A wonderful and timely painting by reader Mahasweta, used with permission. See http://creationsfromstillness.com/maya/ . “Removing our Masks” is a metaphor we frequently use to describe Uranus Squaring Pluto, as our True Self becomes more and more insistent on enjoying the Light of Day.
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Late additions are in green…
If you’ve never seen or heard The Lone Ranger, you won’t understand our title. The Lone Ranger (one of my childhood heroes) was a fictional do-gooder of the Olde West in the USofA, who wore a simple black eye-mask. As he rode off into the Sunset at the end of each episode, one of the done-good villagers would be heard to say, “Who was that Masked Man?” Here’s an example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XChIBk_MBsk .
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Sheila asks:
“Natal moon is 15 Cap — I suspect many another’s moons are involved as well. For us, what?”
Excellent question.
First we need to look at Transiting Pluto crossing your Natal Moon – that’s one of the heavier Emotional adventures we can have, so I hope you’re Witnessing and Journaling like crazy for the next few months!
This will be what we call a “Can-Opener,” and we’re usually caught off guard when a Can-Opener hits.
When one planet crosses another three (or more) times as they take turns Retrograding (appearing to go “backwards” for a while, as they’re wont to do), the first episode is called a “Can-Opener” because it opens a previously latent Issue or Growth opportunity. The second crossing is called an “Exposition” because we re-experience the Can-Opener, but this time the Drama evolves more slowly, and we’ve been there before, so we can come to understand the Issue or Growth opportunity. The third crossing is a “Confidence-Builder,” because the Drama repeats, but we now know how to handle it.
We could easily recast all of astrology as a game of Experience – for instance, the Moon crosses each of our natal planets monthly, so we have a lot of Experience with it. But we’ll get a Pluto crossing only once at most (though it may be multiple, as in the paragraph above), so it’s bound to blow us out of the water.
Your Pluto-Moon “Exposition” doesn’t occur until early June, and your “Confidence-Builder” late December (the timing will vary for folks with Moons that are more than a few arcminutes distant from Sheila’s), so to the extent that you can, it would be a good idea to…
Suspend Judgment and just set your sensistat to Raw Experience for now. You’re just collecting Experiential information (not to mention Existential information!) for processing later. Hard to do, I know, but just plan to roll your eyes a lot and have a lot of “What Now?”s at the ready.
Above all (or “beneath everything else”) Pluto means Transformation or Trance Re-Formation, so aside from all the Sturm und Drang, what’s really going on is that your Moon-Life is being significantly upgraded, but it’ll be almost a year before you understand what that means!
Pluto is also the Lord of Death, so Ego Death is likely. In Ego Death, it Feels Like you’re Dying, or like you’d rather Die than go through that again. You just need to move the emphasis to the other syllable; it’s not “I’m Dying!” it’s “I’m Dying” – your Ego (“I”) is being Transformed. Ego is a Trance. Someone, it may have been yourself, hypnotized you into Believing you’re who you think you are. As your Consciousness Grows you’re in the process of learning to think you’re someone other than that, as a new Trance takes hold. Meanwhile, your Old Ego is “Dying,” and its Loss must be Grieved.
It helps not a bit to have Uranus and the Nodes all tied up in this adventure, because that adds about seventeen other layers to what’s going on. Eventually you’ll be able to sort those out, but it’ll take a while to make sense of it all. So take copious notes! You’re a Living research project on human evolution. I can’t wait to read your book about the process!
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That said, we can talk about the “larger” (less Personal) Perspective.
We often use what’s called a “90-degree wheel.” It’s a little hard to understand if you aren’t used to thinking in circles, but on the 90-degree wheel the Cardinal Signs are collapsed as if they were all one Sign. So…
Most of the rest of this post will apply whether your Moon is in Capricorn, Aries, Cancer, or Libra. If your birth Moon is in mid-Capricorn, the above will probably outshout the below for you, though both will be relevant. If your Moon is in mid-Aries, -Cancer, or -Libra, the below will probably be more useful to you than the above.
