An Underworld Is Above Us: Saturn and Pluto Changing Signs in March 2023

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to take a look at the simultaneous entrances of Saturn into Pisces and Pluto into Aquarius. This is happening in March of 2023. And it's something I've been meditating on a lot lately. You might remember over the past couple of weeks, I've done some videos on Pluto's entrance into Aquarius and Saturn's entrance into Pisces. But the more I think about it, the more that I'm realizing that what makes March of 2023 so unique is that both of those ingresses are happening within a couple of weeks of one another. So today, I want to try to reflect on what it might mean that both Saturn and Pluto are changing signs together in that month. How could we read Pluto into Aquarius alongside Saturn into Pisces as a cooperative symbolism that I think is toning a period of years to come in the case of Pluto and Aquarius many years, right?

But in the next couple of years, while Saturn is in Pisces, Pluto will also be going back and forth over the early degrees of Aquarius as it's still sort of retrograding to the last degrees of Capricorn. And so there's this transitional state between now and about the end of 2024, which forms the bulk of Saturn in Pisces and the very first stages of Pluto into Aquarius. So I started thinking, I'm like, this is really important that the beginning of Pluto's long stay in Aquarius is really accompanied or ushered in by Saturn in Pisces in the very next sign, and remember, Saturn is the ruler of Aquarius. So. So anyway, that led me to this talk today, which I hope you will enjoy. I've got a bunch of quotes and some stories. And you know, I think you'll hopefully find it interesting.

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All right. So today, the name that I gave this talk might seem kind of strange, and hopefully, people were kind of curious to hear what this is about. The theme that came up the more I've been meditating on the simultaneous entrance of Saturn into Pisces, which is happening on March 7, and then Pluto entering Aquarius on March 23. The title that I kept coming back to was The Underworld is Above Us. And this actually came from a book that I read recently, which I'm going to read to you something from called Hamlet's Mill. When it was, it was kind of interesting to hear and read some things about the nature of the underworld and the ancient Greek and astrological imagination that I had never really heard before. And it got me thinking a lot about Saturn entering Pisces while Pluto's entering Aquarius and what it might mean. So I'm going to, we'll take a little bit of a circuitous path to get where we're going to go today but hang in there because I think you'll find this really interesting.

So remember, just a recap on March 7, Saturn enters Pisces, where it will stay for several years all the way until 2025-26, Pluto will enter Aquarius, where it will stay only for a couple of months in March of 2023 until like June, but then it Retrogrades back into Capricorn and then comes back into Aquarius back and forth like this for most of the entire period of Saturn being in the sign of Pisces. So it is as though Pluto entering Aquarius is being ushered in by its host Saturn in Pisces, and that transition happens almost instantly. So that's what we're meditating on today. And we're going to start by flipping some of our ideas about the underworld on their head. Alright, so I read a book recently called Hamlet's Mill, An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission through Myth. I loved it. I thought it was a fantastic read. It's pretty dense, in terms of, like, it's kind of like a dense academic text, and the tone is not super accessible. So I can't say that I think everyone would love it. It's sort of like reading the Masks of God by Joseph Campbell compared to, like, you know, the Hero with 1000 Faces. Hero with 1000 Faces is very accessible; Masks of God is dense, really good, but dense. So that's kind of what this was like.

I'm going to read you something from Hamlet's Mill that sort of gets at what I was talking about. And this is an exploration of Hades, Hades being the underworld. Now, this is crucial because we have Pluto, often associated with the Greek counterpart, Hades entering a new sign and an air sign. So this is kind of where we're going with this but listen to this. To pursue this hazardous inquiry, the first source is Homer, the teacher of Helles. The voyage of Odysseus to Hades is the first such expedition in Greek literature. It is undertaken by the weary hero to consult the shade of Tyreseus about his future. So that's first of all, it's interesting that he goes to the underworld to talk to something like a diviner. The advice he eventually gets a startlingly outside the frame of his adventures and of the Odyssey itself. It will be necessary to come back to this strange prophecy, but as far as the voyage itself goes, Cersei gives the hero these sailing instructions. Set your mast, hoist your sail, and sit tight. The north wind will take you along. When you have crossed over the ocean, you will see a low shore and the groves of Persephone, tall poplars, and fruit-wasting willows. There, beach your ship beside deep eddying Okeanos and go on yourself to the dank house of Hades. There in the Acheron, the river of pain, two streams flow. And he goes on a little bit, drawn near to this brave man and be careful to do what I did. Dig a pit about one's cubit length along and across and pour into it a drink offering for all souls.

