Mercury Opposes Pluto: 5 Things to Watch For

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we're going to take a look at Mercury, having just entered the sign of Leo, making an opposition to Pluto in Aquarius. Yesterday, we looked at the total sequence of events happening for Mercury this week. Today, we're going to zoom in and look more specifically at the Mercury-Pluto opposition and put that archetypal combination into an interpretive vacuum, as I like to say, and then we'll turn the jewel and see what we come up with. I've got five different themes to watch for. You may have noticed these yesterday, today, or tomorrow. And that would be consistent with the trine that was also happening from Mercury to Neptune. So I'll refresh on that with a real-time clock in a second. But that's our agenda for today.

Before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe if you're new to the channel. We would really appreciate it if you clicked the like and subscribe button. If you're not new to the channel, we always appreciate the Like buttons so you can find transcripts of any of these daily talks also on the website nightlight astrology.com. There are a couple of things that I want to point you to this month of July going on at nightlight. Our school is hosting a speaker series this July, the 13th, 14th, and 21st. You can find those talks under the Speaker Series tab on the website. They are free. You receive the recording if you can't make it live to the webinar link that we send you. I couldn't recommend it more highly, especially T. Susan Chang, who is an expert on the decades and the correlations with the astrological deck ends in the tarot cards. It's a real honor to have every once in a while get kind of like a little celebrity visit. She definitely has a special gift when it comes to this topic. So, I hope you guys will check it out.

Also, Erika Beach, one of our staff and Nightlight alumni, is giving a talk on Sedna, and Jeanne Friscia is giving a talk on the overlap between the art world and astrology, which should be really interesting. Go up to the events page and click on live talks. You will see Uranus in Gemini, which is our July talk on July 18. I'll be giving a talk on the entrance of Uranus into Gemini, which is taking place next year.

It's one of the major transits of 2025 that we'll be looking at. We looked at Neptune in Aries; we did a talk on the 12th House recently, all of the outer planets and love, so you can find all of those on the shop page, or you can purchase them there; you get the recording. If you can't attend any of our webinars live, we always give you the recording. So that applies to the Uranus and Gemini talk coming up in mid-July as well. Hope to see you all there.

So, on that note, Let us now turn our attention to the real-time clock, where we are going to take a look at Mercury's opposition to Pluto. And I'm gonna give you five things to watch for. So here is the Mercury-Pluto opposition. By the time you are listening to this Wednesday, July 3, it has just passed by, but you will be seeing that the effects of this transit, which perfected early this morning, will be in effect all the way through, I would say Friday, July 5, you start to see the real separation taking place by that point in time.

If you back this up, of course, yesterday was the ingress of Mercury into Leo. In the early morning, we had Mercury going through a trine to Neptune in Pisces from Cancer. So we've had this little sequence from Mercury this week that's been quite strong. And we took a look at that yesterday and now again today with Mercury opposite Pluto. So, what can we expect from Mercury and Leo opposite Pluto and Aquarius?

I want to give you five things to watch for. I always pick them up after sitting and drawing up some notes. I always pick them from the meditation that I do before I work on my content for the day. So you never know what's going to be rolling around. What kind of stuff is rolling around in my head is always what you get.

But number one on my list, and these are in no particular ranking order or anything. Look anytime anything comes into contact with Pluto. One of the most magnificent and beautiful qualities of Pluto, although it can be a little daunting, is that Pluto brings up material that is unseen, hidden, secretive, or what we might broadly call unconscious. It brings it up and out, often with an eruptive force like a volcano.

Or I've joked in the past before on this channel about it being kind of like a zip that you are just ready to pop. It's like there's a force and a pressure that is bringing something from a subterranean unconscious, dimly lit place, a place that may not include a lot of our awareness. And it brings it up so you can see it and become more aware of it. And sometimes what comes up is sort of startling, like, oh, there's a gremlin in my fridge. But a lot of the time, what comes up is that Pluto's name is Richard. And so, what comes up from an unseen or unconscious place is often filled with vital, regenerative, primal, enlivening, enriching energy. And so what comes up is often a treasure.

Now, because what comes up is somewhat unexpected, and it's coming up from an unseen place. Sometimes, we have to process fear. Sometimes, we have to process misunderstandings; we judge what's coming up to be a monster when it's actually a blessing. There are all sorts of ways that we can freak out when stuff comes up from an unseen, hidden, unconscious, or subterranean place.

