Pluto in Capricorn Tag

September 21, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

One Moment in Time—Libra New Moon—September 25th.

A slow, attentive light settles on heather-clad hilltops. In steep ravines that slice the coastline into restless waters of the Atlantic, gilded leaves flutter on the invisible breath of autumn winds. This is the month of changing seasons and changing guardians.

The Sun enters Libra on September 23^rd. As it moves over the equator, day and night are equal. This is the midpoint of the zodiacal round, representing the seasonal shift that accompanies endings, and beginnings. In the metaphorical language of astrology, the Libran part of our own birth chart will be illuminated for the next month as we practice and perfect the art of relating to others in an uncertain world. Libra is symbolised by a pair of balancing scales. For so many of us, balance is something we may wistfully talk about when the rhythm of our days begins to gyrate, scattering the weight of worry like a mantle over our minds. The souls of the dead were weighed against the Feather of Truth by the ancient Egyptians, and this month, for many of us, there will be a sense of arriving at a crossroads of a situation that requires sound judgement and careful consideration. Libra is an air sign, and the element of air may make us feel unsettled, unsheltered, and ungrounded. At this time of the Equinox, as the seasons shift, we may feel we need more rest, foods that support our digestion. In Ayurveda, autumn is the vata season, a time to enjoy grounding, warming soups, or hearty casseroles.

October may feel disorientating as Mercury moves direct on October 2^nd, followed by Pluto direct on October 8^th and Saturn on October 23^rd, but it will be the Mars Retrograde cycle that begins on October 30^th that might test our courage and resilience. When Mars moves Retrograde, the primitive shadowy nature of Mars may erupt on the global stage and in our own relationships as we project our aggression or thwarted desires outwards. Mars represents our instinctual will to live, our primal rage. Mars serves the individual rather than the collective, and our battle may be an intensely private, interior campaign as we practice self-mastery and draw deeply on our inner strength.

Mars Retrograde in Gemini coincided with the financial crisis of the credit crunch and recession of 2007-08 as Pluto entered Capricorn, a poultice that has drawn to the surface all that festers in big business and hierarchical social structures. This sense of dissolution will continue, peaking with the Saturn/Neptune conjunction in Aries in 2025-26.

The Libran New Moon on September 25^th arrives with charm and grace, offers the promise of compromise as both Mercury and Venus, both in discerning Virgo nestle close to the New Moon this month. Amorphorous Neptune may cloud our sound judgement, or soften our gaze as we practice radical empathy and compassion. The Moon is invisible when she’s new, but she carries potent unseen energy if we have the courage to step back into balance, to find that still point of silence at the Centrepoint of our heart.

The Full Moon on October 9^th brings the raw vitality and verve of Aries to what we have imagined or initiated at the New Libran Moon. We hold the tension of opposites with Aries (self) and Libra (other). This Full Moon will reflect the state of our relationships. The bonds of love and loyalty that bind. The untethered ambiguity of those casual encounters that so easily tilt and topple. Research links happy committed relationship to lower stress levels, better immune function, and lower mortality rates, as oxytocin and vasopressin activate parts of the brain associated with calm, even the suppression of anxiety and pain.

At this time when relationships between nations are strained, President Putin threatens nuclear retaliation and a partial mobilisation of Russia, and Liz Truss’s rampant ideological “trickle-down economics” bolster the fortunes of the rich and powerful, the buttress of those relationships that offer comfort and belonging become even more important.

“Intimacy is a difficult art,” Virginia Woolf once said.

For some, this will be the moment in time when we harvest all the thoughts and emotions that have brought us to a place of ending. This will be a time of departure from a relationship that for far too long has provided scant nourishment. For others, this may be the time of our heart’s delight as the revitalising fire of passion draws us to a deeper, more soul-ful, intimacy.

Intimacy is a difficult art in a world where technology replaces the warmth of human encounter. Voyeuristic TV series like Married at First Sight portray a lonely absence of intimacy, a hungry urgency to find shelter for the soul. In a culture so focused on measurables and certainties, we may find the candlelit depth and substance of intimacy a difficult art. Yet within every human heart is a longing to be cherished and to be seen.

Psychologist Sue Johnson writes, “this drive to emotionally attach—to find someone to whom we can turn and say ‘Hold me tight’—is wired into our genes and our bodies. It is as basic to life, health, and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex. We need emotional attachments with a few irreplaceable others to be physically and mentally healthy—to survive.”

