Pluto in Capricorn: A Tale of Responsibility, Anger, Judgment and Blame
Pluto through the Social Signs, part 3
Read part 2 about Pluto in Sagittarius here.
Pluto in Capricorn (2008-2023)
The time for crusades against evil, heated religious debates, and an unwavering belief in the virtues of globalization is over. Society (Capricorn) is here and now, and someone needs to take responsibility for it. The system (Capricorn) is in crisis.
Before I get ahead of myself: What is Capricorn essentially about? Responsibility, maturity, accountability - in other words, showing integrity.
In Sagittarius, we learn about truth and truthfulness, but it is still at a philosophical level. In Capricorn, we show that truthfulness in action by acting in accordance with our beliefs. You do what you say. You don't say one thing and do another. Sagittarius has laid the philosophical foundation for what a good society should be like. Now act on it! You don't get to preach about truth, goodness, justice and fairness for all, and then go out of your way to cheat on your spouse, embezzlee the taxpayers' money and steal candy from little children. A person acting like that shows a lack of integrity, of accountability. Such a person cannot be counted upon.
What follows is an almost verbatim citation from Michael De Baker at the EA School Online, Module 1, Chapter 1, Lesson 12:
“All integrity or accountability is in relationship to yourself - Capricorn trine Taurus. By doing as you say and by owning (Taurus) your mistakes, you strengthen your relationship to yourself. By strengthening your relationship to yourself, you begin to develop a sense of wholeness - integrity, from the Latin integra meaning complete, whole. Now, when you notice a lack of integrity in yourself, you can recognize (Capricorn) it and make adjustments thereafter (Capricorn trine Virgo).
If, on the other hand, you do not recognize your own shortcomings, you will instead be likely to blame someone else for it. By blaming someone else, you find yourself excused (Capricorn trine Virgo again!). You have rationalized (Virgo) the situation; looks like you don't have to take any responsibility, after all.”
This particular image from the EA School Online has stuck with me:
“The mountain goat ascending a cliff must be careful where it places every hoof. It must own whatever mistakes it makes in the process, instead of blaming someone else ("You should have pointed out that slippery rock in front of me, you should have told me!"). Only by owning up to its own shortcomings does it begin to show true accountability, integrity, and therefore maturity.
This integrity, this wholeness, is the beginning of true individuation in Aquarius - as visible in the fishtail of the seagoat. The Aquarian individuation is already present in Capricorn, just as Capricorn's integrity and accountability is already beginning to show in the Sagittarian morality and truthfulness.”
- Michael De Baker, The EA School Online, Module 1, Chapter 1, Lesson 12 (paraphrase mine)
The flipside to this process of developing integrity should also be mentioned: Taking on too much responsibility, taking responsibility for things that aren't yours to own, because of blurred boundaries around the self, therefore feeling victimized - Capricorn sextile Pisces. That also is not integrity.
Or how about taking responsibility to carry out your duties to whoever happens to be in power - Capricorn sextile Scorpio. "I was just following orders" is perhaps the standard excuse for war crimes. As easy (sextile) as that may be, it is not responsible at all. It shows a fundamental lack of integrity, as opposed to the wholeness that will bring about true individuation in Aquarius.
In order to understand when to assume responsibility - and for what - Capricorn must develop conscience and conscientiousness. And in order to do so, Capricorn must hold himself accountable: inner accountability, internally felt. This is the Cancer polarity of Capricorn. As long as the sea-goat is guided by this inner accountability, there are no Capricornian themes he cannot deal with: rules, laws, order, structure, justice, even punishment if necessary. As long as he feels into himself (Cancer) to ask if he is really being true to himself, as long as he ensures that his actions are really in accordance with who he deep down truly knows himself to be on the most basic, subjective level (Cancer), there is little risk of wrongdoing. But if he hardens himself for harshness's sake, if he becomes all judgmental and rigid and unfeeling, then there is great danger of misstep. Such a figure can easily become an oppressor, forever standing in judgment of others, putting them down, rationalizing harshness, pointing fingers at others, controlling them through endless rules and regulations, the boot of the tyrant forever stamping on a human face.
Capricorn is a very public archetype and as such deals with society, the social structure, the system as a whole as well as big, heavy, powerful organizations within that system. The public world, the external world where things are objectively defined, the establishment and the current consensus, all are covered by Capricorn. Furthermore, Capricorn deals with men and the world of men, the world of linear time and of lineage, the world of tradition, public rituals and ceremonies, accomplishments and the celebration of accomplishments, official events and inaugurations, external roles - including gender roles - hierarchies, hierarchical establishments, patriarchy, fathers, the elderly, old age, stagnation, attaining a definite form, maturity. Some also believe that Capricorn is connected to money, which it may well be in the sense that money brings social power, status, and is connected to social class. Having spelled out all these connections - which are the same for Saturn and the 10th house - here are some observations for the Pluto in Capricorn years.
