my own chart as well as through important mundane transits.

So what is Pluto anyway? Massive sexual energy would be one fair description.  There’s a reason they call sexual orgasm the “little death” and that’s Pluto’s rulership over sexuality.  Pluto also rules death, rebirth, recycling of old roles and relationships, garbage, excrements, composting and massive forces like tsunamis.

It’s unthinkable power, power beyond comprehension.

We don’t have a good track record on Pluto.  We can guess, of course, and astrologers spend a fair amount of time speculating on Pluto.  Until a planet’s discovery, its effects are unconscious. We can go back in historynow to look at the impact of Pluto transits before Pluto’s discovery.  But as Einstein says, the act of observing changes what we’re observing, so observable Pluto and invisible Pluto may not have the same impact.

The Sons of Liberty formed in 1765, probably as a response to the Stamp Act and probably in both New York and Boston. They were a secret society.  The British no doubt considered them to be the equivalent of modern terrorists although Americans call them patriots.  They’re best known today for the Boston Tea Party. By the time Pluto left Capricorn in 1778, the British Empire had lost it total control over the American colonies. (Our present form of government and our Constitution were established after Pluto moved into Aquarius, the sign of democratic principles.)

If we look at the Pluto in Capricorn chart set for Washington, D.C., we find mutable (changeable) signs on the four angles of the chart.  Clearly our nation’s relationship with other countries and its role and position in the world at large will change dramatically by the end of the Pluto in Capricorn era.

Pluto movement tends to break up oppressive control (sometimes replacing one oppression with another form of oppression and sometimes replacing oppression with democracy or at least republics and constitutional monarchies).

The changes we could predict today are likely to be the least important changes. Pluto above all makes changes in the way we think.  People born before World War II in the United States have memories of a world at peace that people born later do not have.  Children growing up with television find our having to walk to the library for entertainment ludicrous. People who only know their personal religion’s teachings before Pluto in Sagittarius have been forced by war into understanding other traditions.

Pluto began the breakup of the British Empire in 1765. One intriguing question Pluto in Capricorn will answer now is: Are the multinationals or the governments more powerful?  Because wherever real power in concentrated, Pluto is sure to strike.

Mary O’Gara, Ph.D.