The notion of Can-Opener, Exposition, Confidence-Builder apply as well to Transiting Squares and to a lesser extent Oppositions, not just Conjunctions (a “crossing” is a Conjunction). But the Emotional Intensity applies more to the Transiting Pluto-Moon Conjunction than the other Angles. The Square will just Challenge you to Master your Emotions; the Conjunction will almost certainly overwhelm you.
“Transiting” means a planet in the Sky now, that illuminates a natal planet – Sheila’s referring to “Transiting” Pluto crossing her Natal (birth) Moon.
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I think of the Moon as having three “layers”…
- “Random” Emotions – At times some things are really irritating (or grievous, or scary, or…), at other times the same things are no big deal
- Compare to Venus, our Values, where our Emotional Reactions are pretty consistent, and Vesta, our Beliefs, where our Emotional – or intellectual – Reactions can be extreme
- Instincts – when we “obey” our “Random” Emotions (ie, interpret them as meaningful), the results will often be surprising (though our Instincts are often years ahead of our “Plans,” so it’s not always obvious)
- Compare to Lilith, which is more specifically about our Instinct for Yindependence
- Manifestation – “Science” is a looong way from verifying this, but eventually they’ll realize that Emotion is a window on the glue that holds a physical Manifestation in its current Form and keeps it from Re-Energizing as something else
- Compare to Makemake, which is more about Creativity
- Note that these distinctions are just distinctions that I use, not universal. Other astrologers will use different distinctions; astrology is like Tea leaves, it’s a trigger for Intuition, it’s not a recipe or a blueprint. So everyone’s triggers will be different – and almost every astrologer who isn’t just running an interpretation program or reading a book, will add new, complementary Perspectives. Even two interpretations that are complete Opposites will be instructive – it will advise you to look at the Coin rather than the heads or the tails.
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So how Uranus-Pluto-Nodes will impact your Moon is likely to depend on which levels you usually Live your Moon on – and which levels your Moon Lives you on. For example…
Random Emotions
- You could be having a lot of “Random” Emotions that are really Karmic “flashbacks” – in this case you’d probably be spaced out a lot, as each of these “Random” Emotions would probably strike you like a ton of bricks, even though you wouldn’t recognize them as “your own.” As much as possible you’d want to avoid drawing Conclusions or making Decisions based on these, as you’ll still be seeing “through a glass darkly” till the Exposition.
The Mind is a trickster, and Mercury is triple-crossing us here – Mercury fiddles with our mid-Cardinal hotspot January 15-16 (ie, today), 26-27, and February 28-March 1. It’s in Aquarius, but in a sense that makes it worse, as everything will be indirect, like a funhouse mirror. It’s an excellent time to see as much as you can as Cosmic Humor. Mercury rules Conclusions and Decisions (at least, those made purposely), and we don’t want to be distracted by erroneous preconceptions when we get to our real Exposition/Understanding phase in Linear Time.
- Much of what you’re Experiencing Emotionally won’t even be “yours,” as you’ll be an Emotional antenna. Separation (Ego) is an Illusion; we’re really All One, or, on a more practical level, all very connected through the Unconscious, where Individuality (as well as separate Past/Parallel Lives) is a fuzzy concept. So relative to your own Life, when you pick up on Emotions that your neighbors or friends (or someone on the subway, or your Doppel in another Drama) are Denying, and the strength of Emotion you feel is proportion to the strength of their Denial, part of what you’re Feeling is truly “Random” (to the extent that there is such a thing), as it depends on who your transmitters are.
Someone has to “own” or Take Responsibility For (be willing to Respond to) all Emotions, so when we don’t own our own we make our friends and neighbors process them. It’s not possible to own someone else’s feelings, though, so that just Confuses everyone. Confusion is the first stage of Growth, in this case Growth in Boundaries – from a Personal Perspective it’s more important to Learn how to not own someone else’s Feelings, than it is to Learn to take Responsibility for our own. Of course from the Community’s Perspective, it behooves if everyone Learns to take Responsibility for their own Feelings.
