The 5 Lessons Pluto in Capricorn Won’t Let Us Forget

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Monday, everybody. Today, we're going to take a look at Pluto in Capricorn and some of the parting lessons that Pluto in Capricorn will surely not want us to forget.

I have a feeling that these are some of the lessons that we will be revisiting and that we've been visiting very slowly and gradually to the point where you know it's like fish and water. You don't even know that you're swimming in the waters of a long outer planetary transit. But we've been in Pluto, in Capricorn territory, in that water, for a long time.

So today, I want to talk about five lessons that I think maybe highlighted in the last couple of months while Pluto finishes up in Capricorn. And certainly, these are things that I think are always important to qualify, that every planet in each different sign has different lessons that it will impart.

And that does not mean that these are the only lessons, or that there aren't other lessons, and that sometimes those lessons aren't even in a kind of, you know, polar opposite relationship with one another, and that they push and pull in different directions. So, just keep that in mind.

But yeah, today we're going to talk about five lessons that Pluto and Capricorn won't let us forget. Think it'll be a kind of a fun way to start the week here, and before we get into it, as always, don't forget to like and subscribe. Share your comments and reflections.

If you've got a good story to share, use the hashtag #grabbed or email us your story grabbed@nightlight astrology.com; as always, transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on the website nightlight astrology.com, and today, I am so happy to announce that registration is now officially open for the Fall year one program. So, our new cohort of the nightlight astrology year one class.

If you go to the Courses page and go to the first-year course, we begin on November 16; registration is officially open today, which means that you can join with the pre-registration sale and save several $100 off the normal cost of the program. There is an enrollment plan, like a tuition payment plan, that you can spread out over 12 monthly payments. There's also an early bird price, and those prices will be available from today, September 9, through October 15.

So you have about a month to take advantage of that sale. After October 15, the normal course prices will be in effect, so there is a little bit of a chance to save here and join the new first-year program that starts in November. It is a really good time to begin the program. And those prices, by the way, we haven't the ones that if you just saw those on the screen, those are the normal prices.

The registration early bird prices will be up. I'm recording this a few days before we've actually launched the new sale page on the website, so the old prices are showing, but yeah, the thing that is really nice about studying astrology at this particular moment is that we have Pluto moving into Aquarius at the outset of this program and that ingress of Pluto into Aquarius is a fantastic electional signature for studying astrology.

The other one that's happening within the course of study in the next year is Uranus's entrance into Gemini. Both the air signs, in particular, are very, very conducive to getting a lot out of astrological learning programs.

So I think it's just a really good year this year and next to begin unpacking this ancient technology and learning more about it. During the year, there are 30 webinar classes, and we have an interactive group, forum, discussion, tutoring, and breakout study sessions.

There's so much material that is built into this program to help you succeed in starting a practice or in just learning the language so that you have the lifetime gift of knowing this language so that you can look at your own chart or the charts of people that you know that you're close to, and use it as a tool for spiritual growth.

So, we have a lot of people who come in with intentions to study professionally. We have a lot of people who come in just wanting to do this for personal enrichment. Whatever the case might be, you are welcome. We hope that you will take advantage. If you are very brand, brand new, you don't know anything.

You may want to try the astrology for beginners course, which is just about eight hours of content that will be a prerequisite for total beginners. And I would take that first and then jump into the first-year course in November. But because the first-year course sort of assumes that you know a little bit about science planets and houses already, this isn't a class in ancient Hellenistic astrology.

So if you, if you're coming from modern astrology, this is also unlike anything you've ever studied before, and so the prior background isn't enough to skip forward into our second and third-year courses because ancient astrology is a very particular school of astrology with some really unique teachings and methods.

Not only that, but I like people to entrain themselves into a living lineage and really get to know me and the way that I do things. With regard to client readings, in our year one program, we have a lot of live clients come into the classroom, so you get to learn my approach, not only in a theater. The historical and technical levels, which you know, may sort of similar from one place to another in the Hellenistic world, but also how I do things, particularly with clients, that I can show you and pass on to you.

So anyway, the course starts in November. Hope to see some of you there. This week, I'll be just sort of promoting the launching of registration and the sale. Then, I believe next week, I'll have an informational video that I'll be tagging on to the end of every daily video so that if you want to stick around and learn more about the program, you can learn more about it that way.