Many centuries later, a remarkable commentary on this passage was made by Cretes of Pergamum. Pergamum, a mathematician, and mythologer of the Alexandrian period, has been preserved by Strabo. Odysseus coming from Cersei Island, sailing to Hades, and coming back quote must have used the part of the ocean which goes from the hibernal Tropic of Capricorn to the South Pole, and Cersei helped with sending the north wind.

This is puzzling geography, but astronomically it makes sense, and Cretes seems to have good reasons of his own to make the South Pole the objective. The next information comes from Hesiod, and his theogony and very obscure. It is after having heard of the echoing halls of Hades and Persephone, he says, and there dwells the goddess loathed by the deathless Gods' terrible sticks, eldest daughter of the back-flowing ocean, she lives apart from the gods in her glorious house vaulted over with great rocks and propped up to Heaven all around with silver pillars. Rarely does the daughter of Thalamus, swift-footed Iris, comes to her with a message over the seas wide back. But when strife and coral arise among the deathless gods, and when any one of them who lives in the house of Olympus lies, then Zeus sends Iris to bring in a golden jug. The great Oath of the gods from far away, the famous cold water which trickles down from a high and beetling rock. Far under the wide past Earth, a branch of Oceanis flows through the dark night out of the holy stream, and a 10th part of his water is allotted to her. With nine silver swirling streams, he winds about the Earth and the seas wide back and then falls into the main, but the 10th flows out from a rock a sore trouble to the gods, for whoever have the deathless gods that holds the peaks of snowy Olympus pours a libation of her water in his Forsworn, lies breathless until a full year is completed, and never comes near to taste ambrosia and nectar, but lies spiritless and voiceless on a strewn bed, and a heavy trance, a coma covers him, but when he has spent a long year in his sickness, and other penance and a harder follows after the first, for nine years, he has cut off from the eternal gods and never joins their councils or their feasts. Nine full years, but in the 10th year, he comes again to join the assemblies of the deathless gods who live in the house of Olympus.

Such an oath then did the Gods appointed the eternal and primeval water of Styx to be, and it spouts through a rugged place, and they're all in their order are the sources and limits of the dark Earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry Heaven loathsome and dank which even the gods abhor. And there are shining gates and an immovable threshold of bronze, having unending roots and it has grown of itself and beyond away from all the gods are, are the Titans beyond gloomy chaos.

This is Hesiod's version of the foundations of the abyss. Its very details make confusion worse confounded as it befits the subject. The difficult word oxgyon, translated often with primeval, seems to designate things vaguely beyond time and place, one might say, the hidden treasure at the end of the rainbow. It was also the name for the resting place of Kronos, that's Saturn, where he awaited the time of His return. But the paradoxical piling up of resources of sources limits on ending roots of Earth, sea heaven, and Tartarus to remove any thought of a location that is the location of the underworld, at the Earth's core, such as the cryptic words were popularly felt to convey this deeper than the deep, must have been beyond the other side of the Earth. And for reasons of symmetry opposite to our pole.

The shining gates and the immovable threshold of bronze are set elsewhere in the text to be the gates of night and day. The gates are high up in the ether, leading to the abode of the goddess of truth, and necessity goes on and on. But then what he goes on to say, and that I found really profound, this author, or there's a couple of authors in this text, I believe, but what they're generally saying, is that the underworld in ancient imagination was not under the ground. It wasn't deep down literally under the Earth. The underworld was, let's call it, imaginative. And by imaginative, I don't mean unreal; I mean an imaginal realm that had its roots, almost like on the other side of the Earth, but out in the depths of space, but in the opposite pole as the one, we look out to in Heaven.

