On May 1, 1986 in the journal Nature, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses ruled that two virus names should be dropped as they were the same virus and the name human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) used. This was the conclusion of the mystery surrounding AIDS. Finally, the world knew what was causing the failure of immune systems and the strange infections, pneumonias and cancers that followed. A tiny virus was infecting people and overwhelming and destroying their immune systems.
HIV was officially named under the Capricorn Neptune – Scorpio Pluto era. The emergence of HIV and the response to it tells the story of how Pluto transits a zodiac sign. Neptune and Pluto together create waves that come into the shore. As they transit into different signs, these incoming waves change. New things can arrive and old things can disappear.
The HIV virus had been identified by three independent laboratories and scientists in 1983 and 1984. HIV didn’t kill people directly instead it stripped away natural barriers to everything else. Left increasingly undefended, an infected person was invaded by other viruses, and bacterias and the patient then succumbed from strange maladies. In May 1983, Pluto was in its last stages of transiting Libra. The unknown saboteur that was afflicting people worldwide was being revealed. In 1986, the great fear of what caused the unknown affliction could begin to wane.
By May 1986 at the announcement of HIV, Pluto lay at 5° Scorpio and the south node of the Moon had just transited from Scorpio into Libra. HIV has forever been linked thereafter to the Scorpio Pluto transit period of the mid 1980s to mid 1990s.
The Scorpio zodiac sign is made up of the influences of deep familial inheritances, curses, debts, shared resources, death and rebirth. The sex of Scorpio produces heirs. Continuance and rebirth. This is deadly serious as Scorpionic sex is about producing a child that will in turn produce grandchildren, and continue the familial bloodline. Half of every person’s DNA was first cared for by their maternal grandmother. Since female children form all of the eggs they will ever have while a fetus, it is her mother, your grandmother, that sustains the entirety of your maternal inheritance. Scorpionic sex is about creating grandchildren.
The HIV Yod
A 5° Yod existed. Astrologers often call Yods “the finger of God”. They denote special missions when in an individuals chart. The previous Neptune-Pluto conjunction in 1891 at 7° Gemini points toward the connections that cause civilization to arise. Gemini is the sign of urbanization. Colonization. Civilization. Here the Yod points to a cure associated with civilization. Gemini Venus. Civilization Cure. Deep in Africa, humans had often caught a virus from several different monkey types. Africa is home to the most variants of HIV including HIV-1 and HIV-2 both from different monkey species. Unknown to the rest of the world, there was no cure.
Around the time of the last Neptune-Pluto conjunction, urbanization was increasing in the Congo and this allowed for an infection to spread within the river city of Leopoldville and from there beyond Africa. Since HIV doesn’t kill people but just weakens them until something else does, it takes a lot of time to even see the symptoms that something is wrong. Within a few decades after it began infecting people in America, isolated and strange medical cases were arising in the 1950s and 1960s. When gay men were asked in the 1980s the last time they remember when everyone was healthy, they pointed to the bicentennial celebrations of America’s birth. The 1976 bicentennial appears to have been a superspreader event for AIDS among the gay community.
HIV scorpionized Leonine sex. Casual sex for fun could lead to death. Gay men were told that to save themselves, they needed to use condoms. This community was stigmatized but it was this very trait that caused them to band together to work on this issue, knowing that if they didn’t force the issue it would not be a high priority for the rest of society. In America unlike in Africa, HIV still impacts gay and bisexual men more than any other group. The HIV Yod is a special mission to create a civilizational cure.
The Name chart shows a Yod chart pattern that connects the Scorpio Pluto to the Capricorn Neptune pointing at the Gemini Venus. Cures are represented by Venus. The Venus lies on the Sabian symbol “a radical magazine”. HIV has not been cured by a physical cure but prevention by information and also now by preventative medicine that has been used to bring infection rates down. With Capricorn part of the base of the Yod, HIV will one day have a cure. No matter how long the road may be, the Capricorn goat won’t be dissuaded from reaching his ultimate destination, the pinnacle of the mountain.
The Archetype of Capricorn Neptune – Scorpio Pluto
Once HIV was isolated and discovered, hope immediately increased that a vaccine would quickly be found that would stop the epidemic. That was not to be. The interplay of Capricorn should have indicated that there would be no quick fixes. This goat’s arduous climb will eventually arrive at the destination but this success is not easily won.
Pluto has an orbit of 244 years while Neptune has an orbit of 164 years. Their natural cycles are beyond the lifetime of an individual person and instead are some of the shorter civilizational cycles. Nations are one entity that matches the timeframes of these cycles. The USA just had its Pluto Return. Virginia is three quarters of a way to its second Pluto Return.
So let’s explore the basic meaning of these two particular planets. This chart has a Capricorn Neptune. Neptune represents ideals and influences. Those ideals would be Capricornian. Responsiblity. Restriction. Discipline. Borders. Boundaries. Commitment. Tests. Scorpio Pluto. Pluto represents the transformation of death and rebirth. That transformation would come through Scorpio. Sex. Bloodlines. Shared resources. If you put this together you have the themes of responsible sex, restricted blood, restricted resources, committed sex, sex barriers, and blood barriers.
Commitment and faithfulness in marriage, testing the blood supply, ending the sharing of needles, using condoms and medical gloves. Neptune imagines what is needed and Pluto is the transformative agent discarding the past and giving new life to new forms. Death and rebirth according to the ideals of Neptune.
The archetype of the Capricorn Neptune and Scorpio Pluto demanded that sharing be curtailed. HIV works directly against promiscuity and sharing resources, whether unprotected sex, shared needles or blood transfusion. The Scorpio Pluto was the death of sharing. The Capricorn Neptune wanted restrictions. Capricorn’s blocks such as condoms worked. Very close pair bonds also worked because, when faithfully observing their committment, this too prevented a couple from contracting HIV. Testing the blood supply worked.
