Pluto in Capricorn: Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase and The Fed

The day the news about Bear Stearns broke, I heard a surprised radio report about the surprising situation and drastic measures the Fed authorized, and I thought, “Geez, if that isn’t Pluto in Capricorn…”

Bear Stearns hit a liquidity (aka cash) crisis as a result of the shifting structures of the housing crisis stuff in the US that you can read about all over every media outlet. JPMorgan Chase offered a bailout, backed by the Fed.

I felt we needed to tease this out and take a moment to smell the aromas of the complexity of the developing scenario. Aside from what it is and means, what it is and means that the Fed stepped in and engineered the solution is huge in this.

But, then, all of a sudden we’re looking today at JPMC buying Bear Stearns at $2 per share, drastically lower than recent Bear Stearns prices.

If you allow that this situation represents that existing structures (Capricorn) need to be dramatically, irrevocably overturned (Pluto), you can understand that we need to see these how things are really working, how they’re really set up. And if you get this, you will not take this situation to mean that we are doomed, which is the vibe coming over the airwaves.

But here’s what I have to say about this whole thing: Notice if your belly is contracting.

Notice your feelings about the idea of a threat to your/our financial security.

Watch whatever feelings might be arising about this, and understand the collective, global need to see how huge banks/corporations/governments are set up so that we can consciously improve what might not be working.

I’m reminded that there is a huge invitation open to us right now as time seems to be speeding up, as we near whatever big shift we’re collectively headed for. Most of us aware of it will feel it as a constant challenge to remain connected to our feelings.

I’m recommending you don’t shut down from the fear that’s coming over the airwaves and ethernets. Also that you keep your eyes and ears open to how this develops, and see how this giant thing might hold keys to understanding the personal, smaller-scale situations in your own life relative to Pluto turning over any of your existing structures.

Some questions to ask with this transit, individually and collectively, are who’s in charge?, why?, how does this thing really work and can we say it really does work?

Tom is available for private intuitive astrology consultations. See his website for more info and contact information.

March 17, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Profile & Current Events: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer

First of all, I usually stay away from analyzing the astrology of public persons who meet with dramatic turns. Mostly, I just never want to be the astrologer who says, “Oh, lookie! You can see why [name of public figure] [verbed] [horrible and tragic life circumstance]!” A fundamental truth of humans is that we have free will, and people respond to the energies being called up in their lives with choice.

Now, our choices are based in our conditioning - who we think we are, what we believe we’re supposed to do, etc. - and I’m clear that the themes of our conditioning can be seen in our charts. So of course I know I don’t have to be that kind of astrologer, but it usually doesn’t interest me on that level enough to dive into their charts.

But.

But as I listened a second time to the public statement by Eliot Spitzer following revelations that he’s been a customer of a prostitution ring, I had to go straight to his chart. Maybe I’d got used to hearing remorse or regret in the voices of politicians who are revealed to be two-timers or whatever?, yet what I heard in his voice was impatience.

An impatience to have to deal with the whole situation.

Which surprised me, so I was drawn into his chart (June 10, 1959, Bronx NY, time unknown).

First thing to see is South Node in Aries, with the ruler Mars in Leo conjunct Venus, with both of them quincunxing (inconjuncting - 150 degrees) a retrograde Saturn in Capricorn…which is square the nodes. With transiting Saturn retrograding in early Virgo trining that Saturn…and nearing a conjunction with his natal Pluto, retrograde in early Virgo…

Yeah, yeah, I know - that’s a mouthful. I’ll spell out what it said to me:

South Node in Aries: He’s coming from a karmic past full of Marsy experience. He’s used to the fight. He expects the world to be about Aries issues, and he will be drawn into them in this life in one way or another.

