Pluto 6: High Weirdness
at the anaretic degree
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*This is the sixth post in an ongoing series on Pluto, astrological planet and lord of the underworld, in culture and the cosmos, who will move into Aquarius on November 19th after sixteen years in Capricorn.
"The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night." — Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Pluto’s been sitting at the final/fatal degree of Capricorn. This final degree was known, by the old school astrologers, as anareta. McCarthy uses the weird word in Blood Meridian in a darkly groovy passage. Anareta describes the 29th (final) degree of any sign—a place of limit and ends—the trip almost over and thus highly charged—-sacred, hardcore, volcanic. A space of fate—-encountering that which we cannot change but throw our weight up against just the same. In doing so, we change. Post-election, an anaretic hysteria. Differences reduced to hatred, labeling and scolding, thereby flattening harder Truths, contradictions, and the high weirdness of Pluto at this critical edge, end. The word “weird” got activated this election season. Weird comes from the medieval wyrd: fate, chance, fortune; destiny, the Fates….