It’s the big show this week featuring a once-in-a-lifetime meeting of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn along with the Sun, Jupiter, Mercury, and the South Node of the Moon, all in the hard-working, industrious sign of the mountain goat. If that weren’t enough, on Friday a Full Moon Eclipse in Cancer opposes this meeting of celestial moguls while Uranus, a planet linked to the discovery of new ideas comes to a standstill before moving forward in Taurus. It’s very likely that you have been feeling the pressure build on a personal project or an area of life for the last several months, so this week will feel less like doing the quickstep and more like a slow waltz toward destiny.
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You might feel enormous pressure to perform miracles under what seem like impossible circumstances. This is especially true if you have any planets between 18 - 24 degrees in Cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn), but will affect everyone in ways subtle to dramatic. Whatever you are currently going through, this week and this year present an extraordinary opportunity to cause a breakthrough in the areas of life that matter most to us individually and collectively. Werner Erhard, a pioneer in the 1970s human potential movement sums up the challenge we face in expressing Capricorn ambition at it’s most humane:

“Every human being’s deepest, most natural expression is the desire to make a difference in life, of wanting to matter. We can choose to make the success of all humanity our personal business. We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family, to make our love for each other and for the world what our lives are really about.”
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Capricorn is ruled by Saturn and is known as the Lord of Karma and the Guardian at the Threshold. Saturn is the gate-keeper and cosmic debt-collector who asks us to grow up by taking full responsibility for every aspect of our lives. Ruling the metal lead, Saturn represents the dull, decaying, detritus of our lives – everything that seems to stand in our way and drag us down. In Capricorn Saturn tends to delay our progress by placing obstacles and trials in our path in order to test our resolve, providing the lessons we need to gain greater self-respect and self-sufficiency. These character-building challenges are likely to cause a reflectiveness that allows us the opportunity for a deep accounting of our lives. In every life, there are myriad problems to solve. As our time on earth is limited, Saturn asks that we choose our problems wisely that we may give our lives meaning and purpose.
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On Sunday Saturn will join with Pluto, another type of guardian on a different kind of threshold. Pluto, named after the Roman god of the underworld, is a brooding and possessive figure describing our deepest desires. Intense Plutonian transits tend to strip us bare by dismantling our inauthentic attachments leaving us with only a glittering inner core of authentic desire. This deep purification process is not unlike the creation of a diamond from decaying matter that undergoes immense pressure and fire under the earth’s crust. What might this look like in real life? A business crumbles despite best efforts. A partner decides to leave after a 20-year marriage. The loss of a cherished family member. A frightening and debilitating illness. To say the least, these experiences can be very unpleasant to go through but Pluto offers us the chance to tap into vast reserves of inner strength and to connect with our human capacity for compassion, forgiveness, and love.
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What might the meeting of these two archetypal figures of trial and tribulation offer humanity? Saturn gives us the context, the container, the goal, the earthly mountain we might climb while Pluto beckons us to let go of our attachment to fear and walk with faith over metaphorical hot coals toward our deepest callings. Representing our deepest needs, once recognized and tapped into, Pluto offers tremendous power, stamina, and control. Not the artificial control of an inflated ego trained on external circumstances, but the peacefully and powerfully directed will of the inner being, the dweller within, what Jungians call the higher Self, where the personal soul meets the soul of the world. Pluto’s meeting with Saturn is an invitation to let go of past disappointments and to bring compassion and healing to the act of remembering. We tend to amplify our missteps and minimize our achievements. Our hurts become the through-line of our lives instead of our victories. We are now invited to reverse this tendency and remember our achievements at least as well as our failures. On Saturnian terms, this is simply living in reality and taking responsibility for our successes. On Plutonian terms, it means realizing that fear is an illusion and that most of our suffering is an invention of the mind. Saturn offers us the raw earthly material, the lead of our lives, while Pluto applies the pressure and heat needed to transform our suffering into something more meaningful. In between these two great, unstoppable forces is the freedom of an open heart living one brave beat at a time. As you contemplate your part in the celestial play this week, it might be well to remember a great truth from A Course in Miracles: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”
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Friday
Full Moon Eclipse 20 Cancer
Uranus Direct

Sunday
Saturn Conjunct Pluto 22 Capricorn
Mercury Conjunct Saturn + Pluto
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