For example, if you ever look at a birth chart, you'll notice that in the circular wheel version of a birth chart, the above hemisphere would point up to the visible sky and the stars in the visible sky. Whereas below, what we're really seeing is not just an image of something inside the Earth, but the stars and space on the opposite side of the Earth that extend out into space beyond the opposite side of Earth. And so what he's getting to is that not only was the underworld a space, and this is the underworld of Hades, the underworld of Pluto, not only was it a space that was not literally beneath the Earth or deep down in a cave somewhere that isn't quite the right imagery, but that it's a timeless and it's an unbound space is not bound by linear time and space. But it's also somehow on the opposite pole of our frame of reference.

Now, that is super, super important. Because that is going to lead us into a couple of other passages that start to give us a clue as to what the underworld might actually be or what kind of space it occupies. And once we have that, we can start to reflect upon the fact that Pluto is entering Aquarius, an Air sign, and that that's happening as Saturn is entering Pisces.

So we're sort of building our case here onto the next quote. Now, this is one of my favorite books of all time; it is called the Dream and the Underworld by James Hillman. And I think this is one of the best books ever written on both the topic of dreams and the underworld simultaneously. Or, you know, you'll find passages on both topics in this book that will you'll never be able to forget. Anyway, so he says this;

By day, world, and daylight, I do not mean the daily world. I mean, rather the literal view of any world where things seem as they appear, where we have not seen through into their darkness, their deadly nightshade. It is this day world style of thinking, literal realities, natural comparisons, contrary opposites, processional steps that must be set aside in order to pursue the dream into its home territory. There thinking moves in images, resemblances, and correspondences; to go in this direction, we must sever the link with the day world. Foregoing all ideas that originate their translation, reclamation, compensation, we must go over the bridge and let it fall behind us. And if it will not fall, then let it burn.

It's a dramatic but beautiful passage from Hillman. And he's starting to also define underworld as something contrary or polar opposite in terms of our frame of reference or a type of consciousness, which corresponds very neatly with what the authors of Hamlets Mill we're saying about the imaginal location of the underworld, not as something literally under the Earth, but as a non-linear realm that exists in an opposite pole or sphere of reference, but also linked to the stars or the heavens. For example, the river Styx was sometimes compared to the Milky Way. So this is, in a sense, we have to reclaim and relocate what the underworld means as an imaginal, one that figures into an astrological cosmos and an astrological frame of reference, which we're all interested in, right?

But when we reconfigure the underworld as a part of the heavenly imagination, and we understand it as referring to a frame of reference in consciousness that occupies an, like the opposite sphere, of the one that we're used to, that is going to be super important for understanding Pluto in general, or the underworld in general as a symbol that we work with every day. But also, as I said, where we're going with this is to try to make a case as to what it might mean that Pluto is about to go from Earth into the sky. And as it goes into the sky, we also have Saturn, the ruler of Aquarius, going into Pisces. So again, we will be coming around to that; just hang with me.

All right, let's move on. There are another couple of quotes that I want to get at in this text. There's a passage here; it's a little bit longer. But first, an intro before I read this passage, which is on Hades also from Dream in the underworld. So, Hillman says the spiritual quality of the underworld stands forth most clearly in the descriptions of Tartarus, which from Hesiod onward was imagined to be at the very bottom of Hades; it's the farthest chasm. But Tartarus was compared with the sky, as distant from the Earth as the Heaven above. So it's below, but out in space below isn't that interesting. And it was personified as the sun of ether and of Earth, that is a realm of dust, a composite of the most material and immaterial. As the fantasy of Tartarus, the underworld developed, that became more and more a pneumatic region of air and wind. Unlike the Christian hell of fire in the imagination of late antiquity, Tartarus was a region of dense cold air without light.

