I’m not one of those doom-saying astrologers.  I won’t rant about how the world’s going to end in 2012 (or any other year).  But Saturn square Pluto is starting this month and going through August of 2010 and it’s serious.  It really is heavy. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you know how serious it is and how to cope with it.

Saturn is the archetype of the Wise Old Man, the Mentor, the Father Figure, the Authority.  When Saturn comes along, he reminds us of our duties, our obligations and the seriousness of the situation.  Saturn brings a reality check, sometimes a harsh one.

Pluto is the Phoenix.  He transforms everything he touches, putting it through a metamorphosis, a long dark night of the soul.  He brings a symbolic death-and-rebirth experience.  He also represents our instincts, that part of us that ferrets out the underlying truths.

These are both heavy archetypes and they are in a square to each other, which astrologers traditionally view as a stressful relationship.  A square feels frustrating and obstructive to both parties.  They are not coming to the table ready to negotiate, but ready to ‘square off.’  They’re in a fighting mood.

Here’s a snippet of conversation between the two:
Saturn: I’m the ultimate authority figure.  I’m strong and solid and I have respect for the wisdom of the elders.  I represent the continuity of culture and its rules.
Pluto: I doubt you.  I think there’s something fishy behind everything you say and do.  I think you have an interest in maintaining your position and you don’t really care about the people you have charge of.
Saturn: I’ve been in charge for a very long time.  The people put me here.  I do what I do to take care of them.  I hold communities together.  I provide the rules people live by and the punishments that keep them in line.
Pluto: You have ulterior motives.  I won’t be happy until I uncover every last slimy thing you’ve ever done and hold it up to the light of day.
Saturn: Don’t even think about crossing me.
Pluto: You know you can’t win.  You have a trail of slime behind you a mile wide.  I can smell it.
Saturn: No way—I’ve kept my past clean.  I am a person of integrity.
Pluto: I think you’re corrupt.  I’ll be watching you.  One false move and you’re out.

That was a view of Pluto obstructing Saturn.  But one can just as easily see Saturn obstructing Pluto:
Saturn: Pluto, I’ve noticed that you love intense experience.
Pluto: Yes, I do.  I like life on the edge.  I like passion.
Saturn: You can get pretty compulsive sometimes.
Pluto: I like the sensation of falling.  I like life pulling at me and I like pulling at others.
Saturn: You become addicted to things too easily.  You get lost in your compulsions and lose your good judgment.
Pluto: Did I ever have good judgment in the first place?  I have only my instincts to guide me.
Saturn: But you muddy your instincts when you involve yourself in addictions.
How can they guide you when you’re continually pulled back towards a substance or habit that makes the pain go away?
Pluto: I refuse to live in pain.  What do you suggest?
Saturn: Discipline.  Because addiction, while it promises to relieve pain in the short term, only amplifies it in the long term.  Eliminate your addictions.  Then we’ll talk.
Pluto: Not till I’m good and ready.
Saturn: You’ll probably have to hit bottom first, maybe alienate everyone around you and ruin your life.
Pluto: If the people around me don’t love me through this, maybe they were worth losing.
Saturn: I see—people are supposed to love you while you are free to abuse them because your life is so hard?  You’re such a baby.  And a victim.
Pluto: And you’re a hardass.  You only pretended to care about me.  Go away.

You see?  Both archetypes have their weak spots and this transit could well bring those weak spots out.

This transit of Pluto square Saturn lasts from November of 2009 through August of 2010.  Today’s post is just a taste of what Saturn and Pluto have in store for us.  I’ll write more about it as this transit goes on, but for now I’d like to leave you with a few interesting questions to ponder:

• In what areas of your life have you been using your role as an authority figure to avoid changing?
• In what ways have you become rigid, adhering to rules instead of flexibly responding to life’s challenges on a case-by-case basis?
• In what areas of your life does an addiction rule you and cause you to violate your own integrity—whether with yourself or with others?
• When’s the last time you lied to someone—or to yourself?  What were you protecting?

These are heavy questions.  But if you’re ready for the very foundation of your life to shift in order to change in truly deep ways for the better, this transit is perfect for you.

Yup, Pluto is showing up, right on schedule, to take out the garbage.  Today Pluto turns direct, ending his yearly backwards journey.  Pluto has traveled several degrees backwards and today turns his face forwards again.  He will now retrace forwards the same steps he made backwards during the last few months, bringing a death-and-rebirth experience for everyone who is having a Pluto transit this year.

