A fun spin on serious cosmic stuff! Wendell C. Perry has 40 years experience studying astrology and how it impacts personalities & relationships. He's written two books & published articles in astrology magazines. He's happy to share this website so that you, too, can have fun with astrology to help you in everyday life!
When an astrologer hears about a marriage coming to an end, we have to wonder, “What kind of breakup is it?” Was it a Saturn breakup where one party recognized that the other has become a drag on their ambition? Or was it a Uranus breakup, fraught with drama and rebellion?. Or could it be a Neptune split, gradual, indefinite and likely to be regretted in the long term? However, as difficult as these breakups can be, they are not nearly and traumatic or complete as a Pluto breakup.
In a Pluto breakup one party, or perhaps both, comes to the conclusion that their marriage has transformed into something that they can no longer live with. That transformation might have been sudden, but it’s more likely to have been slow and incremental, so slow that neither party saw it coming until it had already grown into an insurmountable obstacle. The problem with a Pluto breakup is that there’s really no one or no particular incident to blame. It just happens, and in many cases both parties feel guilty about it.
About once every decade Saturn and Pluto form an angular aspect, that is to say a square, opposition or conjunction. Like all angular aspects involving the outer planets, these connections tend to coincide with increased tension in various places around the world. What’s special about Saturn to Pluto aspects, however, is that this tension has, over the course of the last 100 years, produced three major wars.
In 1914, when Saturn and Pluto were conjunct in Cancer, World War I began. In 1940, when Saturn in Taurus was square Pluto in Leo, World War II kicked into high gear. In 2001, when Saturn in Gemini was opposed to Pluto in Sagittarius, we had the terrorist attacks of 9/11 which precipitated the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In my analysis of the New Moon for Apr. 11 (click here to see that article and the chart) I was struck by the sharp contradictions described by the chart. I thought that maybe they would cancel each other out and that the result would be a boring two weeks. Instead, we got both the good and the bad sides of those contradictions and a very exciting lunation period.
I was definitely wrong about one thing. I thought that the Derek Chauvin trial would drag on for a couple more weeks. Instead we got a verdict that provided a ray of hope for those seeking social justice in this country. At the same time, however, we had more mass shootings and more black people killed or wounded by white police officers in controversial circumstances. Though there is no reason to go into them now, all of these contradictory highs and the lows were described by the Apr. 11 chart.
Spring is here and we are beginning to see the light at the end of the long, dark COVID-19 tunnel. You might think that Americans would be breathing a collective sigh of relief. But instead the country has been rocked by a string of mass shootings (25 in the last month). This violence has been accompanied by multiple incidents of black people being shot by the police, protests sparked by those incidents and the Derek Chauvin trial in Minneapolis.
Back when this string of shootings started, in March, I wrote an article attributing them to the square between transiting Saturn and transiting Uranus. (Click here to see that article.) That aspect has been separating over the past months but it remains within three degrees of exact. However, there is another factor to consider. That involves the return of Pluto to its natal place in the horoscope of the United States.
In the Sibly chart for the United States (click on Sibly to see the horoscope) Pluto is at 27Capricorn33. Transiting Pluto won’t reach that point until early in 2022. However, in late March of this year the aspect crept to within a degree of the conjunction and it remains that close until the end of May. So, it’s tempting see this current wave of violence as a foretaste of what that aspect has in store for us in 2022.
