Pluto enters Capricorn

At 3:34 PM, AEDT on 26 January 2008, Pluto moved out of Sagittarius and into Capricorn. It was last in Capricorn in the years 1762-1778, and last changed signs (from Scorpio to Sagittarius) in 1995.

I have cast a chart for the ingress moment, at Melbourne, but with natural angles. Notable patterns in this chart are:
(1) Jupiter-Saturn trine in earth
(2) Mercury-Neptune conjunction, trine Mars in air
(3) Stellium of Sun, Chiron, Neptune, Mercury (and North Node) in Aquarius
(4) Moon-Uranus opposition

Before trying to see what this may mean, let us first review previous ingress charts for Pluto and compare them to the events that took place in their aftermath.

Pluto’s ingress into Virgo took place at 4:23 PM AEST on October 20, 1956. Symbolizing the entire sixties generation, this chart shows a grand cross in fixed signs involving a Moon-Neptune opposition and a Chiron-Uranus opposition. Mars is opposite Venus, and Saturn is exactly square Pluto. This is suggestive of the ecological activism, esoteric mysticism and perhaps the strong desire for escape that fuelled the psychedelic movement throughout the decade. The Mars-Venus opposition evokes a potent sexual tension throughout the period, and the square of Saturn to Pluto (especially with Saturn in Sagittarius) may represent the struggle for human rights and law reform.

The Libra ingress took place at 4:30 PM AEST on October 5, 1971. This chart is interesting because of the extraordinarily airy emphasis. Libra itself contains a stellium of Pluto, Mercury, Sun, Uranus and Venus. The close Sun-Uranus conjunction in Libra trines Mars in Aquarius, and Saturn in Gemini. The Aries Moon opposes Venus, and the Jupiter-Netune conjunction in early Sagittarius sextiles Pluto. I see this as a sort of turning point or re-balancing of the power between opposing sides of conflict. A fundamental will to restore fairness in all dealings between groups. The seventies was a period notable for the rise of feminism and gay rights, as well as the advent of the most notable work of philosophy in the area of justice since the utilitarian writings of Mill: John Rawls’ Justice as Fairness. The swashbuckling escapades of space-age science-fiction as portrayed by the Star Wars series brought the real-world binary division of the Cold War into archetypal resonance with the imagery of two great powers battling for supremacy in the cosmos. Despite the Libran penchant for peace, the Aquarian Mars trine Uranus, together with the Sun-Uranus conjunction, correlated with militancy amongst those who felt unfairly dealt with, whether they were nationalists in Northern Ireland, trade unionists in Britain or ideological radicals in South-East Asia and the Middle East. The oil crises of 1973 and 1979 reinforced the reality of the way power could see-saw between different interests depending on their willingness to achieve a diplomatic compromise.

Pluto entered Scorpio at 8:41 AM AEDT on 6 November 1983. This chart also has a stellium, this time in Scorpio (Pluto, Saturn, Sun, Mercury and Moon). Jupiter conjoins Uranus in Sagittarius, and a Mars-Venus conjunction in late Virgo squares Neptune. The heavy Scorpio stellium at a new Moon was perhaps a warning of a new era in matters of sexual and financial exchange, one tinged with themes of responsibility and death of old ways. AIDS and the transformation of attitudes to sexual behaviour that it brought in its wake, although first described in 1981, did not become a widespread epidemiological concern until around 1984. A harder-edged, less forgiving approach to financial management in the business and corporate worlds became noticeable as market liberalisation and privatisation of state assets swept through western capiltalist economies, spearheaded by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. A new level of development and popular availability of microcomputers took off in the early 1980s and was perhaps correlated with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, preset at this ingress. The ideological struggle of the previous decades finally resolved itself in the death-throes of the communist states in Europe and the triumphant merging of the two alienated halves of the continent, as if in a chain of events in an unstoppable biological reflex. By the time Pluto left Scorpio and entered Sagittarius in 1995, the political landscape was utterly transformed.

Entering Sagittarius at 9:52 PM AEDT on 17 January 1995, Pluto was in conjunction with Jupiter and Venus, and square Mars and Saturn. The Sun was conjunct Uranus and Neptune and opposite the Moon. Two major developments took place in the common understanding of power and the collective will during the Pluto in Sagittarius era. Firstly, there was sense that moral hypocrisy had reached new levels. Western political leaders developed a sense of incorrigible arrogance and infallible righteousness that persisted in the face of widespread popular knowledge of evidence that contradicted their claims. Starting with the shenanigans surrounding the Clinton impeachment in the US, and continuing through the manifestly undemocratic 2000 US Presidential election, the inadequately invesitigated 9/11 events and the subsequent manufacture of lies and deceptions leading up to the invasion of Iraq, which still continues to this day, it was the sheer breathtaking scale of the audacity of judicial and political corruption that was suggestive of the workings of Pluto in Sagittarius. I associate this development with the T-square involving Mars, Saturn and Jupiter-Pluto.

The second major development was the dawning understanding of the power of global networks, whether instantiated through the internet, the common atmospheric perturbations of climate change, or the giant casino of global capital exchange and speculation. I associate this aspect with the Sun-Uranus-Neptune conjunction in late Capricorn. The difficulty with such pan-global structures, or, moreover, their essential characteristic, is that they are decentralised, and therefore lack leadership or management hierarchies. And it is precisely this idea that acts as a perfect segue into the Pluto in Capricorn era.

For it is during the next 16 years that the reality of the pan-global networks and communities and interdependencies will no longer be doubted; not only will it be the everyday reality for everyone on the planet, it will require leadership and reponsibility to maintain it and to ensure its ongoing viability. There will ensue a transformation of what it means to be in an executive position. To lead will no longer be synonymous with capitalistic, exploitative and wasteful enterprise, for this notion of leadership dies with the deep acceptance of limits to our existence. Rather, leadership will be more associated with the development of a sense of responsibility to contribute to the public good, but in a manner that is flexible to change, that is willing to forge new paths, to try alternative courses of action. Pragmatic adoption of what works and what is sustainable will be the order of the day. Older hierarchical structures depending solely on values of deference and respect of authority for authority’s sake will not survive, because they have become too crystallised to respond to the rapidity of the changes affecting our globalised systems. Ultimately a new sense of personal autonomy and citizenship will emerge, one which may strip away the power of nationalism and tribalism, but promote the power of individual achievement, duty and reward.

I think the emphasis in both Capricorn and Aquarius bears out these themes. The Jupiter-Saturn trine in earth is suggestive of future growth and prosperity being brought about by means of restriction or shrinkage, perhaps shortage. The Mercury-Neptune conjunction in Aquarius is redolent of the new faith in collective problem-solving, but also perhaps the fraud and deception that may emerge in such global efforts as carbon-trading and emissions reduction. Trine Mars, this Mercury may also symbolize a quantum leap in speed and complexity of communications, taking connectivity in the collective to a new level.
With Venus conjunct Pluto, and Jupiter not far off, all in Capricorn, perhaps the most immediate and obvious issue for everyone in the next few years is the diminishing pool of wealth and resources available for the members of our species to survive. Throughout the next 16 years, it is the duties that we individually shoulder towards our overpopulated and fouled environmental matrix, and the actions we take to discharge these, that will determine how we deal with the shifts of collective will during this time.