Personal Tantalization with Pluto on Point

 

 An compounded image of nebula/supernova remnant W49B. 

photo credit: the blue is by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the red and green is courtesy of Palomar Observatory, further X-ray imagery is couresty of NASA/CXC/SSC/J. Keohane et al...and the team of Caltech/SSC/J. Rho and T.Jarrett contributed infrared data. Too cool, right?

Rise and shine! Asteroid Tantalus moves into Aries on January 2nd at 9:16pm (UT/+0).

Does that mean we’ll all get up and go around being fascinating?

A fun thought, but....probably no! Life doesn’t work like that – particularly since the Tantalus them is less about being tantalizing to others than it is about temptation. It’s more about the ‘I COULD do that…SHOULD I?” sort of thing.

And when we put that vibe in Aries form, we get a question of what should I make of myself? I could be this. I could do that. What should I do – or allow myself to do. Or for that matter, what should I allow myself not to do?

Not about twelve hours after this shift, something else even more subtle occurs too: as of January 3 at 9:04am (UT/+0) Pluto touches base with the space and frequency at which it went into retrograde last April.

And no, that's not the end of that - which is the point!

When a transit happens once in a planet's cycle around the Sun, that's a moment, an event, a recognition, a 'singular something.' But when planets go back and forth over given degrees because of retrograde, that set of "degree harmonics" are getting a bit of a work-over - with particular emphasis on the degree where the retrograde starts (the station/retrograde), and that at which it turns again to go direct (the station/direct degree).

Put more simply, a one-time transit is an "event," against which we have the standard 3-time (forward, backward, forward-and-done) retrograde cycle, which we would otherwise probably see as a personal 'process.' Call it 'situational or personal evolution,' if you will.

But then we get to the outer planets, TNOs and the like. Given that these objects are so far from the Sun, their orbits take a really, really long time - which in Earth terms means they move very slowly. The result? The result is that it's not unusual at all for Pluto to describe a five-time retrograde cycle that instead of lasting 8 or 9 months ends up lasting 16 or 18 months.

And one more thing to know when we get into this land of planetary slooooow mooooootion, that being how since any way you cut it, 16 or 18 months will get you passing some yearly birthday (and just maybe two), the effect that a major passage like this Pluto meander through early Capricorn is going to have will change with every birthday.

In your life, I mean. How this works is a solar return (birthday chart) function, which is a subject for another day and totally individual.

But that taken into account, such is why you should figure on an 'inexorable' shift taking place in life (yours and/or that around you) any time you hear a five-time transit is under way.

Such as now. The evolutionary metamorphosis Pluto signaled the beginnings of last April will end with the dawning of November, 2011. And in this process, this would be a moment when we're 'touching base' on how well that is or isn't going.

With Tantalus moving into Aries, yes.

And with a Solar Eclipse about to take place?

Uh....yes. Got the point?

Just don’t expect this to like hit you like any light bulb. It’s not going to be like some blessed moment when you finally get home after a long, exhausting day and shut the front door, locking all the hassles out.

And that may be good, that may be bad. I'm not sure Pluto ending a cycle at the moment of an eclipse is all that wonderful either.

What is suggested by this combination of factors is that the new year’s calendar business starts up on calendric schedule because everyone has some idea of where they stand. And what they want - courtesy of Tantalus, which can be a rather conniving sort of dynamic!

So Tantalus/Aries plus Pluto/Capricorn plus an impending Solar Eclipse. What does that mean?

Well, tell you the truth, the list here could be rather near endless. But one thing which may happen right away in the moments before the eclipse involves self forgiveness. You know, sort of like with a puppy where you scold them and they look so very contrite. But then the warning ends and as said puppy turns to leave you can just see by how the degree of jauntiness picks up with every step that they’ve forgiven themselves pretty  quick?

That may be us. With Tantalus having moved out of Pisces to enter Aries, there’s an emotional quotient which, particularly in underscoring Pluto as a greater transformational symbol of the emotional type, suggests we realize a few things about what we did or didn’t do right – particularly over the last six months or so.

Does that mean we’ll do better? With Tantalus now in Aries, moving forward we are likely to be tempted to continue doing or being something we know we shouldn’t be (or be doing). And with a solar eclipse on our doorstep, for some this is absolutely the moment when will dawn the realization that our actions (or lack of same) have designed all that we are now faced with dealing with.

In the end, that’s the real lesson. What we do or don’t do and how we do/don’t do things is really what ends up designing the ‘present moment’ we then must contend with. And that is what mitigates the Tantalus Effect: the being tempted. Often times it’s not the thing you want to do which is the problem – it’s what you’re not doing with your time and resources which causes all the problem.

Considering how fast Tantalus moves (it completes an entire orbit of the Sun in about 1.4 years) that means that in a little over a month….give or take…this Aries phase is over. And this isn't any 'grand moment' which is going to burst on any of us like sunshine breaking through the clouds after many days of sodden, heavy rain.

But it is a shift of dynamics. And considering that we're about to have a Solar Eclipse, this many a life this isn't a subtle moment.

Yet even if it is - even if you're someone who isn't being  hugely effected by the Solar Eclipse which occurs this Tuesday - it's still worth knowing about these shifts as a sort of 'footnote' on life.

The theme for the next little while, whether you're affected by the eclipse or not, is about what are you going to make of yourself. It's simply a new celestial day - and that's not just true because Sun came up!

No, it's a new celestial day because we get to take a new tact. Because we should be looking to take a new tact. And maybe that's on old problems, but new is new, right?