The Initial Years (2008-2011)
Big organizations include big banks and if there was anything characterizing the early Pluto in Capricorn years, it was the bailout of these banks. This was a way to take responsibility for the system, but not a way that everyone found satisfying. The anger was already seething: Why should we bail them out? Why isn't any of the bankers going to jail? They should be brought to justice! All in all, it seems that over a trillion dollar found its way to the banks that were considered "too big to fail". The deep status quo was suddenly all about saving these big institutions, pouring money into them at the expense of the American taxpayer. The word plutocracy1 - in a double sense - suddenly seemed apt.
Capricorn has a tendency to bring things to a halt (especially true for the railway system in Sweden every winter). In order to stimulate the economy, central banks all over the world started using quantitative easing (more or less printing money) to flood the system with new money, an economic policy that had not been used before. The theme of big organizations and big money loomed large.
Then there was another kind of big mega-organization that really started to grow in power during these years: the tech giants. I'm talking Google, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Apple, and (since earlier) Microsoft. Elon Musk's conglomerate (SpaceX, Tesla etc) could also be added to the list. These are big organizations that have also, for the most part, been lead by big men, almost akin to a new kind of little emperors, if you will - a theme to which we shall return shortly.
Meanwhile, in 2011, two things happened: Neptune moved into Pisces and Uranus into Aries.
Uranus on the cusp of Aries
On 4 January 2011, the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi died from self-immolation, in protest of corruption and ill-treatment by the police. This became the trigger for the revolts known as the Arab Spring. Look at the conjunctions in this chart, it is seriously shocking!
Looking particularly at Uranus in Pisces here, we can see that the initial protests (Uranus) were driven by a sense of victimization (Pisces) and there were attempts - some successful - to end (Pisces) the current status quo and replace it with one more oriented towards fairness and equality (Saturn in Libra). Then, on March 15, the Syrian civil war erupted four days after Uranus entered Aries (I kid you not). As great a tragedy as this was, we cannot pass up on the opportunity to identify these patterns. If anyone wonders what kind of energy Uranus in Aries might bring, look no further than to recent Middle Eastern history.
An explanation might be suitable here: What is the difference between Capricorn anger and Aries anger? Capricorn anger is like a deep frown: full of blame, demand for punishment, a contractive (Yin) movement. Aries is fiery and expansive (Yang): instinctive, direct, impulsive, driven by a need for independence and perhaps by an unability to co-exist with the object of one's anger. If Capricorn looks at you gravely and asks: "What have you done?" Aries is more likely to rage and get physical about it: "Get out of my way!" Uranus in Aries was a political energy that demanded to assert itself and found it difficult to co-exist with the Other (Libra polarity).
Later that year, the Occupy Wall Street movement began. In retrospect, it seems almost as if Neptune was culminating at the very final degrees of Aquarius, expressing itself as a hope for a more egalitarian world ("Another world is possible!") in combination with a new, instinctive, forward thrust (Uranus in Aries). Then in early 2012, Neptune moved into Pisces where it would accompany Pluto for the most part of the latter's journey through Capricorn.
Neptune enters Pisces
To fully understand what happened when Neptune entered Pisces, I decided to turn to a secular scientist (something astrologers should do more!). Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who has shown convincingly - without believing in astrology, I assure you - that mental health has declined considerably in a number of countries since around 2012, especially among teenage girls. He connects this to the breakthrough of smartphones and social media, including platforms like Instagram and viral functions such as the "Share" button.
The first iPhone may have been released in 2007, but smartphones took a few years to really take off. Around 2012, the breakthrough of smartphones and social media platforms had really started to change the culture. It was no longer about "the web", it was about that mystical, gleaming thing in your back pocket, a shiny thing that wants to suck you in and make you forget about the outer world entirely for a while. People literally started to behave as if they were trying to derive ultimate meaning (Neptune) from staring at a screen (Pisces)!
We have gone from an ocean of interconnectedness to an ocean of... the screen. A blurry, unified, whole. And inside the screen, remembering that Pisces is a mutable sign, lies an ocean of information. All mutable signs deal with information one way or the other, and Pisces specifically deals with videos, images, music, songs, and sounds. It's not like people are actually reading that much, it's all about the Spotify playlist, the Netflix series, or the cute video of a cat befriending a pet bird. And this has all happened in connection with a new kind of organization: the aforementioned tech giants (Pluto in Capricorn), the new, powerful, corporations that are delivering us all this content and helping us deliver it to each other.
