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The cosmos initiates deep inner shifts and retrogrades this week, each movement inviting us deeper into ourselves and deeper into life.
Pluto Retrograde In Capricorn
Pluto sits at the edge of our known solar system. Far from our reach yet simultaneously deep within our beings, Pluto represents our inner reserves that are not often explored. It is our darkness, our vulnerabilities, our unconscious, and our shadow self. It is the crevices within that remain hidden and untouched—that is, until the time comes to journey with them.
The outer planet, which can remain in a sign for up to 21 years, entered Capricorn in 2008. As an earth sign, Capricorn is concerned with the material world and resources. It is our planet of authority, ambition, determination, and discipline. It represents career, social structures, and traditional values. It guides us into responsibility and maturity and asks us to master the path that is ours to master. And it shows us that in so doing, we create security for ourselves.
Pluto transforms whatever it touches. With the dwarf plant in Capricorn, we were transforming our inner and outer resources so that we could stand on our own two feet. And we were doing this by first touching and excavating the spaces that existed both individually and collectively where responsibility and maturity didn’t, that existed where security and discipline didn’t, that existed where right relationship with material resources didn’t—all so we may renew and rebuild these areas.
Earlier this year, Pluto transited into Aquarius for the first time since the 1700s. Since that era-defining movement, it has been lingering along the threshold between Capricorn and Aquarius. Its time in Aquarius is a transitory moment prior to Pluto retrograding back into Capricorn from June 11 until January 2024, when we will revisit our journeys of transformation from the last 15 years.
We may find ourselves revisiting these invitations once more before we truly begin a new chapter of Pluto in Aquarius. It’s a fine-tuning of who you have been changing into, a solidifying of who you have been becoming, and an anchoring of the transformation that was taking place.
Throughout this time, we are invited to reflect on our deepest inner transformations from the recent past. If looking back to 2008 feels overwhelming, consider when Pluto last retrograded in Capricorn, which was October 2022. What is your relationship with responsibility, authority, discipline, and maturity? What have these areas of life been teaching you?
Mercury Enters Gemini
While Pluto is our slowest moving planet in the cosmos, Mercury is the quickest. An excited, curious, speedy, and mischievous planet, Mercury joins the Sun and enters Gemini on June 11, where it will remain until June 26.
In astrology, each sign has one or two corresponding planets over which they hold an ownership and responsibility. Gemini is that for Mercury. They share a similar nature and attuned traits, intentions, and overall energy. While Mercury is in Gemini, it is at home.
Both Mercury and Gemini rule the mind, communication, learning, information, mental processing, and information. When it can concentrate on the domain of the mind, Gemini acts as a breath of fresh air, clearing out what is stagnant and breathing new life into our mental world.
Our mind can shape our entire lived experience. While Mercury is in Gemini, we are invited to curiously explore the mental constructs through which we filter our reality.
Does your mind feel open, free, filled with exploration, agility, and curiosity? Or is it feeling stagnant, heavy, constraining life force, due for an update? Breathe life into the spaces of your mind. Bring in curiosity, excitement, and openness. This transit calls for new topics, classes, conversations, learning, reading, and sharing—anything that will let the mind discover, move, and open.
Saturn Retrograde in Pisces
Saturn has also experienced deep change earlier this year by moving into Pisces for the first time in 27 years. This week initiates Saturn’s first retrograde in the watery sign of Pisces since 1996.
Saturn appears in our reality as boundaries, structure, responsibility, and discipline. Saturn invites us into self-mastery and reminds us that it can’t be given, nor can it be rushed, and it can’t be reached unless it’s challenged over and over. Saturn also reminds us, through various trials and tribulations, that mastery can’t be achieved solely through the mind. Rather, it must be experienced and integrated.
During its time spent in the last sign of the zodiac, Saturn has been inviting us into the mastery of spiritual and emotional boundaries, spiritual and emotional discipline, responsibility of our emotions, of our energy, and of our divine sensitivity. It has been building structure within our imagination so that we may use it as a tool of creation, connection, and oneness. It has been building resilience in our psyche so that we may collaborate with it and master the unseen realms within us.