Remember, it's interesting that Hamlet's Mill authors were also pointing to the South Pole. And there's a whole section in this book that also talks about hell as a place, almost like the deep dark of space. If you think of William Shatner talking about his recent experience of going out into space and the terror he felt and how alone and dark and sort of cold and distant it was. This is getting closer to the ancient imagination of the underworld, but as a place still belonging to the heavens, not so much a literal just down below our feet kind of place. At any rate, so here are a few things he says about Hades, and then we'll move on.

Hades was, of course, the God of depths, the God of invisibles. He himself is invisible, which could imply that the invisible connection is Hades and that the essential what that holds a thing in their form is the secret of their death. And if as Heraclitus said, nature loves to hide, then nature loves Hades. Hades is said to have had no temples or altars in the upper world, and his confrontation with it is experienced as a violence, a violation. He is so invisible, in fact, that the entire collection of Greek antique art shows no ideal portrait of Hades, such as we are familiar with with the other gods. He had no representative attributes except an eagle, which brings out his shadowy affiliation with his brothers Zeus. He leaves no trace on Earth, for no clan descends from him, no generations, Hades name was rarely used at times; he was referred to as the unseen one more often as Pluto, wealth or riches or as Trophonius nourishing. These disguises of Hades have been taken by some interpreters to be covering euphemisms for fear of death. But then why this particular euphemism and not some other?

Perhaps Pluto is a description of Hade's much as Pluto understood this God, then Pluto refers to the hidden wealth of the riches of the invisible. Hence, we can understand one reason why there was no cult and no sacrifice to him. Hades was the wealthy one, the giver of nourishment to the soul. Sometimes he was fused with Thanatos, death of who Aeschylus wrote death is the only God who loves not gifts and cares not for sacrifices or libations, who has no altars and receives no hymns. On vase paintings, when Hades is shown, he may have his face averted as if he were not Even characterized by a specific physiognomy. All this negative evidence does coalesce to form a definite image of a void and interiority or depth that is unknown but nameable there and felt even if not seen. Hades is not an absence, but a hidden presence, even an invisible fullness.

So now, the last thing I want to read to you guys. So we now have the idea that Hades is an imaginal space. But it's a space that resonates with looking up at the darkness of Heaven and feeling as if some hidden Enigma or mystery lies in the deep dark of space. Even that deep dark of space that exists beyond where your eyes can visibly take you into the night sky, somehow going beyond them in the opposite direction of consciousness with its clear sense of things into a space of unknown, of unraveling of mysteries, of suggestiveness, of subtlety, of mystery, and of things that are slightly revealed, but then immediately concealed. This is the presence of the underworld. And it is best evoked in some ways by the night sky itself or by the imagination of a night sky that is cloaked or hidden within the night sky.

So this is a really beautiful and deep way of sort of starting to unpack what Hades is and how it might make sense to us to start thinking about Pluto moving into an Air sign, which is actually a place that, as we just unpacked in Hillman's text, ancient astrologers would have had, in some ways, no problem thinking about, you know, when we think about the air, we think, Oh, we go upward into the sky. And we think of Pluto; often, we think downward into the Earth. But what I'm trying to say is there is a very real sense in which Pluto has always been associated with something like the sky, but it's a particular imaginative relationship to the sky. And I want to talk about why I think that's so important here in a minute, but first, we need to be able to link Saturn and Pisces in.

So this comes as just a short little paragraph from a book called Saturn, A New Look at an Old Devil by Liz Greene. And this is one of my favorite books written on Saturn. However, Liz Greene's view is in some ways not identical to my own. For example, She uses the 12 Letter alphabet, and I don't use that any longer. It doesn't matter. What she says is this. She says Saturn in Pisces is difficult from the point of view of the personality. Because the Saturnian energies geared initially towards self-protection and defense against the environment are rendered ineffectual, this may, in extreme situations, be through hospitalization or imprisonment for a period of time, and the person may learn through their own helplessness how ultimately impotent the personal will is against the forces of his own past, which he himself has set in motion. The feeling that one is helpless, and must submit to something larger and greater, is frequent with this placement of Saturn, although it may occur on a very subjective level.

