Last week, from April 10 to April 17, was unusual in that I felt life with my honey underwent some turbulence. Usually we are a peaceful couple. We have normal disagreements that are short lived and often times misunderstandings. But for some reason last week it felt as though whenever we tried to connect and meet one another, it just could not, would not happen. The climate of our dealings was an intense tight brooding energy. It felt strange to me. I had a gut feeling that there was something greater at play affecting our typically peaceful abode. It felt like we were releasing and letting go of habits and ways of being that were evidently no longer serving us. I guessed that maybe it had to do with the Cosmos.
Sure enough, I had discovered that Pluto went Retrograde on April 9. In fact, it’s planning to be retrograde until September 16. Whenever I hear about planets going retrograde, my un-refined astrological beliefs lead me to feel a little uneasy. I’m suspicious about planets that move in a backwards direction. Isn’t that the wrong way? What can be good about that?
Luckily there are people who make charting the starry sky their life’s passion. They know better. They are astrologers who can explain what the hell retrograding is and especially what it means for us. I found this quick and easy explanation for what retrograde means for us on Molly’s Astrology. She writes, “When a planet in your chart is retrograde, you experience the energy of the planet in a more subjective, internal way.” [Source: Molly's Astrology, Tutorials, Retrograde Planets.] Ahhh, okay, so, maybe Pluto is in both mine and my honey’s astrological chart. Well, according to Molly, nearly half of the world’s population has this retrograde. That immediately made feel better. That means we’re not the only ones experiencing something that doesn’t feel typical of ourselves.
Now that we know what retrograde is, how can it be a good thing in our lives? From what I have read Pluto has great gifts to offer, and you know what? From what I have experienced, he (or she?) really does. You see, Pluto’s purpose is to wake us up, to shake us up and out of our illusions, to push us to shed our old skin, to shift and change us because it’s necessary to do so. With Pluto, I don’t think we have a choice. I think depending on what angle he’s in, he pushes us up against walls and makes us feel squeezed in tight dark places. One of my favorite Astrologer bloggers is Lynn Hayes. In her blog, Astrological Musings, she writes, “Pluto’s transits are nearly always intense…When Pluto in the sky makes angles to the planets in our chart we are forced to face patterns of behavior that don’t serve us – we are often confronted with issues from our past that need to be released.”
This is so helpful and reassuring. My gut feeling about the planets having to do with honey and I having trouble meeting each other half way wasn’t far off the mark. Given this understanding, I can see that our obstacles were opportunities to heal our old wounds and to release ways of being that are no longer good enough for us. The obstacles we faced showed us what exactly we needed to change. If it wasn’t for Pluto doing his retrograde thing we might not realize that now is the time to transform.
If you’ve had an especially difficult time in the past week (4/10 – 4/17 or thereabouts), and you believe that this planetary movement has something to do with it, you may want to better understand what area of your life is being catapulted into change. One of my other favorite Astrologer bloggers, Jamie A. Kahl, author of the Astrology and Personal Empowerment Blog writes, “It will have to do with the planet in your chart that’s being triggered by Pluto. If it’s Mercury, Pluto is metamorphosing your mind and killing off old ways of thinking. If it’s Venus or Juno, Pluto is metamorphosing your relationships, giving you the possibility of a whole new way of being in relationship in the future. If it’s your Sun, the very core of you is being melted down and reshaped into a whole new person you will not even recognize. But whatever it is, you’ll have that feeling of emotional intensity, grief and loss and a powerful need to assert control as everything around you melts down. That’s Pluto. ”
The way I see it is that Pluto is a planet that propels us to transform and so long as there is any transformation happening, there is healing happening, too.
I do hope this post helps those of you who are sensitive to the subtle energy shifts affecting our energy fields.
Until next time!
