The Tea Bag Said It: Capricorn, Libra and Relationships Misunderstood

I’m writing about Pluto in Libra tonight, settled in for a cozy astro-inspired night at home. I remembered that a friend gave me a few tea bags of what is certainly the finest, most wonderful, greatest and otherwise superlativest tea ever created. It’s made by this company that has inspirational messages printed on the bag tags.

You know the one. They’re always pithy notes aimed at gently opening your eyes to a higher level of love and light. Or bringing you back to your already very elevated consciousness after a stressful commute full of screaming at all the ignorant people who shouldn’t be allowed to drive but inexplicably apparently are. Or reinforcing your entrenched self-definition as someone who trafficks in a Cali-style, new agey pithiness that your Midwestern relatives are continually stunned by, telling each other when you’re not around that you probably joined a cult.

I’m usually down with what the tea bags have to say to me. The messages tend support my chosen self-definition, and I even sometimes share with others what the tea bag told me if it was particularly poignant or Cali-licous.

The message tonight: Live for each other.

Can you blame me for running over to trusty Computor to get my reaction down on virtual paper?

I’ve been sitting here teasing out the blind spots and unchecked assumptions of Libra, and the criticism that Capricorn can offer if Libra will listen. Libra makes the other its business, and Capricorn makes building the structures needed to care for people en masse its business.

Each sign’s energy defines itself in terms of what it can do or how much can get done for the other, yet the criticism of Libra from Capricorn has to do with the reality of working hard toward something concrete, and not just remaining focused on a person and the (to-Capricorn) petty concerns of defining the self in terms of interpersonal human relationships.

But living for each other?

No, tea bag, no! Living for each other is how we malfunction. That’s how we get away from being able to offer each other our best, from being able truly to share life in the superlativest ways.

People, don’t listen to the tea bag. Don’t live for each other. Live for yourself. Get yourself to the point where being with others becomes a celebration, and honors your life and their lives and your choice to experience them with each other.

I can’t yet advocate never listening to any tea bag, but you need to root it out and slam the door in its face if it sneaks into your life. And let’s all just be a little critical when tea bags offer easy means to deludedly derail ourselves from our path of compassionate awareness, or whatever other Cali-licious path you might be on.

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

February 29, 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

Last-minute thoughts before Pluto splits Sagittarius

1. Thirteen years might be a long time in human consciousness years, but might not be enough to rreeaallllyy intuit the truth. We’ve been trying on for size different versions of Truth, as well as different ways of arriving at it.

2. I’m pretty relieved now that I can stop trying to figure out what’s true. My job now is clearly to start building stuff - no more of this sitting around and checking in with my intuition, no more digging behind how things work. I mean, do you know how tiring all that fluffly perhaps-not-work is?

3. In honor of Pluto, I’m considering building a ladder down to hell.

Once I collected months’ worth of hair a roommate had brushed from her divinely adorable and wonderful cat and carefully rolled it together, a la dreds. I displayed this freak show entrant on the livingroom mantle, and when visitors asked what the disgusting snake-like lint thing was, I told them I was building a ladder to heaven from the cat’s hair, since she was so divinely adorable and wonderful, etc.

But now, it’s time to get serious. No more cat hair-as-joke lying in wait for unsuspecting visitors - no more frivolous games. Now is the time to earnestly build mental, physical and emotional structures to reflect what I learned from sitting around checking in with my intuition all those years (and preaching the truth left and right as I was deciding I was getting it). And one of the major things I learned during Pluto’s trek through Sagittarius is that doing spiritual work isn’t getting me anywhere if I’m not also doing soul work.

In depth psychologist and ecotherapist Bill Plotkin’s terminology, the former is ascension. While it has its place in our lives and journeys, integral to wholeness is also engaging in descension. I see we’re getting here and there better at ascension, for which we have some examples in our culture, but we don’t have acceptable, sanctioned models for descension, and so people don’t always know how to deal with that. I recommend Plotkin’s work to get a handle on this stuff - it’s conscious of how people and the world really are, and in it he suggests and explains numerous doorways to undertake the journey to gain consciousness of your most inner workings and, as I understand it, make friends with and reintegrate anything hiding down there that we’re afraid to look at. It’s a smorgasbord of shadow work.

Hence, a ladder down to hell.

Coincidence that I’m doing this waxing Pluto square thing?