South Node ruler Mars in Leo, conjunct Venus: His role centers on being proud, good with people, direct, a man of action.

natal Saturn retro in Capricorn and square the nodes: The issues of work, balancing life in the public sphere, the sense of and the right sort of maturity to develop, are unresolved issues (squares to the nodes represent something we know some about but need to learn to make different choices about).

that Saturn quincunx that Mars-Venus in Leo: Whatever is misunderstood about work, life in the public sphere, and appropriate maturity development are having what feels a power struggle within him - and everything in astrology works in our external lives so that we can have opportunities to explore our internal conflicts.

transiting Saturn trining natal Saturn and conjuncting natal Pluto: Major lessons of authority (Saturn in Cap) & self-responsibility (Pluto in Virgo) are being helped along by transiting Saturn.

Oh, but then hey, the transiting North Node is right on his natal Chiron, at 27 Aquarius…

Putting all this together, I can’t help but feel that the opportunity he has is to be humbled & connect with his vulnerabilities (Tr. NN on Chiron), to choose to allow his reputation to be reframed in terms of the reality of his behavior and choices (Saturn transits). And to spend some time with himself to check in with how and why he does what he does (Saturn retro transit to conjunct natal retro Pluto).

Oh but then with the asteroid Arjunsuri (20300) natally on his Libra North Node, conjunct Pallas Athene and Juno in Libra, there’s a call to learn to listen to others (NN in Libra) who stick with him (Juno-Pallas Athene in Libra), to learn a new level of give and take (Libra NN) that works in conjunction with the parameters of his conscience (Arjunsuri) and how co-operative life with others works (Juno-Pallas Athene on Libra NN). But also to allow his conscience to guide him (Arjunsuri on the NN).

The latest news tonight was that he’s planning to spend time with his family in the short term - no word as of yet if he’ll stay in office. Developing the stuff mentioned the previous paragraph could be very much needed, and to make time and space for whatever in our lives is much needed, some of us have the knack of clearing our schedules in sometimes rather dramatic ways, just to make sure we have the opportunity.

March 10, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Lilith & Health

When I sit down to work out thoughts on Lilith, I often find myself inside one or another feeling, and seem unable to express anything cogent or cogently.  Yet when some other being asks me about her, I can respond with a torrent from I-don’t-know-where.

This is adapted from my response to a reader’s question about Lilith’s relationship to healing:

my thoughts on lilith and healing: lilith invites us to embody an uncompromised relationship with our bodies as extensions of the natural world. not a flowery, let’s-hold-hands ”we are the world and maybe we should all recycle” sort of thing, but that we have our own wild sides. that the wild is us, is natural, and can course through us if we let it, and it can inform how we tie together our whole beings and relate to all of life.

i live in los angeles, and we have coyotes here. LA has lots of hills, and at night they step out and roam here and there. people are often paranoid about letting their dogs and cats out at night. the presence of these coyotes (and their so very anti-urbanity howling!) makes me think of lilith often. i feel lilith is clear that the natural processes of life, even though messy, are of prime importance.

people terrify themselves with the idea of the messiness of life, and lilith is an energy that invites us to honor the fact that we’re tied to all of life, that we’re animals with drives and something wired into our makeup that is the wild of the natural world, and that things running their natural courses do get messy.

“it’s normal that pets get killed” would not be the point to lilith, but that when the natural flow of things is not interfered with, this kind of thing can happen. but it’s not heartless, it’s absolutely heartful in a way that modern people, civilized people, have tried to squeeze out of themselves. the good news is that we can never squeeze it out of us, never. it’s part of who we are.

so, then, think of health as the wholeness of body+heart+mind+soul, and consider where interventions thought of as modern (and therefore better than what people used to do, have done for a long time) interfere with the natural order of things. while we’re not aware of it yet on a grand scale, a huge giant bigbigbig thing on our collective plate right now is what happens to a woman using hormonal birth control. this is just huge. the body, and therefore the whole being, gets tuned out of whack by a chemical intervention, and any wisdom that the whole being might be offering by manifesting a hormonal imbalance in the body is not possibly seen. (it doesn’t mean that certain women aren’t positively benefitted by this as a treatment, but not the numbers who are prescribed it as an attempted answer to a problem.) can we recover the kind of eyes needed to see the messages of the whole being that the body has to offer? will we choose to relearn how to relate to ourselves in this way as extensions of nature, and therefore possessing in each of us the wisdom of the natural world?

