The Sun Squares Pluto and a Note About Fixed Stars Spica and Arcturus

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Friday, everybody. Today, we're going to take a look once more, as we did at the start of this week, at the aspects coming between Mercury, the Sun, and Pluto here over the weekend. We're gonna look at it from a slightly different perspective, sort of just pressing the refresh and some things we've already said so that we can just have that archetypal combination fresh in our minds as we go into a pretty intense weekend of astrological aspects.

Also, today, what I want to do is talk a little bit about the fact there's something I missed talking about that I actually spent a lot of time talking about in our monthly Moon circle, our Roots and Spheres program and, by the way, if you're interested in that, I'll show you where you can connect with that in a minute.

The fact that this solar eclipse that we had in the sign of Libra took place pretty close to the fixed star Spica and also close to another fixed star named Arcturus, I am not a fixed star expert, but I will give you that qualifier, but I have some very basic observations at this point in my career about the fixed stars and not a huge collection of them.

So there are some fixed stars that have come up in my work, especially as a horary astrologer and in teaching horary and a little bit in Natal work. But the fixed stars are not a huge part of my practice; it's a part I tend to incorporate new things as I go along in my career very slowly because I like to take a lot of time to get to know them before they become a part of what I teach or work within client practice or whatever.

But there are some interesting things to say about Spica and Arcturus and the fact that their archetypal qualities are implied in the entire lunation cycle because of their presence at the opening of the cycle during the eclipse. So, I want to mention that a little bit today, just as something to keep with you as the cycle keeps unfolding here in the next couple of weeks. So we're going to do that as well. That is our agenda for today.

Don't forget to like and subscribe if you're new to the channel; welcome. I hope you'll enjoy what you find here on the channel, and that will earn your subscription. Also, if you want, you can find a transcript of any of my daily talks on the website nightlightastrology.com. If you prefer having the transcript to read, it's there for you.

I want to take you over to the website nightlightastrology.com. So you can visit the school; we have four years worth of professional development curriculum, which can also be taken purely because you love astrology, it's your hobby, it's something you're doing for yourself for your own spiritual growth. I like to compare it to the same reason that at, you know, 42, I'm taking guitar lessons because it's just something I love.

So if you love astrology, the great benefit of studying astrology is that you'll be able to use astrology for yourself and the people that you're close with, at a much deeper level, and that's sort of the purpose of the course in addition to helping people prepare for professional practice if that's their intention.

The first year course starts on November 18; you click on that first year course tab under the Courses page there, and as you scroll down, you'll learn about everything that's included in the program. We will have alumni coming on the show to talk about the program next week. We have 30 online classes for the year; the first, about 20 of those are rooted in the development of foundational theory and philosophy.

This is a course in ancient Greek or Hellenistic astrology, and so going back to the roots to understand the why behind everything is really the purpose of the program, and when you have that understanding, it allows for you to be a much more intuitive astrologer when you're making predictions when you're helping people understand their character, and you're helping people understand the kind of the gifts and blessings and maybe some of the things that a soul is here to learn and work within a lifetime.

It really helps when making those kinds of delineations and working with people to have an understanding of where everything comes from because then you can work more intuitively, especially when you're making associations between science houses and planets.

Anyway, as we go throughout the year, we break out between major units of study for breakout study sessions that are optional. My staff tutors will be there to lead those study sessions to help people who may have questions or need help integrating the material. There's also a forum discussion where you can talk with tutors year-round; there's a ton of bonus material there to support you. At the bottom of the page, you will find payment options. Remember, the whole class is held via live webinars, but everything is archived on a website, so you can actually take the program at your own pace, and you can attend live for some classes, download or watch the recordings on the website either way, so it's pretty flexible.

