Blog
by Steven Forrest
Everyone seems to know the myth of Persephone where Pluto drags her down to the Underworld “to be his bride.” Her mother, Demeter, expresses her grief at her daughter’s abduction by putting the world into the deep freeze of an endless winter. In the end, the Olympian gods and goddesses broker a deal, both to keep humanity from starving and also to keep the worshipful observances coming. From then on, Persephone spends six months of the year with her mother. The other six months of the year, she is ensconced with Pluto in the Underworld. Demeter is bereft during the months spent without her daughter, and so winter and cold reign over the planet until the two are reunited.
And thus does Spring return every year.
It amazes me how literally astrology expresses itself sometimes. For the past three years or so, Pluto has been transiting through a conjunction with my natal Sun. I’ve lived the myth.
-
There is a divine, evolutionary purpose behind everything that happens in the astrological sky. For me, that is the foundational principle of our craft. Aiming ourselves toward the higher ground is what it is all about — and there is always higher ground, no matter how grim the astrological configuration might appear to be. I believe in that principle fervently. It is elemental to everything I teach, write and practice with my clients.
But I’ve got to say, my knees got weak when I looked at April’s planetary patterns. On April 17th, Mars makes a station, turning retrograde, at 8°54' Sagittarius. The next day, Pluto also stations, at 17°29' Capricorn. That’s two potentially scary planets, both getting very intense at the same time.
I will stick to the best truths I know here: this combination of energies represents an open evolutionary avenue for us all. There is higher purpose in it. Astrology is the mirror in the sky.
Drama reigns in the skies lately, with the long series of exact Pluto-Uranus squares looming from 2012 through 2015. As I write these words here on September 3rd, the major astrological event of the next few weeks is the upcoming Pluto Station on September 16 as it turns Direct at just under 5° Capricorn. In broad terms, when a planet is retrograde it tends to be inward and reflective. When it turns around to go forward, it becomes more assertive and oriented toward material experience. And when a planet is Stationary, it is extremely focused and intense. The tide is turning. With Pluto, this intensification naturally means either the culmination of some deep psychological work – or the emergence of catastrophic situations that illustrate the consequences of the lack of such work!
Pluto’s recent demotion to the status of “dwarf planet” upset a lot of us It shouldn’t. We astrologers have been calling the Sun and Moon “planets” for a long time. We have, in other words, a long tradition of using the term “planet” differently than astronomers do. Experience has taught us that Pluto simply works like one—we know it’s a “planet” and we really don’t need anyone’s approval before we use the term.