The Sun, the symbol of our creative self-expression, is said to be in its fall in Libra implying that a perpetual state of balance is impossible to achieve, as we continually re-create ourselves amidst the complexities of our relationships and metastasise the events that are unfolding in the world right now. Balance is as capricious as the patterns of neuronal firing in our brains, as fleeting as our emotionally charged perceptions of the world around us. It will be the small gestures of love and kindness, the careful harnessing of our untamed thoughts, the brave reimagining of how this world could be that keep us open-hearted and soul-directed at this moment in time.

Please get in touch if you would like a private astrology consultation: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

February 13, 2022 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

Red White and Blue—Reimagining America —As Pluto Returns.

And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us—Pablo Neruda.

Few of us go willingly into the kind of initiation that accompanies a Pluto transit. When Pluto stirs up all that has fermented, all that has been banished in the dark basement of our psyches, we emerge irrevocably changed.

When Pluto slowly moves across the horoscopes of nations, what has been collectively repressed, conveniently ignored, rises to the surface.

Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 as the fissures in financial systems widened and the blight in governments exposed disturbing division and misuse of power. As Pluto razes down façades with relentless ruthlessness, it also regenerates, and in Capricorn this means governments, police, corporations, infrastructures.

As Leonard Cohen released his prophetic single, You Want It Darker in the September of 2016, Pluto and Jupiter were forming a square that intensified in January 2020 by conjunction. Neptune, purveyor of contagion, illusion, deception, and deceit, slipped in behind the green curtain, a making a slippery trine to Mercury in the US birth chart. The star-spangled banner fluttered in the winds of change.

Pluto’s opposition to Mercury in America’s birth chart (2017-24) reminds us that the foundations of The Land of the Free are dug deep into the black earth of genocide, slavery, and appalling exploitation of the natural world. Mercury presides over communication, intelligence, propaganda, paranoia, media, and travel. Old certainties are unmoored.

This month, America experiences its first Pluto Return (February 22^nd) as Pluto circles back to 27° Capricorn, returning to the place it started from on July 4^th, 1776 when the nation of America was born. Pluto moves slowly through the darkness of outer space, so we’re collectively steeped in Pluto’s darkness which permeates American culture well into the 2040s.

A Collective meeting with Fate.

Mercury, Venus, and Mars escort Pluto this month, accentuating the caution, contraction and discipline that has been attributed to the archetype of Capricorn, a sign ruled by frugal Saturn.

Banners of “freedom” flutter alongside boarded-up shops that offer cold comfort to the homeless as howling ghosts of debt haunt governments and the millions who have lost jobs and homes during the pandemic. As the rich continue to shore up colossal gains and coal factories continue to feed the illusionary bitcoin industry, grandiose Jupiter sails nonchalantly through the heavens, trailing promises of salvation.

Jupiter meets nebulous Neptune in early April, an obtuse union that inflates blind faith and optimism, engorges debt balloons that will explode as Jupiter moves into heated Aries in early May.

The triple conjunction of Venus, Mars and Pluto herald a sobering warning, perhaps a small crack in our collective denial, as Pluto returns to 27° Capricorn three times this year, (July and December.) This is a year that many believe is a make-or-painful-break year for Joe Biden as Pluto opposes his 8^th house Jupiter. Pluto also is in a tense T-square to Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Libra Sun/Aries Moon opposition.

As an impending catastrophe in Ukraine dominates mainstream media, the Moon makes her monthly round, ripening to fullness on February 16th in the sign of Leo.

Weeks of negotiation show no signs of progress and now as embassies hasten to withdraw their staff, and nations urge citizens to leave as Venus (diplomacy) and Mars (war) descend into Pluto’s blackness. Psychologist, Terry Real reminds us, “under patriarchy, you can be connected, or you can be powerful, but you can’t be both at the same time because power is power over, not power with, it is dominance. So, if you move into power, you lose connection.”

On March 6^th Venus and Mars move into Aquarius, activating the degree of the Saturn/Jupiter conjunction of December 21^st 2020, a union that symbolised the dawning of a new era.
Venus and Mars make a tense square to President Putin’s Venus in Scorpio from March 17th-23rd, energising his four Libran planets.

In our highly individuated narcissistic culture, we may ask what values are being unearthed… equality, liberty, diversity, or McCarthyism, Jim Crow, an idealised Camelot? As Pluto’s gravitational force dredges up the grisly truths that lie buried under streets and skyscrapers, America journeys down into the Underworld to be scooped out, humbled, reimagined and reborn. What do the colours of the American flag symbolise now as the earth shudders beneath our feet?

