When I started the Our Sky fb group a few years ago I imagined it as a source of support for days like today. My Capricorn friends were having their Pluto transits and I wanted them to have a place to talk about that.
Well, so far it has seemed like a waste of time. I realized almost immediately how little my friends knew about astrology and got right down to business giving them a good education. In the process I learned a lot that never was covered in all the astrology books i've studied over the years. If I hadn't learned so much I really would consider all this effort to have been wasted. None of my Capricorn friends have any idea how Pluto is associated with the loss of innocence they've experienced in the last few years. So far I have failed as a community educator.
That may sound depressing, but these are the kind of thoughts that go with the end of a long Moon meets Pluto day. And today was a doozy. The only thing I had going for me was serious sobriety. I never thought turning away from social interaction would be the most important step in finding what I wanted, but it worked like magic.
Today I thought of Frankenstein's monster. I was trying to describe the feeling I get almost every time the Moon comes around to Pluto and Mary Shelly's character was the closest I could come. More like a third or fourth generation. I imagined instead of suicide he had found another monster, a female created by some other ambitious doctor of science, and they had made love and bred.
When that exiled frame of mind associated with Pluto comes over me I wonder if anyone else feels it on these Moon and Pluto days. I feel grateful for astrology and the knowledge of the planetary cycles. I feel grateful for preceding generations that have cleared a path to the present. I never occurs to me that I could curse them for my miserable monstrous existence. I know in a matter of days, well right now more like a couple of weeks, the Moon will line up with Jupiter and my soul will come so close to leaving my body that it will feel like i'm gliding over Raleigh suspended from a high tech balloon.
Tonight, as I came up from the Plutonian depths of the day, my mind came back to the yoga sutras. The one that surfaced in my mind is from the second or third "pada" which I think is kind of like chapter. It's one of the sutras that gives some idea of what it will be like when the aspirant reaches liberation. Kind of like symptoms, but in this case of freedom rather than pathology. It says there will be no more desire to know anything. There are a couple other desires that finally burn away, but that one about knowing things is a hard one to imagine.
That's right, another one is no desire to avoid things.....I am NOT going to look it up.
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I joined the local astronomy club. When I volunteered for an event I was paired with a guy who does chemistry for a living. He showed me a spectro, the gizmo they put on telescopes to get those beautiful bars of color all broken down into hundreds of little lines. I asked him questions about things I could not understand in science and wished I could stay an extra shift just to learn more from someone with good answers. I really wanted to know.
An astrologer is supposed to know about heaven, which covers a lot of territory. I usually tell myself it is ok to study because people will have the same questions I have and will be grateful and happy to pay for good answers. But today the sense of despair, as the Moon moved into Pluto's first house, got pretty intense. At one point, near the end of cleaning a house I thought I should just give up in making a living as an astrologer. There are so many reasons not to engage in the practice and they are just as good as the ones for pursuing it. As the thought to give up flashed through my mind the knowledge of the Moon's position followed. I was in my car, I breathed a relaxed sigh in the warm sunlit front seat. I started up the car. I looked to see if anyone was coming and pulled out into the street. I was on my way home, where I am now.
Yesterday, or maybe Sunday, I spent at least half an hour, at least, I love playing with the numbers, figuring out when Pluto would stand still and when Mercury would over take Earth on the inside lane. Today Pluto moved less than two seconds along the ecliptic. It is in the same degree and minute as yesterday and will remain there through the next few days. Venus is still going extremely slow, its motion is like a plane that seems not to ne moving because of the angle of its path. I love knowing these things, looking at the numbers that barely change before and after I struggle with these thoughts that seem to hang on to the walls of my mind like Frankenstein's monster listening to the people talking in the blind man's humble abode.
This need, this drive to bring the monster into the fold. I really love knowing the Moon is passing Pluto when that feeling comes over me. I'm no where near liberation but there's plenty of time.