Going back to Jonathan Haidt, what is it that started happening on social media? Why did people start feeling bad about themselves? Because they started being judged, condemned, pressured to conform, judged for their opinions, for their apperance, for something they said, for something they did not say - because this Pluto in Capricorn era has also been one of conformity. In fear of saying something that might offend anyone or in any way be used against you, many people simply went quiet. Haidt summarizes it well in the middle of this interview:
People have become so unhappy, in fact, that Neptune in Pisces might also be likened to an ocean of suffering (Pisces). The suffering, in turn, the sense of victimization, fuels the desire to get back at others and make them toe the line.
Haidt further recounts how he now has to teach to the most sensitive student in the class. If a single student gets offended by something, he can be reported for it. Students increasingly do not want to be challenged in their viewpoints, instead shutting down controversial speakers, demanding "safe spaces" and protesting against "microaggressions". And if someone doesn't follow this deep status quo of conformity, endless rules and regulations (Capricorn), you can always use the ocean of social media (Neptune) to cancel them (Pisces). I have previously written about this in the case of J. K. Rowling, who I believe is innocent of the heinous sins she has been accused of. That is what my conscience is telling me. But if that is a standpoint that makes you angry, you are of course free to cancel me. 😉
While this whole trend began in 2012, Haidt believes that the real problem started on college campuses in 2014 when "Gen Z" started going to college. Gen Z, starting around 1996, is of course the Pluto in Sagittarius generation. This is a generation that collectively must learn to become less self-righteous and less dogmatic in their opinions (Gemini polarity).
As for Neptune in Pisces, perhaps it is obvious that we need a Virgo polarity here. We all neeed to discern and discriminate (Virgo) between all the information we receive nowadays. And we need to remember to be here and now, not allowing ourselves to be swept away by the ocean of information when all we were intending to do was to check our email.
What follows is a list of other themes related to Pluto in Capricorn and (in some cases) Neptune in Pisces.
The rise in gender dysphoria
Like previously stated, Capricorn is connected to men and to gender roles. It comes as no surprise, then, that the number of people being diagnosed with gender dysphoria or transsexualism has risen sharply since 2008. It also comes as no surprise that most of them are girls (females) who want to transition (Pluto) into boys or men (Capricorn), partly as a result of a trend towards stricter gender roles among today's young.
The question of responsibility and of conscience comes up here yet again. In some countries, it has now been made illegal to give hormonal blockers to very young people, for fear of permanent damage to their bodies.
Order! Order!
This era has also seen the rise of figures such as Jordan B. Peterson, who has Saturn conjunct his South Node. Peterson sees as his mission to bring order to an increasingly disordered world. His book Twelve Rules for Life became a bestseller and was widely read among all kinds of intellectual men in particular (I can testify).
Going a bit further to the Saturnian extreme, we have people like Andrew Tate (with Saturn conjunct both Sun and Moon in Sagittarius) who preaches a form of hypermasculinity that has (unfortunately) gained ground among young men.
Questions of immigration and citizenship have also generally been salient. Who is allowed into which country, under which terms? Perhaps we should build a wall on the border with Mexico?
In part, what seems to happen is that people feel more emotionally insecure when they don't know what is what, who belongs where, what a man or a woman is, what is your gender role, who is part of your own people and who is not. These are all Cancer themes that Capricorn may need to work through, as part of its polarity point, to feel that inner integrity and wholeness. As such, I don't think it is something that should be trivialized. The person who ignores these fundamental questions may not be any closer to wholeness than the person who takes a deep, hard look at them.
With regards to immigration, the demand for order has become an especially big theme in Sweden ever since 2014-2015, when we had our second Pluto return. Sweden's Pluto is probably in the fourth house, and the Pluto return coincided with the European refugee crisis of 2015, when Sweden took in the highest number of refugees and migrants per capita in the EU during a relatively short period of time. This, coupled with already high rates of immigration and poor integration, seems to have activated deeply rooted emotional insecurities connected to race and national belonging (4th house stuff). It has also triggered a great deal of anger with political irresponsibility (Capricorn), and not entirely without reason, as rates of violent crime in segregated urban areas have increased sharply in recent years. It is a prime example of Pluto in Sagittarius having glossed over an issue, forcing Capricorn to pay the bill.
Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy theories have of course been along for a long time, and some of them may even have some merit (please, don't ask...). But during the last decade or so, we have really entered a whole new level of crazy. You have the Flat Earth believers, you have InfoWars (whose host, Alex Jones, has Saturn conjunct the South Node in Gemini); you have things like the PizzaGate conspiracy theory, sometimes mixing freely with a variety of New Age concoctions about how Queen Elizabeth didn't actually die or whatnot. What they all have in common is a belief that "the masters of the universe" (looking at you, Bill Gates!) are trying to dupe us all into blind subservience to some evil scheme that usually involves pedophile rings, microchip implants, and diabolical lizards from outer space. What saddens me is that many so-called spiritual people have jumped onto the bandwagon as well.
