I wrote this in 2009 for Pluto in Capricorn. Eight years have passed. What do you think?
I know a family that was strong at one time. This family stood for something, but today there’s little left of it. It’s been almost completely decimated.
You see this sometimes when the patriarch or the matriarch dies or is weakened due to tragedy of some type. Maybe it’s a devastating illness or perhaps they lose a child and can’t recover. Everything can all be traced to the one event. You can look back and see that this one person or maybe two people were holding the thing together, carrying on traditions and values maintained for generations. When they dropped off, that was it. The family fell apart.
This led me to wonder if a family ever comes together when someone dies. Some parents drive wedges between their children, be it deliberate or subconscious. In a case like that, I wonder if the family might come together when the offending parent dies. I don’t think this likely and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen it happen.
It’s seems if a family goes down, this is how it happens and once down, it stays down. Someone in that line has to come up with a concept of family, start from scratch and build anew.
The thing is people from weak families, or people who have no concept of being part of a family, family loyalty, etc. are not likely to do this. It leads me to think there is probably some dark time before something or someone springs up organically to rebuild. In other words, it’s a Plutonian process.
I don’t think the one family I am referring to is unique. I think “family” is dying in general and it scares me.
I asked my friend, Ben about things around this, he’s worked with middle school age kids for going on 30 years. He reports that the kids all have contempt for their parents which is no surprise. I don’t see this turning around anytime soon.
Thoughts? What is the state of your family? Does it matter?
I don’t think families loved or respected each other any more centuries ago, they just needed each other for survival so they were more willing to make certain compromises while continuing to hate each other’s guts. Not all, but many.
Wow this topic has obviously hit a sensitive spot in us all.
When my dad died we all became closer/better. His passing was like a black cloud lifted and we could all breathe again. Things have got better and better ever since.
My dad is the Pluto conjunct my MC – a pedophile that affected all of us in some way. His abuse was subtle but pervasive and in the long term – extremely crazy making – our alcoholic mom was not a lot better. She stopped drinking many years ago – and there was still a lot of good – we are all close -though dysfunctional as one would expect. As for my dad – He had his good side – he did support us all and was a mentor for me in many ways.
I just returned from a family visit (I live on other side of the country) and my mom was in hospital for a bit – and it was a reminder that shes next. I can see old wounds surfacing and things get a bit touchy.
I have heard it said that with the sign of Cancer opposite Pluto in Capricorn – we all need to process and heal our childhood /inner child (Cancer)- so we can move through this breakdown of the old order (family/government/religion/ patriarchy etc) and turn it into a Break-through. Time for a new sense of family that includes the whole human race.
I expected it to destroy states, not families. Obviously families are a much more artificial concept than I thought.
Thanks Raven for those wise words, the connection between Cancer and Capricorn and healing our human family.
It isn’t bad that the concept of family gets destroyed because it’s time for giving way for better concepts.
I just recalled something I read a few years ago in a bio of Vivian Vance (Ethel in I Love Lucy). She had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized a few years before she was hired for Lucy. Her mother was abusive and negating to her and she struggled with that wounding all her life. After she became successful she was very devoted to helping the mentally ill and visited patients in sanitariums to talk to them. The anecdote in the book relates that often people would tell her how their families put them away because they thought they were defective or crazy. And Viv would say, “Tell them to go f*** themselves!” Which seemed to shock the patients but also often helped them come out of deep depression. She was earthy but she seemed to have a real healing presence that helped people.
I think if family is loving and supportive that’s a gift in life. But if your family is toxic and tries to keep you down, or torments or drains you, they should be shunned. It doesn’t help to keep going to a dry well or stay loyal to people who treat you badly. Things became clearer for me when I realized most of my family members are enemies of my soul and spiritual progress in life. Anyone who tries to disempower or hurt you should go f*** themselves, even if they’re family.
So beautifully put, Rennie. I don’t believe we’re put on this Earth to allow others to harm us. Sometimes amputation is the only effective method of self-preservation from people related to you who want you hurt.