Pluto will be in Aquarius from 2024 to 2044 as we begin to make reparations for historic injustices and re-image a world where exploitation of people, animals and nature will be relegated to his-story and we (hopefully) begin to address the collective grief and trauma that defines the experience of so many people whose lives are still curtailed by inequality and blatant injustice.

The first Industrial Revolution was under way as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Herschel “discovered” Uranus, that planet associated with breakthroughs and revolution as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Captain Cook and William Bligh searched for new consumables in southern lands as Pluto’s passage through Aquarius marked the beginning of the climate crisis and a soulless sense of alienation and loneliness that now threatens our survival as a species.

Carl Jung used the word, Shadow to describe the repressed, denied aspects of our lives, and that the Shadow doesn’t lie languidly, waiting to be redeemed, it regresses, becomes scaled, archaic, clawed. It rattles through our homes, our streets and our nations. It emerges as school shootings, rape, gang violence, and suicide filmed on social media platforms. It screeches as mountains are gouged out for metals and coal, as oceans are scraped empty of fish, and underground creatures are bulldozed to make way for yet another mall or motel. It emerges in the sanctioned bloodletting of war, the slaughter of nameless innocents.

As we all experience the potent alchemy that strips us of our excess as we travel the via negativa, the road through the depths that leads us to what mythologist Michael Meade calls dark wisdom, may we trust Pluto’s power to pull from our souls what is most authentic and loving. May we transform our suffering into wisdom and compassion. May the monuments that we erect to our power and importance, topple.

Rilke speaks to the soul muscle and faith we all need in our grief-phobic, death-denying culture.

“…but the darkness pulls in everything: shapes and fires, animals and myself, how easily it gathers them—powers and people. And it is possible a great energy is moving near me. I have faith in nights.”

Please get in touch if you would like to book an astrology consultation or to find out more about webinars in 2022: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

August 18, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Bolt from the Blue—Full Moon in Aquarius—August 22nd

We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world—Gabor Maté.

Dew-spangled spiderwebs glisten from the hedgerows. The rosehips and blackberries have ripened, and burnished bracken flecked with shocks of gold covers the hillsides. As the Sun melts across the dome of the horizon, Jupiter, a dazzling bright star, and a primrose yellow Saturn, accompany the graceful presence of a pregnant Moon.

This August Full Moon in the humanitarian sign of Aquarius falls at the powerful 29^th degree, which carries a charge of energy and seems to define the intensity and changeability of our feelings and circumstances. Aquarius like all astrological signs, draws deeply from the minds that created the world millennia ago.

For thousands of years, The Water Bearer has been identified with the invigorating waters that bring renewal and hope from Heaven. Now the waters have become airwaves and modern minds have assigned two rulers to Aquarius: Saturn, the autocratic authority figure, and Uranus, a planet that could have been more aptly named as Prometheus, the Trickster Titan who dared to steal fire from the gods—and paid the price.

This lunation is charged with the unexpected as she gathers in Jupiter’s overblown, expansive energy. Jupiter in Aquarius is moving Retrograde (between June 20^th and October 17^th) amplifying the shadowy side of Aquarius—misuse of science and technology, fanaticism; the callous crushing of individual freedom and human rights under the boot heel of ideology or in the “interests of public safety”. This Full Moon symbolises our collective trauma, our private heart ache; the loss of autonomy as the impending heat death of our earth home overshadows humanity.

In Kabul, fear and grief hang heavy over the city as lives are obliterated, women raped and beaten into silent submission.

We are still in the eye of the storm, a dark night of the soul as Pluto moves through Capricorn and the dark stain of hardline patriarchal power continues to infuse our lives. Pluto, god of the Underworld who abducted and raped Persephone in Greek myth, squares Eris, chthonic Goddess who holds the stories of countless women silenced and forgotten. The so-called witches and whores. The unacknowledged healers and midwives. Those who made bold bids for freedom and justice. Those who paid the price with their lives.

As the wheel of his-story turns, the disorientating Uranus/Saturn square may be making its presence felt in discord in those personal relationships that ache to stretch and grow beyond the silences and painful stasis. The energy of this capricious square has unsettled financial markets, destabilised economic structures, jarred us from a sense of complacency as the climate crisis blazes into our awareness with increasing urgency.