But in my experience, over many years of seeing Pluto transits with clients in my own life, the more you spend time with the stuff that comes up under a Pluto transit, the more you realize that it is there to enrich your life, even if what comes up requires change, the change that is required by whatever comes up will be changed, that will usually make you feel better, healthier, more alive. In a way, whatever comes up when Pluto is active is the kind of stuff that will fester if it doesn't come up. So there's also a very purifying, healing, cleansing kind of feeling that can come with what Pluto brings to the surface.

Now, with Mercury hitting Pluto, we're talking about mercurial things coming up. This means that we might see patterns of thought or communication coming up in ways that we can see much more clearly. Or we may find that suddenly we have empowered words to say that are coming from a place that's been pent up and that we haven't been able to access before. But now we're able to say something that we haven't been able to say, or we're thinking thoughts that it's as though somehow before we didn't know we could think or we didn't give ourselves permission to think or we were afraid to think. But now we're feeling empowered by certain thoughts and ideas, and they're all just coming up.

So watch for the eruptive force of unconscious material on the realm of thoughts, ideas, communication, and speech. Broadly speaking, the areas that Mercury usually touches on are technology, mental and intellectual spaces, and learning language; those are all things that Mercury covers as well. Mercury, interestingly, also has a lot to do with things like our strategies, approaches, and organizational methods that we use. Also, Mercury is usually related to business, marketing, and money. Mercury, Hermes was the ruler of busy marketplaces where lots of exchanges were happening. Think about the stock market, for example; it's, in a sense, very mercurial.

All right. Number two is a transformative idea or a transformation of ideas. There is nothing I love more about Mercury Pluto contacts than the way in which my mind is able to change. Now, I think I personally spend time with a lot of people. I've learned a lot about human beings and about myself, of course, and one of the things I think human beings sort of suck at, just generally speaking, is we're not very willing to change our minds about things. I mean, my favorite kinds of people do, and I've learned how to do so more now than I was in the past, let's say. But it says, though, that we connect our ideas and thoughts and the fixity of those ideas and thoughts to our self-worth.

A great lesson for Mercury and Leo, opposite Pluto and Aquarius, is you can change your perspective, you can change your mind, you are able to grow and evolve in your thinking, and, to open your mind and to consider what you thought previously. Maybe isn't the best for you. Now, it might have been at some point in time.

Can we be daring enough to change our minds without thinking that it invalidates who we were? It makes us wrong in the past, and that makes us right now; we think so much about right or wrong, good or bad. There is a faculty of judgment that we have to use each and every day to just get through the world; we have to be able to point out basic facts like that person is driving super aggressively. It's not a judgment, exactly. But we are judging a situation and discerning and describing, and a lot of how we justify our actions is rooted in our ability to accurately assess situations and make decisions based on how we're describing and perceiving things like that. This is all, in a sense, Mercury's domain.

But the hardest thing we have in front of us is living with a certain level of moral or factual discrimination and judgment in everyday situations. And this other space where I cannot possibly judge another being. I cannot judge their worth. I cannot judge who they are or what they are. I cannot see my mind because each soul is a little spark of the divine. And as Heraclitus said, every soul is explored forever to a depth beyond the report. We have to make our way through this world by judging, discerning, and discriminating faculties while refraining from judging other beings, judging their souls, and condemning them. In other words, we can say, well, that person is doing this or that it makes me feel this or that way.

But I can't say by judging this soul to be good or bad. Whether you're talking about the bodhisattvas or the great compassionate traditions within the great compassionate lines of wisdom within Buddhism or Christianity, like mystical Christianity or Sufism, the teaching is always the same. Right? It's judge not lest you be judged, and we cannot possibly judge another being right.

Can we discern and describe actions and activities? In the human world, we have a system of justice, right? We, you know, and we have to, but metaphysically speaking, spiritually speaking, when it comes to the eternal nature of the beings that populate this universe, there is the sacred sense in all the great worlds, you know, spiritual traditions that says you cannot possibly judge, a being whose depth is beyond your ability for your mind to like to circumscribe another soul is impossible. And there's also within some of the monotheistic traditions; there's the sense that God if you believe in God or the gods, you can go that way to that there's one operative level of justice going on that sort of like a karmic equilibrium, that's balancing everything out on the level of material outcomes, right.

