Our old friend Pluto has turned direct this week (on Friday, September 13, 2011, to be exact) and he’s bringing to a close this year’s underworld journey. What follows is a repost from last year, with dates updated for 2011.
Yup, Pluto is showing up, right on schedule, to take out the garbage. Today Pluto turns direct, ending his yearly backwards journey. Pluto has traveled several degrees backwards and today turns his face forwards again. He will now retrace forwards the same steps he made backwards during the last few months, bringing a death-and-rebirth experience for everyone who is having a Pluto transit this year.
This Is A Pivotal Day
If you are one of the millions of people having a Pluto transit this year, today may be pivotal for you. Around April 9, you came to realize you were facing a big life-change and since then, you’ve been re-evaluating some the area of your life that’s changing. You’ve been examining it and mulling it over. Perhaps you’ve been researching it. Basically, you’ve been asking yourself, “What is this part of me that wants to transform right now? How have I lived this part of me in the past and what is it turning into for the future?”
This week you’ll experience a pivotal day. It may be that you realize your internal quest for understanding is over. You’ve come to clarity. You’ve recognized the change that needs to occur and you’re ready to implement what you’ve learned. You can now gear up to act on that recognition, sometime in the next few months (between now and January of 2012).
“What is a Pluto transit like . . .”
A Pluto transit is distinct, because it feels like dying. You may feel at times as if you are in meltdown and you don’t know what you are doing in the area of life (i.e. planet in your chart) that’s being affected. Pluto is asking you to let go in this area, to let something die so that it can be reborn. Pluto is asking you to search underneath the surface for the essence of this part of you. And Pluto is demanding that you let go of the old ways, so the new ways can emerge, regardless of how uncomfortable (sometimes very uncomfortable!) that might be.
“. . . and how do I know when I’m having one?”
First of all, you know by feel. If what I’ve described resonates for you, it’s likely you are having a Pluto transit. (If it resonates, but only a little, you may be having a transit, but by a planet other than Pluto.) Transits are almost always accompanied by real-world events, which are woven into your experience of the change. Transits feel distinct when they are happening, and the sensation distinctly fades as they end. When a transit is over, your preoccupation with its themes quickly fades as your attention becomes grabbed by a different transit. Occasionally a person will have no major transits at all for a time period (weeks, say, or months), but that’s pretty rare.
If you don’t have your chart, or don’t know how to read your chart, you might want to order your own personal Astrology Chart Decoder. This is a special tool I’ve invented that puts your chart’s details in English, instead of astrology symbols. Your Decoder tells you where every planet in your chart is located: the sign it’s in, the house it’s in and the exact degree it occupies. When you’ve got your Decoder in front of you, check to see if you have anything at all in 4, 5, 6 or 7 degrees of Capricorn, Cancer, Aries or Libra. If you do, you are definitely having a Pluto transit this year. This would account for the feelings of meltdown.
“What do I do now?”
You can ponder on it and get into alignment with the change that’s happening. This way you can take advantage of it while it’s happening, and not feel like a victim of it. Transits are not fatalistic events that happen to us—they are our greater Selves reaching out into life and drawing toward us the events and experiences that will help (or force) us to grow beyond our old selves. These changes are always the next thing you wanted to experience at the time and the more you regard them with appreciation, awe and a willingness to take them on, the better your experience will be. Even at the 11th hour, you can turn around even the harshest transit into something that leaves you in a better place.
For more insight on a transit, you can schedule a reading of it, which will help you get very clear about what this change is that’s happening in your life, how to handle it and make it turn out well, how long it will last, how various phases of it will feel and (not least!) when it will be over. You might have several changes going on at once and if you do, this could help distinguish one from another. The best thing you can get out of a reading is how to align with the deeper meaning behind the surface of your changes and accept the gift Pluto is bringing you.
Pluto’s Gift
Pluto’s gift changes according to the planet it is transiting of course, but one theme always remains the same. Pluto offers the knowledge of essence—the heart, the center of this piece of you, its essential nature. Pluto does this by stripping away all that is not essential and shows you that you will be ok without all that stuff. Pluto says, “you don’t need that garbage!” and takes it away before you are ready because, left to our own devices, we’re never ready. That’s ok—Pluto will always show up eventually, to take out the garbage.