She talks about Saturn being associated with the 12th house, which it was; traditionally, the 12th house was called The Joy of Saturn in a cadent house refers to states of mind, and Saturn here often generates a vague fear that someone or something misty or generalized fate or destiny is going to destroy or control him. So okay, now with that little passage on Saturn in Pisces in mind, let's talk about five themes to watch for pairing Saturn and Pisces alongside of Pluto and Aquarius. Now I'm going to be marrying these planets and their placements together in these five themes and using the backdrop of some of those quotes as we go. And this will actually be, I think, fairly quick. A lot of build-up to get to making these points but here's the first one.

Images of progress upward become pictures of earthly shadows. Remember, that's one of the hallmarks of Saturn, and Pisces has to do with the Gift of Failure. Saturn in Pisces, as Liz Greene was explaining, is a Jupiter-ruled sign. A Jupiter-ruled water sign has a lot of emotional faithfulness, romance, hope, and aspiration behind it, especially of the emotional variety. Saturn in Pisces, one of the things that it can do is sort of Dash Your hopes, challenge your faith and put you into a feeling of having failed. But that is the blessing of Saturn and Pisces is that through the failure of your ambitions, you come into contact with your shadow. And because of that you're there's something you can't eat. The only way you can get certain dimensions and depths of your own soul is through its failures. Its frustrations in its ineptitudes. This is something Saturn in Pisces, specializes in. This is why for example, you will often see the image of Saturn in Pisces in young tragic rockers who, you know, they're so promising, but somehow there's tragic; Kurt Cobain is the one that comes to mind.

Now, similarly, when you get Pluto into Aquarius, in an Air sign, a sign that is, in some ways, obsessed with progress. One of the I think key themes that we can watch for here is that images of progress, upward, aspirational things, dreams, and ambitions take me to the stars, right? There's something in all of that that is not in touch with the Plutonian dimension, like the vertical or essential path, that not only do our dreams take us upward, but frequently, our dreams take us into that sort of terrible nocturnal underworld space, which is filled with unraveling, mystery, depth, it is filled with undoing. And there's a sense of fate faded, notice when something fails, right? If you're patient and curious, the gift is that suddenly, you're what you thought was a ladder to the heavens, you know, this image of going upward, like the sky is this limitless space of upward progress.

But actually, what lies upward and out there is also this deep black, this place of undoing and this place of mystery, and a place that is the underworld. And so I think one of the things that's going to happen in the next couple of years as we get into this sort of Pluto in Aquarius age, is that we're going to see certain aspirational, ascensional upward movements, whether in the collective or personally failing, but it specifically because they fail, that we are able to get back in touch with that dimension of the sky that is not just about rainbows and jet rockets flying off. But it's also about the mystery and the mystery and, in some ways, the terror. Because it keeps us there's an all that comes when you try to progress upward. And suddenly, you find yourself in the black. And it's only when you do that, that you that your aspiration takes you into this no man's land of total uncertainty and just being in the deep end, way over your head, that you can own. How else could you understand the shadows of your own aspirations that they didn't lead you not upward into, you know, Olympus, but upward into hell? You know, and but held being the not the Christian hell but held being Tartarus. Right, if you follow what I'm saying.