There's a strange form of justice that works karmically. But that on the level of the eternal soul, the operative principle is actually grace. Right? Forgiveness, compassion, and the fact that all souls are being gifted on the level of soul, even if on another level, on the level of action, there's this other kind of program running.

Now, why am I mentioning all of this? I'm mentioning all of this because there is a very powerful sense in which Mercury opposite Pluto, especially when Mercury is in Leo, will involve the feeling of judgment of having to make wise or difficult judgments or choices. And I'm going to bounce around here a little bit.

Number four on my list is a big, weighty choice or decision. When we're faced with these huge choices, there will often be a sense that I have to make this choice the right way, because it is going to be reflective of my worth. When we try to make choices in order to justify our eternal worth as living beings, we will never get it right because our self-worth is never an effort.

Our self-worth is never like Mr. Rogers; you guys have heard me say this many times about your special just because you're you. And yet, this transit is one where it feels like you're special if you do the right thing. If you say the right thing, if you act the right way, if you perform in a certain way, if you have the right quality and category of idea or thought.

If you communicate with enough enthusiasm, then you'll be loved, then you'll be valuable. And I think one of the potentials for Mercury and Leo, opposite Pluto and Aquarius, is to place a lot of emphasis on getting something right. So this is kind of why I'm just kind of spreading out here into this bigger conversation about this.

There's one level where we have to make tough choices in the world. We have to balance and weigh various facts, judge situations, be discerning, and try to get things right morally. But there's a huge difference between that like functional level of human life, you know, which we can't deny or ignore, and this other level where you could get every last choice wrong, you know, and you still would be infinitely valuable in the eyes of the universe.

There's always that grace; there's always that forgiveness. There's always that charity; there's always that compassion. The universe sees you as an eternal part of itself, and the universe is fundamentally made of love and; hence, compassion, forgiveness, grace are the unifying principles behind everything. How do we keep that in mind when considering our self-worth in the midst of choices that we have to make on a totally different level of human life?

Where are there important judgments and crossroads, decisions, and consequences? Do you know what I mean? I find that that is one of the most difficult things ever, like how do I work on being. Let me just give you an example of my everyday life that maybe you can relate to, like, how do I be a dad? How do I do my best to be a dad today? Making the right choices and evaluating the situation is the best I can do. Making the right parenting decisions, modeling the right things with the right tone of voice, and having the right quality of heart.

Those are all things that you really do have to weigh as a parent can't just ignore them. How do I do them while also having the simultaneous like little Mr. Rogers in my heart going? You're doing your best; give it your best. And you're you're loved. You're okay. You're beautiful. In the eyes of God in the universe, you're an eternal being. You can't fuck this up. Because it's who you are. You can't get it wrong. You can't earn more of it. You can't lose any of it. It's a promise. It's just who you are. You are beautiful. Right? How do we accept that? I think that's really tough.

So anyway, the reason I'm going into this, again, is just because Mercury opposite Pluto will bring up this feeling that, especially in Leo, right, a sign that has so much to do with our sense of self-worth and confidence and self-esteem. Can we allow ourselves to move through difficult decision-making periods without connecting our eternal sense of value or worth to how right or wrong we get something? One of the most powerful things that Pluto does is we will visit the shadows of our ego when it comes to our thoughts, our words, our decisions, our judgments, our evaluations of things, and we'll get it wrong with Mercury opposite Pluto, our ego will take a hit. But if we look at it from that larger, deeper perspective, Pluto is always offering us getting it wrong, which is one of the quickest ways to relieve ourselves on some level.

When I grew up, one of the things that I am ever thankful for is that I received a liberal Universalist Christian upbringing; I had a very liberal Christian upbringing, for the most part. One of the things that I value so tremendously is that if I am taught, it's not a big deal. If you get things wrong in life. The main thing is that when you get something wrong, you don't have to be defensive about it. You can just be like, Oh, I screwed up. But that's okay. Because I can forgive myself, I can ask for forgiveness, I can be forgiven. The universe forgives me; God forgives me, and God loves me. So it's not a big deal to admit that you're wrong. It's actually really, really relieving.