Uranus arrives like a bolt from the blue, shattering our innocent illusions, upturning those structures that are ripe for change. Saturn at best brings stability and structure, and at worst contracts, concretises, mires us in fear.

Richard Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche, writes, “Our time is pervaded by a great paradox. On the one hand, we see signs of an unprecedented level of engaged global awareness, moral sensitivity to the human and non-human community, psychological self-awareness, and spiritually informed philosophical pluralism. On the other hand, we confront the most critical, and in some respects catastrophic, state of the Earth in human history. Both these conditions have emerged directly from the modern age, whose light and shadow consequences now affect every part of the planet.”

Uranus begins to switch back and will move Retrograde on August 20^th (14° Taurus) and will move direct on January 18^th 2022 at 10° of the same sign as we respond to the external events in our lives. Mercury, god of communication, and Mars, god of war, make a harmonious trine to this unpredictable planet, offering at best new possibilities, new information, and the impetus to take the initiative. If used unconsciously, carelessly, this energy takes on a speedy trajectory prompting reactivity, sudden decisions, painful words that twist in mid-air and harpoon our hearts.

Mercury meets Mars again on October 9^th in Libra and November 10^th in Scorpio. The current meeting is in the discerning sign of Virgo, which can have a waspish quality if not moderated by compassionate listening and some thought about how our words will land. “I always say that if people’s physical appearance matched their emotional age, human behaviour would be a lot easier to understand,” writes Gabor Maté.

Virgo also presides over our health—what we ingest into our bodies and our minds. As we remain rooted in the essentials of what matters, may we be rooted, in “the life of significant soil” as T.S Eliot reminds us in Four Quartets.

Poet and novelist, Ben Okri writes, “bad things will happen, and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So, taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is Life too. It is truth. But it will pass, and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.”

This Full Moon will reflect the state of our relationships. The bonds of love and loyalty that nourish us. The untethered ambiguity of those casual encounters that so easily tilt and topple. Tsoknyi Rinpoche writes so beautifully, “Every time you connect, a little bit more clarity stays around the love, a little bit more space opens up around it. Your mind becomes clearer. You experience expanded possibilities.”

We can discover the Miracle in the suffering, we can taste the strange honey in the bitterness of our grief as we feel what needs to be felt—in the light and the beauty of this Full Moon.

Love Apples—Celebrating the Sacred Feminine in Astrology and in Fairy Tale—Saturday 25^th September 2021—14.30 BST.

Feast of Fairy Tale and Sky Stories—Take 90 minutes just for you.

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning”―Gloria Steinem.

This is a time of seasonal change and perhaps a time of profound change or challenge in our own lives. As Hope unfurls her bright wings to settle upon new green shoots in the south, or a shimmering spiral of golden leaves here in the North, let’s get together to discover the practical wisdom of fairy tales, and the ancient messages encoded in the language of astrology.

Together let’s dream, imagine, plan―as we encounter feisty heroines, narcissistic stepmothers, poisoned red apples, and apples of pure gold.

Together we can celebrate the sisterhood of kindness and radical strength of empathy as we meet at this time of trial or celebration in our own personal journey.

Payment is £40 via PayPal. Discounts are available, if your income has been affected by the pandemic so do please get in touch. Everyone is very welcome. I will send you payment details if you e-mail me at ingrid@trueheartwork.com to book your place on the day. If you can’t join us, I’ll send you a recording to savour later.

With Love,

Ingrid.

April 19, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Practical Magic—Sun in Taurus—April 19th-May 21st.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions, he had money as well—Margaret Thatcher.

Money, digital currencies, bright shiny skyscrapers, land— wild, or tamed by industrial farming—are yoked to neck of The Bull.