We have people from all over the world who take the program as well, and we have closed captions if people need that as a form of assistance. Early Bird payment saves you $500. With the payment plan, you can spread your tuition out over 12 monthly installments, or we do have need-based tuition, and we do still have a number of need-based tuition spots available. So, if you are someone who would love to take the course but you need a little help financially for whatever reason, tell us your situation, and we'll be glad to work with you. We want to make sure that people aren't priced out of astrology. So we trust people look at the price point if you can't make it, but you really want to take the course, and you're not just, you know, we trust people to not just seek a discount, right? It's like I need some help. If you need help for whatever reason, use the tuition assistance; we'll be glad to help you out.

Okay, by the way, when you're on nightlight astrology on the Courses page, click on Roots and Spheres if you want to join our moon circle in 2024; we meet each month we talk about the astrology the month before the new and full moons, and we diet particular plant teachers every month, that are helping us to work with the astrological configurations of each lunation cycle.

It's been a really great circle this year; we got another one starting in January of 2024. You can sign up there's a payment plan for that to tuition assistance for that as well, and it's all that course is a very it's not that's one of our most accessible price points, is what I'm trying to say. But there still is need-based tuition if you, for some reason, would need it. All right, well anyway.

So I want to start off by talking we're gonna talk about Sun-Pluto and Mercury, Pluto, and so forth because that's what's coming here over the weekend. But first, I want to talk just a little bit about the fixed stars Arcturus and Spica. Now, the reason for talking about these is that Spica lands at around 23 and a half or so degrees of Libra, if I remember correctly, and Arcturus lands at just over 24 degrees of Libra; the eclipse was close to 22 Libra, so we have to fix stars within about two degrees of the eclipse.

That is the orb that a lot of traditional astrologers would give these stars, suggesting that the eclipse would be influenced by their proximity. So what are these stars about? And this is just, again, I'm not an expert. So I've just got kind of a quick sloppy rundown for you guys of, like, what, okay, here's stuff to think about. Okay.

First of all, I'm just going to talk about what I know about Spica Arcturus is a little bit more foreign to me; I'm not, like I said, I'm not a fixed or expert. But I happen to have one of my natal planets configured with Spica, and so I feel like I know a little bit of that planet because every time Pluto gets activated, there have been many occasions where I feel like I've gotten some personal insight into Spica and then that's a fixed star that one of my horary teachers like to emphasize, and so I've seen it in a lot of horary charts.

Here's what I can say about Spica. There's something about Spica that seems to, on the one hand, be the side of the fixed star Spica that grants some kind of success in business and economic matters; it points toward things like Good, good, good, good fortune in business like there's, it can be a very fortunate star for things working out well and like your own business or work or your professional life, especially when it comes to things being sort of abundant. I'm going to read you something about Spica in a minute that will qualify that more first; I just want to speak from my experience.

Second is that there's this weird thing about cosmic karmic justice with Spica where there's this kind of aura of protection, and people who are being mistreated or even have become victims of some oppressor or oppressive force will sometimes experience good fortune later in life or some kind of karmic balancing that comes about as a form of, like, mediation or yeah, like there's eventually people who have like, strong spider configurations that they go through something really unfortunate, there's a weird way in which eventually, it's almost like you get rewarded, or you the cosmic justice tilts in the opposite direction, and you feel redeemed or like, like, the word vindicated, is that right?

Yeah, so there's something to think about for Spica, and also, there's this aura of protectiveness that I've noticed with Spica in client charts, horary charts, and stuff like that, where it's almost like it protects from the worst case scenario. It's not that nothing bad happens, but it's almost like you have this real feeling like, wow, that could have been worse. So those are my observations about Spica.

Arcturus, I don't know as well. So I want to read you some things. I think there's a great website if you want to learn more about fixed stars. One of the places I go to there are a few, but one of the places I go to is astrologyking.com. Not to be confused with the other king of YouTube. But, if you go to astrologyking.com And you look at their collection of fixed star write-ups, they're really good, they're really solid, and there's a lot of examples of people who have planets conjoined those stars, and so forth. So I'm gonna read you a little bit about Spica.

