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Right before the solar eclipse, we entered retrograde season with Pluto doing the honors on April 29. Far from lightning-quick doom and gloom associated with, say, a Mercury Retrograde (that’s quickly approaching), we live half of every year with Pluto in this state, with this retrograde period ending October 8. It typically exposes a specific circumstance that is playing out over a 3-5 year period in our lives, provoking where our need for power and control must be released to gain awareness of our unhealthy or unrealistic attachments.
Is Pluto retrograde good? It gets maligned because it does not allow you to hide in your guilt, shame, keep dirty secrets, taboos, and emotionally can bring a lot of pain and discomfort. That thing in your life you try to control gets outed through trials and tribulations, and the instinct to maintain the secrecy is what can make these transits brutal. You may believe you want to grow a huge company to dominate a certain field, only to find your partner leaves to start a family, the supply chain gets severely diminished, or some unforeseen obstacles make you really question if this desire is really something that fulfills you. And through this transit, it’s typically revealed you don’t, changing your life for the better.
As we are wrapping up its run in Capricorn (mind you very slowly – we get a few months in Aquarius next year but aren’t full tilt changing zodiac signs until April 2024), we’ve been challenged with outdated structures and growing a new backbone in this changing world. Capricorn speaks to legacy, governing, and tradition. We’ve been learning to tap into our own resources, embrace traditions older than what we grew up with. We are finding what we truly hold valuable and pondering changes about how we can exist more effectively outside the manmade bounds that have been created for us. Right now, we are still bartering about what we can do while still participating in the capitalist culture. Particularly, in this retrograde, we’ll be shown to release that structure completely and begin to empower ourselves to create our own.
Coupled with many other transits (and in complete preparation for the Aquarius transition), we are learning the structures and processes put in place aren’t efficient for us–our physical, emotional, mental, and energetic health–nor complimentary for a healthy society. What you are seeing politically in the world is a death grip of control from dying regimes. They are fighting dirty, gripping harder, and outing their great desire for legacy in the world before their ultimate death. That’s why so much seems so crazy and unfathomable to us. And on a personal level, we have to take responsibility for upholding a system that disempowers us. For maintaining power structures we think may benefit us over certain people. To face the guilt, shame, and fear of what we have supported in order to overpower the other.
But of course, this is Pluto, unveilor of cultural mythology, a harbinger of profound evolution (both astrologically and scientifically). In this 14-year cycle has set its sites on the governing structures and processes that have been made up for us and been corrupted (and payback for why Pluto no longer being a planet). We’ve known the systems in place became about domination and having power. The social contract that governments were taking care of their constituents went out the window long ago, and yet we are still feeding into it. For fear of not knowing what’s next, how to be effective and what power we may lose in the process. It is being revealed that we may in fact have a better way of living and greater gifts than the model we live in allow for.
How does pluto retrograde affect us? As it moves into the third to last retrograde in Capricorn, it is diving even deeper into secluded aspects of ourselves. Meeting it with honesty and truth provides a greater redemption. As it’s seeking our natural talents that we’ve hidden, we venture to guess that the big thing that you’ve wanted to do–the thing that you’ve kept hidden from the world because you don’t see how it fits–most likely needs to be let out. Perfection in how it needs to be done is not wanted. Perfection is just doing it. It’s efficiently running yourself as a human as you express your deep joy, passion, and desires without creating a societally accepted way of presenting it.
The interaction with eclipses invites a healing moment for us on an individual level. The solar eclipse happened while Pluto was sextiling the Jupiter-Venus conjunction inviting us to have more compassion for ourselves and others and spotlight the things we are most passionate about to a larger level. A deep longing may have come to the surface and you may be surprised to find help from another person when you expose it.
As we move through this two-week period to the lunar eclipse, this incident will shake loose something that needs to be released. As Pluto sextiles Neptune and the Moon you are absolutely in a position to release all fear and pioneer your deepest desires. Specifically, we’re being challenged with our co-dependency tendencies. It’s balancing where we are over-dependent on others, but also where we hide from others, truncating our collective strength, just to fit in.
