A slow soft light settles over the meadows. Leaves flutter, bronze and golden butterflies in the cooling air and choirs of migrant birds begin their long pilgrimage south.
“To everything there is a season,” yet change, like all initiations, rearranges our feelings, evokes dread or the salve of denial. As each bright leaf falls, we may be moving through our own season of fall. We may be weary, emotionally raw, finally able to disconnect from a difficult situation. Finally ready to admit that all the love and time and energy we have invested in a person, or a place, or a career will never bring us what we long for.
It’s eclipse season. A season of dimming light when our instincts are whetted by the necessity of endings. Some people may feel the energy of the eclipse a month before the first pair of eclipses. They experience a strange sense of hightened awareness that lingers for a month or more after the second eclipse.
Nebulous Neptune conjoins the moon in Pisces on this lunar eclipse, creating a force field of vulnerability and heightened emotion. This Neptune/Moon conjunction is infused with a sense of nostalgia, but can also quite literally present as extreme wet weather, high seas, and storms. Neptune is also associated with delusion and illusion—castles in the air, flights of fantasy—so, pause for a few days before committing to a decision that may be flawed. Dedicate time for self-care. Consciously disconnect from what agitates and disturbs the nervous system. Mercury in discerning Virgo will oppose Saturn this weekm supporting considered thought processes and deep listening, yet also exposing a tender place of vulnerability. Be mindful of how the words will land before you send them out into the world.
Mercury joined the sun in Virgo on Monday 9th September, and on Wednesday 11th, it returned to the degree at which it turned Retrograde (August 4th). In astrological jargon, it is moving out of shadow, which means returning to speed and strength. Now is the time to be receptive to new perspectives but fact-check before assimilating information as a “truth”. Mercury enters the shadow again on November 7th as votes are counted in America and the Mercury Retrograde cycle begins again on November 25th.
Saturn is still moving very slowly, in Retrograde, through Pisces, clearing the way for new beginnings as activities and projects come to completion. What has outlived its purpose dies and decays. We learn our own limitations, confront own fear and sense of inadequacy. Saturn also presents as responsibility and accountablity. As I write this post Apple loses an EU court battle and must pay a tax bill of over €3 billion to Ireland. Google loses a court appeal and must pay a fine of over £2 billion.
Just before the new Virgo Moon on September 2nd, Pluto made its final significant retrograde back into Capricorn and will turn direct on October 12th.
Pluto will spend only two months in Capricorn before returning to Aquarius again on November 19th. It will remain there until 2055. These next two months will be especially impactful for those who have personal planets in the last degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, and early degrees of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. This marks the end of an intense evolutionary process, a finishing up phase, that will leave a lasting imprint on our lives.
Pluto has been moving through the sign of Capricorn since the global financial crash of 2008. Over these past 16 turbulent years, we have entered a world where nothing is as it seems. Deep fake, deep state, made-for-media politics, and a babble of voices competing on social media, which serves as an accelerant to hate speak, and them-and-us mistrust.
The true meaning of democracy might have to be re-examined as Pluto moves through Aquarius over the next two decades.
Pluto has circled slowly through the darkness of outer space to the to the place it stood on July 4th, 1776, when the nation of America was born. Over these past 16 years, America has experienced the long slow process of its first Pluto Return. As reminders of the painful legacy of dispossession, enslavement, ecocide, and genocide seep through a nation experiencing so much polarisation and collective angst, America is also experiencing a Chiron Return. America’s origins must be either confronted or repeated.
Transiting Mars opposes Pluto on the day of the US election, signifying a ruthless and merciless power struggle, the potential for violence, the possiblity of a contested election.
Unpredictable and erratic Uranus is still conjunct the fixed star of Algol, making a conjunction with Kamala’s Jupiter on election day and also back on Trump’s midheaven, aspects that will be positive in different ways for both candidates. The Moon moves into conservative Capricorn on that day, and Saturn Retrograde trines a Scorpio Sun signifying a stable, conservative tone which may favour either candidate, depending on your political prism. With Uranus activating the birth charts of both candidates, this election will deliver drama, uncomfortable reckonings. And Pluto will still be in Capricorn, a sign ruled by Saturn (responsibility, hard lessons learnt with humility, reality and the potential for enlightened leadership). Already we are witnessing the conflict between the energies of Neptune (suffering and sacrifice, compassion and confusion) and Saturn (responsibility, self-sufficiency, defensiveness and mistrust). Whoever “wins,” they will have to deal with the divisive effect of the coming Neptune/Saturn conjunction in Aries nearly exact in July next year and perfect at 0º Aries on 20th February 2026, as our own inner conflicts and projections shape our reality.
At this turning point in the year, the equinox on September 22nd readies us for wintering. “Autumn poses the question we all must live with—how to hold onto the things we love, even though we know that we and they are dying. How to see the world as it is, yet find light within that truth,” writes Pico Iyer in his exquisite book, Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells.
As we tend to the grief that accompanies endings, may we pause awhile, make space to feel the emptiness, then prepare to turn our attention inwards as the nights draw in.
To book an astrology consultation, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com
