Watching my fellow travelers hurl their big vehicles across the lanes of the Washington beltway over the weekend like children released for recess, and observing no less than five significant car crashes in two days on those roads, I thought I'd better examine the energies involved in this Moonwobble period.

The New Moon chart for May 11 (21 deg Taurus) for Washington DC suggests a period where higher learning is emphasized and philosophical perspectives get respect. These are tied to imperatives that move the nation and its people forward, not without challenges. Quick thinking is essential (and available) during this period to navigate these challenges.

A very practical outlook appears to be in the offing, but unreasonable expectations, especially with regard to others (individuals, nations), need to be taken into consideration. The Biden administration would be well advised to put any rose colored glasses into storage.

A deficit of resources in the area of meeting essential needs appears to be an inherited situation: for example, labor shortages related to existing conditions before the pandemic struck may make expansion as things open up troublesome.

Powerful transformative energies continue to shake institutions in apparently random ways, disconnected from perceivable relationships with specific areas of life. Those who believe they understand the cause of all this upheaval most likely are mistaken.

There is the opportunity for disciplined thought and intelligent structuring of responses on many levels.

Important context, for U.S. citizens, involves Pluto heading for a return to its place when the Declaration of Independence was written (Sibley chart). Increasing polarization will continue to undergird American affairs.

As the peak of Moonwobble approaches (May 31, June 1, 2) Mars forms an opposition to Pluto that aggravates the deep institutional challenges and brings them to the fore. It's possible a crisis may evolve in foreign affairs or (less likely) civil unrest may develop that challenges the nation's sense of identity.

Mercury goes retrograde on May 30 and remains so until the cycle is well over, going direct around June 22. This will give the peak period an even stronger appearance of instability as communications systems (including your nervous system) need attention or repair.

Use the Mercury retrograde period to study. During Moonwobble it pays to use meditation practices to shift your attention from the inevitable drama to a place of unchanging integrity. More experienced practitioners, such as translators, may be able to use the notes above to focus their process, with significant benefits.

I've spent the last two days hanging out with the very impressive students and tutors of the Faculty of Astrological Studies. It has been a great joy to visit Oxford, England, each August for the past several years to spend 5 or 6 days talking with astrologers and listening to eye-opening presentations by some of the biggest names in the business.

This year's event was canceled - and then transformed from the usual 8 days to just a weekend teleconference with a carefully crafted program of eight presentations and designated spots for students to contribute their reflections about the Summer School experience. All in all this was a brilliant pivot that gave students the opportunity to have a taste of the event they remember with such joy.

The topics, of course, focused one way or another on the times we are in and in particular on the transits of Pluto, Saturn, and Jupiter through Capricorn, all of which are associated with the global pandemic, the subsequent lockdowns, and the psychological challenges that such an enforced change of routine necessarily incites.

Let's go back three years, to August 2017.

For that event Alana and I decided to take our vacation time during the weekend workshop events and just attend the week-long Summer School. On Monday morning I entered the classroom and introduced myself to the instructor for that session, one Michael Lutin. He looked at me as if to say, "Ok. Is there something you want ?" I mentioned that Alana and I had liked the look of his weekend workshop but decided not to attend because, "we weren't sure we'd be able to muster the energy to do that and then make it through the week." He got a rueful look on his face and said, "Yeah, it was a lot of energy out."

What I did not know at that moment was that Michael Lutin had been asked to step in to cover the sessions originally planned for Rob Hand, who was not able to make the cross-Atlantic trip due to an eye operation. How he managed the energy to pull it off I have no idea. One of the lectures (each one 90 minutes) dealt with planetary nodes, a topic you don't hear a lot about these days. In that presentation he laid out the positions of the planetary nodes and talked about their role in getting context for the solar system environment within which our planetary transits occur.

Michael Lutin, unjustly cropped by a data obsessive, talking about planetary nodes at the FAS 2017 Summer School

Michael is a very entertaining lecturer, and he's an experienced hand, which means he doesn't just sit down and read a paper to you. He dropped an enticing statement into his presentation (and expanded it in a separate session later). He suggested that when Pluto transits its own South Node (20 deg. Capricorn) we should expect "something really big". When pressed to give details he simply said, "Just remember that in the worst case, say, a total nuclear war in which civilization is destroyed, a few days after it's all over, out from under a rock somewhere, will come . . . a Scorpio." This got a big laugh, but nobody could get him to be more specific.

In the follow-up lecture he spent all of his time talking to his astrologer peers, saying that when this transit happened there would be great need for the people in the room to provide guidance for a lot of people who would be in dire straights emotionally and psychologically. He wouldn't be more specific, and there were more than a few frustrated attendees.

At the time of the lecture, Pluto was at 17 deg. Capricorn. It first reached 20 deg. Capricorn in February 2018, then went retrograde and passed 20 deg. again in June 2018; then went direct and passed it again in December 2018; it came back for its final pass in September 2019 and stationed at 20 degrees Capricorn on October 4 for seven days until October 11, 2019. This was the last pass of the transit. Pluto went retrograde on April 25, but will only get to 22 deg Capricorn before going direct on October 4.

All of this tells us some interesting things :

Michael Lutin nailed this transit; he identified it as something an order of magnitude beyond what we're used to projecting for transits of any kind.
What we are experiencing in the pandemic coming out of the autumn of 2019 has roots in February, June, and December 2018. It's not just COVID-19 but a constellation of developments that have prepared the way for what we are experiencing now. In the U.S. this corresponds to a weakening of the powers of the central government, at least.
None of this diminishes in any way the excellent analyses that are being made about the effects of the conjunction of Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn.
Planetary node transits need more attention.

Moonwobble May 2021

Pluto and the end times