transfer this kind of thinking to type ii diabetes, cancer, overweight, depression, and everything else and you’ll begin to have a handle on what lilith has to offer about health considerations: when the wisdom of the body is ignored, the whole being suffers. in the long term, we have gotten ourselves into screwing ourselves over for choosing to believe the newtonian perspective of science/medicine that the body is merely a machine. lilith would have us search out and experientially test potential remedies to bring the body back in balance. what does this food in my hand feel like to my body? does my body support taking it in and making it part of me? the headline: we’ve forgotten that we’re part of nature! and lilith offers a door into reconnecting with the wisdom of our wild selves, which possess much undeveloped and untapped wisdom and strength.

when we doubt the wisdom of the natural world (and forget how to identify as the natural world), we buy into the cartesian-newtonian model of life that we’re using to destroy ourselves.

By Tom Jacobs

Eating the Wild: Notes on Hillary Clinton

Our mothers understood something essential: the green is poisonous to civiliation. If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic.                      Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Secret Teachings of Plants, p. 145

A student tonight asked to work on Hillary Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s chart for her lesson. I knew the birth time of Obama was uncertain, so I looked up Clinton’s. Hers is, too, of course, but I didn’t know that - I only recently began following politics again. (Awareness of these things is one way to re-enter the world, after years of holing up on what might be called the spiritual plane - at any rate, a plane less involved in the physical world.)

Her South Node in Scorpio with Mercury-Venus in Scorpio and Jupiter in Sagittarius conjunct it tells of an acuity in the realm of politicking, in understanding the ways that people are, think and feel. A familiarity with the workings of power (Scorpio), how it affects people and how people affect it (Mercury-Venus in Scorpio). And with Jupiter there in that particular sign, an understanding of how to inspire people by formulating and expressing vision. And yet with the South Node ruler Pluto square the nodes, she’s her own worst enemy when it comes to the expression of her desire to be an aggressive, powerful authority figure (Saturn-Pluto-Mars in Leo square the nodes).

She’s got a karmic history of, on one level or another, going for the big office, or expressing the big idea (the whole story of her healthcare reform proposal from some years ago tells this story in parallel to her bid for the nomination, by the way), and in the end feeling that she didn’t do some part of it right (squares to the nodes indicate energies we need to learn to make different choices about - typically they tell of choices in other lives that didn’t serve us well because we didn’t understand all we needed to in order to navigate some choice successfully).

And then that North Node in Taurus. Taurus being the sign of slowing down, and the ruler of it, Venus, in Scorpio conjunct Mercury. If she were a client, I’d advise her to come to her senses.

Literally.

There’s a highly developed strength of observation and sensing of others with that conjunction in Scorpio on the South Node. And yet how much is her ability to listen and sense, and probe into deeper layers of reality, turned on herself? The aggressive expression that is the hallmark of her public persona (Saturn-Pluto-Mars in Leo) represents what is, from the viewpoint of the journey of the soul, an overdoing that I suspect is a repeat of a karmic scenario from her past, an investment in a deep desire that doesn’t actually get her where she wants to be (the respected authority who has the ultimate say in something).

With this node in Taurus, all things natural are called for. Natural ways of being, of perceiving. Feeling life through her body as part of her whole being. Connecting with the natural side of anything is what’s foreign territory for her. Taurus also calls for the development of a personal relationship with the natural world, with nature or, perhaps, Nature.

If she came to me as a client, I wouldn’t necessarily advise her to drop out, head to the wilderness, grow her own food and get off the grid, but I would advise to see how to heal the memories of the karmic past of not getting recognition as the authority figure - that she craves, that takes so much of her energy - and reconnect with herself as an extension of the natural world.

If she loses the nomination, her challenge for growth will be in understanding that what she’s offering doesn’t speak to the majority of people at this time. Taking it personally, which would be the reaction from habit, would only fuel the momentum of the karmic wound, with all the Leonine Saturnian-Plutonian-Martian action covering up the pain under even more layers of thwarted ambition.