This Is A Pivotal Day
If you are one of the millions of people having a Pluto transit this year, today may be pivotal for you.  Around April 4, you came to realize you were facing a big life-change and since then, you’ve been re-evaluating some the area of your life that’s changing.  You’ve been examining it and mulling it over.  Perhaps you’ve been researching it.  Basically, you’ve been asking yourself, “What is this part of me that wants to transform right now?  How have I lived this part of me in the past and what is it turning into for the future?”

Today (and I mean this loosely—it may happen as soon as 2 days before or as late as 2 days after today) is pivotal.  Today may be the day you realize your internal quest for understanding is over.  You’ve come to clarity.  You’ve recognized the change that needs to occur and you’re ready to implement what you’ve learned.  You can now gear up to act on that recognition, sometime in the next few months (between now and January of 2010).

“What is a Pluto transit like . . .”
A Pluto transit is distinct, because it feels like dying.  You may feel at times as if you are in meltdown and you don’t know what you are doing in the area of life (i.e. planet in your chart) that’s being affected.  Pluto is asking you to let go in this area, to let something die so that it can be reborn.  Pluto is asking you to search underneath the surface for the essence of this part of you.  And Pluto is demanding that you let go of the old ways, so the new ways can emerge, regardless of how uncomfortable (sometimes very uncomfortable!) that might be.

“. . . and how do I know when I’m having one?”
First of all, you know by feel.  If what I’ve described resonates for you, it’s likely you are having a Pluto transit.  (If it resonates, but only a little, you may be having a transit, but by a planet other than Pluto.)  Transits are almost always accompanied by real-world events, which are woven into your experience of the change.  Transits feel distinct when they are happening, and the sensation distinctly fades as they end.  When a transit is over, your preoccupation with its themes quickly fades as your attention becomes grabbed by a different transit.  Occasionally a person will have no major transits at all for a time period (weeks, say, or months), but that’s pretty rare.

If you don’t have your chart, or don’t know how to read your chart, you might want to order your own personal Astrology Chart Decoder.  This is a special tool I’ve invented that puts your chart’s details in English, instead of astrology symbols.  Your Decoder tells you where every planet in your chart is located:  the sign it’s in, the house it’s in and the exact degree it occupies.  When you’ve got your Decoder in front of you, check to see if you have anything at all in 0, 1, 2, or 3 degrees of Capricorn, Cancer, Aries or Libra.  If you do, you are definitely having a Pluto transit this year.  This would account for the feelings of meltdown.

“What do I do now?”
You can ponder on it and get into alignment with the change that’s happening.  This way you can take advantage of it while it’s happening, and not feel like a victim of it.  Transits are not fatalistic events that happen to us—they are our greater Selves reaching out into life and drawing toward us the events and experiences that will help (or force) us to grow beyond our old selves.  These changes are always the next thing you wanted to experience at the time and the more you regard them with appreciation, awe and a willingness to take them on, the better your experience will be.  Even at the 11th hour, you can turn around even the harshest transit into something that leaves you in a better place.

For more insight on a transit, you can schedule a reading of it, which will help you get very clear about what this change is that’s happening in your life, how to handle it and make it turn out well, how long it will last, how various phases of it will feel and (not least!) when it will be over.  You might have several changes going on at once and if you do, this could help distinguish one from another.  The best thing you can get out of a reading is how to align with the deeper meaning behind the surface of your changes and accept the gift Pluto is bringing you.

Pluto’s Gift
Pluto’s gift changes according to the planet it is transiting of course, but one theme always remains the same.  Pluto offers the knowledge of essence—the heart, the center of this piece of you, its essential nature.  Pluto does this by stripping away all that is not essential and shows you that you will be ok without all that stuff.  Pluto says, “you don’t need that garbage!” and takes it away before you are ready because, left to our own devices, we’re never ready.  That’s ok—Pluto will always show up eventually, to take out the garbage.

Art by Betelgeux.

The Federal Reserve Bank has been having a hell of a time since the beginning of 2008.  This is reflected in its astrology chart.  Pluto in the sky has come opposite its position in the Fed’s chart.  This is something that few human beings get to experience in their lifetime but which the Fed gets to experience because it’s over a hundred years old.

Every entity that comes into existence has a chart and the Fed is no exception.  I’m no expert in mundane astrology (that’s the branch devoted to world events, politics and the charts of leaders and nations) but the Fed fascinates me, so I thought I’d apply what I do know—which is the astrology of individual personality—to the Fed.  So what happens when I read the chart of the Fed as if it were a person?  It might go something like this:

Me:  Hello, Fed, how ya doing?
Fed:  Not so good in the last few years.  In fact, I feel like I’m in meltdown.
Me:  Yeah, I can understand why.  You are experiencing an opposition of Pluto to your natal Pluto.  And because your natal Pluto was already opposite your Sun, that means the transiting Pluto is conjuncting your Sun.  See?