As the Sun enters Taurus this month, this thing we call “money” calls our attention to what we value, to the money we have, or the money we long for. For most of us, our relationship with money is an emotional one, marked by tawdry secrets, cautionary tales, sleepless nights, and magical thinking. As the Sun moves into earthy Taurus, joined by Mercury and Venus, we’re reminded of the power of practical magic to alter the state of the material world. Magical thinking has been demoted to a response to acute stress and uncertainty: the lucky charms carried in the pockets of young men going off to war, the tiny talismans, rituals that come with the unshakeable belief that we can win the match, or the lottery. Author, Julia Cameron suggests in Faith and Will: Weathering the Storms in our Spiritual Lives, that we ask Higher Power to help us with our finances. This month, we pray, perform a ritual, light a candle, use our will to add a dollop of magical thinking to the mundane, as the winds of change scrape against all we thought was safe and sure.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence in her shoe… money makes the world go around and silver sixpences have morphed into cryptocurrency, symbolised by the seven-year transit of Uranus through Taurus, (2018-2026.) Uranus in Taurus has highlighted the climate crisis and accelerated the power-hungry cryptocurrency bull run which leaves such a heavy carbon footprint. China is now minting its own digital cash, “in a re-imagination of money that could shake a pillar of American power,” writes James T. Areddy in the Wall Street Journal. As Uranus shakes and shatters Taurean ground, this archetypal force of chaos and disruption reminds us that we are standing on the rim of the widening gyre between rich and poor. That even wealthy Samaritans with the best intentions can lose it all in what Joan Didion calls this “ordinary instant”. That for most of us there is no settling feeling of security when work is patchy; that money and a gig economy are incompatible bedfellows.

All through 2021, the Saturn/Uranus square will stir up the sediment of social inequality as the rich practice the art of elegant economics and swathes of homeless continue to forage on scraps and shelter beneath flimsy roofs of plastic. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction square Eris of 2020 continues to affect the lives of millions of people who don’t have the luxury of resting in bed as they recover from Covid. US President Joe Biden, who has a pragmatic earthy Taurus Moon, says, “don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” For those who live on the verges of society, there are no budgets. Just a continued search for a warm place to spread a strip of cardboard; perhaps a few silver coins to buy something to eat.

Money has no power of its own according to “Money Lady”, financial advisor and millionaire Suze Orman who says, “Self–worth equals net worth.” She links money with internal power. “You alone are the power source. You are the one who makes the choices to spend money, to save money, to borrow money… money is an amazing teacher; what you choose to do with money shows whether you are truly powerful or powerless.” Her words carry a potency that has brought her riches and fame. Yet for most of us, it’s the personal powerlessness that chafes and scrapes. Emma Mitchell writes in A Spell in the Wild, “late capitalism is not a meritocracy. We do not do well in life simply because we show up or try hard to be clever or well-behaved or good. Most often, people succeed because of the financial and institutional networks that sit behind them. From private education to parents who know important people in an industry to being able to afford property, to living in affluent areas with better health outcomes.”

The Age of Taurus (4,000-2,000 BCE) coincided with the prosperous river civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia; and for eons, the Bull and the Cow have been associated with wealth, with the flooding of the great rivers, the rich black sediments of the earth. Taurus, despite its association with the muscular bull, is associated with “the feminine”, which has been denigrated, distorted, disowned for thousands of years. Yet she is still there in the sharp green scent of green growing things, in the soft contours of the land, the artists brush that sweeps turquoise and violet across the tangerine skies at sunset. We know her indomitable presence that emerges in the daisies that turn their faces to the sun from cracks in the pavements, in sluggish city rivers filled with plastic, in filthy alleyways strewn with syringes and layered with human detritus where bright yellow dandelions grow.

Accompanying our global rite of passage, Pluto moves through Capricorn, (2008-2023) intensifying and complicating matters of the physical world, highlighting the “masculine” qualities that we glorify in our culture. Pluto turns Retrograde on April 27^th, and this retrograde journey lasts five months until Pluto stations direct on October 6^th . Retrogrades can feel disruptive especially if Pluto moves over planets and angles in our own birth chart. The intense energy of Pluto may compress and pulverise our tenuous relationship with what we grasp too tightly. Pluto destroys those things that have outlived their purpose; those things than no longer serve the evolution of the whole. As Pluto’s raw power activates our own birth chart, we finalise unfinished business, eliminate and end those things that must be ended, and we contain our own resilience, draw deep on our own rescources.

Expansive Jupiter dips into the dazzling and confusing waters of Pisces on May 13^th-July 28^th, and will return there for most of 2022, amplifying Piscean themes of compassion and suffering, illusion, and delusion. This is the realm of long-distance travel, higher learning, pharmaceuticals, High Hopes, and Grand Designs. Jupiter turns Retrograde on June 20^th, moving “backwards” through the cosmos till October 17^th (22° Aquarius) and will eventually join Neptune in Pisces in May 2022. Expect a sharp undertow that draws us back to those things that matter most in our lives right now as we continue to live amidst a global pandemic, economic recession, and the harsh reality of the climate crisis. Naturalist, John Muir wrote “everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” As we are propelled from the comfort of the old, we may need to borrow the wisdom of the indigenous Americans—only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.

