Pluto In Capricorn – Excavating The Family

bahoIt’s been awhile but when Pluto first headed into Capricorn, I was talking about this in terms of a natural chart. Astrologese aside, I see Pluto’s transit through Capricorn as a Pluto transit to the Moon transit for the entire collective.  Basically we’re going to dig up our roots this decade, for good or ill but eventually for our own empowerment.

I once bragged about having written 100 posts about Neptune conjunct the Midheaven but the posts on Pluto transiting the Moon dwarf that. I counted 200 posts back to 2007 before I gave up counting so it’s feel comfortable saying I know something about this. I love the topic so much I don’t know where to start but today I have a story because it keeps coming back to me.

I am making Baho today which is my husband’s home food. It is not a dish his family made but it is from the region where he grew up (South America) and the flavors are all  familiar.  I posted to the boards the first time I was going to make this and it came out terrific. He asked that I make it again and when I was searching around I found another site with the recipe. I was fascinated with the instructions as presented because the Nicaraguan culture is so vividly illustrated here:

While meat is marinading, you can start getting your pot ready.  If you don’t own an olla that is big enough to bathe in, than you will need to go around to all your neighbors until you find one suitable.  Kudos if your neighbor also has a giant metal bowl that fits in upside down as a lid.  Asking around for giant pots is also a great way to start spreading party anticipation and invitations…”

and here:

“Nicaraguans don’t leave their houses empty ever, and so it is customary to send guests home with a plate of food or piece of cake for the generous person left guarding the house.  Which means, cook for twice as many!”

I have been thinking about the idea that you would not leave your house unattended. Someone in the family stays home to guard the home and it makes a lot of sense.   What hit me next is I bet it’s not hard to find someone who would just as soon stay home and have the food delivered.  Someone like me for example.

I don’t have Gemini in my chart. I’m not that keen for small talk so I’d be really happy to miss the party but not the food. I don’t feel that way all the time.   I’m just saying this occurred to me and I think it illustrates how families work together.

In this country (US) at this time the family is pretty much been decimated. It may get worse before it gets better – this is Pluto we’re dealing with so if probably will get worse but eventually we’ll hit bottom and I am completely confident that “family” will rise from the ashes.  You know why?  It’s because you can’t have a society without families.  Not for long anyway.  People just plain need each other, that’s all there is to say.

How do you feel about “family”?

32 thoughts on “Pluto In Capricorn – Excavating The Family”

  1. I love that idea (someone is always home). I grew up, in a home where someone is always home, and my whole adult life, I have lived in places where there is always someone home. Even when I lived alone with a partner, life evolved in such a way, that my then-artner was always home!

    One of the things that always used to get me, was my parents telling me I had no sense of family, no family values, because I left home young. It was seen by every single member of my family as a betrayal. My grandmother was never informed I did that and died before I told her. When she was about to die I said I wanted to go to the funeral so my mother erased all contacts from her address book.

    I am close with paternal relatives, however we don’t live in the same country now and so I don’t get to see them that often. Last time was in 2008, though I do have family coming this summer.

    Uranus in 11th in aspect to Moon–my friends are like family to me, too. Eg. my best friend (the Cancer) has a huge family and I am invited to everything, her parents routinely introduce me as their 5th kid, and that really does make me feel good, though of course I know they’re not “really” my family.

    I am a very lucky person. Pluto/Moon transit now is coming to terms with lack of boundaries in childhood. I’m learning more about how I go through the world with this blueprint, of my own family.

    Nothing ever takes that away–they are who I am, the blood runs thick and deep. I do feel like what you’d call “a child of the world” but you can see that traced through my family, still–we’re traveling people. Once a gypsy always a gyspy. Even gypsies have roots, however.

    Sorry about the long post!

  2. Avatar
    Anna in Canada

    Interesting posts, h and Elsa. For me, Pluto in Capricorn crossing my IC and moving through my fourth house has entailed a breaking down, and soon enough, a rebuilding of my family.

  3. I would have loved to have a close family andto feel I wanted to spend a lot of time with them, and could depend on them, but it hasn’t worked out that way. I do feel I miss out on a lot because of that.

    But it just happened I was adopted into a family with whom I had almost nothing in common – intellectually, spiritually etc. You can rub along for a long time pretending, but when cracks appear it can all just disintegrate

    I do feel those with a strong family support system are at a big advantage, and will be so especially if things get more difficult in the coming years.

  4. I love family. Awesome post, Elsa. I like the whole idea of it. Even being super Gemini, I could still see how staying home and having the food delivered would be kinda cool. I just like the whole setup of it.

  5. I would love to be the one home. mmmmm. especially if that is respected! wow! I’d love a plate of food after alone time!

