Pluto 's trip through Capricorn - how's it going?

Pluto slowly nears mid-sign Capricorn (it'll be around a year before Pluto reaches 15 degrees). I decided to re-read a 2-part piece by astrologer and historian Neil Giles, written some eight years ago, with Pluto about to enter Capricorn from Sagittarius.



Pluto in Capricorn - another kind of power

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Powerful, hidden forces are the gift of this unseen and distant planet, elected by some in modern astrology to be the true ruler of Scorpio though tradition still accords that role to Warrior Mars. Pluto rules obsessions, driven behaviour, the subconscious and our deepest urges and desires. He is a god of hidden forces, of the depths where they gather and of their ruthless, irresistible or uncontrollable eruptions. He works secretly or for reasons concealed or unknown, sometimes even to himself. It's important to remember our discovery of Pluto marked the rise of Fascism and the Third Reich, and oversaw the experiments that created The Bomb. As Pluto's looming presence was detected, we split the atom, releasing its hidden forces, but we also discovered something about the makers of the bomb – ourselves. We discovered a shadow force in our nature that aspired to wield an ungovernable power, thus risking extinction by our own hand. From Hiroshima to the Cold War to the threat of nuclear holocaust, Pluto forced us to face a bomb inside us, one waiting to explode and unleash our hidden feelings or desires as we stood at the brink of global catastrophe, wondering if we could survive the war that no one might win.

Pluto is remorseless in his search to know where the limits lie and what the inner forces will do. He will persist in this until he knows what can be overcome and what cannot...... With this ruthless investigator at work, there will always be a death of the old, a transformation and a rebirth for Pluto is the god of elimination and regeneration, teaching us that all things that live must die and all things that die will live again.

Pluto, marker of generations, had spent the past thirteen years in Fire sign Sagittarius. Pluto's ingress into Capricorn marked its transition from Fire to Earth. The author's assessment of Pluto's journeys through Capricorn, in history, remain interesting, but I wondered how his predictions for 2008 onward have turned out, so far.
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There will be powerful or dramatic events affecting travel, communication, transport and electric supply. Incidents with firearms and explosives will become increasingly prevalent. The volcano, the eruption, the fated event and the clash of arms and opposing ideas will walk with us until we can learn to communicate and function in such a way as to solve the problems of the abuse of power and refrain from the constant usage of abusive powers. With our 'dig it up', 'knock it down' and 'shoot it' mentality, we have treated every species, including ourselves and the Earth as an enemy to be beaten, an opponent to be overcome.

In such a pressure-cooker as this coming cycle, it may eventually occur to us as a species that we cannot continue trying to solve our problems with a bullying thrust of violent intervention. Just as we will have to look to alternative energy sources, we must also realize that we cannot keep building roads to the future by blowing up everything that gets in the way of our intended path. Obstacles to our desires are there to teach us, not frustrate us. It is time we learned that salutary lesson from Pluto. The sign of Capricorn teaches the proper sense of organization and responsibility required for effective social contribution. With Pluto in Capricorn in the coming era, the imperative is to learn how to make one, how to put aside the power-mongering and the drama and do something that works. The destiny that is written in the stars is also in our hands.

Let's see... "powerful or dramatic events affecting travel, communication, transport and electric supply. Incidents with firearms and explosives will become increasingly prevalent"?

Travel: a still lost huge plane (MH370) carrying hundreds of passengers, and another plane from the same airline shot down with all passengers lost not long afterwards. Those were, and still are dramatic events concerning travel. There have been others too, but I guess there have always been some such happenings, during any given time span, so not too convincing as being in any way representative of Pluto in Capricorn.

Drama in communication: the rise and rise of social networking and constantly updated smartphones! Dramatic, and potentially powerful! Yes, tick that box. One factor I see also as especially Plutonian is the implementation of Big Brother-like surveillance of our extended communication abilities.

Transport - see travel, I guess.

Electric supply: perhaps the ongoing spread of wind turbines and solar energy in the last few years fits this heading.

Incidents with firearms and explosives increasingly prevalent. Yes indeed! The bombing at the Boston Marathon, numerous mass shootings in schools, colleges, theatres...need I go on?

Opposing ideas: these have been with us always, so I don't see them as particularly in the realm of Pluto in Capricorn, though it's true enough that, in the USA especially, the divide of 1% vs the Rest of Us has become more sharply defined than before, first due to OWS activities a few years ago, then the current surge of support for Bernie Sanders' in the 2016 presidential campaign. Ever more right-wing stances by the opposing party, as time has gone on, add to the sharpness of this divide.

We can only hope that the second half of Pluto's journey through Capricorn will teach us the important lessons this author hoped for. We have been rather poor students thus far.

While on this topic I may as well add brief clips of other predictions from noted astrologers, culled from my archived posts from 2007:

Eric Francis :

"Pluto in Capricorn is, among other things, about massive changes to the structure of society. It is about the consolidation of corporate and government power to a degree that far exceeds anything we have seen so far."

Tick that box!

A period of some 12 to 14 years is involved in this transit of Pluto and Eric Meyers' interpretation could well form a stage two, to commence when other outer planets have moved on into new positions:

"When Pluto moves to the earth sign of Capricorn, our structures and institutions are bound to face upheaval and drastic change that will reflect the shifting spiritual and moral processes that are currently occurring while Pluto is in Sagittarius.

Leagues of people will be challenged to release attachments to paradigms and structures they thought were stable and enduring. Changes in government, education systems, infrastructure, organized religions and the general sociological organization of society could endure needed face lifts in order for our collective evolution to take its next step."

All kinds of scenarios could finally bring about a swing from corporate and government clamp downs of stage one, to the kind of collective evolution described by Eric Meyers. I may not be here to see Pluto move from Capricorn into Aquarius, but do hope to see some indication of how things are turning out before my final exit!

I liked Maya del Mar's attitude - she wrote:

"We are, in fact, fortunate to live in such an intense period of tremendous challenges, and tremendous opportunities. This is our chance to create a new and better world."