Shortly after, it will be trining the Sun, further advocating us to highly evolved states and emboldening us with confidence to go after our desires. Mercury is in close contact, though retrograde, so we may speak out of turn. But we learn to cull our ideas to become more influential and persuasive from a conscious ego that has a greater impact over authorities and governing bodies. Combined with the long-standing Pluto square Eris we are living through, there’s a greater unveiling of our truly luminous beings–our sovereign selves being complete with who we are and talents we possess.
As we move into July, Pluto retrograde encounters the sun and mercury again, though in opposition. Did you really absorb the positive transformation in having power? Or did you let it go to your head? You may have been very successful and scared of the success and begin to self-sabotage with egoic and aggressive communication, thwarting your natural gifts. It will definitely be a time to mind your verbal aggressions and be mindful of what you recently learned about your power and influence.
Ultimately, it’s not about repressing your power, but reclaiming it in a self-built container to be a more potent person for yourself. Not the system. Not your family. Not society.
What are some surprisingly natural talents you’ve realized you have over the past 14 years? How have you incorporated them in your day-to-day life? If you aren’t, how could you?
Use your birth chart to find your rising sign or use your sun sign below to see where in your life you’ll be most challenged to release power and structures that no longer serve you.
You will finally be given a little slack on the professional side and an opportunity to breathe. A moment to reflect on your ambition, the tests and power struggles you went through, how this made you stronger over the last decade, but also the overbearing control you tried to keep on all things. What are you ready to release as you transmute your relationship with authorities, realize your professional worth, integrate your selfless ambition and become your own emotional authority? What if you were simply letting go of the need to control the outcome and just ensure that everyone feels supported and motivated to work on it with you at the moment? Time to experiment, don’t you think?
There’s never be a better time to reconnect with your friends and finally enjoy some fun time socializing around You have been trying to stick to a certain way of seeing life for far too long, rejecting or trying to control others’ ideas and the cracks are showing. Your world views are no longer relevant, no longer supporting you and about to evolve dramatically if you haven’t yet seriously thought about it and opened up. There are things you need to be able to hear and discuss with others without being exaggeratedly dogmatic. Suspicion is a good thing, but too much of it ends up being detrimental. Your beliefs may have become your biggest enemies so why don’t you start showing a little openness before you end up completely rejected, cynical or jaded. The universe will stop challenging your opinions for a few months. Time to use that courage and determination to explore other philosophies of life, cultures, countries and gain in wisdom. You do not obviously have to be stuck in just one ideology, only you thought that!
Time off! You can finally breath for a few months, financial and intimate challenges will now ease, giving you a welcome break to explore your relationship to sex, secrets and sharing, the power you leak while badly handling those topics or giving them undue importance into your life has become unbearable and require your last efforts in your grand transformation. Intensity, shadows and depth are OK, but constantly seeking it while being fearful of it is not OK. Start by intentionally letting go of your deep-seated fears around those themes and see what’s happening. You are being challenged more than others to surrender and trust others, so why don’t you? Channel your need to dig deeper into activities where research and investigation are critical…the rest will be taken care of.
You are about to deeply heal your relationship to others, but the beginning of the year must have further tested your connections and your ability to form balanced relationship. You certainly pushed yourself into extremes so that you finally have a deep look at the emotional wounds of your childhood you had built unsustainable structures around. It is now time to release what is not supporting you in your relationship with others. For all your attempts to control the game, you either ended up into power struggles, attracting toxic people into your life or being unable to genuinely connect by fear of losing your independence. It’s high time you realize that entering a partnership does not mean that you will definitely lose a part of you. You could, on the contrary, discover a brand new side of your personality. In fact, if you really look deeper into it, your growth has mostly come from others over the last ten years. Stop relying on others to be the adult, grow up and act like one.
Your health, work and routine are finally given a little space to breath. You’ll probably be happy to release a little bit of the control you are used to put on yourself to do everything so perfectly. Honestly, no one is watching, but even. You’ll now be able to decide more freely of how you want to use and spend your time. So why don’t you spend it on reflecting on why you set such a high level of standards for yourself to the point where it is either paralyzing you, burning you out or almost making you asocial. Nobody is arguing with the intention of doing things as perfectly as possible, it’s just that the intensity and extreme to which you are going are really becoming counterproductive. Why wouldn’t you try to let go a little? After a decade of strict diets and discipline of all kinds, your good and healthy habits are now well-integrated and all you have to do is pick the signals of your body or colleagues to deal with them. It’s time that you start enjoying life a little, don’t you think?