My take on what does speak to us, what we’re hankering for in the present moment (aside from ideas for solutions for current concerns), is someone with heart. It’s true that Obama doesn’t have the experience that Clinton has, and yet it’s evident that more people are more willing to trust him. Anyone connected with him- or herself can’t trust people so obviously disconnected from heart-informed ways of being.

As Pluto continues its fresh transit through Capricorn, we’re getting the opportunity to see any assumptions we might have about what it would mean to have a woman in the White House. As I wrote here a few weeks ago regarding these assumptions, would she bring a compassionate stance to the office? Would having a woman in the highest office in the land mean having a heart-centered person as the nation’s chief executive? Would we automatically have an emotionally centered individual (a prevalent assumption about womanness) running the show, checking in with her heart instead of just her head (a prevalent assumption of manness)?

Anyone checking in with how they feel in their bodies when they hear her speak will be very clear that the answer is no.

And while I admire Clinton’s dedication, tenacity and clarity of purpose, I would hope she can learn to slow down. My wish for her is not just to learn to remember and eventually enjoy smelling the roses, but also to toss them into her mouth and chomp away with abandon, letting the natural world enter her, and share its emotion, and let its nonlinearity, unpracticality and poetics speak to her through her body.

(In case it’s not clear yet, the opening quote kind of hints at my wish for Clinton, whether or not she wins the nomination.)

Tom is available for heart- and soul-centered consultations. See his website for more information and contact details.

March 3, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Pluto in Capricorn: Discovering Assumptions

Capricorn is the sign of structures and the glue that holds social and political groups together. 

I’m listening to political reporting on the radio more than ever these days. What struck me today is the assumptions of some random citizens interviewed for some piece about some of the candidates. From their statements, these are the questions that some of us might not be asking themselves:

Does Hillary Clinton’s gender mean that she would bring heart & compassion to the office?

Does Barak Obama’s skin color mean that he would look out for minorities?

Does John McCain’s military history mean that he would work to defend this country?

Any general assumptions that we may have about what the members of any group would do because of their identification with it need to be reviewed.

The focus on the collective that Capricorn represents naturally calls up questions about the realities of the individuals making up that collective, as deeply entering any of the archetypes will naturally call up its axis partner, the opposing sign. Membership is more of an issue for the sign of Cancer (belongingness), but as Pluto begins its trek through Capricorn, assumptions about the structure of any group - and the realities of the people associated with it - might come up. 

Or, perhaps, should.

February 2, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Pluto in Capricorn: Thoughts on Politics

1. Dirty stuff.

Are there still people in this culture who don’t understand the psychology of politicking?

It’d been months since I’ve listened to NPR regularly. I keep hearing criticisms of the Clintons for their propaganda against Obama - mostly taking what he’s said out of context (at least that’s what I keep noting). Isn’t that what politicians do in this system?

What occurred to me was that we might be expecting Bill not do such things. Not because we think he is or should be spotless, but he’s got this patina that’s supposed to follow him everywhere - that of the Office of the President of the United States.

That we get to see him actively engaged in this is an example of the opportunity of Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto can show us what’s going on behind what’s going on. In this case (as if we needed more examples of this), we get to see how even the highest office holders in the land are still, regardless of the efforts of the purveyors of spin, human.

I can’t wait to learn what’s waiting for us re the current highest office holder in the land - believe me, there’s something. There’s got to be. There’s no way any sitting president could escape the revelations probably unavoidable as Pluto shifts into Capricorn…what I keep thinking is that not even these guys can escape the turning-over-the-soil imperative of Pluto.

2. Scandal

It seems that the media might not let French President Sarkozy, no matter what he achieves in office, escape the realities of his personal life: He has relationships, he drinks alcohol, he emerges from a plane with his new wife (an ex-model, for crying out loud!!) with one too many buttons on his shirt undone.

The shocking reality that he has a libido and one of those concave depressions below his Adam’s apple (and maybe chest hair) might be too much - a reporter just said that the French would prefer him to be “more presidential.”

January 27, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Profile: Playwright Edward Albee

Playwright and philosopher Albert Camus held that every artist, no matter the medium, spends his or her entire life working out one idea or problem, has one thing to say. He wrote that even no matter how many media were used creatively, the same problem was the focus of the artist’s life and work.