All right, well, number two, our humanity and our failures lift us up. This is a similar idea, which is that a lot of the time, we think the only way up is through progress, discipline, hard work, and so our imagination of what up looks like is ironically very limited. And it's specifically when Saturn gets into Pisces again, where the failure of our aspirations becomes precisely what saves us, what redeems us, what helps us out. It's our humanity and its limitations, and our failures, our ineptitudes, and so forth that end up lifting us up. How many times in your life when, specifically when you have failed and hurt, and something hasn't gone the way you wanted it to, has the astrology not been the most vivid and profound, overwhelming, awe-inspiring, slightly scary. You feel like something faded has happened. And now the night, the night sky, and the vision of up is ominous, but it's good to have that ominous presence in the psyche because that means that the sky holds secrets, not just goals. It holds things that will be revealed that you couldn't possibly plan for, or plan against, protect against, and because it holds those things in it. You can't just look up and think, you know, that's where I'm going. And it's all good up there. No, it's It's a diverse thing up there. And when your ambitions are checked, that's the only time when your actual frame of reference, your actual humanity, can be your protector, can be your friend, can be your blessing, a safe place, you're a beautiful place to be, you know?

Okay, well, number three, truth becomes the source of our confusion. Now, similarly, when we are aspiring to understand, to know, to find the truth, whether it's in science, or religion, or culturally or politically or whatever, we're moving toward utopia, we're moving toward the true, you know, the grand unifying theory, when we try and move further and further upward toward the all that, you know, we try to circumscribe the mind of God, whether it's, again, if you watch nowadays, you know, it's amazing the things we're discovering and science of lectures on YouTube that pop up in my feed, talking about all these kinds of amazing discoveries, and, you know, genetics and all this stuff. It's, it's mind-blowing and very interesting. And similarly, you know, Ayahuasca psychedelics, I mean, I've been a part of some really interesting, you know, forward-thinking religious and spiritual communities and groups and using different technologies. And I have nothing against any of that. But it's very important that when we perceive truth, as a progress upward, you know, toward God, whether that's again, through scientific hubris, or religious hubris, or whatever. The thing is, one of the places we will end up is Hades because Hades is up. Hades is also out in the depths of space.

So when we're walking up the ladder to Heaven in pursuit of truth, one of the most profound and beneficial things can happen to us when we get further and further up, and suddenly we become totally bewildered. Because that's one of the effects, you drink from the river of forgetfulness. When you get up there, you get into a space where, again, think about the sky, not so much as the logos, right? Now you look at the sky, and you think all of the measured rhythms of Heaven perfectly intelligible, the divine intelligence is guiding us, and you can, you can start writing really high even as an astrologer, thinking that the whole point of astrology is to grant life this ultimate coherence and meaning and purpose and, and you can start becoming like an astrological truther you know, and like that.

But the truth is also that the further up we go with astrology, in some ways, the more likely we are at, you know, at some point to stumble, stumble into Hades because it's out there too. And when we stumble into it, were brought back into a frame of consciousness, a polar opposite to our day world consciousness that seeks grand coherence and meaning and a sense of confident knowing. And we are now in a place of unknowing and mystery, and we can't help but look, you know, in their neighborhood and at people and within our lives and situations. And see that confounding deep, dark, where something is hidden within, it's something that will be revealed, but we cannot see. When that becomes present in our intelligence, it is a real gift. And so the more we try to apprehend truth, the more eventually we'll stumble into the heavenly realm of Hades, and confusion will become our blessing. And I believe these are elements of what this whole next phase is bringing. Also because when Saturn gets into Pisces, there is often a crisis of faith and of knowing.

What we lift up becomes our downfall. What we exalt as holier than holy, beautiful blessing above the rest, right? It's when those things fall when their faults are revealed. When the secrets are revealed that they're not that there, there's a stain somehow very Saturn in Pisces, the downfall of faith, the thing that tests your resolve, that the thing that makes you confront frailty that's very Saturn in Pisces is very wounded, and especially the beautiful things that are somehow wounded. What we exalt, remember this is the place where Venus is exalted in Pisces and also in Aquarius; what we lift up on high, what we venerate, as so special above everything else, it's very easy for Aquarius to do that with ideas, for example. But those things have to sometimes become the source of our downfall. Because that deep region of space that we call Hades needs to be present in our lives, it needs to be a co-present reality that we bring in. It's hidden; there is no way of worshipping it. There's no face on that God. But that faceless God is present when the things we lift up fall down somehow. And then we can continue to lift things up through our lives, but they will always be lifted up with the faceless presence of Hades nearby.

