Astrology of Now: A Very Important Retrograde
Doomed mountaineer George Mallory on the Aiquille Verte mountain in France in 1909
Imagine you are walking up a mountain trail. You’re slowing down because the way is getting steeper, and rougher — and your sense of dread and unease grows with every step. A dark shadow looms on the path in front of you, filling you with dread. You turn tail and fly, tripping down the mountainside.
In fact, as you stumble away, you realise you had dropped your map some way behind anyway and you start looking for it on the way down. As you walk, you find that your path looks quite different from this angle. You are able to see layers of rock. What the mountain is actually made of is evident now.
About half-way down, you meet a fellow traveller who radiates a powerful, positive energy. When you are near him, you notice bright veins of minerals in the rocks that you had never seen before. He tells you he’s seen your map near the bottom of the mountain, and that he’ll meet you on the other side. He explains that he has a meeting with the Lord of the Mountain, the person who owns everything you both stand on. Heartened, you hurry downhill.
It becomes clear to you that the path you were taking is not what you thought at all. The view is quite different now; you can look right down into the valley you’d left behind.
At the very bottom of the mountain path, you stumble back into the jungle. There is your map, exactly where you dropped it.
You turn back. Because you see the path for what it is now, you can make your way with greater certainty — and you have the map. Now you gather pace as you float up the mountain. Lo, at the exact spot (almost) where you turned back, there, sitting on a rock at the mouth of a vast cave, waiting for you, is someone dressed in black, the Lord of this Mountain.
Mercury is doing something like this now. The little planet of speed, intelligence, communications, commerce, language and travel will turn retrograde on December 19 just seconds before meeting Pluto. He has been toiling through the shadow of that retrograde since the start of the month.
Mercury turns Rx on December 19 at 15° Capricorn.
Meets the Sun on December 28 at 7° Capricorn.
Turns direct on January 8 at 28° Sagittarius.
Returns to 15° Capricorn on January 27.
Squares Uranus on February 1.
Leaves Capricorn on February 7.
This year Mercury’s three retrogrades have been almost exclusively in earth signs, squeaking just barely into other signs for a day or less. Practical changes have been afoot. These have been to do with money, with property, with boundaries.
But this month’s action is especially important because Mercury is retracing all the degrees that Pluto has recently made his own in Capricorn (since 2008). Pluto in Capricorn has been transforming the world economy — and possibly not for the better. We saw this in action in the banking crisis as soon as the Lord of Plutocrats entered the sign of establishment, international structures, hierarchy. Now we are getting a chance to review Pluto’s scorched earth in Capricorn so far.
Just this month we have seen some very literal changes in how money works in the world. In India, “demonetisation”, imposed by the government, completes today. Basically, small denomination notes have been taken out of circulation with lightning speed to be replaced by plastic. Since most Indians (some estimates say over 90%) are paid in cash, the impact has been disastrous. The results so far have been devastating for the poor. The purpose of this move was to root out corruption. Both are Plutonian themes. That’s 2bn people affected.
Meanwhile, in Egypt, the government has floated the Egyptian pound — again with devastating effects on the poor. The value has dropped by 50% in less than a month. That’s 90m people affected.
Then there’s Venezuela: another money disaster. The currency was worth so little by the end of November that you had to carry a backpack of notes around in order to do your shopping. Like the Indian government, the Venezuelans decided to pull banknotes (demonetise) — but these were high-value ones. Again this was supposedly to combat corruption. This week, the country has had to close the border with Colombia to stop currency smuggling. That’s 30m people plunged into deeper poverty.
In all three of these countries, decisions by government (Capricorn) have rendered people who were just coping completely destitute. It’s the difference between feeding your family and starving in some cases.
Fighting corruption has been one of the motivators — social unrest will and is likely one of the results. But international corruption — an area of Plutonian expertise — is being rapidly exposed too. Every day, the stink from Donald Trump’s ties to Russia gets stronger. It will be interesting to see whether the Electoral College goes with the energy of the Mercury Retrograde and decides not to vote for him on December 19, the day Mercury goes Rx.
Be prepared for a lot more corruption and dirty dealing to be revealed over the next few weeks. Another example is the revelation today that 1bn yahoo accounts (including mine) were hacked in 2013. Big, big numbers of people are feeling the effects of this transit personally already. Pluto is about vast wealth. Mafia bosses are Plutonian avatars, but so is the chief of police…
Watch out when Uranus turns direct on December 29, Mercury turns direct on January 8 and when these two meet on February 1. This will wake up the Uranus-Pluto square again.
On a personal level, we will all be reviewing the effects of Capricorn in Pluto so far too. More on that in the next post.
I was hoping you’d write about this!!! I’ve been looking at that Mercury/ Pluto dance and part of me is extremely worried…the other one can’t wait to see what’s going to happen.
Is has been difficult to see two places I’ve called home going through such levels of corruption controlling the lives of so many…Both countries have the Sun at mid degrees of Cancer so they’re face to face with the Lord of the Mountain…
Just looking at it personally, I notice the retrograde begins and ends on my natal Mercury (where Pluto is, of course, currently parked).
Could be quite a useful Rx then.
I’m re-writing a novel so I hope so (thanks – for everything. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a fabulous New Year).
Merci pour cet article !