Understanding this, I’ve gone through phases of working with and in response to (being inspired by) the work of various artists. We all do this, but we don’t always understand why. We’re living myths in our lives, and there are others who provide examples for us along our way. We can lose interest when the artist seems to diverge from our path, or when our path changes and that of the artist seems not to.

I had this experience with the work of the playwright Edward Albee, ending a few years ago. I’d read or seen most of his work, and what he was trying to do became clear to me. And after that, I was bored with him and moved on. Thanks, Ed, I seemed to say, but I’ve gotten all I can get from you. Thanks for your time, and best wishes on whatever you laid out for yourself this time around.

And then, yesterday, something happened.

I heard an NPR interview with and about him, about the first act he’d written and appended to his famous one-act, Zoo Story. It’s a story about a fairly well-to-do, rather uptight, unimaginative man who has a chance encounter with a very different sort of man in a park. The new version (Peter and Jerry) includes an act previous to this act that tells the story of the rather uptight man, putting him at home with his wife. (I haven’t yet read it, but this is from the description in the radio story.)

Albee said something about the play had always stayed with him and made him want to do something else with/to it. When I heard about the new act and therefore context, I got back on the Albee train - he’d enlarged his previous vision, the one I saw and read too much of and became bored by. This play is the one that launched his career, and many in the theater world hold it as sacred and were confounded by his audacity to change the play they loved so. He commented in the interview that he’s after all the one who wrote it.

I couldn’t locate a birth time for Albee (12 March 1928, Washington, DC), but he’s got a Uranus-Jupiter in Aries that I just really want to put in the 3rd house. That would be an early-morning birth, and Chiron in Taurus would be in the 4th, one kind of signature for adoption. Now, it’s just speculation, but I rreeaalllllyy want that Uranus-Jupiter to be in the 3rd, because of his lifelong unapologetic styles of writing and speaking, and the nature of the stories he’s inspired to tell.

Without the time of birth, we can see the South Node in Sagittarius, with Saturn pretty tightly on it. This paints a picture of an orientation to beliefs and ideas that’s built intentionally and with much hard work. The Sun in Pisces squares the nodes, indicating that something very large in the karmic past, something that was orbited, was not approached and understood in ways that seemed to get him where he was going, and he now has the challenge of learning the right size and use of ways of defining the sense of self.

The South Node ruler Jupiter is conjunct Uranus in Aries, and squared by Pluto in Cancer. The role he expects to have (South Node ruler) is that of Jupiter in Aries conjunct Uranus in Aries - someone with something big, original and probably cutting to say. The square to Pluto in Cancer screams that he is not aligned with tradition and the powers that wish to uphold it, but is doing something original that probably challenges everything traditional.

And then there’s the pileup in Aquarius - Eros, Pallas, Mars, Arjunsuri, Ceres, Venus, Mercury, and Vesta. This underscores his expectation of the role of being Uranian, given the conjunction of the South Node ruler with Uranus. His sense of proportion and how he understands harmony and balance (Venus) is working together with how he perceives things and his communication style (Mercury), in the sign of things that are different. And the drive to action being there indicates that not only is what he wants to think about and express creatively (Ve-Me) in the sign of things working differently than normal, but how he’s moved to get things done (Mars) also works differently - how he goes about getting out there his ideas and creativity we can also expect to be different.

His North Node is in Gemini, which indicates a call to stretch into the new territory of flexibility, and curiosity, of openness to new information. Reworking the piece that launched his career is a very Gemini thing, most certainly not a South Node in Sagittarius conjunct Saturn thing. His willingness to stretch into what is new territory for him (the North Node for any us is new territory) surprises me more than his willingness to “ruffle feathers,” as he’s always been very good at that (check his biography for stories of him as the editor of the school paper). But refiguring a major work of his intentional design (Saturn in Sagittarius)?

The best part for me is that Albee’s almost 80 years old. I’ve always knows it’s never too late for 0ld playwrights to learn new tricks, but to see it happening with this one is an inspiration to me.