Now, number five, and the last thing I have to say for today, is that depth is what takes us above and beyond. So when we allow and try to cultivate an active relationship with depth, when we say, hey, I want to just bring that presence of Hades into my imaginal life. It's amazing what can happen. I want to tell you a story. In other words, bringing Hades into our life can ultimately be so amazing and how it helps us. If we're a research scientist, or a creative type, or an, you know, just any walk of life, it started including the faceless, deep, dark, ominous, secretive nature of Hades. If we have that kind of astrological richness that we've allowed Hades to be a part of our lives, then it's amazing how it can, ironically and paradoxically, help us to start transcending all kinds of things that would normally be pits in our life of despair, but only pits of despair because we haven't brought hades in into our lives to the extent that we can see Hades rather than a pit of despair. It's something different than a pit of despair, right? So it's amazing how when you bring hades in and make room for Hades, then suddenly, all sorts of deep, mysterious, frustrating, challenging, obscuring, even, you know, even your failures can become the source that, like, like launchpads for incredible growth.

So anyway, now I want to tell you a story about someone in my practice, this is I'm, I'm kind of making this a little bit generic. But this is sort of a slightly fictionalized version of a story from a client that I'm sharing with permission. And I think it illustrates this combination very well. And this is someone who was born with Saturn and Pisces, in their, in their birth chart. This person also had a Pluto transit going on. And I found it really interesting that this was a Pluto transit to someone who was also born with Saturn in Pisces. So this person was in the middle of a messy situation in her marriage, and her spouse had cheated on her. And so her picture-perfect image of life was just shattered. And then she started considering, Well, you know, this is something that I ought to fix and repair, even though at the time that had happened, she thought, you know, this is kind of a good thing because I think I'm, I think secretly, I've not wanted to be in this relationship for a while. And maybe it would be beneficial to, like, go my own way. They had kids, and they belonged to a religious community of sorts. And so it was a really tough choice. And she started saying to herself, the good thing to do, the right thing to do is to, you know, forgive and stick with my vows and continue on, and there was this sense that what had risen up in her, which is the feeling that maybe this is my exit, and maybe there's this whole different person that I meant to become. She did; she literally described it as an ominous feeling that something was like rising up in me, wanting me to just take the exit that was being offered.

Okay, and I thought the language was really interesting. Well, so she got the picture-perfect image all back together again, and it was just good. Well, then it happened again. He cheated again. Now, what happened was, in some ways, because the image was shattered again, one that she had worked so hard to recreate and then to push herself into that she had a kind of like nervous mental breakdown. She left her home and went to a hotel room and didn't tell anyone in her family, including her kids or husband, where she went; she felt guilty for it, she said, But nonetheless, she ended up in a hotel room. And she was on YouTube and found a class teaching a particular form of art that she's always been interested in. She ended up going out and getting all of the supplies, and for that week, doing nothing but immersing herself in this online class about this particular form of art and then doing nothing but creating that kind of art in the hotel room in a kind of manic and totally devastated state of consciousness.

Using these techniques that she was studying and ignoring every good or sane impulse to return home, and when she described it to me, she said it was that exact same feeling that had come up the first time when I thought maybe I don't need to return to this picture-perfect image, maybe something has been broken, and something new is going to come up. And I'm terrified of what that is, but like, maybe I should just go with it; she had pushed that down. And she described it as an ominous voice. And like an ominous impulse from somewhere below, right, like an opposite sphere of consciousness. Well, so she's in this, like, totally manic state as she described it. And then, by the end of this week, being in this hotel room, she ends up. And there are some other details there. But at any rate, she having done all of this with this art, she said it was as though she sort of like made room for that ominous presence that had come up the very first time and just let it do whatever it wanted to, in response to what had happened, rather than trying to figure out how to manage and stitch back the image or, you know, having to make the right choice.

