Do The Work

Steve Pressfield, author of the bestselling book The War of Art uses an intriguing style in his book Do the Work! The subtitle is Overcome Resistance and get out of your own way. In my experience, neither astrologers nor psychotherapists seem equipped to counsel individuals on self-improvement or personal development. Pressfield's advice is good! But you get the sense of being in a locker-room after doing battle against your nemesis and being screamed at by the coach to just try harder. "Clear eyes! Big hearts! Can't lose" sort of stuff. Motivating as hell but not necessarily a sustainable emotion. There may be many reasons for this, but James Hillman captures it best in his bestseller The Soul's Code, where he quotes Picasso who said, "I don't develop; I am". Incidentally, Hillman's subtitle is In Search of Character and Calling.

What we do for a living, and who we are, does seem to present itself at birth, in the birth chart. But reading the chart isn't necessarily as straight forward as reading your resume or vitae. Astrologers tend to get lost in the weeds and miss the big picture; they miss the forest for the trees. Steven Covey put it like this, "the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." This is the view that Pressfield and Hillman hit on the button, but what they make so clear also doesn't seem to sit with most people. There is something else going on.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto on January 21, 1930 (Power, destruction, rebirth, wealth, large organizations). Pluto doesn't always enter the astrological discussion because it takes 248 years to circle the Sun and as a result doesn't advance as quickly as other planets through the zodiac. So, when it changes signs, or makes an aspect in the natal chart then it's a big deal. Pluto is in the process of changing signs now after an extended stay in Capricorn. When Pluto entered Aquarius in May 2023 it seemed to coincide with the outbreak in Artificial Intelligence and the potential for radical transformation in every area of life. Of course, algorithms have been building and accumulating for some time but powerful changes, both constructive and destructive in potential, appeared to catch people of guard. Time will tell, but I am anticipating an equal or even more magnificent transformation in the psychological realm of personal development. One potential candidate is the work Carol Dweck, Ph.D. has done around what she calls the The New Psychology of Success and discussed in her book mindset. Her work has been building and accumulating for some time too. Will we see an even bigger breakout in the success of The New Psychology of Success?

BACK TO PLUTO

Pluto was discovered exactly one Uranus cycle (84 years to orbit the Sun) after the discovery of Neptune. Their orbits moving out from Uranus to Neptune to Pluto are in a ration of 1:2:3. We can think of Pluto as symbolizing perspective since it is one of the farthest out viewpoints in astronomy and note that the planets are not the only things that move. Everything moves! The Sun. The entire Solar System. The Universe. ALL moves. Time moves. And within this movement there is a precession of the Earth through the signs of the zodiac which measures the ages. Keep this in mind as we proceed because it is worth coming back to, to always recall the present age, as a backdrop to any transit, Pluto Included. In doing so, we are creating an even broader perspective for the widening perspective that Pluto provides in astrological analysis.

Pluto’s rulership is assigned to Scorpio. But the extraordinary Seer of our Age, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, assigned Pluto’s rulership to Capricorn, being the higher octave of Mars. Interestingly, Mars opposed Pluto on January 21, 1930, the day Pluto was discovered. And the Sun had just entered Aquarius. Pluto is transiting that same degree now, 00 Aquarius 00, where Jupiter and Saturn came together on December 20th, 2020. These are just a few of the significant aspects we are living under in the present time, so things are being stirred up which is an understatement.

Pluto’s position and rulership in the natal chart represents an individual’s overall outlook on life. Symbolically, Pluto suggests an approach for being productive, establishing prospects, and for making progress. But Pluto symbolizes a general framework for finding one’s place in the world amidst all the Possibilities of Personal Growth, and sometimes projects hidden motivations too strongly (more on this guided by Dr. Dweck's research). Everyone develops a point of view, a philosophy of life, and taken from a certain vantage point our philosophy connects with unique life experiences that necessarily work to adapt to life’s conditions and many entanglements. Symbolically, the degree to which the Core personality expresses itself in development can be seen through the condition of Pluto in the horoscope. For example, Pluto measures the amplitude of our psychological alignment to the Core Analysis suggested by the Sun, Moon, and major aspects in the chart. Irrespectively, the condition of Pluto helps describe how much and how intense the core expresses itself. The level of motivation as well as the individual's capacity for personal empowerment is sometimes suggested. The House that Pluto is in and the House that Pluto rules provide a psychological modification that adjusts the Core Analysis and guides astrologers to modify their deductions, sometimes inferring life perspective in terms of level of achievement and the motivation to get there.

The next essay will begin at the end of the solar system which is a nontraditional starting point, but we'll see that the distance and order of the universe only makes sense to us when we use our spatial awareness, this awareness doesn't always apply in terms of temporal awareness. First, let's look at Pluto through the lens of the houses then we will embrace a psychological perspective that begins to zoom in on the big picture, the natal backdrop if you will, by pulling our eyes and minds out of the weeds.

HVA