This appears to me as another expression of a judgmental Pluto in Capricorn afraid of being controlled together with a confused, information-overloaded Neptune in Pisces. With any luck, Neptune in Aries will eventually clear the mist.
Taking Responsibility for Past Misdeeds
Continuing on the theme of responsibility, accountability, anger, and blame, looming large across this period has been the Capricornian question of guilt. A number of countries and institutions have been found guilty - by others or by themselves - of past wrongdoings, ranging all the way from slavery to mistreatment of indigenous peoples to the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic Church.
Guilt is a difficult thing to consider, especially when it becomes a question of collective guilt. Remember, it is not Capricorn's place to take on guilt that is not his to bear. It can require true discernment (Capricorn trine Virgo) to understand which guilt is yours to bear and which is not. And then there is the question of conscience.
Pope Francis evidently felt the need to assume responsibility, on behalf of the Catholic Church, for the past misdeeds of the Church in boarding schools for indigenous children in Canada. He therefore offered an apology (link to external video) that seems to have found its mark. This is a case where I think the Pluto polarity point in Cancer has been doing its job.
The Return of the "Big Men" (and Old)
Pluto in Capricorn has truly seen the return of the Big Men: self-styled emperors who behave like we were all living some time during the 18th century. The process started when Uranus was in Aries - a wilful, aggressive, selfish kind of energy - but has not worn off entirely. We've had Putin getting back into power in Russia, Trump in the USA, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Xi Jinping in China, Narendra Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey (since before Pluto in Capricorn, but increasingly authoritarian)... I could add more to the list. All of them are authoritarian strongmen and all are over 60 years old.
Then, in the US election of 2020, Trump was the youngest in the field compared to the biggest Democratic nominees. Now the US is governed by an 80-year old. Capricorn is of course connected to old age.
In the next post, I will explain why I don't think there is a future "Age of Patriarchal Strongmen" awaiting us. It has to do with the planetary south nodes in late Capricorn that Pluto is now leaving behind.
The MeToo Movement
As already mentioned, the MeToo movement erupted as Jupiter entered Scorpio. The theme of sexual transgressions began to color the collective lens through which people now viewed the world. We know for a fact that a number of powerful men (Pluto in Capricorn) were brought to justice for sexual crimes. On the flip side, we know that this movement also played a role in the call-out culture which in some cases have actually lead to suicides.
Justice, by the way, is not necessarily a Libran quality. Sagittarius is the first truly social sign in the sense societal, relating to society, whereas Libra is interpersonal. Libran justice is concerned with listening and being listened to, symmetry and equality in relationships, mutuality. Capricorn's justice, on the other hand, is exactly the social justice that has been such a buzzword during the Pluto in Capricorn era. Sagittarius thinks about what a good society should be like, but it is Capricorn who establishes it. Sagittarius may reason philosophically about justice, but Capricorn delivers it.
Uranus on the cusp of Taurus
I have identified two themes that seem to mark the beginning of the Uranus in Taurus era on May 15, 2018.
The first theme concerns the relationship between the United States and North Korea - or, more particularly, between Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. In the year leading up to Uranus' entry in Taurus, the two had been exchanging insults and threats such that it wouldn't have seemed too surprising had nukes suddenly started to rain down from the sky. Uranus was culminating at the of Aries, almost spiralling out of control.
But then, on June 12, 2018, the two leaders met in Singapore and became best buddies! Not that this felt very reassuring either, except for one thing: they both signed a statement emphasizing the need for peaceful relations, security guarantees for North Korea, and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
The second theme is about climate change. On August 20th, 2018, just as Uranus had gone retrograde at 2° Taurus, Greta Thunberg initiated her first "school strike for the climate". The politicians weren't taking the necessary actions to prevent climate change. They weren't taking responsibility. Radical action (Uranus) for the Earth (Taurus) will be needed to prevent the ocean of suffering (Neptune in Pisces) being created by the current status quo (Pluto in Capricorn). Thunberg herself has both Sun, Moon and Mercury in Capricorn (birth time unknown) and she is already a master at demanding accountability. "How dare you?"
Political movements such as Extinction Rebellion and Thunberg's own Fridays for Future have since used a variety of methods, some more radical than others, to bring attention to the climate crisis and demand action. Some activists even just sit down on a road to block traffic - how is that for a fixed earth sign?
This brings us up to the eventful year of 2020, the year when "everything changed". There was a pre-Covid world and there is a post-Covid world and it all started with the exact alignment of Saturn with Pluto in the sky on January 11th, 2020.
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Plutocracy means government by the wealthy.