This article is excerpted from astrologer Frederick Woodruff’s 40-page report, The 2020 Saturn Pluto Conjunction. Frederick’s full report, including sign-by-sign suggestions, is downloadable at astroinquiry.com for $3.99. Frederick is offering a 20% discount to Daykeeper readers, coupon code at bottom of article.
The root of the word prediction is predicament—and, so considering historical precedent (and events of the passing decade), who wouldn’t want to gather foresight as we lean harder into the upcoming Saturn-Pluto conjunction and its reverberation throughout the new decade?
To consider this question I want to take a different approach and close read the conjunction in a way that feels participatory rather thanpassive. I hope to offer suggestions or hints to mitigate the free-floating anxiety and apprehension that colors the collective mindset.
But like those objects that disappear before our eyes, it’s crucial to remember that even predictions and premonitions are not what we logically assume them to be. All bets are off. In other words: we’re braced for one direction (or new disaster) and the exact opposite occurs. So it’s best to ride the predictive arc lightly.
More than specific events, which astrology is really terrible at predicting anyway, we can focus on moods and tenors with accuracy. As Saturn, the planet astrologers associate with the reality principle, blends with Pluto— the solar system’s black hole generator—a kind of altered consciousness is attempting to establish and find harbor.
For those who make the effort, the astrological perspective is always flashing clues. And any point—past, present or future—within a cycle can be revisited to discern particulars about the current moment. Because time is a kind of holographic body, each point echoes the totality and speaks to the all-moment nature of time, and this is why astrology, when applied intelligently can reveal much.
And so, with that in mind, let’s back up and examine the winter solstice of December 2017, a point where the current players had marked their territory on the astrological stage.
Off and Running
The solstice horoscope for 2017 was dreary. Sobering. The solar stillness—the Sun’s zero-degree entry into Capricorn—was met directly by Saturn’s zero-degree position in Capricorn, having just entered the sign the evening before. (You can’t make these planetary moments up!)
As I wrote at the time, Saturn’s “moment in the Sun” should be viewed as a preparatory exercise for the strengthening of resolve we’d need as the collective moved towards Saturn’s impending conjunction with Pluto in 2020.
Have you ever watched that reality TV show Hoarders, where the dazed homeowner stands in front of a mountain of crap, wringing his hands and worrying about how he’ll continue to live without his collection of used paper plates?
The Saturn Pluto confluence has a similar air about it, exposing the disparity between what we think we need and what is essential. The trick is engagement regardless of our ambivalence and anxiety. Should we persevere newfound courage can meet the moment, allowing us to release the spent and worthless—and get on with living. But those first wobbly steps must be of one’s volition. More on this crucial point later.
Cthonic Transmissions
We haven’t experienced Saturn forming a conjunction with one of the outer planets—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—in close to thirty years. The last was in 1988 when Saturn touched off Uranus in Sagittarius and the Soviet Union collapsed. An event that seemed to materialize out of nowhere (in keeping with the nature of Uranian surprises).
But where Uranus’ function is to accelerate and shatter, and Neptune’s is to dissolve and disperse, Pluto invites a re-materializing effect that turns the tiny into a gigantic superstructure that occludes the aperture, or whatever is massive becomes invisibly small and insignificant.
Regardless of the mutation, whatever was perceived as being one way ends up another way—and thus Pluto’s association with quantum physics. This is a tricky dimension to articulate. And for that reason, I explain to students that the jury is still out on Pluto’s influence within the larger cosmic cycles. Like so many aspects of quantum physics, the established views and theories, like Pluto, are shifting and mutating constantly.
Pluto’s entry into Capricorn in 2008 heralded the systemic collapse of the global financial markets. Too, the planet’s ingress marked the moment when the cliched disparity between the ‘haves and have nots’ became a criminal act and fact. Because Capricorn tends to literalize or concretize events related to the sign, the fallout from Pluto’s ingress into Capricorn was immediate, jarring and in our face.
Following the epic wobbling of the reality matrix (financial crashes destabilize the entire planet), a bizarre cognitive dissonance took hold.
Corporate media continued to tout economic improvements and stock market highs while more and more people were setting up tents beneath freeway underpasses. Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest spots per inch on the planet now sees one in four people teetering on the edge starvation.
Who wants to try and untangle the confusing contradictions that plague modern life? Whatever energy we have is funneled into our own efforts to safeguard our own piece of the pie. There’s only so much consciousness to spend in a day and so who or what are we going to spend it on?