But for now, the sale starts today. Hope to see some of you in class soon. Okay, thank you for that. My promos will be short and sweet after this initial launch today.

We are heading over to the transit by page now, and I want to highlight this. Here's Pluto back in Capricorn. This happened last week, and Pluto is at the 29th degree of Capricorn. Let's go forward here. And we're going to see that Pluto stations and turns retrograde about mid-October, then goes forward and comes back into Aquarius by late November.

That's why I was saying, by the way, that it is just a shameless plug for the program again; Pluto enters Aquarius literally just a couple of days after we begin the year one program. It is a fantastic selection for this particular program. I think it's going to be one of the stronger programs we've had in a while.

So anyway, Pluto's re-entrance into Aquarius, though, means that we have about two more months of Pluto in Capricorn in front of us. I want to refresh on the kinds of lessons that Pluto and Capricorn are not going to let us forget, even though Pluto is moving on to Aquarius, moving into a different dimension and zone of archetypal significations in the sign of Aquarius.

But what have we learned? What are some of the core takeaways that Pluto and Capricorn want us to live on? You know, take it with us. These are like takeaways that we've gotten from the whole experience.

Now, maybe one of these is your takeaway and not the rest of them. That's okay. Maybe there's something that's not even on this list that would be okay, too. Remember that in my way of doing things, I try to pick up on archetypal themes and patterns that broadly signify some of the most reliable, you know, the kinds of things that show up for a lot of us, basically so. And some of these are edgy, right?

These are Plutonian kinds of realities that are Capricornian at the same time that Pluto element will bring us in touch with the subterranean, the instinctual, the primordial, and the unconscious, and bringing us in touch with those powers is often an experience that we describe as destructive and regenerative, transformational is a keyword that we use. We always use the phrase death and rebirth, right? You guys have heard me hammer that button before.

So, anyhow, these Pluto and Capricorn lessons are Capricornian, but they're also the depth, the power, the intensity, and the edginess of some of these really come from the combination of Pluto being in the sign of Capricorn. But Capricorn is the sign of the sea goat. It is a feminine earth sign, tropical or Cardinal. It comes as the sun is lifting out of the darkness from within the dark half of the year as the Zodiac is symbolically oriented in the northern hemisphere.

So remember, the Zodiac is a symbolic orientation system, which means that it doesn't you don't take it as literal and causal, which is why anyone can participate in its orientation regardless of what hemisphere they live in.

Anyway, the number one lesson to me comes from understanding the binary between Cancer and Capricorn. If cancer is the Earth Mother, then Capricorn is the earth father. That's something that Liz Greene once said, and I always it's always stuck with me.

The Earth's mother is the one who provides us with a sense of connectedness and nurturance. It's like the fostering and devotional attention and care and the growth that happens thanks to the mothering archetype or principle or energy wherever it's found. And part and parcel of that mothering energy is the experience of safety and connectedness and a feeling of homeness we make our home in the valley of this world.

However, Capricorn is rooted in the recognition of an understanding of the world that comes from the top of the mountain, which means you have this broad understanding, a little bit of a distant, and a little bit of a stoic understanding of the world that you inhabit.

In order to do that, you have to be taken out of the emotional nexus of safety, security, and connectedness, which is very dreamy and milky. So that's very Cancerian and. You get pulled out of that to that kind of mountain perspective. It's a little cold, and it's a little isolated, but it also has that perspective of Capricorn that provides us with an understanding of that.

For example, these are Capricornian realizations: everything you look around, look at nature, everything's killing each other. I remember there's a great documentary about Taoist hermits who live in the mountains. It's called Among White Clouds. A beautiful documentary if you ever get a chance to watch it. I loved it, but it was interesting because there was a documentarian talking to a Taoist hermit who lived in the mountains.

And he was saying, Do you feel like you know when you go and meditate at the river that you're like, at one with nature. It's kind of this, like, I don't know, just kind of a romantic, sentimental question. And the sage was just very sweet, very gentle, but very pointed. And he was like if you want to know what what nature really is, you go and sit there for, you know, a day or two in a rock in the river, and you'll find out what nature is, which is that you'll get hungry, that there will be predators, that there will be coldness, right?

