Astro Forecast 11.20.24: God of Endings
Pluto in Capricorn mortally wounded our institutions. Aquarius will not bring them back.
What is happening?!
Hello again, and welcome to the depths of The Underworld; it is late fall in the Northern Hemisphere, which means winds that bite at the tail end of their gust and a slick decay of leaves coating the sidewalks. In Seattle, the sky is starting to spit with more vehemence and I noticed my ears stinging from cold on last night’s hike, with the aforementioned leaves doing their best impression of bacon grease and almost flattening me on my ass in front of traffic. It felt like walking on freshly excavated guts, and I think we could probably say that for the bulk of 2024 - much of it was spent trampling Pluto’s fresh kills, trying not to die ourselves.
Our dwarf planet oversaw the death of quite a bit during his Capricorn sojourn, starting with our faith in financial and civic institutions in 2008, and ending a 250-year old idea of governance and democracy in 2024. Indeed, the will of the people, empathy for others, and Enlightenment ideas of liberation and individualism seem to be decaying before our eyes at the zero degree of Aquarius. The United States, like so many empires before it, is succumbing to it’s own late-stage bullshit and flirting with all the markers of eventual collapse; severe economic inequality, corrupt and crumbling institutions, declining public health, and a forceful monopoly of one ideology or religion that results in ‘othering’ a group or groups of the citizenry, thus engendering civil unrest. Our people, by hook or by crook, re-elected a criminal game show host to oversee a promised dismantling of democracy and human rights in a country that once claimed to be a beacon for both, but no one seems fired up to do much about it other than whine. Nero had his fiddle, Roman peasants had the Coliseum, and Americans have reality t.v., smart phones, and social media.
The best any of us can do is take things day by day and week by week. Pluto and his shenanigans will be affecting us communally for twenty years; two long decades that will expose the more perverse and abusive Aquarian inclinations. Given that most modern people cannot focus on any one thing for more than two minutes, it would be unrealistic to think we will understand our predicament in one newsletter, year, or even decade of contemplation. What we can do is continue to make the best possible decisions about our daily lives and the people who fill them, and in the context of astrology, that means continuing to track personal planets in a way that sheds light on our quality of time. As Plato might have said, “Eh, fuck it.”
I’m not saying there isn’t free will…but I’m also not saying there is, because philosophers new and old are eternally divided about that little chestnut. Plato and Aristotle defined our will as the ability to choose actions in the moment of living, while acknowledging that no one actually chose to be born, and we certainly didn’t choose when to be born. The only choices we make are our reactions to the stimuli foisted upon us.
In the next few days, Mercury will slow his meddling ass down to take one last crap in our cereal for the year, going retrograde just in time for the American tradition of family sniping and backstabbing over bird carcasses to commence. Our sun continues a disappearing act into Sagittarius, which is not a sign known for sensible diplomacy, so we can probably expect messy-with-a-capital-M communication over the first holiday hump. I’m calling it now; someone is going to bring the wrong dish, even though you swore you told them that the green beans were covered, so now there will be two green bean casseroles and no cranberries, which is going to trigger Uncle Charlie and set off a diatribe nobody wants to hear, so the aunties telephone tree of bitching will be extra spicy by December and several people will not be speaking to each other.
Why wait, though? Neptune is huffing the last of his own farts in Pisces, thickening a fog of misinformation and confusion that will resist clearing until Poseidon enters Aries in 2025. This means our collective channels are a circus of carnival-barking and finger-pointing as we try to suss out where we went wrong and who is responsible for the wrongness; is it trans people? Communists? White supremacists? Unions? Gun-owners? Cat ladies? Every single member of everyone’s extended family?! The answer depends on where you live, how you get information, and which billionaire owns your local news station, which only increases our Neptunian delusions and wears at our social connections.
Despite the confidence that pundits, analysts, and that unhinged dude on the corner with the sign and the megaphone exude when yammering on about their own conclusions, none of the different answers will be as accurate as the following; humanity simply does this. Rising, peaking, and falling is the natural life cycle of individuals, cultures and societies, from Babylon all the way to the British Empire, and there is no reason to expect our modern age will proceed any differently. We seem to be tipping past what some historians refer to as the apogee; a cresting of advancement and affluence that leaves civilization with no where left to go but down, and there isn’t an individual or movement in existence that could have stopped it. One could almost believe it was written in the stars.
Why would this affect me?