In America, why did HIV take particular aim at gay and bisexual men versus the rest of the population? This is the astrological reason. Gay men, especially from the 1980s and 1990s, were associated with Aquarius. Casual sex for fun is Leo. The Scorpio Pluto creates the focus of a T-square between the Leo-Aquarius axis. As Pluto moved through Scorpio, it provided a square aspect to Leo-Aquarius. If instead Pluto had been in a cardinal sign such as Libra, it would have blocked the Cancer-Capricorn axis. That would have increasingly blocked mothers and fathers instead. In Africa, where the epidemic was clearly ahead of America and Pluto was most likely in Libra during the explosion of infections, HIV did block mothers and fathers. HIV spreads in the general population in many African countries and some households are child headed because their parents are dead.
Through this epidemic it was found that the male gay community often engaged in many casual sexual encounters with an average of eleven partners each year. San Francisco had to close its bathhouses in an attempt to curtail the epidemic that was killing many people. The sex, drugs and rock n’ roll culture of the Scorpio Neptune ideals died and had to be reborn as Pluto moved through Scorpio. HIV in the 1980s and 1990s changed the level of fun that could be had. This was a big change from the 1960s of the Scorpio Neptune.
Pluto’s Rebirth Cycle From Death…
Pluto has a eccentric orbit. Instead of a circular and even orbit, its’ orbit is longer on one axis going far out into space before returning closer to the Sun. Pluto spends the least amount of time in its own sign Scorpio and the most in Taurus.
Dwells Shortest in These Six Zodiac Signs: Leo 20 Years – Virgo 16 – Libra 13 – Scorpio 12 – Sagittarius 13 – Capricorn 16
Dwells Longest in These Six Zodiac Signs: Aquarius 21 Years – Pisces 25 – Aries 30 – Taurus 32 – Gemini 30 – Cancer 25
This tells us that Pluto has the most work to do in those signs associated with the individual or an individual in the collective. This suggests that individuals are not good at clearing away detritus on their own. The mythology of Pluto and Ceres shows that Ceres would not allow her daughter to grow up. She wanted to keep her daughter as a child forever. Pluto kidnapped, raped and made Persephone (Prosepina) his queen in the underworld.
Neptune’s ideals animate the Pluto cycle of death and rebirth. The ideals of the collective system are represented by Neptune. Once Pluto arrives into that territory, the death of those ideals occurs and a rebirth ensues.
In the 1960s, the Scorpio Neptune gave rise to the counterculture. Sex, drugs and rock n’roll came from the idealism of the young who were the Libra Neptune generation. Peace, love, and anti-war sentiments of the Libra Neptune youth mixed with the Scorpio Neptune ideals of exploring the darker elements of life. Something darker and buried in the depths was released and began to slowly build up in the population. As Pluto moved from Libra into Scorpio, this death dealing scorpion was revealed as HIV. The Capricorn Neptune ideals were ones salvation against this threat. Committment, responsibility, barriers.
Today, Pluto is transiting again into a fixed sign Aquarius while Neptune is soon to transit into Aries. In the 1980s, the Aquarius-Leo highlighted gay mens (Aquarius) casual sex habits (Leo). Now the main Aquarius – Leo theme is transgender (Aquarius) children (Leo). While Neptune is still in Pisces, it appears that Pluto has already dealt a death blow to medicine used for gender treatments in children, especially in Europe where the medical establishment has stood up against treatments that have had no rigorous scientific study. Observing this suggests that Pluto in Aquarius will deal blows to queerness. Pisces Neptune has caused healers to deal those blows. Were Neptune to stay longer in Pisces, I would expect Pluto to cause the rebirth of medicine.
As Neptune transits into Aries, anger from the transgender community could rise. Speaking as someone who joined a cult at 12 and didn’t wake up until I was in my late 30s, realizing I had deluded myself under a Capricorn Neptune, rage could easily be the reaction by many transgender boys who grow up to realize they would like to be a mother but have been physically ruined by medical treatments in their youth. Will anger, young men and independence be the salvation? A victim no more?
…To Rebirth
The government’s campaign Just Say No in the 1980s and 1990s was an ideal. At the time, Neptune was transiting Capricorn. This campaign resulted from the war on drugs and has culminated in the Capricorn Pluto transit of legalization of drugs by many state governments and discussion that the federal government may do the same thing. Pluto first dealt the death blow to the government’s abstinence campaign and some legal restrictions. The rebirth component has Pluto reigning over the poisoning of the drug supply (Pisces Neptune). Just saying no didn’t stop people from using drugs but today, young people may be starting to get the message that fentanyl has been laced into everything. Just say no has become take your chances. Death to rebirth is as simple as the Capricorn Neptune “Just Say No” – Capricorn Pluto deals death blow to Just Say No, legalizes drugs – Pisces Neptune poisons drug supply with fentanyl.
The Scorpio Pluto first dealt a death blow to promiscuity where two people weren’t intimately bonded together but instead had multiple partners whether it was through sharing needles, sex or blood. Then promiscuity was reborn with safe sex practices. The blood supply was cleansed of the virus through testing so blood could once again be shared and addicts were educated to not share needles while free needle campaigns began and are still in operation today. All of this rebirth had the theme of the Capricorn Neptune.
While remaining optimistic, we should always be aware that the Neptune-Pluto cycle is one in which the incoming waves don’t even notice individuals. Whether it is a war or HIV, individuals are not the focus of this cycle. The carnage of HIV may be to provide a cure for a disease but many people have died in the scourge. The ideals of Aquarius from the late 1990s and 2000s are about to undergo their own death and rebirth.