A couple of weeks ago I was banjaxed by a stomach virus. I spent about 24 hours wrapped around the toilet bowl weeping.
Naturally, I looked at my chart to see if anything jumped out at me. I felt as if Pluto himself had put his arm down my throat and pulled up the contents of my stomach. But to tell the truth not much showed – it was a tummy bug for goodness sake, not a life-changing event.
On the other hand, my kids were pretty horrified by proceedings. They've never really seen me so totally disarmed. And I think it showed up in both their charts as part of a long transit from Pluto, the god of drains (and possibly evisceration).
Normally, I don't look at their charts over much. I try to stand back a bit, because I don't feel that tracking the transits against my kids charts is necessarily useful for them or me. You have to let life flow rather than trying to second-guess the situation. I don't want astrology to act as a brake.
But because Pluto moves so slowly, I always know where he is, so I can't help being quite aware of this particular transit. Pluto is at 9° Capricorn, moving back to 8°.
My oldest daughter has her Moon at 8° Cancer – and my youngest has her IC at 9° Cancer, so Pluto is in opposition. These are both extremely sensitive points in any chart, and both connected with mother. They show a point where my children's characters intersect, and a point where they connect to me. Since in other ways they are very different, so for me, this highly emotional degree is fascinating.
Now, this current transit is long and slow and repeated. It's been going on for a while, and it's going to go on for a while. It's an outer planet transit, so there's not much I can do about it. It's also a transit that won't come again for any of us. And in my own chart, Pluto sends a positive beam to my Sun in the 7th.
So what can I do? Not much in some ways. I can pay attention, be present and try and see the Pluto patterns right now, and maybe even flow with them. You can never predict how a major transit will unfold exactly, and for children in particular, Plutonic transformation often works well below the radar.
Picture credit: Thomas Gainsbourough's Daughters Mary and Margaret.