Pluto is a fairly recently discovered planet, one that ancient astrologers could only have dreamt up in their oddly philosophical minds due to a lack of long distance telescopes, but the concept of an underworld, or hell, seems to be primordial. Ancient Babylonian and Egyptian religion laid the groundwork for this ‘upside down’ realm as a place for souls to be first judged, then sentenced, as well as a place for souls to inhabit after dying on Earth. It felt natural, then, for modern astrologers to associate this frozen rock, with his thirty-year, irregular orbit and proximity to the edge of the known universe with massive, generational transformation. Named for Pluton, or Hades to the Greeks, he is a chilly deity who lords over the ultimate transformation and welcomes souls to his inverse world of chaos.
The Hellenistic idea of an afterlife that is both physically and spiritually oppositional to our living Earth informed modern notions about Pluto’s effect within the zodiac and on our human lives. Some people feel Plutonian influence as perversion, i.e. a twisting of otherwise healthy, balanced inclinations. Examples of this abound from 2008 onward, when material inequality soared and the acquisition of financial health trumped, either formally or informally, the maintenance of physical and emotional health. How else to explain the Occupy Wall Street protests which amounted to nothing, the sizable increase and criminalization of homelessness, and our disregard for the lives of service workers and health care professionals during the Covid-19 pandemic? The shadows of Capricorn are obsessed with status and materialism, and Pluto’s last go-round in the sign of The Sea Goat exploited those faults for all he could. It begs the question - what shadows of Aquarius might be nurtured to ripe perversion over the next two decades?
This galaxy-brained air sign is known to love the idea of humanity, but he’s not so great with the messy reality of individuals. The Water-Bearer has associations with the myth of Ganymede, a human boy of such perfection that the gods whisked him away to be part of their pervy Olympian society. Thus, Ganymede ceased to be merely mortal and became more like the gods; beautiful, distant, and aloof. Like Ganymede, this fixed sign can become obsessed with finding solutions that work on a massive scale as a way to improve or perfect humanity, losing sight of individual emotions and desires in the process. If Aquarius has to force what he thinks of as improvement on large swaths of society, then he will do so, and that kind of thinking veers awfully close to both authoritarianism and fascism as we understand them in the modern age. Be vigilant, then, as we delve deeper into Aquarius, and place the movements of our personal planets within this new context.
When do I have to deal with this?
Pluto takes up all the air, again, as he changes signs, but our sun is also transforming his perspective by bouncing into giddy Sagittarius this week. Both represent a welcome change from the laborious obsession that fuels Capricorn and Scorpio, those murderous freaks, and despite our current global suck fest, these changes could create a tiny crack of optimism in our wall of despair.
This is going to take the heat off of cardinal signs, i.e. Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn, who will likely feel an enormous weight has disappeared from a key segment of their lives. Conversely, the fixed signs of Aquarius, Scorpio, Leo, and Taurus are embarking on a difficult, transformative journey, and while those signs are the key players in this Plutonian adventure, we will all feel the effects of this monumental shift.
TUES 11.19 - THE NEXT TWO FUCKING DECADES - Pluto Transits Aquarius
Pluto in Aquarius: Shadow Chairman of the Board with More Money than Friends whose Non-Profit is Actually a Cult
Yep, it has happened. The United States is now enduring a Pluto return, and I have no doubt that echoes of our fraught founding will reverberate through the collective over the course of his transit. On the plus side, our obsession with status and wealth will diminish as Capricorn shrinks in our rearview mirror, so I’m hoping this rings a death knell for social media influencers. (Please, please, please, Hades, I’m begging you, make them go away.)
In the minus column, we have the Aquarian shadows of hive mind, collective coercion, and a one-size-fits-all dogma that can easily become zealotry. We must all be extremely careful not to lose site of empathy for individuals in a quest to ‘improve’ humanity, because those are the types of movies that end with the ritual killing of our elderly.
THURS 11.21 - SAT 11.23 - Pluto in Aquarius Forms a Sextile to our Sun in Sagittarius, Bestowing Authorities with More Power
Pluto in Aquarius: Shadow Chairman of the Board with More Money than Friends whose Non-Profit is Actually a Cult
Sun in Sagittarius: Figurehead of a Powerful Organization who Leaves Real Decisions to his Underlings because he would Rather Explore Mars, Climb Mt. Everest, etc.
