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
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
The Call to Spirit II
Continuing the thread of my previous post on the call to Spirit, I’d like to offer some ideas about ways to work with anything relevant from that post that you might be working with.
When Mercury stations (appears to stand still as it readies to appear to change direction), the energy of the planet works differently than usual. It can feel like you’re at a cocktail party, amid the normal movement such places offer, yet there’s one person, in this case Mercury, standing across the room staring at you, immobile. There’s a focus the energy takes on because, in contrast to the normal bustle of everything that’s happening, it’s not moving. This can lend what feels like a strength to the energy, that I like to think of as a focused concentration.
In times when our mental energy works differently, or at a different speed than normal, there exists the opportunity to see things differently. In terms of the combo of Chiron and Neptune recently turning direct in Aquarius with this recent Mercury business in Libra, individuals have had the opportunity to grasp in a more-clear way the ahas and opportunities that have been coming through regarding the call to Spirit.
If these posts speak to you at all, you’ve learned something new about, if not how you fit into the fabric of the reality around you, that there is a fabric of reality around you.
Each of the three bodies I mention here, Neptune, Chiron and Mercury, have something to offer about the existence of multiple layers of what we call reality. Neptune is our personal doorway to other realms, Chiron adds a psychological and emotional sensitivity layer onto our normal processing methods, and Mercury is the messenger - the only one in our inherited myths who can travel between the worlds. He’s the messenger, and all versions of Mercury (in various traditions) see him bearing messages between the worlds.
Many of us may not understand what’s happening when the lines between the worlds begin to blur. When approached in a way that allows the symbols to manifest on multiple levels, in multiple dimensions, astrology is a fabulous tool to help put into words and context the sorts of things that happen at these times. I’m talking when dreams are premonitions, when strangers or random newspaper headlines deliver urgent messages designed especially for you, when you begin having flashes of intuition of an unprecedented kind - when things start to get more serious because the sources of information seem not from this world.
But first things first: You have to understand that you’re not nuts. You’re simply having your view stretched or, if you prefer, your operating system upgraded. Making sense of what’s happening is not the first thing to do - grounding and rooting is. Get in your body, and learn to understand what your body is telling you in any given moment. If we’re living in our heads, it can be easy to forget that our bodies are the real-world tools of our living. If we’re out of sync with our bodies, we’re missing something critical about being alive. Get in your body, feel what’s going on there and you’re connecting mind and body. You’ll need both on the same page before you can begin to make sense of things.
Understanding and making the kinds of changes that can be called for when reality’s parameters seem to shift doesn’t happen overnight, and so I’m planning to give some blog space in the coming months to fleshing out different areas of what I seem to be calling the call to Spirit.
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
November 14, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
The Call to Spirit - Present-tense notes on Chiron, Neptune, and Mercury
With Chiron recently direct, Neptune direct in the coming day, both in Aquarius (the sign of looking ahead, objectivity, and upgrading lowest common denominators), and Mercury stationing in Libra, are you someone who’s heard the call to reintegrate or reinvestigate, or reexperience your orientation to Spirit?
I’m not talking religion specifically, but it’s one way it could manifest (though, likely, not for most who are reading a blog that I would pen). I’m talking about the general orientation to life. The awareness of what’s going on not behind the scenes (the Sun IS is Scorpio, but that’s not why I’m writing this) but in the subtle layers within the scenes. You’re not just your physical body - have you been getting invitations to relate to life’s subtle layers in new ways?
Chiron by transit serves to sensitize, Neptune is the how we access and connect to greater or other sorts of realities, and Mercury is the messenger between the worlds.
Mercury in its station is trining Neptune in its station, both in air signs - there’s an invitation to gain awareness not only of what we’re doing as far as Spirit in our lives, but also with whom we’re doing these things.
And with the air signs being Libra and Aquarius, we’re talking on one level about an opportunity to understand more clearly what our bigger picture is and who in our life may or may not fit into it. This picture is the one that involves living with and in awareness of ourselves as more than simply physical bodies/Newtonian machines. Also could be time for opening to find those who do fit in that bigger picture whom we haven’t yet met. With Neptune in Aquarius involved, these people may come to one in unexpected ways or from unexpected sources, and may not be like anyone we’ve ever met. Heck, they might not even be people. The definition of “other” that Aquarius is wont to cover doesn’t discriminate between the number of legs, the point of origination or level of corporeality one seems to offer.
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
October 31, 2007 By Tom Jacobs