Now, I can't speak to all of what is said here, but I generally trust the website, and you'll notice that the certain elements of what I've said about Spica are here now; the point, again, is that this entire lunation cycle, including the energy of the eclipse, and Libra is configured to this star. So some of these qualities could show up in the cycle ahead, and I think we might even see some of those coming as we've got all these squares to Pluto over the weekend.

So, fixed star Spica Alpha Virginis is a spectroscopic binary star system whose two stars are so close together that they are egg-shaped rather than spherical and can only be separated by their spectrum. The primary is a blue giant and variable star of the beta sefie type located in the ear of wheat of the Maidan Virgo constellation, and then he goes on to talk about the astronomy a little bit. I'll skip over that.

According to Ptolemy, it is of the nature of Venus and Mars and to Elvis of Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury. It gives success, renowned riches a sweet disposition, love of art and science unscrupulous, this unfruitful illness and injustice to innocence, Spica and portends injustice to the innocence but with a later justification, and with eminence for now and enriches.

So there's just like this weird way in which injustice to the innocence of innocent and then some kind of theme of like retribution or redemption occurs. Anonymous 379 ad, which is a famous ancient text cataloging the fixed stars, said Spica is like Venus and Mercury, idealistic, psychic, handsome, neat, lovable, refined, genteel, and intelligent. Yeah, so the star gives us natives great honors, artistic appreciation, good fortune, religious preferment, good judgment, unexpected honors, riches, disputed decisions, and sociableness. Spica is one of the 15 Behenian fixed stars. Its image is a bird or a man laden with merchandise that gives riches, overcomes contentions, and removes scarcity and mischief. Rules emerald sage, trefoil, Periwinkle, mugwort, and mandrake, interesting, and it goes on for quite some time.

But this is one part that I found interesting. The combination of the opposite sexes and being designated as Venus and Mars stars in one star must inspire further thought about the androgynous qualities. As the star of the grain harvest that is the provider of our material needs indeed, it always does show up well in that respect. However, there is a word of warning to go with it. We only reap harvest if we have first sown the seed and cared for the fields, and what we reap must last us and all who labored in our fields until the next harvest is ready. He who does not do so well from Spica, who reaps what he has sown, uses it profligately, or denies to others their share in his good fortune. So, to rub this in quite firmly, Arcturus in the sky above the Virgin's hand is the prime star of the much rougher character, the herdsman just as ready to take care of his herd but not stand any nonsense from them. That's interesting.

Spica is also noted for its spiritual and religious qualities, as we must expect, after all, we have seen about Virgo, and indeed, people with the star strong in their horoscope do often gain very high places in those fields of life goes on describing it as associated with certain honors and fame and again, like good luck in business and so forth.

Now, that is a bit about Spica, and I have seen again, as you'll see, that some of the qualities that I mentioned in my experience are listed there as well, and you will find in many sorts of star lore catalogs that the same qualities are described. So again, issues around like karmic justice and balancing and those who have had bad things happen to them, though, sort of, I mean, I don't know. Cosmically, if you know about innocence, and I feel like all souls are sort of innocent in eternity, but the innocent who have been harmed and some kind of later vindication or redemption or something like that, that's a that seems to occur.

I've seen Spica show up in many cases where someone gets dicked over in a custody battle or a divorce proceeding, and then later, somehow, the scales tip in the opposite direction, and they ended up being provided for somehow or like their ex or whatever ends up having to pay money that eventually it looked like they were gonna get away with not having to pay or something like that.

There are a lot of those kinds of stories that I've seen. There's also this kind of unanimous energy of protection, and I also wonder because I've always associated that with Spica. If that isn't part of Arcturus, for example, you see, I think it was Roman Polanski that has like Mars conjoined with Spica, and he fled the US justice system, and you know, essentially is like a fugitive from the US justice system and sort of got away with some terrible things in that respect.

There does seem to be this way in which Spica grants protection, but that protection could even be given to people who don't always deserve it. But then there's also this weird way in which you've never really get away with anything with Spica. It's, it's interesting, there's themes of like karmic justice and protection.