Ugh, these fucking guys. For normal people, this sextile could be very generative, as it infuses us with more charisma and power than we normally radiate. If we are sensible and humble with this transit, we’ll find ourselves finally completing projects or sealing deals that have been dragging on for months. This is Important Man energy, the kind that demands everyone be quiet, sit in the dark, and pay rapt attention to the established leader. If we let this power inflate our heads, though, as I suspect many people who already wield enormous power will do, well…expect abuse to be heaped upon abuse, executed with a confidence that says father knows best.
FRI 11.22 - SAT 11.23: Venus makes a Sextile to Saturn and Celebrates our Stable, Boring Relationships
Venus in Capricorn: Diligent Fine Arts Student with a Taste for Older Partners
Saturn in Pisces: The Toughest, Most Tenured Art History Professor at your Grad School
This is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the week, and it bodes well for both seeking and stabilizing romantic relationships, as well as any creative partnerships or endeavors. Anytime Kronos gets involved makes an ideal moment to connect with aging parents or grandparents; we may gain wisdom through an affable, conversational exchange of perspectives.
Capricorn is Saturn’s feminine chariot, and femme deity Venus exalts in the sign of Pisces, so there is mutual-ish reception happening between these seemingly opposite forces. A reemergence of romantic flirtation in committed relationships will remind us how much we value our long-term partners, and for the unattached among us, this is an auspicious weekend to connect with people seeking what Mary J. Blige rightfully termed “Real Love". If we ignore the hook-up apps and get into deep conversation with someone at a museum or library, we could be planting seeds that continue to sprout for years.
A Tarot Snapshot…
Welp! On Monday, 11.18, we opened the week up to discover the Six of Swords glaring at us with a piece of iolite for good measure, so we can expect some kind of obstacle-laden journey ahead of us. Iolite is also known as “The Viking Compass”, and it helps us navigate shadowy terrain in both the physical and cerebral realm, but we must proceed slowly and with caution. Say NO to any rushed, Mars-style impetuousness.
Tuesday, 11.19 was D-day for Pluto to ditch Capricorn, and an interesting twist might be waiting in the wings when it comes to Justice in the modern age. This card can often predict fair outcomes, but ‘fair’ is a relative term these days. A companion pull of emerald suggests remaining loyal to our most important causes, because we absolutely will not win every case. This is a real ‘pick your battles’ kind of card.
The Five of Wands is a card that could be re-named “Team Shit Show”, and that’s what we’re dealing with on Wednesday, 11.20. We can expect zero compromise and very little agreement in this moment, probably in no small part due to the insufferable egos of Pluto and the sun. Pink tourmaline suggests we fall back and heal ourselves a bit before jumping into the fray.
Thursday, 11.21 brings The High Priestess to the table, and this is a nice counter to all of the masculine power and institutional belief floating about the universe. This card suggests we retreat inward and find a path that operates outside conventional dogma. Chalcopyrite brings us joy and confidence, things that might be regained if we stop playing by other people’s oppressive rules.
The Chariot reversed continues to repeat the theme of the week, which is circumspection and purposeful delay. By Friday, 11.22, it should be clear that this is NOT a week for taking risks, making ultimatums, or closing deals, because no one agrees on anything! We may even find ourselves questioning the veracity of our own beliefs or positions, requiring a retreat and review of our goals. Black tourmaline protects us from physical and psychic harm, but it can only go so far if we insist on being reckless.
Saturday, 11.23, presents us with sad or faulty memories courtesy of the Six of Cups reversed. Something makes us feel weighted by the past, perhaps even trapped in it, and hope for the future seems futile. An accompanying rhodonite suggests we ground ourselves in the present by going outside, chatting with family, and making a big dinner, e.g. doing simple activities to remind ourselves that life isn’t horrible and pointless. Most of the time.
The Wheel of Fortune reversed has one obvious, pedantic translation - we are powerless in the face of circumstances turning to total shit. We never control the wheel of life, we simply hop on and hope for the best. The only guarantee we get is that the world will keep spinning, eventually placing us back on top and repeating this sorry process over and over. Ruby zoisite is the companion crystal for Sunday, 11.23, and it indicates a possible epiphany resulting from bad luck. This Tanzanian stone is thought to prompt spiritual awakenings, so perhaps whatever setbacks we experience will illuminate our own traumatic cycles. Only by recognizing our patterns and circular bad habits will we cultivate the ability to break them. Until then we will continue to rise, peak, and fall. Repeat.
Well I'm just seeing this now and whoof, what a great exposition of the possibilities of Hades - I mean Pluto - in Aquarius. Some astrologers are like yay revolution! and don't know what that actually means. Glad you're explaining the dark side.