Blood is thicker than water,sure. I’ve noticed this most acutely when relatives have tried to spill or drain some of mine.
Rennie, I have a mental illness, and I wish that Vivian Vance was my mother!
Maybe what Pluto in Capricorn is destroying is a false and twisted expression of family- abuse, malice, hate- and replacing it with its true one, which is often found in those outside a person’s bloodline. I love the saying “Friends are God’s apology for your family.”
“Friends are God’s apoloy for your family”. Thank you Scottish. (())
Well put, ScottishFoldSoul!
My hubby’s mom ( Capricorn) passed away in late April. She was the glue. I can see us staying in touch with his sister, as they are close. There’s been a fracture between the brothers ( both Scorpios) for a long time & they’ve really tried to hold it together for their Mom’s sake. We are all working together to take apart her condo & it’s been outwardly peaceful & inwardly seething. I suspect that a split is coming, & for me, I will welcome it. As a Pisces, I feel all that unexpressed stuff & it drives me nuts to be near it. I’ve tried to help by doing solitary tasks ( thank you notes, going through old pictures, sorting out paperwork… while the others do tasks more in their wheelhouse)
Then there’s my family of origin. Like some above: crazy mom/ quiet dad. Mom did her best to divide & conquer all of us…I rarely see my brothers, tho we did come together for my dads birthday (93!) and circled around each other rather uncomfortably. No fights, just no connection….
And the family my hubby & I created….only one lives nearby, but the youngest is making a move back towards home within the year—& our middle one is trying to talk his wife into moving back also. I am the glue for our family, I love having my boys around–& their wives!
Way Bandy, a top celebrity, fashion, and movie makeup artist (and author of two beauty books) in the 1970s and 1980s, said that he’d had a difficult childhood in Alabama, before coming to NYC and reinventing himself. He worked for top magazines and photographers, and did the makeup for everyone from Catherine Deneuve to Barbra Streisand, and said he learned about makeup by painting portraits in his youth. Anyway…..
He is said to have said once, “I think that family may just be the conduit to the rest of your life.”
That always stuck with me; and for many, I think it can be true. If you read historical biography, schisms in families, from royals to everyday people, have occurred for hundreds of years.
BTW, Way Bandy was born Aug 9, 1941 in Birmingham, Alabama, but always his his birth date.
Thanks to all who have spoken so frankly about family dynamics. ScottishFoldSoul expressed the thought that it is a healthy action to have the courage to amputate (Pluto) toxic family situations and create a new family of your choosing. Think of the phoenix–after the fire you get new feathers. Hope they are bright feathers!
Much to my chagrin I am not a destination relative. People fly through this city on their way elsewhere but innumerable times have opted not to stop even though my city is full of attractions. I have extended invitations. Oh well, when I said I would fly to attend my mom’s brother’s funeral, saying thoughtfully I would stay at a nearby hotel so as not to impose on my aunt (my mom and one of my sisters were already booked to stay with aunt), my mom told me not to come. I was flabbergasted. I’m good at sending gifts and cards and writing. On the positive side, my Dad’s relatives and in-laws were better at reaching out and I treasure letters from his sisters-in-law, my aunts. I carried on a one-sided correspondence with uncle’s Down syndrome son. Of course he loved getting the cards. So I did what I could. My Mom has better synastry with the sister she had go with her. So I would like closeness and participation but I understand when a new course of action is advisable. My friends are original and smart and I am grateful for their love.
Thanks for mentioning your sisters better synastry with your mother. Good synastry leads to good relationships. Bad synastry leads to bad relationships. Why does hardly anybody understand this, even among those, who know astrology?
I have Uranus in the 4th. My family of origin has never been close. It’s always been dysfunctional and chaotic and the dynamics are often too difficult to explain to outsiders. My mother just moved in with us but I’m not close to her either. (Saturn square Moon)
However, I saw my SO’s family destroyed after his paternal grandparents died right around the time Pluto entered Capricorn. They were the glue that held his family together. The family hasn’t been the same since. After the passive-aggressive bloodletting over division of estate, and the occasional wedding and funeral, we hardly ever see them. Nor do we want to. I do miss his grandparents something terrible though. They were wonderful welcoming people who made the rest of the family bearable. That’s probably why they avoid each other now ?