Instead, she just went in a totally different direction. And then all of a sudden, she said, she came into this clarity where she realized she was ready to go home and face what had happened and asked for a divorce. She was going to become a new person, and she had no idea. It wasn't like, Oh, I'm going to become an artist or something. It was just there was something new that was going to happen. And she said she could understand her spouse for exactly who he was, with no judgment, shame, or condemnation. She doesn't need to be. She didn't need to be forgiving him or condemning him either way. It was just this total clarity that there was, it was, it was an event that needed no explanation, that she was comfortable living with a certain degree of what she had; her knowing was gone. Her picture of what life was or should be was gone. And she knew something was gestating and coming up from a dark and unknown place. But she was completely content to let that be.

She didn't; she said things like there didn't need to be one truth about the situation and there was no noble mission to try to save what had happened. She recognized that these impulses and urges that had come up the first time and the way she had pushed them down and tried to reconstruct everything had been an attempt to protect herself from this very space of manic, you know, kind of crazy dissociative creativity, right that had just boiled up at once. But because she had made room for it, even though it left a lot of unknowing, it also brought a kind of destructive energy into her family for a week. I mean, what, let alone what her husband did, right? But despite all of that, she felt that what had happened was not good but appropriate.

This is Pluto. Right? That's what that's the kind of thing that Pluto does sometimes. And no more so in some ways than when the things that you hold to be good or virtuous or true somehow are frustrated or fail or fall apart. Now I'm not suggesting I'm not using her story as a template for what you should do if something happens to you or anything like that. But
that was her letting Hades come in and have a say, have a presence in the situation. And for most of us, we can't possibly fathom that, that that that Hades, right, is up in the sky and wants to be a part of how we transcend, how we learn, how we understand how we grow, that it's not something that's just deep inside the Earth, you know, somehow opposite to the starry heavens.

No. Astrology is, in many ways, the realm of Hades because when you live an astrological life where those shades are everywhere, you start looking, and you see the invisible face of Hades in the way you perceive a moon transit or any transit in day-to-day life. And in my humble opinion and experience over the years, whether it's through the grabbed series or what you guys share in the comments section of the clients, I see the students I've talked to, there are in some there is in some ways, no better way to get to know that deep, dark and mysterious version of astrology, than when things fail, when your faith is tested, or when what you think to be true becomes confused.

So now, I don't want that to sound like all of this could sound sort of apocalyptic, right? So you know, I just think that when Saturn enters Pisces, and Pluto moves into Aquarius, these are the kinds of events and experiences these themes that we've been describing today are the way these are the ways in which we can expect growth to come for a little bit if that makes sense, which is profoundly beneficial for people who like astrology. By the way, this is why I was saying the other day that I think this is one of the best possible transits for people to get more deeply involved or invested in astrology, personally, whether you do it professionally or not, you know, whatever. But just because there's no, like, no better time to turn to astrology than when you're going through something like this. And that was exactly when she scheduled the reading too. And we ended up talking like, you know, well after this had happened, because, you know, she, I have a little bit of a wait time. So, it was like her impulse during that time of her life was to reach into the heavens for some form of understanding. But I don't think that people just reach up there so that everything can be granted coherence. I think that part of why we reach up there is that so mystery can be a part of what gives coherence so that Hades and the Milky Way river of Styx can be a part of how we understand things as well.

So all right, well, I hope that this was enjoyable and somewhat tangible. You know, again, sometimes you guys are actually like the way the place I experiment for a talk that I might develop more at some point or give at a conference or something. So I hope that you were able to enjoy it and follow it well enough. Don't forget the Kickstarter begins today. Help us reach our goal of 1608 backers by the New Year if you love and appreciate this channel. A lot goes into it, so your donation is super appreciated. Pick a reward. When you donate, you can find the link in the description and comments below. That's all we've got for today. Take it easy, everyone. Bye