Fed:  Not really, but go on.  What does it mean?
Me:  It’s a time for you to metamorphose into something better, from the core outward.  During this time you’re likely to feel a sense of uncertainty about who you are and why you’re here.  You’ll feel lost in the dark, out of control, a ship at sea without a compass.  During a time like this, your secrets are likely to come to the surface and be seen by everyone.  You’ll feel exposed and vulnerable.  You’ll be forced to let go of things that seemed essential but really are not.  It’s a time of death and rebirth, a time of shedding your skin.  The caterpillar you were is becoming the butterfly you could be.
Fed:  But what if I turn into something completely different?
Me:  You’d best be open to that possibility.  Your past ways of maintaining control are up for change and this is a time of testing for you.  What can you let go of and how gracefully can you do it?
Fed:  That sounds like a lot of work.  I’m pretty complex and change is hard.  What happens if I don’t want to change?
Me:  If you’re not willing to let go of the old ways and trust what you are becoming, this could be a pretty painful process.  Your natal Pluto is in Cancer, which is about emotional ties and the ways they can be used to control and manipulate.  Pluto in the sky today is in Capricorn, and he has a message for you.  He’s asking you to let go of inappropriate codependency and to instead embrace independence.
Fed:  What does that mean?
Me:  I’m saying that your dependence on the government to bail out the banks is not going to fly anymore.  You’re getting the whole nation deeper in debt—to ourselves and other nations—with your monetary policies which were created in the first place by wealthy people who wanted to stay wealthy at the expense of the common man.  It’s just not sustainable.
Fed:  But it’s worked this long.  And I resent your implication that I exist to prop up the rich!  This is America and wealth is available to anyone who wants to work for it.
Me:  Has it really worked?  Are these boom-and-bust cycles symptomatic of a healthy monetary system?  You keep overextending yourself in ways my financial advisor would tell me not to.  The FDIC has propped you up, but how much longer can that continue?
Fed:  But the nation’s economic structures depend on my health.  I need those periodic  infusions of money to keep going.
Me:  Exactly my point.  This Pluto thing you’re experiencing is showing you the ways you’ve become codependent and unable to stand on your own two feet.  Many of your banks have failed this year.  You need restructuring at least, perhaps even replacing.
Fed:  But I don’t want to die!
Me:  Maybe, if you’re willing to be flexible and start serving the actual needs of the people, instead of the comfort of a few, you can change instead of dying.
Fed:  This is scary.
Me:  Fortunately for you, your transition is mostly over.  What’s happening this month is just a small aftershock of events associated with your Pluto transit, which happened from January through November of 2008.
Fed:  Whew!  So, no worries?
Me:  Actually, yes-worries.  Pluto will make one more pass conjunct your Sun.  That will peak around November 10th or 11th this year.  October and November will likely be very challenging for you.  Sometimes illumination of a current transit comes when we look at the previous milestone in its larger cycle.  The last time Pluto transited your Sun and Pluto was in 1971.  You remember what happened then, don’t you?
Fed:  Um, what?
Me:  Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard.  Without gold as an anchor, inflation went through the roof.  You’ve been trying to keep your balance ever since, without an anchor.
Fed:  What can I do?
Me:  Learn from it.  Actually change.  From now through November is the chance to make it better, not worse.  Are you up for that?  Are you willing to see the truth of it if your monetary policies are just not standing the test of time?  Are you willing to try what does work, instead of making adjustments to keep bad policies in place?
Fed:  I honestly don’t know.
Me:  I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

The Fed didn’t like this news very much.  Somehow I get the idea that the Fed is not very personal-growth oriented.  The good news is that when things get bad enough to grab attention, that’s when change can begin.  The Fed is unwell—perhaps the events of 2008 and 2009 are exactly what is needed to bring this country back to financial health.

For interesting background on this, see:
Financial Reform to Address Systemic Risk
(speech by Ben Bernanke, March 2009)
Friedman Scandal Illustrates Need For Federal Reserve Reform
(article in NY Libertarian Examiner, May 2009)
Obama’s Regulatory Reform Removes The Punchbowl From The Fed
(financial astrology blogpost on wallstreetweather.com, June 2009)
August 15, 1971: Inflation Unleashed
(explanation of the woes of fiat currency on www.financialsense.com)