  6. I agree with what you’re saying Elsa. I wish I had that feeling that family and close ties were a good thing. I think I’ve had such trauma growing up that I wouldn’t know how to appreciate that level of closeness. I’m too much of a loner now that if you put me in a situation like that, I’d want to run away shortly thereafter…however, if I get to pick my family – ie my friends then I can deal with it. I like it and want to have more of it.

    1. Some people have no choice but to pick their family, mahchi, or to start their own traditions as I have. My family is very strong. Small but very, very strong and committed and connected.

  7. mahchi, after reading your post I feel compelled to say, we are not a close family. Not close as in, nice and kind and loving and supportive. We are close as in we are always within shooting range of each other. That whole ‘keep your friends close and enemy closer’ thing. LOL

    Aries Mars in 4th, opposed Pluto and square Moon. Chiron/IC. Epic battles and fights in our house, every day. Violence, too. It’s only in the last couple of years I have started asserting myself about having one-on-one time with family members when we have a gathering, if we are all together it is fucking intense. I really don’t think most people could hack it. My boyfriend was overwhelmed by it.

  8. Also, this is true for individuals but also valid for the collective. The fact is, as long as the family is broken, so is society. This is what we’re going to find out… the hard way, it seems.
    I write this stuff so please can blunt the trauma by seeing it coming.

  9. Elsa you are a really good woman and I appreciate everything you do. This really really helps. It helps me, anyway. I’ve always been obsessed with family and with Pluto transit to my Moon/4th House even more so.

    Thanks for this space:)

  10. The paradigm of family is often a difficult one for me as I was raised by a frustrated and tired single mother. I often wonder who I would be had I had a father present in the home. THe concept of family is powerful and daunting.

  11. This is an 8th house (and cardinal T square) transit for me. One piece of good to glean out of all the funerals this year is that everyone talks about family history when we get together. I’ve picked up some amazing pieces of history and insight into my roots through all of it.

  12. Pluto is transiting my 7th house…

    I didn’t have a close relationship with my family as a child.. however it has been getting better! Most of my paternal family is in the States and I live in Canada. I see them at least twice a year, I’m the one doing the trip mostly.. with a stellium in the 9th house, including my Moon, I actually love it! I have no connection with my maternal family and it has been this way for a very long time. I don’t miss it too much.. As a kid, my dad’s friends were my family (he’s a Aquarius and so am I)

    I have never been in a long term relationship and I think this Pluto transit will change that.. I will have to create a family of my own with someone and it’s actually scary at times.

  13. I have no family, as they’ve all passed away, but even when they were alive “close” and “supportive” would not be the way I’d describe them. Neptune and Mars in the 4th, and Mars squares Uranus on one side and Chiron on the other. Lots of conflict growing up, along with other things still to be dealt with and put behind me.

    I like the idea of family, but seeing others whose families of origin are genuinely close and who foster individuality… it feels alien to me. They’d probably see me as alien, too. Creating a family with someone else, for me, would have to be with someone who is able to accept the experiences (good and bad) that I’ve had and vice versa.

  14. Avatar
    White Chocolate

    My “family” was anything but.
    Fragmented is the only word to describe it.
    My parents were both 16 when I was born. They fought while I was in the womb! Neither one of them had a real “family” either, just stepparents mixed in with abuse surrounded by the dysfunction of the ghetto, sorry to be so blunt about it. They continued the fragmented pattern by having other kids by other people except each other. Mom went to crack and heroin, Dad went to prison, and is still going back and forth to this day. I’m 31, he’s 47, still a jailbird.
    Pluto in Capricorn is changing who I am as a person as it’s transiting my Sun sign & squaring my Moon in Libra. While Uranus was in Pisces, opposing my Virgo stellium, I worked tirelessly over the years to beat what I call the “ghetto syndrome” by graduating from high school and college and pursuing my degree, but the abusive relationship I was in seemed to pull me right back in. Being betrayed by paternal family members after that happened, while I was trying to recover, drove home that I was really on my own, and now I also have to blaze a whole new trail that doesn’t include abuse or abandonment.

  15. I think that pluto through cap is finally allowing us to recreat definitions of what constitutes a family. is it 2 married parents with their various amount of kids? is it a single mom or dad with kids? is a couple who decide or by circumstance dont have kids? is it a civil union btwn two men and women with or without kids? i personally feel all of the above are families. and i think there should be more creativity in the design and structure of the family. an honesty, instead of the cleaving to the perfect ideal family- which in my opinion is a myth.

  16. I’ve redefined family in my life. I’m holding tight to the core and setting boundaries with the rest. I’m pretty close to my mother’s side of the family. But, I have had to set some serious boundaries with my mother lately and that has been tough.
    But my core family, Ox and our boys, we have made our own traditions that separate from the larger extended family on both sides. We cherish the past and our heritages, but we also cherish the legacies we are creating now for our own unit.