So, and he's not, he's not like, truly, if you saw this man in the documentary, you would see that you're not looking at someone who's like a hard, cold, embittered person. This was a soft, gentle, serene, looking saintly hermit living in the mountains practicing meditation and looking very blissful. And yet what he did was he sort of cut away at this sort of sentimental and a fantasy idea of nature that this documentarian had, that he imagined this the monk was living in harmony with, and he was like, you know, clearly, this man is living in the mountains on his own foraging and has a garden, and he's living in nature, and he had a very realistic understanding of it, which is that nature is predatorial.

Nature will involve privation and suffering and decay and competition. And it's not that nature isn't beautiful because of those things. It's because nature is beautiful, and it includes those things. And if you're not aware of those things, then you don't really have a sense of what beauty is. You don't really have a sense of what safety is, and you don't really have a sense of what it means to be emotionally secure.

There's some way in which, in order to be secure and at home in the world, we also can't ignore it for what it is. It is a place with, you know, teeth and claws and blood, and I don't again, I'm not saying that to be like, let me rain on somebody's parade. It's just a reality that Pluto and Capricorn will not let us forget that your safety and your security, your at homeness in the valley of this world, which we should all seek to nurture and create and try to foster as people among one another, care for one another, no care for the Earth and right and there is a way in which survival and the sort of harshness of the world if you get too far away from your understanding of it, you will be not living in a real sense of safety or connectedness or nurturance. You will be connected in a somewhat diluted and forgetful sense of it.

And so Pluto and Capricorn, a planet that has so much to do with the subterranean and the primal understanding of darkness and of the claws of life and Earth, will not have us forget that so many things come up while Pluto's in Capricorn are reminders that, yeah, just because you're living in, you know, the 2000 20s doesn't mean that like real darkness and really heavy stuff is not still a very basic feature of life on Earth. And it's not that we're Pluto, and Capricorn wants to rub our face in it.

It's that Pluto and Capricorn don't want us to be naive, so we can create a sense of being an adult with an adult understanding of the nature of the world while also striving to create that sense of safety and nurturance. Number two, your dreams are fantasies without sacrifice and hard work, just like every one of them is just like I pooped in your pool.

That's every single one of these Capra Pluto cap realizations: I have moon and Capricorn. So I delight in it. You know, I find the sort of semi-cynical and dark, absurdist realities of Capricorn to be absolutely wonderful. I seriously enjoy life because I find these reminders to be humorous. And you know, it's like they're they're heavy, but what can you do but laugh, you know? So that's how, that's how that's where I come at from all this.

Anyway, your dreams are fantasies without sacrificing hard work. Fantasies are, it's, it's not a crime to have a fantasy. It's not a crime to imagine. It's not, you know, it's. I think sometimes people think of Capricorn as a dream killer or Capricorn as a sign that says your imagination isn't real enough.

No, I think that Capricorn, which has a watery tail and an earthly top half right the sea goat, is just very aware that for your dream to be anything other than childish and immature and lacking in substance, it needs to be put into action. And it needs to be made. It needs to be made manifest.

And, for example, if someone is an imagineer, a dreamer, I don't think Capricorn is averse to like saying like, well, make art, you know, make poetry, dance, sing like it's not that Capricorn says, Look, unless you're building a skyscraper and you're, if you're thinking or dreaming about artistic things, you're full of crap. I don't think Capricorn is anti-arts, anti-imagination, anti-romance, or anything like that.

Capricorn is merely like, don't sit around complaining or fantasizing or wishing or longing or yearning for things, which creates a kind of condemnation of the world, right? It's like, well, the world isn't good enough. I wish it was like this, or I wish I had that, or I wish I could be like this. Or I think Capricorn resents that kind of place of fantastical longing and yearning and complaining and childish fantasizing without action, without saying, you can, you can build and make and create things, or you can literally do or embody things. It's a feminine earth sign.

It doesn't mean I mean people frequently misunderstand Capricorn as patriarchal, and it's better to think about systems like that, patriarchy, matriarchy, socialism, democracy, monarchy, any kind of system, it's better to think about them instead of being associated with a sign. It's better to think about how they can express those systems and look different through the signs.