Is it any wonder we are walking around with our heads buried in our phones? Everyone seems in search of yet another New York Times article that might explain everything, to help make sense of the nonsensical. But solutions won’t come from more information, data, social networking, texting and sharing. The info-well is deep and seemingly endless with information exponentially compounding every second; a literal representation of the void.
Static-isis
Pluto’s twenty-year transit through Capricorn heralds what I call “propagandistic denial.” All collapsing structures, states or governments follow this pattern; it seems to be a culture’s key defense mechanism, a creepy codependence and complicity that says: “You lie to me and because I don’t really want to know what’s happening I’ll buy your bullshit.”
This type of propaganda foments fake news, alternative facts and conspiracies. And on the other end: Stock market highs that shatter historical records and technological monopolies that mutate into new religions. Are we really ready for AI deities and overlords?
When I teach astrology the most effective way for my students to understand planetary transits is via a body-based example. Like this: Planets moving into a sign of the Zodiac, I explain, are similar to one organ or system within the body becoming more sensitized than another.
And so what of the sign Capricorn?
Capricorn and its ruler Saturn are associated with the skeleton and the skin, the brick and mortar—the structure and boundary of our being. How we are arranged, both physically and psychologically, is responding in a literal way to the Saturn Pluto overhaul through Capricorn.
The building inspector has arrived to check the floorboards, the drywall, the plumbing—the very ground that our house is built upon. And so I recommend that my clients prepare. That they become familiar with the art of maintaining their body (and it really is an art, something beyond getting prescriptions from the doctor). The Capricorn-Saturn association with chronology reminds us that we have limited time remaining, to arrange our legal affairs, wills, final wishes.
Viewed psychologically, Capricorn and Saturn are defensive by nature. Defense mechanisms maintain the equilibrium between you and the world outside your skin. This is good and fine. We need boundaries. But, also, too much defensiveness keeps you crammed into your old familiar sense of self, an identity that’s probably moved beyond its sell-by-date. (Flashback on the Hoarders guy). Do you see my point?
The belief—perhaps false?—is that you must have defenses in place (denial, delusion or avoidance) against the impending chaos. As the ongoing Pluto transit erodes our consensus views of reality, the moment is here, for each of us to make way for crucial adjustments.
As Hermann Hesse noted: “Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted to a new order.” Ah, another Saturn and Pluto secret revealed.
As I’ve told clients throughout the years, in preparation of the Saturn Pluto conjunction, it’s best to acclimate to the idea that every aspect of life that they associate with solidity and security will experience an overhaul; and the Pluto part of the equation promises to teleport us to uncharted non-conceptual realms, a Zen sort of mindset that, uncomfortable at first, holds the keys for survival.
When Saturn and a transpersonal planet like Pluto become resonant, we no longer experience choice or volition as self-directed options. Our agency has shifted its center to that of the Earth’s. I mean, as Earthlings we must participate equally in the Gaian Mind—nature’s process of evo—and devolution. We’re each part and parcel the farm. What part of the arc are we riding? The ascending or descending? Or as Pluto is involved we need to ask: What about both arcs simultaneously?
You can download Frederick Woodruff’s full 40-page “2020 Saturn Pluto Conjunction” report at astroinquiry.com for $3.99. Use coupon code DAYKEEPER for a special 20% discount.
I’m honored to share that my teacher was Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson, an Aries dynamo who convinced me when I was a teenager that astrology was a worthy subject to consider as my life’s vocation; and so I’ve worked professionally as a counseling astrologer for the past 45 years. I write regularly on the merger of astrology and popular culture on my WOODRUFF Substack. My two published books, Secrets of a Telephone Psychic
and Skywriter: Notes on Modern Astrology are are both available through my e-book publisher. You can arrange a session with me here.
Oh great so if I read correctly Pluto is not yet done kicking ass. Yes it’s been a long haul since 2008. Some of us never really recovered. Currently in a quasi- protected state, but guessing that’s going to get rocked and rolled again no matter the extent to which one is an active participant. No reason to doubt it. Astrologers were spot-on in predicting so much that has happened. I will never be done, as when Pluto is done with Caps he will move on to Aquas – my daughter’s sign. Can’t wait!?!? That’s what we get for trying to kick him out of the universal lineup! All above a great read.