January 20, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Two or Three Thoughts on Libra + Transit Lab: Waxing Pluto Square

While Aries defines itself in terms of self, saying, “I am what I am because I am it,” Libra defines itself in terms of the other, saying, “I can tell what I am because I can tell what you are.”

This isn’t a terrible starting place, but it can’t be the only stop on the line. At some point, the Libran (whether it’s the Sun, Moon, Ascendant or some kind of planetary pileup there, or if there’s a very strong Venus/7th house signature) has to resort to understanding self first.

But the orientation to the other is a blind spot for Libra. The core aim of Libra, understanding it as a method, or a lens through which planets operate, is to create harmony and balance. Libra does not already understand how to do that. When people come in with heavy Venus/Libra/7th signatures in their charts, there’s an evolutionary intention to learn to relax, to slow down - to introduce moderation into their lives.

Last night I thought of the Pluto in Libra generation (1971-2 to 1984), specifically that they have the greatest soul wounding surrounding the aims and methods of Libra. There is a range of possibilities to each of the 12 energies of astrology, and yet people tend to focus more or less on specifics in their karmic journeys, as anyone’s conditioning necessarily limits the vast possible menu into a few subsections of it that can offer us appropriate playing fields on which to explore the core ideas of it.

The specific that came to me was in the prevalent Pluto in Libra fear of rejection, that can be based in a fear of abandonment. To be alone to these people is hard enough, but to be left by someone, a friend, lover or parent, is devastating.

What Libran Pluto people having this fear need to learn is that how people treat you has nothing to do with you.

Nothing.

It has everything to do with how they think of and feel about themselves.

This will make zero sense to most Pluto in Libra people who haven’t Plutoed themselves quite a lot somewhere along the way. And with Pluto entering Capricorn, the waxing Pluto squares for Libran Plutos are about to begin. Steven Forrest has said that this square is when the monsters that live under your bed come out and sit down with you at the dinner table. I have loved this image, and I find it very useful when working with clients.

When you’re sitting at the table with them, which is to say that what you hide is out in the open and needs to be faced directly and head-on, you see that they’re not as bad as you fear. That the fear of them is worse than their reality.

The next few years will see the older Libran Pluto people facing these monsters, and seeing how to navigate them. The basic message that Capricorn has to give Libra in its natural square is to stop looking around itself and to relationship for cues about how to be, and to get busy building stuctures to take care of the self. I expect that many people in this generation who haven’t learned to do so already will begin to take back what they put on other people (a Libran strategy to form relationships) and begin understanding the impact that kind of use of energy has on them and their lives (the Capricorn call to reality that feels like friction - the square - to Libra).

I’ll be writing on these and other themes about this business in the coming months. With my Pluto at 3 Libra, I’m one of those folks just beginning the square. And it natally squares my Jupiter at 6 Capricorn in the 3rd. How this has worked so far is that all the Pluto square stuff that wants to get thought ends up coming out in my writing and speaking.

Tom is available for spirit-guided karmic astrology consultations. Contact him via his website.

January 18, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Pluto into Capricorn: With Open Eyes

As uncomfortable as it may be, you may soon begin to experience certain aspects of reality that you’ve seen fit to edit and omit from your consciousness.

At some point, a recognition of reality apart from our selective visions is to be faced. I seem to think this is what happens on the deathbed, and with certain tragedies and traumas that can serve to wake us up, when we find ourselves working from within a new and clear paradigm of spotless vision. And yet it seems to be in the air at the moment - at least in my circles and of what I’m hearing of people’s experiences these days.

Capricorn is the sign of slow development and maturation that comes from hard work. And yet as the sign concerned with status and reputation, it’s also the sign of the veneer of slow maturation that comes from hard work. What I’ve been writing about Pluto entering Capricorn has been based in my understanding that Capricorn operates according to a lot of shoulds, and there could be some hollow structures that hold our lives and societies together. Whatever they may be, Pluto entering this sign is the surest (if not the quickest and least painful) route to begin to see how we might be running on a lot of shoulds that aren’t based in reality or contributing usefully to it.

