When Pluto goes retrograde, and where Pluto goes retrograde in one’s chart is where, over the course of the next six months, there is a deep dive into the unconscious. This is because this specific Pluto retrograde is hanging out with two other slow planets Jupiter (insight and learning and opportunity) and Saturn (focus, hard work, facing the tough stuff with strength). I guess it’s like a ‘consciousness gang’ because they are not far from each other this year until the end of the year, when Jupiter starts to move out in front because it is the fastest moving of all of them. 2020 is one of those now or never years where everything, and, I mean everything is turned inside out, upside down, thrown up in the air and on its head.
A lot of people have asked ‘why’ this happened. There are lots of explanations, the planet is oversaturated, the markets were due for a change, but what specific things. One explanation might be this:
At the beginning of 2020, and particularly as we moved into early February, an overabundance of really slow moving planets were sitting too close together in Capricorn (Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, Mars, and joining by the Moon on the 17th of February — creating a ‘lop sided’ planetary sky. This is what happens when a heavier load is found on one end of the see-saw we find in playgrounds. That weight was on the South Node (Dragon’s tail) configuration in the sky. There are two points in the sky, the North and South Node, often referred to as the Dragon’s head and tail and they relate to the eclipses and the movement of the Moon. Those points come around every 19 or so years creating eclipses, which intensify energies. The Dragon Head and Tail (North and South Lunar Nodes) are special points of power relating to the Moon’s movement and the Moon is a fast-moving body. The Moon is related to the cosmos — the people of the world — and there was the pile up on one end of that cosmic see saw, which happened to congregate on those points further exacerbating the likelihood of some terrible imbalance, but who knew? The overload in the sign of Capricorn, contraction, was just too tight and too heavy a load on one end of that cosmic see-saw and the walls came tumbling down.
This year is about a world and lives that were out of balance and sitting too heavily on one end of what we called reality. At this writing our realities have changed- much like a surprise ending in an episode of the Twilight Zone.
What is important, is we now have the time needed to discover our true natures or essences. Who we were before this crisis started is very different than who we are becoming as individuals or as a collective, right? The lives we knew at the end of 2019 no longer exist. Time has allowed both industries and individuals to change their habits, their directions, their values and their thinking processes. This time we’ve been given offers and opportunities to carve out more meaningful existences requiring certain sacrifices around old thinking patterns. (Pluto is part of this topsy turvy patterns and requires sacrifices for any sort of new thinking to take place).
This is a fascinating year filled with far more retrogrades than usual. The word ‘retrograde’ often sends chills up peoples’ spines. That is too bad, because retrograde periods, are about reviewing our lives and our directions. This is an unusual year because between May and June Venus (values and love) is retrograde (more on that in May forecasts or if you have our annual Starcycles Cheat Sheet you can see them clearly laid out and color coded) and from September to November, Mars, the planet of motivation and action, is also retrograde.
Then there are the standard Mercury retrograde periods, one of which just ended in March and another coming in July and then again in October, which are ‘stop and think’ periods of time. The big idea is that last week’s Pluto retrograde near Saturn and Jupiter makes this period more impacting. This is extremely unusual.
It is hard, today, to identify what that means for me, personally, but I do know I have a hankering to write something different, something that is off my beaten track or move into a yet undiscovered new direction. Maybe I want to make my astrology more personal and less technical. Maybe I want to design an online course of study or an online manual for something that is fun. I don’t know. I am trying on various ideas and exploring the world out there to see if anything inspires me.
For anyone with Taurus Sun or Taurus rising this month, the New Moon with Pluto, Saturn and Jupiter all in your 9th house as well, there are insights regarding your philosophy of life, opportunities for learning at higher levels (i.e. raise your bar of information), for writing, publishing, training online, or consulting or even researching foreign affairs and getting clear about legal matters that should clear up by year end.
And this week, Mercury the thinking and problem-solving planet are very active. On Tuesday, Mercury and Saturn, get together asking us to clean up our bills, those unfinished final papers, or those pieces of paper on our desks that need organizing. As the week continues, Mercury connects with Uranus, a livelier mental energy and you’ll be surprised to see how your mind comes up with alternate solutions and solving problems in a unique way that is a little unorthodox. Unorthodox methods aren’t always bad. And necessity is the mother of invention.
Remember, there are lots of fixed signs in the sky this week. Fixity is good for sticking to something like finishing a project you’ve been working on, but fixed energy is stubborn and can put heels down stubbornly refusing to change or compromise. These are the folks that you can’t change the furniture on. You tell them over the course of a few days that you are going to do that, repeating it regularly, until they think it is their idea? Then they are okay with that change. It’s not what we do, it is how we communicate it.
There is more receptivity with fixed energies this week because they are lined up with Uranus, the cosmic catalyst, shown as The Tower in the Tarot. This energy makes for a week of edgy energies offering the ability to change routines, diets and day to day habits willingly because the increasing boredom is no longer an option. Comfort zones are important for fixed sign energies, but comfort zones can get tedious and people can get lazy when it gets to be the same old, same old each day. So how can you change things up right now?
With Uranus and the Sun together, you can do things like taking that old bucket and making it a planter (because you are home) and repot some plants, take your old garden furniture and clean it up for summer, take your wardrobe, discard stuff that is really worn, and put together some new outfits with the same items. You can paint your walls or a wall in your home to a brighter more fun color, or, if you are like me, you can take the paintings you have on your walls and change them around — it gives an entirely new look to your living space.
When the Sun travels through Taurus we need beauty or pleasing visuals around us. I used to dye light colored cotton items that were worn to brighter fun colors when they were looking like they looked like they were at the end of their usefulness. The color changes were miraculous and easy (another trick my mother taught me). For those of you needing to learn better skills, this is a perfect time to go on YouTube and discover how to do the things you always wanted to learn to do. In other words, this is a perfect time for self-directed learning where we all have the rare opportunity of opening new learning channels in our brains and building new pathways.
I always write these forecasts ahead of time and when I was writing this, I had just gotten word from our county that we were locked down until May 8, 2020 and so I thought, okay, by the time the month ends, we will all be needing something to shift our energies around — and I have complete faith that this time away from the craziness of our formerly fast paced world is perfect for self-examining our lives and making important decisions for effecting those changes. My bet is that a whole lot of people will not go back to their old lives. Things have changed. I know I have. Have you?