Thank you for these vivid images. Will keep them in mind in the next few weeks as this is an important one personally. The lord of the mountain is sitting on my Moon, Venus and Sun and the Rx ends on my birthday, near my Sag Mercury. Strangely, the exact solar return is just a few hours before the mountaneer finds the map.
Seriously, Christina, do you really believe the Electoral College will deny the vote for Donald Trump ?? I think not, if so there will be a major uproar in the USA. Surely, they will not dare to do this ??
mimi
I hope they have the courage.
It would not matter, ultimately if they did. The system is set up so that it would go back to the state legislatures. Then, ultimately, the House of Representatives. Which is controlled by Republicans.
To my mind it would be worse if the electors abandoned their remit. What of the elections? Of the US constitution and over two hundred years of democracy?
The Electoral College was set up deliberately to allow the President to be picked by the ‘States’. To encourage candidates to visit and campaign to the entire country -not simply those locations which are most populous. If there was no Electoral College, candidates would only visit California and a few coastal cities. Then the ‘fly -over’ terrorties would truly be neglected -and unrepresented.
I urge you to read up on a system you do not appear to understand. I do not claim to understand why the UK has an unelected, Head of State, but I assume there is a reason. And one I could, perhaps, readily understand if I took the time to learn it.
Who me? As a matter of fact, I’m well aware of how the system works; and that is not just because I’m a dual citizen (which I am), and went to American school (which I did), and paid attention in history class (which I did) but because I like to be informed about matters which are of such huge importance to everyone on the planet. What is ignorant is assuming that a person living in another country cannot possibly understand your system of government. It’s not that complicated.
Donald Trump and his Russian friends have made a mockery of the democratic system —- and he and they should be stopped. It’s corrupt.
Thanks, Christina. It is corrupt, and it’s a nightmare. Trump’s cabinet appointees are all people who either want to destroy the departments they’ll head or they’re completely incompetent with no experience in that arena and thus will do the same. Then they will privatize everything, selling off to corporations to make money off of, for profit to the wealthy not for the people.
Agreed. An excellent article, thanks!
Really illuminating post, which I have shared on FB. My north node at 16 Cap will be directly activated, and the conjunction will trine my moon in Taurus. With a stellium (Mercury, Jupiter, Venus) in the early degrees of Cancer opposing my Mars at 8 Cap, I am interested to see how this will all come around. We in the US have been really concerned about the political situation. It really hamstrings us here not to know more about Clinton’s chart, but intuitively I had called it against her– voted for Bernie myself, as did many folks I know. DT is an abomination. Still having trouble believing he won, and pretty sure that there has been a fair amount of hanky-panky. My deepest anxiety personally concerns the effect this will have on environmental policy world-wide. I hope you will speak to the Jupiter in Libra aspect of this…
I DID vote for Clinton on Nov 8… wasn’t giving anything away to DT. Realized I did not make that clear.
Very compelling post. I’m still in shock from the recent election here in the US. Interesting how Pluto in Capricorn is playing out internationally. So far, it hasn’t been good for poor and working people. That said. Here in the states, many of the disenfranchised voted for Trump. Voting against one’s self interest is something I’ll never understand, and yet, people continue to do it en masse. My fingers are crossed but, I don’t think the electoral college will deny Trump the presidency. I’d hoped for more from this transit.
The phrase that springs to mind for Pluto in Capricorn thus far is “gangster capitalism”
Hi Christina: I don’t think Brazil is doing too great either.
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/12/17/how-brazil-got-the-worst-austerity-program-in-the-world/
I suffered a great deal under the uranus/pluto squares of recent years, when they crossed my IC and DC. Pluto is in my 4th house and Uranus my 7th. Also, I’m sun scorpio, and saturn was at work on me too. As a sick/disabled person in the UK, I was in a dangerous position with our government, and although things calmed for me this year, I’m not out of the woods as I face another ‘assessment’ soon. I am more worried now, if uranus/pluto square is triggered again in Feb. This isn’t pathetic anxiety, they’re killing people. It’s death or destitution under this government. Even if you’re terminally ill, government will deny you help.
I have a Sag stellium, so saturn is still at work on me. Although there are small signs of things looking up, I know they may be illusory. I don’t dare relax. I know I am one of the lucky ones and many didn’t survive the uranus/pluto years, but I only just made it. It’s a strange thing to make peace with not surviving when the thing threatening you is your government.
I remember liking your horoscopes during those uranus/pluto years. They were free then. I might subscribe now, I miss them.
Listening to people about what could be done about Trump, it sounds like there’s pros and cons to every action and there’s no agreement on the best course. Someone said it’s a stress test of the government. (thread https://twitter.com/LibyaLiberty/status/809220576904642560) Personally, I think there’s a danger we could lose ourselves in all the detail when the bigger picture is a diminishing America, a growing Russia, and everything else in collapse. In a sense, we have an opportunity to rebuild ourselves from the ground up and really protect ourselves from Russia, but we won’t, it’s a fantasy, and there are far too many people in denial or out of their tiny minds and voting against their best interests anyway.
Things haven’t collapsed enough yet for new ideas to form. We’re still in the collapse stage before everything bottoms out. So the time ahead is very dark indeed.
We could use a stroke of luck. How is 2017 looking?
Thanks Christina, you have showed in astrology terms what is happening in my country just now… I am a Venezuelan and this desmonetise way that my government did, this week has turned our lives in an huge chaos..
x-(
Soe