Making Friends with the Dark Goddess

Pluto at the end of Capricorn, squaring the Nodes

Pluto, aka the Dark Goddess, has been a potent force these past months. As the planet of radical transformation finishes up its tour of Capricorn, it forms a tense square (90-degree angle) to the Nodes – a life-or-death, karmically infused final exam.

The South Node – where we get caught in illusion and self-sabotaging patterns – is in Libra, the sign of projection, reflection and “the other.” The North Node – which guides us toward our greatest fulfillment and highest evolution – is in Aries, the sign of individual power, innovation and leadership.

Pluto’s square to the Nodes represents a crossroads, a choice point: to own our power and take responsibility for creating a new reality, or to project our authority onto an external entity, passively waiting for someone or something to save us.

Pluto is making a slow transition into Aquarius – where it will finally settle in, for the next 20 years, as of November 2024.

If we don’t master the evolutionary intent of Pluto in Capricorn – owning our authority, taking 100% responsibility for our life circumstances, and committing to building the world we want to live in – we can look forward to a rather bleak (understatement) expression of Pluto in Aquarius – the technocratic, AI-ruled, digitally-imprisoned, humans-merged-with-machines dystopian future.

While we’ve been conditioned to keep our focus “out there," our place of power when it comes to changing the trajectory of collective destiny is IN HERE – in our own personal underworlds.

As Carolyn Elliott writes in Existential Kink (my new favorite Plutonian handbook):

“[T]he most surefire way to help address the collective shadow is to do the work to become aware of and to integrate your own personal unconscious desires… The brutal circumstances wrought by the collective are made up of unconscious individuals, so the more aware you personally become as an individual, the more you ‘clean up’ your own influence on the collective.”

We can feel victimized and helpless in the face of world insanity, in a constant cycle of reaction to one outrageous event after another. Or, we can turn inward to the source of that emotional freakout, heal our own trauma response, liberate our creative power and contribute our awakened life force to the healing of the world.

In this spirit, I’m offering a new, 3-session live workshop: Making Friends With the Dark Goddess: A Pluto Transit Deep Dive. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned about navigating the Plutonian Underworld from my 20+ years as a professional astrologer – as well as my own personal experience of dancing with the Dark Goddess (I was born with a Sun-Pluto conjunction).

The first session meets Friday, September 8th, and if you sign up by tomorrow (September 1) you’ll be included in the drawing to have your chart used as an example in class (I’ll pick two). To participate, you’ll need an intermediate-level understanding of astrology (conversant in the planets, signs, houses and aspects). Recordings are available if you can’t make it live, and for your re-watching pleasure. You can find all the details and sign up here.

Note that this will be the last live class I teach for the next 6 months or so. And p.s. – in a previous missive I asked you to save the date for a live workshop in New Mexico on October 28th. Please UNsave the date – we’re postponing that event until early May (retrograde re-do!).

Hope to see you in Pluto class! Just hit reply with any questions.

love, Emily