  17. (((Whitechocolate)))

    I am not close to my family I was born into. Thats my brother job, I have too many different views. I did create my family and I am passing down my own new traditions as well as the old.

    How do I feel about family, I think that it does have an impact on your life, but it comes to a point that you have take action for your own life. Yes I have a strong Saturn Chart. I value Family Values, even if my own family does not agree with my way of thinking, I will respect them. They are old world.

    I will admit this, ever since Pluto in Cap, I do want to have a family and build and create a family with new traditions and old wrapped into one. This “black sheep” in the family knows all of the family dishes and stories. And they thought I wasn’t listening. I get this from my Grandfather and Great-Grandfather they were travellers just like me. I am keeping that tradition alive.

    Also I have accepted that my daughter is a princess fairy. I am also there for her with a crazy dish ready for her to eat.

  18. I don’t really have a family. I was alway sort of the bastard child of two cultures, and I mostly had to be on my own — this also goes for other groups — friends, school, work. I’m THE outsider always, partially I think because I was trained to keep one eye on the catastrophe that destroyed the connection. Also, quite plainly, my father died when I was seven and my mother was crazy so I spent a lot of time getting ready for the blowup/disappearance that meant I was going to have to drop everything and protect myself and anybody else who was fucked. Survival mode, most of my life.

    I tried to make my own family but that didn’t work out either…I finally realized my karma would leave me attached to nothing and no one. I’m not sad about it but I am at this point sure I am right. I’ve been homeless my whole life whether there was a roof over my head or not.

  19. I hate family. Everyone swears up and down that family is the best and only thing ever, these are the only people who will ever be there for, family makes you feel snuggly warm and safe inside… Except oh, my family doesn’t do that and at best, doesn’t like me much. (You don’t have to be adopted to not fit in. It may be worse when you’re related by blood to people who wouldn’t like you if you weren’t blood.) And my “chosen families” of friends end up having a 2 year shelf life. I feel very angry at always being told that family is awesome, and then IT ISN’T.

    I always have to go it alone. That’s what it always boils down to. I will die without family support, but I can’t get it, so… yeah.

  20. @jenfullmoon – I used to argue a lot with my family, growing up. One time my father said, “No one will ever love and support you like family. No one will be there for you like family.”

    My response? “Yeah, and no one can F**K with you like family, hurt and manipulate you like family.”

    I moved to southern California from the East Coast 5 years ago to find myself…Pluto in Capricorn now has my parents thinking of moving out here from NJ…

  21. It is in the best interests of manufacturers to dissolve households. Think about it more households more washing machine and refrigerator sales. My prediction for Pluto in Capricorn is a return to the grand family after all it was dissolved when Pluto transited Cancer.

  22. Pluto is parkin’ his big ole butt on my 4th house. I used to drop everything for my family, put them before me, even my husband. All family ideals shattered last year for very painful reasons. I haven’t spoken to my parents since Christmas and have had very minimal contact with my siblings. This is for my own sanity and mental health.

    I’ve finally realized my husband IS my family and it’s horrifying it took 10 years for this to sink in. My friends are family too. I have to put my energy there, until I’m ready to see my family again.

    My natal North node is in Capricorn, time to cut the apron strings and be my own father/Saturn figure.

  23. Pluto is conjoining my moon and my progressed sun is now conjunct my natal moon, which opposes natal uranus. (Also my solar return ascendant is the same as my natal ascendant.)??????

    I’m not sure what this means with respect to families. My parents died young; I’ve always had to rely on myself (regardless of marriage), and while my family always offers encouragement, that’s about it. I love my family, but aside from my early childhood, family has always meant the people you take care of, not the people who take care of you. (Do such people even exist?)

    Finally, someone here said she longed for a return to Pluto in Cancer. My experience with Cancers is that they idealize the notion of families, but they are not always so great in dealing with kids.

  24. anonymoushermit

    I feel a lot of families are showing their shadow sides. Gold digging sisters, psychopathic dads, narcissistic mothers, bratty brothers, unfaithful dads, families with no morals, families with hidden agendas. It’s pretty shocking to my eyes. Money problems, power plays, divorces, etc. It’s all a little too much at times, but I remember that Pluto is in Capricorn, and that Pluto purges false pretenses. Whoo! I feel sweaty just writing all this, intense!

    1. I believe ever since American beauty the most common family portrayal is the dysfunctional one.
      It is also common to blame the parents for how the child grows up. I listen to a show where a lot of the entertainers interviewed wax eloquent about narcissistic or bipolar or alcoholic parents. Ever since college I’ve met a lot of people from difficult families. Recently a few guys who were rejected by Jehovah’s witness parents.
      I think I wonder if people ever recognize that kids can be crappy too

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