Wow, I followed the link for the Neptune retrograde and saw the teaser – Pluto in Capricorn, Family Destroyer. I can fully relate to that. Father passed suddenly in my childhood and siblings left with an abusive mother who demanded family loyalty on every level. She devoted her time and energy to the eldest – a son, who in turn took on her personality anomalies. I put up with this nonsense for years, but eventually realized my family was a dead end. My mother passed in 201l, and I haven’t looked back. During my adult years, I was determined not to be like her – judgemental, nasty, opinionated and distanced myself. Now I have no contact with my older sibling, and the same is coming true for the youngest. He has become a chronic, abusive alcoholic. My experience working with astrology has been very beneficial in pointing out to me that everything happens for a reason. My family, for better or worse, has been a teaching tool. But I no longer want an association with them. In the end, I am much happier without them
Yeah, I also think that the concept of family as we knew it (aka a mother, a father and children), is not coming back. A single mother with her kids who see their father on weekends, is a family now. So is two husbands living with their children. Family in its traditional sense, is gone.
My family is weird. I think there’s some kind of old country type loyalty that still pervades our psyches. Never go against the family.
Pluto in Capricorn has been moving through my tenth and yes, I never thought of it in these terms but a week family is now dead literally. My super Sag daughter wants her own life so that’s pretty much the end of it. Yes it’s sad.
Everytime a patriarchal or matriarchal figure dies in our families, the family unit is blown apart.
And we lost the last patriarchal figure in Feb. And my husband and I try to avoid his sister. Neither my husband the Capricorn or myself are big about family. I recall times when I was living at home, when I stayed home on Thanksgiving rather than doing the family get together because of my grandfather’s hatefulness. He never liked food and he didn’t like anyone eating around him.
And my husband’s mother’s family was huge! And since his mom died in 2001, he only goes to funerals and he won’t go to anyone’s home to visit because he rather not talk to them. I write to one of his aunt’s all the time and she is like a 2nd mother to me, but as far as visting, no.
And right now, my husband is wanting to move as far as we can get away from all family members and not look back.
Funny that he is a Capricorn Sun with Cancer Rising and they are supposed to be family oriented. Not him.
I wonder about the children born with Pluto in Capricorn. They’re growing up watching the family fall apart.
My generation (Pluto in Libra) watched our parents divorce in droves or fight and stay unhappy. Sometimes a parent would walk out in their family to go “find themselves”.
So we redefined marriage. How many people now say marriage is “just a piece of paper”? Shoot, Meredith and Derek on Grey’s Anatomy first got married through a post-it note and then at the courthouse! Now we have commitment ceremonies and domestic partnerships, same-sex marriages are now recognized, people can be ordained as ministers online and perform impromptu ceremonies, we have drive-thru chapels….and drive-thru divorce….
How will the Pluto in Capricorn generation redefine “family” (and career)? As they grow up, that should be an interesting development to watch.
I think the Pluto in Aquarius generation will come to understand and define family in a much more universal sense.
Family as has been, has been very Lunar and tribal in nature. It’s based on connection, but a very narrow connection, that of blood.
But the highest reality is that of universal Oneness, and this is what we should be growing towards. Someday we will realize that everyone is part of our family and vice versa. And not just humans, but all of creation.
In the future, intentional communities will be the norm. Children will be raised by villages so to speak. At some point, there will be also many ET groups visiting the Earth and interacting with humanity. As America became a great melting pot in the world, so to will Earth become a melting part for this sector of the Galaxy.
It’s the beginning of Christ Consciousness blossoming within the heart of humanity.
Pluto in Capricorn destroying families is the best thing that has ever happened in the present age. How liberating, from the sheer, utter abuse and trauma of what had to be destroyed. A complete freeing from karmic ties. Time to rewrite one’s life on a personal and collective scale!