As we face into the reality of many more years of mask-wearing, curtailed freedom, and economic thrift, may we discover that our health is our wealth, that there are diamonds in the dust of loss, and that good intentions are magical resources.

Please connect with me directly if you would like an astrology consultation: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

November 9, 2016 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

I’m Still Standing

“Donald Trump is the best live performer who doesn’t sing and doesn’t play a musical instrument,” Sir Elton John once quipped.

He’s promised Brexit Plus Plus Plus. He’s promised to Make America Great Again. He’s the man in the golden jet who will run Apprentice America like a business.

The Power Base of the world is slipping and protectionism and nationalism are sandbags against the rising tide. The reality TV US Presidential Election campaign and Donald Trump’s election as President may have come as a shock to many though “it’s written in the stars”. As Pluto moves through the sign of Capricorn (2008 to 2024) expect to be confronted with all those things we have ignored, disowned in our smiley- face-have-a-nice-day-consciousness. Any thing that has outlived its purpose, is rotten, in need of amputating will be irrevocably destroyed—within those megalithic bastions of Power in our governments and in big business, in our personal lives and in the dynamics of our relationships.

trump The last time Pluto was in Capricorn, the American colonies rejected the British Monarchy and declared themselves independent of Great Britain by taking up arms and revolting (1765 to 1783 ) declaring that all men are created equal and that they have the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It’s the child-like pursuit of fun and happiness that has come up against the hollowed out heart of America today where there are no winners and many disillusioned and dis-empowered losers.

“ The winner takes it all
The loser standing small
Beside the victory
That’s her destiny…”

hope-2 This year, the insidious Neptune-Saturn square (26 November 2015, June 18 2016 & Sept 10 2016) brought us Brexit and waves of refugees. Walls, borders and boundaries (Saturn ) crossed with redemption, glamour, illusion and delusion (Neptune). Many people declared their own Brexit and walked away from relationships where they felt victimised, hemmed in and trapped.

Jupiter moved into the sign of Libra in September. Many astrologers consider this enormous gas giant to herald “luck” and “good fortune”. But large-bellied Jupiter also inflates and expands and takes things to the extreme. So when Jupiter comes to square Pluto three times between November 23rd 2016 and early August 2017, the optimistic Jupitarian drive to achieve success and influence will be tinged with Plutonian ruthlessness, obsessiveness, fanaticism and extremism. Pluto is about power and survival. Pluto’s realm is the underworld where treasure lies buried in the fathomless depths of our unconsciousness. When Pluto meets Jupiter, the impetus to succeed, the single-minded belief that you are destined for greatness, no matter how many bodies you have to step over to get to the top of Mount Olympus, may be carried to the extreme. Jupiter is about excess, perhaps over-estimating, over-reaching the mark at any cost, and when this energy combines with Pluto’s primitive instinctual survival, we’re in Jurassic Park.

0813-man-made-indoor-clouds-belgium-670 Human history is a record of the rise and fall of civilizations, of revolutions that promise freedom to the oppressed and leave scorched earth and the blackened stumps of smoldering hopes and dreams. Carl Johan Calleman talks of a Sixth Wave of Creation and a dark age for global civilization in terms of rational thinking. “ The darkness is evident in an almost complete lack of rationality on the Trump side, but also in the role that conspiracy thinking has come to play in it… People are unaware that we have gone into a night, which may bring out the shadow side in many human beings, an unprecedented tendency has emerged to project this darkness onto others. This is the reason that despite the fact that Trump is a billionaire with many obvious patriarchal and Hitler-like traits, his supporters tend to project these supremacist traits onto the opposing side. Hitler was elected and took dictatorial powers in Germany exactly at a shift to a night (in the Seventh Wave) and blamed (projected) all the difficulties of the German people after a lost war on an international conspiracy. Something similar may now come to happen in the United States. ”

trump-1 For most of us, 2017 will bring a heady mix of tension, rapid change, extremes, single-minded determination to succeed as Jupiter opposes Uranus ( January, March and August 2017 ) to add a lightening blot of the unexpected upset into the mix. Change is necessary for our evolution. Change is the momentum of Life. And if Brexit and the political circus in America seem far removed from your life today, know that everything is interconnected, pulsating, set in motion at the slightest flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Our challenge is to remain supple and pliable as the winds of adversity blow across the planet. To stay standing when everything about us is falling apart. To trust that the changes we fear are the very ones that might catapult us from the cocoon of our ordinary lives and give us wings to fly.