During Saturn retrograde from June 17 until November 4, we are invited to look over the past few months of Saturn in Pisces and review what we have been building, how we have been maturing, and what we have been learning about our emotional world, boundaries, the power of our imagination, and the strength that sits within our sensitivity.
Retrogrades bring a sacred pause to integrate the journey we have been walking before continuing forward. Allow yourself to step back, look within, and explore who you are becoming and what it means to you. What does your emotional health need? What is your relationship like with boundaries? How do you tend to your energetic health? How does discipline, responsibility, and structure support you? What does your connection with spirituality and oneness need so that it may support you?
New Moon in Gemini
Straddling the closing of one week and beginning of another, we are met with a Gemini new Moon on June 17 or 18, depending on where in the world you call home.
A new Moon is the beginning of a new lunar cycle. She has emptied herself all so that she may rebirth herself. It is here that we, too, rebirth ourselves. It is here that we plant the seeds that we want to bring to fullness. It is here that we set the intentions, directions, and dreams that we want to grow during this new chapter.
As we sit within Gemini season, the Moon joins the Sun and Mercury in the same sign, inviting new inspirations, ideas, curiosities, and flow of communication. Neptune also makes its presence known, offering a softness to what could otherwise be a rather analytical lunation. Neptune invites us to lift our minds into a higher consciousness, dance with possibility, and explore the realm of infinite ideas. Venus, too, welcomes herself into the art that is this new Moon, bringing the mind into the heart, and inviting loving expression, creativity, and beauty.
This new Moon is relational. It is relational with the chosen people in our lives and it is relational with the Divine. It is an opportunity to see the beauty that surrounds us, feel the oneness with the flow that is Life, connect with our loved ones, and revel in the slipstream of ideas that dance within the collective consciousness.
Your Invitation
As Pluto descends further in its retrograde return into Capricorn, it invites us to review the trajectory of the last 15 years but condensed into a six-month visit. Pluto journeys deep. It sinks right in, goes underneath, and creates intimacy like nothing else. Where has Pluto been journeying deep within you? Where have you been transforming? How can you use these next six months to understand it better and start to integrate the intense curriculum of transformation you have been journeying? Can you let yourself dance with that transformation?
As Saturn joins Pluto in retrograde, you are invited once again into deeper introspection as you reflect upon these last few months of Saturn in Pisces. What has changed within you since March of this year? What invitations have been presenting themselves? What does your emotional health need? What is your relationship with boundaries? How do you tend to your energetic health? How does discipline, responsibility, and structure support you? What does your connection with spirituality and oneness need so that it may support you?
While retrogrades can feel slower than the usual flow of forward momentum, Gemini in Mercury with the new Moon soon after can bring relief to what may have felt heavy. Allow this inward reflection to inspire you and spark enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, and insight. Allow the new beginning of this new Moon to draw from, and be inspired by, the underworld that Pluto and Saturn are journeying through.
While Pluto and Saturn represent the more serious nature of humanness, Mercury and Gemini bring a lightness to the introspection taking place. They do so while also offering a digestible, rational, and applicable understanding of the insights afforded from your dive into retrograde underworld. Mercury and Gemini bring the lessons into understanding, into the mind, and into a format that can be used to integrate the wisdom into your everyday life.
Learn more about the influence of astrology in your life, including astrological events the Moon cycles, your Sun and Moon and rising signs, how journaling can help you connect with the current influences, and more with Jordane Maree at Girl and her Moon.
About Our Contributor
Jordane Maree is the founder of Girl and Her Moon, a platform and community exploring Soul through the lens of astrology, tarot, and energy healing. She is a writer, intuitive astrologer, energy and soul guide, and host of Girl and Her Moon, The Podcast. She is inspired, every single day, to be the mirror for you to see all that you truly are, you in all your infinite abilities, in total expansion, in infinite opportunity and love.
