Autumn Equinox Note: Bends Of Pluto: Raw and Real
The Sun has just entered Libra, marking the Autumn Equinox and tonight there will officially be a shred more darkness than there had been daylight. In exactly one month’s time the Sun will also make the last square to Pluto in Capricorn from Libra until 2254. The next time Pluto will be in a Cardinal sign will be in Aries in 2066, so now until November 19th there’s really not that many hard aspects left before Pluto commits to Aquarius for twenty years. We’ve already had Pluto in this Saturn ruled Air sign from 3/23/23—6/11/23 and 1/20/24–-9/2/24 so we’ve had some time already to feel how an Aquarian Pluto feels in the fixed axis of our nativities. October and November gives us two opportunities. One, to reflect on this emphasis of cardinality as we end an era with Pluto pressurizing and distorting that modality, and two, feel for a brief stretch of weeks what the fixed modality feels like in relative neutrality before Pluto returns with unknowns, shadows, power games, fears, obsessions, corruption, conspiracy, abduction, alien encounter and all the rest the far reaches of our solar system has to offer.
Pluto in Capricorn’s time initiated with the Lehman Brothers collapse, housing market crash, bank bailouts and subsequent recession. Prior to this gentrification had already been ripping across the land, especially in the culturally volatile United States. I often mark MTV’s the Real World as a starting marker for the contemporary age of gentrification, as it allowed for Iowa farm boys to dream about living in San Francisco, Seattle, and other cities with then incredibly cheap rent for the relative poshness close at hand, taking a nose dive into the yet-to-be-spoiled subcultural pools. By 2008 many of the generational inhabitants, ghetto zones, 90s style subcultural enclaves and organically cobbled together neighborhoods had been chased out or driven into less desirable corners. 2008’s dramatic drop in real estate allowed for further consolidation of property into the hands of developers as well as making many in their 20s-40s suddenly able to lucratively house flip leading to an after effect of younger to middle aged normies of breeding-ready age having unexpected asset security once things began to rebound to normalish levels along with developers converting every street corner into a foodie destination hub with adjacent AirBnB lodgings as the hospitality industry swelled to distorted proportions, a very Capricorn—Cancer axis affair: banks, real estate, restaurants and shelter.
Before Pluto in Capricorn a “hipster” was someone who worked at a record store, knew all the who’s who in the underground bands, record labels and club scenes. After Pluto in Capricorn a “hipster” is instead basically anyone who isn’t a Trumper, or more accurately a member of the masses who consumes and styles themselves based on predictable niche trends. Something happened culturally (Libra) and it effected what was D.I.Y (Aries) sucking the punk scenes (Libra-Aries) up and flattening them beneath the new monoliths of status (Capricorn) via food, drink and homemaking (Cancer). In the early phase of this (Earth Firster punks train-hopping to go apprentice at horse powered farms) everything seemed still hopeful. The crash in property prices allowed for a lot of have-nots to access home or building buying that normally was out of their range, giving subcultural participants, and average people a way to pull themselves into a better quality of life as well as provide stability for their pet projects. The 2010s for this reason were quite industrious, but as social media became more pervasive in our lives the images of cool people fermenting daikon and raising sheep got fetishized in the eyes of suburban cubicle workers as well as Brooklynite trustifarians who were ready to start families and back-to-the-lander regions began to experience an influx of a much less radical population. The rare and unique was becoming replaced by the formatted as an everything worth having and everywhere worth being vacuum started sucking items and locations out of thrift stores and back waters into the hands of the nouveau niche. Interestingly, much of the plot points of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram fall upon Libra-Aries timings, such as eclipses in this axis, displaying how and why the pervasiveness of “Identity Politics” and “Social Justice Warriors” dilated to such proportions in the period in which every time something transited either end of that spectrum it squared Pluto in Capricorn, or “the Patriarchy”. (Identity-Aries and Politics-Libra. Social Justice-Libra and Warriors-Aries).