But anyway, so fixed Arcturus, which I didn't really know about until I did some reading because one of my TAs, her name's Erin, mentioned that our Taurus is also at 24 Libra, and we should think about that with the eclipse, and I was like, Oh, that's interesting; again; just my own ignorance about a lot of the fixed stars, so it's okay; let's look it up.

Fixed Arcturus gives riches, honors, high renowned self-determination, and prosperity by navigation and voyages. Oh, that's interesting; according to Anonymous of 379 Arcturus like Jupiter and Mars, high ambition, pride, love of power, grandeur of view of rising military honors of culminating, ecclesiastical honor, marital perform, and prosperity in business. Yeah, that's interesting. That's really interesting.

Yes, here we see the other role of Arcturus: a protector, yes, but an unbiased protector of all. While we take what we may from Spica, from the symbol of the heavens and earth together, we are protected, but abuse that boundary or ticket from others or deny it to them, and the region protectors step in upon any other predator. We ourselves, we are ourselves that same region, of course, so that it is our own hand indeed that calls us sharply to order.

That is why older texts warn of Arcturus above the inviting Spica as though God has maliciously placed the bad star right on a good one. One must marvel at the base kind of astrology that does not accept a need to give as well as to receive life's bounties. That's interesting. So anyway, I thought that those were just a pair of interesting stars. If you're curious to read more again, you can check out the Astrology King website, which has a nice catalog of fixed stars.

But yeah, basically, I feel like one thing that we can add into the Libra and symbolism of this eclipse with fixed star Spica and Arcturus is really interesting dynamics around things that are given and things that are taken away, receiving, like rewards for one's merit, and also receiving correction and then this theme of like injustice that eventually receives justice, protection, but sometimes protection for like a kind of unbiased, like anyone gets protected. But then, is there reform that comes along with it?

For example, let's say you do something; you're protected from the worst. You like, wow, I got into drugs, I could have, Oh, deed and died. Well, does that serve as a correction? Does that protection offer you a gateway for reform and spiritual transformation? Do you take it or not? There's this sort of implied sense that, like, bad people may get away with something but that there's with it a sense of the opportunity to reform, like you're being given a free pass here, but you better not abuse it?

There's something like that going on with these stars; in my experience, at least, it was Spica for sure. But now I'm wondering, you know, hey, maybe I've been kind of conflating these two stars all along since; apparently, people have really looked at them as two stars that sort of work together because of their close proximity. Anyway, food for thought. I hope it's interesting.

Let's return to the astrology of the weekend just to take a look at it. All right. So you can see that what's happening is we've got the last quarter moon coming through, and Friday, the 20th, today into Saturday, we have the Sun and Mercury passing through the square to Pluto. So, that is the dynamic.

Now, on Sunday, Venus will connect in a trine with Jupiter. So I really do feel like the weekend ends well, and there's something about this passage that's really important for the health of Venus as well because Venus and Mercury are in a mutual reception. Mercury's going through the heart of the sun and squaring Pluto, and then it's starting to recover from a more damaged position, at which point the fact that it's in a mutual reception with the fallen Venus would seem to improve, especially because Venus is also hitting a benefic trine to Jupiter who is in Venus a sign so it's as though we have to go through something this weekend.

But as soon as we do, there's an energy of like, you know, the high tide lifts all the boats; I think I said earlier in the week that everything is going to get a little bit better, but we have to kind of walk through this Plutonian portal. That's, you know, that's that is what it is.

So what can we say about the sun square Pluto? One is that whenever the sun squares Pluto, I feel like the opportunity for regeneration to look at where things are decaying, falling apart, where some kind of stagnant or, you know, energy is pulling us down and to say no, I'm going to like for it could be let me give you the most mundane example that I can think of, let's say you've gotten off the horse a little bit with your diet, your sleep pattern, your exercise routine, your morning, you know, rituals, whatever they are, I'm thinking of the kinds of things that I have going on in my life. You start feeling like you're getting pulled down.