So there's a very way in which any sign can express a dimension of patriarchy or democracy or monarchy or something like that from a different angle. It's much better to use signs in that way than to be like, well, this system belongs to that sign or this philosophy. No, there's existentialism, which can be expressed very differently through all the signs. For example, look no further than all of the examples of great existentialist thinkers who have radically different charts and express existentialism differently through different signs.

So anyway, all of that is just to say that it's not that Capricorn is fundamentally about making things that are traditional, conformist, and patriarchal. It certainly can go in that direction, but it's more about just saying, don't let it just be some childish longing that you can't do anything about. You know, Capricorn says, with work, with sacrifice, with determination, with discipline, with effort. You can take something that starts as a longing or a wish or a hope or a fantasy, and you can move it into manifestation. And your dreams and your longings are nothing. This is sort of Capricorn talking. It's nothing but whining and complaining, just a bunch of blubbering, unless you just sort of saddle up and, you know, get to work and put in the discipline and the effort and the hard work and the sacrifice to take that beautiful longing and do something with it, other than because if you don't, it'll just a lot, it'll become a childlike space of complaint and discontent if it doesn't move. And there are so many ways in which it can move just because you like to imagine a lot, daydream a lot, or fantasize a lot; there's nothing wrong with that temperamentally. It's just that if you don't use that inspiration in some way to shape and mold things in the world, then you'll be the Capricorn. The way of looking at it is to say you will become whiny and complaining and discontent and unrealistic, and you'll start to lack a grounded understanding of things. So you know.

One of the most important things we do with kids when they're little. We give them space, and we say, Go, imagine and create. And when kids get bored, like, when my kids get bored, right? I'm like, Okay, well, this is a really good opportunity for you, like, this summer, and they're home from school, you know, there's a lot of open space. This is an opportunity for you to get creative, and then kids get creative, and they do something. They go, create a fort. They go, you know, they create a game. They and those are imaginal worlds that are then created. They're actualized Capricorns. If you're not actualizing the things that you dream about, it's kind of like you don't have any room to talk. These are a little harsh, right? But that's kind of the idea.

Number three, you aren't any better than anyone else. There's a thing that's like, you know, it's, it's real, like, you know, I had a, I had an aunt who, like, anytime she saw me, she would call me her little shit. It's like she was from Detroit, and she was kind of gruff.

Anyway, it was a great-aunt who was my mom's aunt. But anyway, same kind of attitude, you know, which is like your shit doesn't smell any better than anyone else's. But there's a tendency, especially through that polar opposite sign of cancer and some of its regressive shadows, to feel like my situation, my needs, my problems, my wounds, my hurts, somehow make me better than other people. And it's not that all their wounds are the same. It's not that everyone has an equal amount of baggage or that everyone has had an equal amount of devastating things happen. It's not like that at all, but from Capricorn's perspective, it's like whatever the case may be. And you don't have to agree with this; by the way, this is a very particular Capricornian way of looking at things.

There are other ways of looking at things, but Capricorn's point of view is whatever the case may be. You just have to embrace that. This is the raw material of your life that the divine, the gods, have given you; do something with it. Become better because of it. Make something out of it, and stop whining. I just say it like that. It feels kind of good to get it out, but at the same time, it's like no truly. That does not have to negate that, you know, pain is real, suffering is relative, and people have very different experiences.

So, but at the same time, there's this Capricornian way in which it's like your shit doesn't smell any better than anyone else. Get up, get on your horse. Don't make any excuses. You're not your nothing about you, and what you're doing with your life makes you better than anybody else. Neither does any bad thing that has happened to you make you more special than anyone else. It's like, it's just, it's Capricorn is asking for us to just drop that particular lens. It's like, just stop looking at yourself through the lens of, you know, your family baggage or the pain or the suffering, and Capricorn just wants us to be like earthly citizens like you're not better than an ant or a frog or a tree, you're not better than the claws and teeth of nature.

You're not better than anyone or anything else. You still have the same desires for safety. You still have the same issues with pain and suffering that everyone deals with on some relative level. And sort of like, there's a way in which Capricorn cannot stand for the arrogance of thinking that you are special. This is why you'll often see, for example, some serious clashes between Capricorns and Leos, by the way.

