Pluto Retrograde

 

September 3, 2004

 

http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/sep3.html

 

Hi Eric Francis:

I've recently stumbled across your page on Jonathan Cainer's website, and am finding it very interesting. So here's a poser for you. Nobody seems to be saying anything very much about the fact that while there is all this powerful planetary activity going on involving Pluto. Pluto has been retrograde since March, and will continue to be until end-August. How does that affect things? I have a particular interest, because if I understand right, Pluto turned retrograde on 24 March, at 22+ degrees of Sagittarius -- exactly where my ascendant is. And I can't help feeling if my life hasn't quite been going backwards, I certainly haven't made as much progress as I would like. I was born 25 Oct. 1966 at 10:50 a.m. in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Here's hoping you find my question interesting enough to answer.

Elaine

 

 

Dear Elaine,

Pluto is retrograde a lot -- about 42% of the time, much more than any of the inner planets. Pluto takes about four steps forward and three steps back, over and over again, slowly inching its way forward through the zodiac. That is how this planet works. Most of the movement of Pluto that we see in charts is really a trick of perspective based on the movement of the Earth rapidly swinging around the Sun. This makes Pluto SEEM like it's moving forward or back, or faster than it is -- Pluto itself really orbits the Sun extremely slowly and steadily.

 

I think that the stations of outer planets can be significant, but personally I feel and experience stations of the inner planets much more palpably -- everyone is different. There are those, however, who can really sense the outer planets stationing, and I've seen some mighty good horoscope interpretations based exclusively on outer planet stations, written for the day or week of the event. Stuff in newspapers has at times been so astute it's better than anything I've read in a textbook, and that's made me really look at how these stations work and feel.

 

In one's personal chart, outer planet stations are much more pronounced. If you have Pluto stationing right in the degree of the ascendant, this is a big time in your life -- big. This is a dividing line between the past and the future. It is not a temporary condition but rather a lifetime threshold. Events of this time will teach you to come to a fundamental understanding of who you are and what you are doing in this lifetime. For one thing, you have lived for many years with Pluto going through your 12th house, and that is a time that you are very fortunate to have come through feeling so good - it is one of the more challenging and by far one of the deepest transits that we can get (and it happens to less than half the population in one lifetime).

 

When Pluto stations in a degree, it stays there for a couple of months. It is on one hand a lot of pressure and on the other, an enormous blessing, because it gets the job done. People with the Sun, Moon, Ascendant or other vital point in the degree of a Pluto transit are going to go through some kind of major growth process and then, hopefully, move on to a whole new future.