The quickest way to stop the suffering associated with making maybe some bad choices or selfish choices or not seeing someone else or, you know, just messing up is to be like, oh, shoot, I messed up. And you're instantly relieved, whereas if you get so defensive and protective that I'm not wrong, I don't regret anything; it was that I was misunderstood. You didn't build it, you know, then we're constantly in defensive mode. We think that our worth is connected to how right or wrong we get things. Actually, our worth is connected to how quickly we can forgive ourselves of the whole right or wrong paradigm that we suffer under. You know what I mean?

That's why, going back to number two, one of the best things we can do is allow our ideas to be transformed and not make them about being right or wrong. Well, now I've got the right idea. And before I had the wrong idea, how about we evolve and grow as we as we learn? We learn by holding ideas as lenses through which we look and live, and then they die. And then new ones are reborn. Can we hold that whole process rather loosely and say, Yeah, I'm growing in my ideas in my relation to ideas, and it's okay.

I think one of the hardest things that we all really, really struggle with is allowing ourselves the permission to like, mess up, and be wrong or for our ideas to need to grow and change. We think that our self-worth is tied to never having to change our minds. Well, if I had to change my mind, then there would have been something wrong with me. Not really, not really, if we're eternal beings whose self-worth is given, can't be added to, can't be subtracted from ever. It's just who we are.

Then what freedom do we have to change ideas, change our minds, learn how to discern and make mistakes, grow, and, you know, develop better discernment in future situations? There is a tension between the Leo Aquarius access and always feeling like me, an individual unit of solar light, creativity, divine creative choice, and agency. That's the sun in each of us, the little spark of spirit, versus the sense of our belonging to a collective and being a part of a collective group effort, movement, set of values, or ideas.

There's also something about being who we are and just not needing anything else other than that fundamental sense of being special because you're you, and the idea inherent in Aquarius, which is that you can improve, you can be better, you can evolve, you can grow, you can find greater potential, which is sort of in a weird way, like, it feels sort of offensive to the sense that you are special just the way you are. And yet both can be true; you can be special just the way you are, and you can grow and evolve and change and quote, unquote, improve. The only way that you can actually do so is if you fundamentally and paradoxically embrace the fact that you don't need anything at all to be special or to be beautiful; you just are, once you deeply, deeply embrace that.

You can also, paradoxically, embrace the whole paradigm of improvement. Because you can embrace it from the standpoint of not being stressed out or feeling some kind of existential pressure from it being that's what's so great about self-esteem that comes from the divine within you that self-esteem, once you're really in touch with it, allows you to grow and evolve.

Because there's no pressure to do so, there's nothing ultimately, that is, ultimately, there's no real improvement upon who you are. And yet, it's exactly that freedom that we need. Inherently, we need to know it and feel it so that we can do those things without the weight or pressure of eternal judgment resting on our shoulders in the process. Isn't that beautiful? I mean, think about how beautiful that is.

It's like the universe saying that all you need to do to learn and grow and improve and enlighten yourself is to accept that there is absolutely no pressure or need to do so. And the more you deeply embrace that, the easier it is to evolve. Beautiful, who came up with that? Thank you a bit. All right, we talked about this one, which already jumped to number five descent in return. The thing that comes up under any Pluto transit, we use that you know my death and rebirth, death and rebirth. Like like the like I think of like the monkeys and Wizard of Oz.

So anyway, descent in return is another way of putting death and rebirth, but it really means that we have to get in touch with something that is life-giving and powerful, but sort of subterranean. And we have to go into the cave. It's like Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey; we have to go into the cave like Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, and we have to get in touch with something that is dark, powerful, subterranean unconscious; it's a little bit scary. But because we've touched that, there's a richness and a fertile power in it. When we come out of the cave, our lives change somehow fundamentally because of what we get in touch with within that underworld space.

So think about descent to get in touch with something that is dark and unconscious but powerful, like a dragon or something that we might initially think of as dark or evil that lives beneath the ground. But when you get in touch with it, you find out that it's actually the life-giving source of everything. Then you return, and creative power comes with you.

So anyway, these are some fun ways of thinking about Mercury contact with Pluto Don't forget we're going to have the sun contacting Pluto we're going to have Venus contacting Pluto.

This month of July, there is a lot of opposition to Pluto, so it has this very regenerative power behind it. Yeah, I'm excited to unpack more of it as we go. That is it for today. I hope you're having a very good day and that this Mercury-Pluto talk will resemble some of the energies it describes. Alright, take it easy bye.