Last week I moved to a new place, and a few days ago met one of my neighbors, an artist and writer named Alex Forman. She told me about a photography & writing project she’s done, and it struck me as wonderfully illustrative of the energy of Pluto in Capricorn.

She photographed 2″ high figurines of the American presidents from Washington to Nixon, and each is accompanied by text reflecting research of various sorts of records - letters, medical records, biographies, etc. - which let us in on what are perhaps little-known aspects of the presidents’ lives. The result is what would make my 1st grade teacher believe she was near an apopleptic fit: A look at these men as the humans they were, with human concerns, desires, challenges, weaknesses and urges. As men with personal & intimate lives not ending with what the office of the presidency (I suppose that’s to be capitalized?) is supposed to be about. Each was made to be as much a symbol of the “should” life of the country itself as possible, and I have to believe it’s only a matter of time before stories based in reality come out.

The truth is that the vast majority of us constantly create a veneer of self-image based on shoulds (in what ways have you responded to media versions of how people should look? - that’s big enough for another post!). And it takes a lot of energy to keep out of consciousness the other, left out aspects of reality that fill reality out. Think about what it is that you don’t want to know about, don’t want to hear. Think about why you spend as much energy as you do keeping certain things out of your consciousness. Alex offers an example of this on a large social and historical scale with information about the real lives, the sometimes messy and gritty lives, of the presidents represented in her project.

Take a look at her site (Tall, Slim & Erect) and understand that this sort of revelation of truth, being faced with the unglamorous bits and pieces of reality that in actuality make us up, is the kind of thing we’re all in for with Pluto’s Capricornian ingress - the kind of thing we all have the opportunity to experience if, that is, we’re at all tired of keeping the messier, unglamorous and perhaps shameful-seeming corners of our realities out of consciousness and ready to try something new.

And this, as all things do, comes down to the challenge of self-love: Can you accept the parts of yourself that you don’t want to be part of you? Can you choose to be more whole by admitting a broader scope of yourself, as shown by an honest look at the reality of you?

Tom is available for karmic astrology & intuitive consultations. See his website for more information and to contact him.

January 11, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Pluto into Capricorn: The Will to Authority, part I

There isn’t a person alive who hasn’t been shaped by authority structures related to Saturn/Capricorn. This energy is that of the normalization of groups and the coherence of all systems: filial, social, educational, governmental. And anyone alive who’s paying attention to the energy of the present moment will notice with the ingress, if they haven’t already with the hinting at major Capricornian shifts that Jupiter’s recent ingress offered, that something important is happening.

An evolutionary astrology e-mail list I’m on received a note today from a member asking about source referrals for understanding the collective impact that Pluto’s ingress into Capricorn will have. She ends the e-mail by saying that it feels like quite a shift and she’s drawn to do some research.

Of course she’s drawn to do some research! The energy of Capricorn is that of authority - gaining, becoming and holding authority.

Natally, Saturn for anyone represents the urge to develop and be an authority, for mastery in order to, in the long run, develop security. Along the way, we adopt other people’s ideas of what authority is until those ideas clearly don’t work for us. Even without a natal retrograde Saturn, there comes a time for most people when they must develop their own ideas of what authority, discipline, sacrifice and hard work mean.

The first Saturn return (around age 29 1/2) is the pre-wired opportunity, the most convenient time for this. Earlier than that there isn’t sufficient experience to tackle this maturation (Saturn hasn’t made a full circuit around the birth chart until around 29 1/2, and so hasn’t made all possible aspects to natal bodies and points), and much later than that we lose the Saturnian understanding that the return offers the opportunity to capitalize on (though following through on the lessons made apparent by the return can take a few years and/or be ongoing).

But regardless of your age (where you are in your Saturn cycle) at this point, if you’re paying attention to how things in the air feel, Pluto into Capricorn will stimulate your own urge to develop authority. You’re going to want to do some homework and answer some questions for yourself. But it’s not just that you might start to get all Saturn on yourself. It’s that getting more Saturnian will likely feel of great import - we’re talking about Pluto here, after all.

(To be continued.)

Tom is available for private consultations. See his website for more information and contact details.

January 7, 2008 By Tom Jacobs