Of course not. Why, I’m this week spending time with some monsters that’ve been under my psycho-emotio-spiritual bed. Probably I won’t report the encounters in detail, but suffice it to say that I’m learning just tons about stuff I think, feel and do that I’ve never been able to see before. And, of course, I’m happy to report that the reality is never as bad as you think - as bad as the fear of it. But something I got today when writing an e-mail to someone is this: One of the fears about coming to work with Pluto energy consciously at the waxing square is that in each of us, there’s a part that’s afraid to become the agent of change we so desperately want to become.*

*Pluto in evolutionary astrology, depending on whom you ask, represents the soul’s deepest desires/intentions or the soul’s deepest wounding. I work with it as representing both: To get to the desire and become that agent of change, we have to heal the layers of pain that inform our fear of living our lives in the ways we truly desire.

Tom is available for soul-centered consultations. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information.

January 25, 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

From Sagittarius to Capricorn, re Pluto’s Upcoming Shift

I’ve been thinking this morning about Pluto being the “bottom line”: What, in the end, is the most important thing. What underlies everything else.

In the paradigm of evolutionary astrology, Pluto for any person (natally) represents the deepest desires & intentions of the soul, as well as the soul’s deepest wounding. Transiting Pluto for all of us indicates pathways to manifest desires and intentions, while offering doorways into healing any wounds we collectively share.

This morning I’ve been thinking about the shift from Sagittarius to Capricorn as one from Mutable to Cardinal, and from Fire to Earth.

Mutable to Cardinal: From flexible and preparatory to direction-based. From openness to the exigencies of external circumstance to the motivation to travel over or plough through them. From an awareness of multiple existing realities to the instinct to create new ones.

Fire to Earth: From the spark of inspiration to the need to manifest physical structure and order. From the flash of intuitive knowing to the necessity of manufacturing and sensing physical security. From the feeling of possibility to the reality of matter.

One way I see this manifesting in my circle is the emergent desire to ground the spiritual knowledge gained during the long transit of Pluto through Sagittarius. Among some folks in my circles, the realization that practical, concrete skills and sturctures need to be applied to the insights recently gained.

In some people, this shift could manifest as the calm knowing that things need to slow down, a natural pitstop on the way to figuring out how to ground and stablize, as Capricorn requires. The intuitive feeling of Sagittarius gives way to the physicalizing of Capricorn.

But, again, this is all bottom-line stuff. Though for anyone interested in healing and making real their deep desires, this shift from Sag-Cap will be noticeable. Those people are the ones focusing on the bottom-line issues of their lives, of life in general.

Tom is available for spirit-guided, soul-centered astrology consultations. Contact him via his website.

January 2, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Jupiter in Capricorn - and Pluto on its Heels

Headline: The High-flying Optimism (and Perhaps Over-extended Wishfulness) of Sagittarius Gives Way to the Sobering View of Reality of Capricorn!

Whether this is seen or experienced as a plus or minus depends on one’s willingness to adjust meaningfully and maturely to Saturnian, get-the-job-done energy.

Undoubtedly, it’s time to work. With Jupiter into Capricorn, the intuitive mind begins to whiff that there are opportunities to ground some of the insights afforded by the previous year of Jupiter in Sagittarius.

It might be time to go to school or class of some kind to put into actual practice (manifestation) some of the rad theoretical stuff that we’ve been collecting. It might be time to slow down anything and everything in order to be sure that we can get and stay real about how things are actually working - Capricorn being the sign of adjusting to and responding to reality.

With Pluto’s ingress to Capricorn, we’re looking at the opportunity to deepen our relationship with the reality of authority. Who’s in charge, and why? How did they get there? What do they have that we think we don’t? What do we have in common that we may not have seen? Anything in there we can learn to ground and stabilize to develop and manifest our authority in new, better, healthier ways?

Pluto presents us with the tools to dig below the surface, and invites us to turn over the soil in a recognition that change is inevitable. If you’ve followed Pluto transits in your own life, you can correlate its level of difficulty with your willingness to change…wait a minute! - no one told you that’s the secret of prospering and growing during Pluto transits? Well, it’s time you got the memo.

Pluto in Capricorn will present us with many reflections of our conditioning, and you’ll treat yourself well if you choose to be willing to see how you’ve adapted to the suggestions, requirements and edicts of external models of authority. Who do you think is in charge of your life? Who gets to direct things in your consciousness? How are you doing at learning to be in charge of yourself? Whose idea of reality is currently the ultimate one?

Capricorn is the sign of normalization, of leveling to a common demominator that’s based on the order necessary for the greater good. Capricorn aims to fit everyone into the bell curve, an impossible attempt not at homogenization but at a decomplication to allow a given amount of work to positively serve the greatest number of people.

Let Pluto’s ingress show you what’s really happening in your life related to that necessary order and that greater good. See where you can ground. See what you can do to get more real about what’s happening and what needs to be done. And above all, keep your eyes, minds and hearts open.

Tom is available for spirit-guided, soul-centered astrology consultations. Contact him via his website.

December 29, 2007 By Tom Jacobs