Well, there are different archetypes that do different things for us. Sometimes we need to go to, like, the school of Capricornian hard knocks, where we're just reminded that, like, yeah, there are aardvarks and there's, and there are little dogs and big dogs, and there are humans, you know, and there are stars, and there are plants like you're not anything special, you're just a part of creation. And cutting Capricorn wants us to cut away at the narratives that really try to deal with a sense of displacement or lack of at homeness, or lack of safety, or lack of nurturance through some kind of over-coddling stories that we like, the stories that we tell ourselves like over coddle Capricorn is kind of like, just expose yourself to the elements of life. Let your ego be leveled by the difficulties and sort of see yourself as a common traveler and citizen of Earth. Yes, we all go through suffering. Yes, we all go through pain. We all have longings. We all have dreams. And that's normal Capricorns.

Normality is not mean it can veer. The Shadow may be conformity. The Shadow may be a suppression of uniqueness. Those are definitely Capricornian shadows, whether it's the uniqueness of your gifts or the unique uniqueness of your suffering like Capricorn can suppress those things. But on the other hand, Capricorns are not like Capricorns. The idea of specialness is rooted in the common, ordinary acceptance of what it's like; it's much more like planet Earth. If you've ever seen the show planet Earth, it's like, if you can locate yourself in the reality of planet Earth, that TV series narrated by David Attenborough, is that his name? Yes, that's where you fit in and belong, and that's where your specialness comes from. It's that you are an earthly citizen, not some kind of extraordinary level 10 Angel, you know.

So now again, you don't have to agree with that. But there are some blessings in that kind of perspective. It brings us down to Earth, and it actually can relieve us of all the effort to try to heal. No, you don't have to heal hurting's normal. Oh, I've got to try to do something or be something special. No, you don't. You're just a human. Everyone dies someday, and no one's specialness is; there are a few exceptions, but the vast majority of humans that have lived are not even remembered anymore like that. Kind of Capricornian realism can be relieving. Sometimes, it's suppressive. It depends on the situation.

Number four, if you're not maturing, then you're only dying. Each one of these is like, Happy Monday, everybody. If you're not maturing, then you're only dying. Capricorns like look, if spiritually or in your disciplines or your crafts, or your arts or your relationships, if you're not getting better, by better, we mean wiser or more skilled or Capricorn looks at things and says, are you developing? Are you growing? Are you becoming wiser? Are you becoming better at things? Are you maturing? Are you getting more masterful at your subjects or your crafts, or in your field or your profession? Are you becoming wiser, you know, an elder as you grow up and more emotionally and spiritually mature?

If you're not, then you're not really living a human life. You're just in the process of dying, and Capricorn has a weird way of looking at things like that, which I know sounds sort of like it's so bottom line, you know? And it's kind of hard. And it may not be the teaching for you; it may not be the teaching for me. At certain times in my life, I don't always resonate with any of these things, right?

But there is some truth to that. It's like every year, can we measure a little bit of growth, like for me as a content creator? Have I gotten a little wiser with my understanding of archetypes? Have I gotten a little better with time management? Have I gotten a little bit better as a parent or a spouse? Have I gotten a little bit better at guitar, or have I grown with respect to my relationship with the divine? They may be subjective.

There may be no final, objective way of measuring or confirming those things, but I think Capricorn wants to live with just a felt sense that we're working on things and we're seeing results. We're seeing actual living proof of having put the work in and gotten better at something or improved upon something, and that if you're not doing that, there's a way in which you're just waiting to die because the purpose of life, on some level, from Capricorns perspective, is to climb a great mountain, right?

So if you're not climbing the mountain, then you're just sitting around waiting to die again. Do you have to agree with that? No, you don't. That's Capricorn's perspective. But Pluto and Capricorn really asked us to consider, like, are you just doing the same thing over and over again, or are you growing in any way?

Number five, life isn't fun. I can't even tell you how much fun I had writing these. Life isn't fun, and your destiny isn't special. Oh, do I? Don't I? Don't mean any of this. So, oh, life isn't fun. From Capricorn's perspective, life can be fun.