So, you have been quite obsessive over your kids, creativity, hobbies or romantic affairs over the last decade in attempt to regain power somewhere, seriously raising your game and perfecting your creative talents. It might now be time that you either transform the essay or relax a little and let the energy flow more freely so that everybody can enjoy the fruits of your creative talents and personality in a more lighthearted fashion. For all we can see, there is always something refraining you from fully expressing yourself, taking that little extra risk, dropping the mask. Yes, we know, there is always a good reason. But why don’t you take the time this summer to ask yourself what you are really afraid of? What do you really have to lose? And simply trust.
You may have gone into extremes over the last months, believing that the world is against you and giving in more than usual to a victim mentality through doubting your own value and purpose in life. You are also likely to have experienced challenges with your parents or big changes in your family and home situations. Traumas are ok, but you can no longer use them as excuses to benefit from situations or control others. You are being challenged to grow up and realize that your gift of empathy and depth of feelings are indeed an unquestionable source of power. The universe will now support you for a few months, so why don’t you try to heal those old childhood wounds, use the support of an emotional council, if needed, and regain authority and agency on your life.
Difficult to remain optimistic when all the signals turn to red, most around are struggling, chaos is emerging and there is very little left to be excited about. Regain confidence in the knowledge that nothing is permanent and even the dire situations are temporary. Stop trying to control your environment and instead approach life with curiosity and critical thinking. Accept that you do not know all the answers and continue to expand your knowledge and quench your curiosity. The more you’ll let go of this need to control, the clearer and deeper your thinking will become and the more persuasive you’ll become. Isn’t that a strong enough motivation to try, if only for a few months. What do you really have to lose?
It’s not about how much money you make or how many things you’ll buy, it’s about whether or not you love yourself. This slowly growing feeling of being unloved or unappreciated for who you really are might have become very difficult to bear over the last couple of years and pushed you to challenge many pillars of your life. You will have certainly gotten rid of a lot of extra luggage in the process, but also reached a point where there is very little left to do externally. The real work is indeed within. Use any personal challenge to your self-worth to dig deeper under the surface and understand what the old debris are still keeping you from really loving yourself. As your values evolved and you have grown clearer with what you want, it might be time that you genuinely fall in love with the fantastic person you have become. Simply try this and observe love and abundance flowing back into your life.
Most of the structures of your life that defined who you were as an individual might have been stripped away from you over the last ten years. A sense of powerlessness and an inability to control the situation must have become prevalent, pushing you to become possibly bitter and very protective. The additional tests brought by the pandemic should have forced you to have a deep courageous look at your fears and finally embrace them. The only way forward is with courage, and this can only come from within. So, use the next six months to willingly purge your system from all the remnants of the past you were still holding on to and head on regardless of what others might tell you. Don’t you think you have listened to them one too many times?
Almost 15 years spent struggling with an irrational mind, overwhelming you with the strangest experiences and the most confusing states, pushing you to the weirdest behaviors, and very often ending in self-sabotage. Until you decide enough was enough until you could not hide it anymore until it became too big to deal with and you had to understand. You are once again being offered a temporary truce during which the confusion will become more bearable and supported with the opportunity to dive into your subconscious. Your challenges have no easy solution as they require you to look deep into your compulsions and past karma, so you might want to be properly surrounded for this kind of work. But the gifts, talents, and peace of mind you will soon inherit are all worth the efforts.
Dealing with groups and friends might have been quite an intense and draining experience over the last decade and more, enameled by a series of feuds, betrayals, manipulative behaviors, and deep connections. Your social life has certainly drastically evolved as you’ve become much more serious and selective with your friends, favoring depth and intensity over shallow acquaintances. Your dreams and hopes have also transformed quite a lot, moving away from status-oriented goals and self-centered achievements to a more meaningful agenda and purposeful initiatives. As you continue to let go of your past dreams of personal success and individual glory, upgrade your outlook and grow more confident and passionate about your selfless values and ideals, you start realizing that you can truly bring people together and motivate them to change. With the ego fights rescinding from your life for another six months, there might never have been a better time than now to experiment again with how you can revolutionize society from the bottom up and turn your greater visions into realities. If you have doubts, sweet Pisces, just observe yourself during your next group gathering, you might surprise yourself!