Have you guys ever seen the movie The Labyrinth with David Bowie and what was the girl's name, she became really famous too. I can see her face anyway, you know, the girl I'm talking about, and there's this place called the bog of eternal stench. Like, Sun squares, Pluto, and you're like, oh, I can feel the bog of eternal stench, you know, trying to pull me down and, and it is time for me to take actions so that the light might rise up again.

Because when it's getting pulled down, it's like, oh, you know, for example, I remember when I was in graduate school, I tended to go out and party on the weekends. But by Sunday, I'd be like, Oh, I better start rebooting the system because otherwise I'm gonna fall apart, and I have a whole week's worth of, you know, teaching and work coming up again. But there's just a sense of needing to press the renewal button.

Otherwise, you're going to go down into a much more difficult and heavy place, and so the work of pulling yourself out of the bog of eternal stench is worth it when the sun and Pluto come together in a square conjunction, whatever.

A square, though, is, you know, it's a little bit more confrontational; it's like, it's gonna burn a little bit. It's kind of like that first workout back at the gym after a couple of weeks off or something I had that happened to me this summer because of travel, and then I came back to the gym after about two weeks of not being there, because going to Colorado and so forth, get back to the gym, and I was like, Oh, this hurts. Oh, my God, you know, and then, but then before you know it a couple days later, you're like, Oh, thank God, if I wouldn't have gotten back and gone through that burn, it could have been a lot worse.

That's sort of in a nutshell what Sun-Pluto transits are like, of course, when they last several years in your birth charts; different story, because then you're dealing with the weight of unconscious patterns that, you know, it's not just a Monday back at the gym, it's sort of like a two year period of getting back to the gym. It will dig up such tremendous stuff to be released, you know, like, oh, look at all of these unconscious materials that have been, you know, draining me in ways that are much longer and perpetual. So that's a difference between a quick Sun-Pluto transit over the weekend and one hitting your chart for a couple of years.

But yeah, the weekend offers us an opportunity for renewal. But there's like a burning off of detritus in the midst of it. That's the that's the I think that's the easiest thing we could say going into this weekend, without rehashing all of the, you know, like a 10-point list or something. I really didn't want to go so deeply into it today.

Mercury-Pluto, you know, it reminds me that there are hard things to say and choices to be made. You're not going to please everyone. So the kind of unconscious energy coming up around relationships and conversations and choices and values and having to choose between things or people and always being afraid of, you know, your social calculations not adding up, and we're like receiving a bad grade from the universe or from another person or something.

We have to face that fear this weekend, and if we do so, I think we will feel that it's All okay, that Venus trines Jupiter; by the end of the weekend, it's like, it's all good. You made it through a hard patch. But you were honest; you were real. You didn't let you know things pull you down; you worked through it, you felt the burn, and now things are lifting up again, and that's this really is the critical transformation of the entire lunation cycle.

Because everything's sort of moving right into Scorpio after this, so that kind of Libran moment of like judgment and balancing and so forth is really just that, this first week of the eclipse cycle. But you could see some of the themes that we talked about with these fixed stars, you know, you can see that playing out through the rest of the cycle. It'll be interesting to watch.

Anyway, I'd love to hear from you guys and hear what you're noticing as these transits come in over the weekend, and hopefully, it was fun to learn a little bit about Spica and Arcturus. I think that again, Astrology King would be the first resource I would point you to, but maybe what we could do at a certain point is I can, I'd love to maybe have some, some of my friends who are more into fixed stars than I am we could talk about a collection of them or something we could get a little crash course on the YouTube channel that might be fun to do.

Okay, that's it for now. I hope you guys have a great weekend and tell us your stories. If you've got one to share, use the hashtag grabbed or email us at grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. If you've got a Mercury Sun-Pluto square story to share, we'd love to hear it. Alright, that's it. Have a good one. Bye.