Anything can be fun, but it isn't inherently fun, just like life isn't inherently joyful; it can be joyful. Life isn't inherently happy or peaceful. It can be peaceful. It can be happy, it can be joyful. Big difference. Sometimes, people mistake this for pessimism. From Capricorn's point of view, it's not. I recently heard an interview with, oh, what's his name? I think his name is Trevor Noah. He's a talk show host. I think he's from South Africa.

Anyway, he was talking, and I saw this. I think it was on Instagram or something. He was talking about how he's been. Traveling around the world, different people have very different understandings of happiness. And I think he was talking about being in Japan, where there was more of a sense of contentment, and there was another place where happiness was more about a kind of sense of social belonging or participation. And I just think it's interesting because sometimes I feel like our version of happiness, at least in the modern, like West, quote, unquote, is it's like, it's like joy on crack.

We're just supposed to be beaming, like we're supposed to be so excited all the time. And you know, Capricorn's perspective is that things things come and things go. Capricorn is intimately aware of impermanence as well as the absurdities, the dark humor of life, and the difficulties of life. Capricorn is truly a joyful sign, but it doesn't like the joy that lives too far away from an understanding of the shadows. Scorpio is a very similar sign in that respect, which is why Capricorn and Scorpios often get along very well.

Anyhow, life isn't fun. Does not mean that life can't be fun. It's just that you don't deserve or are not entitled to a happy, joyful experience. 24/7, and the more we know that and accept that with a kind of adult understanding, the easier it is to actually find those currents of happiness and then be okay when they go away.

Because, you know, they come and go, that kind of mature awareness of the fluctuations of things like joy and happiness is crucial for Capricorn. Also, your destiny isn't special. We kind of went over that earlier. You aren't any better than anyone else, but your destiny isn't special. That doesn't mean you don't have a destiny. It just means that the more comfortable you get, the more content that you feel with your unique destiny, the more that you feel like it couldn't have been anything else for anyone else but me, in the way that it is that this cuts away at the idea that your destiny is supposed to make you special. Destiny couldn't be anything other than special because there's no one else like you.

And Capricorn is really aware of that point, that crucial point, that destiny is special. And so there's a way in which destiny is common, and the more humble and common we are about destiny, the more we can actually inhabit it and appreciate it. It might sound like we're saying be a stoic, but we're not, and Stoics were not without joy, by the way, but there's a joy found in the commonness, in the simplicity of destiny that I think a lot of us are missing like we. We think Destiny needs to be something bigger than what it is because we've yet to understand the way in which even humble destiny paths confirm that there's nobody like us in that confirmation, however simple or humble it is, is just as profound as any other destiny, and Capricorn wants us to be aware of that because there's something like Capricorn really feels comfortable walking with other people in life who have this unassuming confidence in the just oneness of what they're doing and what loads they're carrying, what burdens they have, and people who can laugh along with others in the face of it all you know, who can bear it and laugh and find that their specialness is rooted in the ability to bear and live with what is common and simple about their destiny, not what is profound and aggrandized. So, okay, that's it for today. Good luck.

Oh, seriously, I hope that these were interesting insights. Remember that every sign, when every planet in every sign, is like a little philosophical school; there are little teachings and beliefs, like a little mandala that comes with it. And what I presented today, I think, is a little like Pluto in Capricorn specifically. There are so many other dimensions of the sign of Capricorn, like Venus in Capricorn, very, very different kinds of like you could go to the Venus in Capricorn school, and I think you'd find a very different list, you know.

So take these. Use them. Work with them. Think with them. Don't take them literally. Don't take them as dogmas, at least not that they're without knowing that there aren't competing doctrines and dogmas that all the planets in the different signs have and present us with. These should feel familiar. We know these teachings, and we've heard these teachings.

Maybe you like to turn the channel whenever you hear someone popping off with one of these teachings, you know. Nonetheless, we are becoming familiar with them, learning them, and being present with them in the next couple of months, which I think will be important as Pluto finishes up here in Capricorn.

All right, that's what I've got for you today. I hope this was interesting. Don't forget that the year one course is now on sale; I hope to see some of you in class in November, where we will go to cosmic school with all of the archetypes and learn so much about this beautiful language. All right, take it easy. Bye.