I’m thinking about Pluto today. This dear dwarf demon has been my guiding light since I started on the astrological path. Some of you know I’m incubating a larger offering, and in recent years I have been absolutely floored by the wealth of material this archetype has brought into my life through my own biographical digging, personal/relational dynamics, client work, and synchronicities.
Image description from Nasa website: NASA New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto on July 14, 2015. Pluto surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds.
Today we have the opportunity to observe the first exact conjunction of transiting Pluto returning to the position it held when the founders of the United States signed the Declaration of Independence.
The United States’ Pluto Return. What an opportunity! What a moment to notice, make room for, breathe into and attempt to relax around. If we can find the courage to bear down into whatever is calling to us from below, from the places we normally try to tighten around and control — to bear down and listen — we may hear something like the sound of our own true, deep, wise, and ancient power calling us home.
A few technical notes to set aside any catastrophic tendencies: outer planet returns are not one-day events. They take place over years, like a rolling, tumbling, restructuring massage. This is the first of three exact conjunctions that will be spread out over the course of this year, but we’ve been feeling Pluto’s signature moves for a few years now and will likely continue to feel them for a few more.
If I’ve learned anything about Pluto in these past few wild and precious – and often terrifying – years it’s that we have an opportunity to understand power in deeper, wider, wilder, and more sustainable ways when we pay attention to what Pluto is asking us to acknowledge. Sometimes the task is simpler though, and Pluto asks us to stop ignoring a basic truth which is that change is the way, dissolution is as inevitable as an exhale, and power is far more interesting (and powerful) when it isn’t held too tightly.
Today we find ourselves in the eye of a great needle; pulled into weaving a pattern that we have little control over other than our own ability to breathe, look, listen, and widen our capacity to understand. The scent on the wind is change, and I am interested in being in it with you.
In pursuit of justice, fairness, equity, inclusion, and wellbeing for all – may we know Pluto in a good way, even when it can be terrifying.
Lilly Falconer, M.A. 