Emotions are no different than the Weather – if a Belief System prevents a Community from Taking Responsibility for their own Feelings, they create an Emotion-Storm that afflicts neighboring Communities. When the Community is large enough, or when the Emotion-Storms are bounced back and forth as if it was ping-pong, it can become Global. You can probably kernelize today’s entire Zeitgeist with the notion that almost no one is taking Responsibility for their own Feelings of Insecurity. Like the Butterfly in Chaos Theory, it’s possible for one person not owning their Emotions, to initiate a Storm that envelops the Planet. We don’t need to worry about that though, because there are plenty of people not owning their Feelings.
However, Mercury’s in a Twelfth-Harmonic Relationship to Pluto, so for all of us our intellectualizations here will be useful for Breaking Patterns – and Breaking Patterns is exactly what we need when we’re dealing with the South Node. The Mercury-South Node Angle is a Sextile – Grace after we take the first step. So we’ll all be finding a shift in the way we think here.
With natal Moon in mid-Cardinal Signs and Mercury in the same Degrees, you’ll want to take good notes about what you’re thinking as well, and as much as possible try to distinguish your Emotions from your thoughts. You’ll actually be Learning a great deal about how Emotion and thought interact.
Instincts
- Expect a lot of “synchronistic” phenomena, like Mahasweta reported, as she was making the painting above at around the same time as an earlier Uranus-Pluto astroevent.
- Your Instincts could be Scary, as they Ask you to make bigger Changes than you’re used to making all at once, and your Instincts could be more insistent than you’re used to (Pluto doesn’t much like Resistance).
What’s the difference between Instinct and Intuition, as I use the words? Instincts are usually about Survival, Intuitions can be about anything.
- The North Node represents your Mission in the Lifetime, and your Deepest Desires are a Metaphor for your Mission – our Mission per se is too multidimensional for most of us to understand, so our Desires are sent as a surrogate. Desires are unquenchable because our Mission won’t leave us alone. So Expect many of your Instincts to come through as Desires. If we have a Personality that leans toward Addiction (which often means a strong natal Pluto or strong natal Scorpio), we could see that either strengthen, suddenly stop, or demand a lot of Attention as it shifts.
- We all have “Uranian” Instincts – the urge to be True to our Deeper Self. But we usually decide, no, it’s better to just “get along.” Our Uranian Instincts will be stronger here.
Manifestation
- “Be Careful What You Ask For” is the traditional warning for times when our Manifestation Skills are particularly lit up. For instance, we could Ask for more money and find a beloved relative dropping dead. If you PIAVA Consciously, it might help to append “Lovingly and Gently” to the end of your Requests. If you catch yourself PIAVAing inadvertently (such as “Damn it!”), you can “Cancel, Neutralize, Upgrade” (Cancel the Request, Neutralize the Energy initiated, and Upgrade the Requestor) – you just say it, Trust, and forget it.
- In general, the End doesn’t justify the Means. So because Pluto can be a sledge, you want to Consciously err on the side of Gentle whenever there’s an apparent Conflict or Obstacle. With Pluto on your side you will get there, no worries. So you don’t need to sweat the small stuff.
- When there are major Castles Burning, Let Them Go. Uranus clears away whatever is no longer in Alignment with your Soul’s current agenda for you, so if you’re particularly Attached to anything that no longer serves, you could lose a fingernail or two. All Losses must be Grieved, so don’t squash those Emotions, even if they seem out of proportion. South-Node Grief passes surprisingly quickly.
- Don’t be surprised to see new Structures assembling themselves with remarkable speed, as Moon and North Node interact. You probably don’t know what they’ll be good for yet; Trust that they’ll be important. You could wake up one morning and know that you need to move to Peru. That would be way too much work, so you have permission to Resist and laugh it off. The first two mornings.
…occurs on the Cusps between Signs, which is astrological important, particularly for Blessings (Trines). Trines represent Dumb-Luck Blessings because they usually connect Signs of the same Element (Fire, Air, Earth, or Water).
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