Pluto entered Aquarius in March of 2023 for the first time, only months after the FTX collapse and synonymous with the Silicon Valley Bank demise which briefly depegged Circle’s stablecoin: USDC. Clearly, horizontal networks and decentralized economics running on digital rails palpitated with this ingress whoosh. AI face filter selfies and Barbie movie looks posts ensued. Something we’ve seen since the ingress is the further Tiktokification of Instagram and Twitter getting Xified, many of those who began entrepreneurial online hustles in and around Saturn and Jupiter’s times in Aquarius have reached a crossroads of keeping up with the extreme infomercial style promotion one must enact to proliferate and profit on the platforms or begin their exit out of the apps into business suicidal obscurity. Across many fields it has become paradoxical and absurd to put research, sounds, looks and images of one’s work online as it is instantly copied and if you don’t gamify your approach in the extreme you are likely to get drowned out by your impersonators. Inauthenticity reigns as everyone pretends to be whatever they are compelled to for either aesthetic, consensus, or financial reasons. Clearly, we can see authentic, charismatic and self expressive Leo put on the fritz by Pluto in artificial, cold and syndication structuring Aquarius. There is now an influencers who utilizes their herpes condition to launch courses to teach others with herpes how to best live with it, monetizing their existence to the degree that they are profiting from their own disease. The Davos set and World Economic forum with Pluto in Aquarius seem now so thinly veiled as purely technocratic and totalitarian managerial control cabal that their lecture stage presence seems like parody of creepy dystopian sci fi antagonists.
The Scorpio—Taurus axis is also effected by Pluto in the Aquarius—Leo axis. The herpes influencer is making an infomercial around her sexually transmitted disease (sensual Venus ruled Taurus and pelvic primal Scorpio). AI brainwave monitoring headbands to better manage workers and make for safer more productive work places proposed by The World Economic Forum this past session touch labor managing Taurus and power-game penetrating, stealthy Scorpio. For those who don’t want to run an infomercial or get their ideas copied and persona mimicked there is the non-ephemeral obscurity of Scorpio and the substance rich nature of Taurus to escape to, which we can observe on the macro/cultural scale as well as in individual nativities and personal life scenarios. The degrees opposite and square from Pluto will host the narrative tension of the twenty year transit in malefic Air and carve out the story of what we now call Influencers and Digital Nomads and YouTubers and Power Users structuring themselves professionally to perform syndicated exhibitionism to the collective audience. As animals (Scorpio) we respond to viral lingo and gesture and these habitual behaviors are then normalized (Taurus) into our routines and repertoires. What it is now will go through many episodes, developments and plot twists until 2044, and after it is said and done we will see the before and after of Pluto’s shadows working unconsciously on us and manipulating everything we consider regular and constant.
Michail Wassiljew
It is revealing to see how what is at stake in a story where the focus of conflict is upon what is commercialized, syndicated, faked and performed for profit in an attention economy ends up pivoting upon what it means to be animal, primal, instinctual, real, raw, natural, organic, material, have actual substance and be in the sensory realm. The impact flows both ways. In one sense Scorpio-Taurus is the anecdote for the Aquarius-Leo problem and in another the Aquarius-Leo drama ends up altering the Scorpio-Taurus baseline. Although, perhaps that is the root of what Scorpio-Taurus is all about: at the substrata level Scorpio-Taurus can’t be fucked with, even though Aquarius-Leo will try. For instance, how Monotheism and Empire (Leo-Aquarius) arising in midst of agriculturalization began initially with domestication of animals (Scorpio) and plants (Taurus). This round we must take heed in the context of genetic engineering of what we interact with say as food or medicine but also in our own DNA, altering us as a species. Tapping into fundamental Scorpio-Taurus integrity, what it means to value the real, raw, natural and organic can temper defenses against extreme, corrupt, or perverse levels of Aquarian expression as well as the distorted version of Leo which flares up because of it.
The upcoming ingresses into Scorpio (Venus on September 24th, Mercury on October 13th, and the Sun on October 22nd) could give us some subtle insight on what the Scorpio end of the Scorpio—Taurus axis expresses and represents in our live’s free of the Plutonian tension for some final brief moments. Tap into unrelenting fixations, primal urges, animal drives, instinctual motivations, and your emotional intelligence at its most keen and cunning to get a glimpse what will be contending with relentless artificiality put on display in the heart of technocracy. Scorpio is Mars ruled, so tactical in nature; this is a good moment to calibrate your maneuverings, even or especially secret ones, in the sheer contemporary reality.
Just as I was finishing writing this Elodie St Onge Aubut sent me a link to Mystic Medusa describing Demi Moore’s new film The Substance as SO Scorped. Watch the trailer, it appears to fit into exactly what I’m talking about, and just dropped on September 20th, so was released as Venus in Libra was applying to her last square with Pluto in Capricorn in centuries.
Comments