The Same Question, Three Times
Venus squares Pluto on September 15, October 20 and December 9, at almost exactly the same degree. One question about desire and power, asked three ways.
Venus squared Pluto on September 15. It squares Pluto again on October 20. It will do it a third time on December 9.
The three contacts happen at 40.01, 39.81 and 40.49 degrees of Virgo. Three passes, within seven-tenths of a degree of each other, spread across twelve weeks.
That is not three coincidences. It is one long contact that the geometry cuts into three visits, and knowing which visit you are in changes what it is for.
Why an aspect repeats
Most aspects happen once. A fast planet catches a slow one, the angle perfects, the fast planet moves on.
A retrograde breaks that pattern. Venus crossed the square point in September moving forward. It stationed retrograde on October 3 and walked back over the same point on October 20. It stations direct on November 13 and crosses the point a third time, going forward again, on December 9.
Same two planets, same angle, same patch of sky, three times, because one of them changed direction twice in between. Any time you see a triple like this, a retrograde is the reason.
The direction changes are the tell
Here is the detail I find most elegant about this particular set, and it is visible only if you look at the motion of both bodies.
September 15: Venus direct, Pluto retrograde. October 20: Venus retrograde, Pluto direct. December 9: both direct.
The two planets trade directions between the first pass and the second. Pluto stationed direct on October 15, five days before that second square; Venus had stationed retrograde twelve days before it. By December, both are moving forward and the contact resolves with nobody backing up.
You can read the arc straight off that. The first pass arrives while the deep thing is still underground. The second happens with both parties pointed the wrong way relative to each other, which is why it carries the most weight of the three. The third is the one where everything is finally moving in the same direction and something can be settled.
What the square is actually about
Venus is what you want. Pluto is what is underneath the wanting.
A square between them is the contact where those two stop agreeing. Desire meets the thing it would rather not look at: the attachment that has more control in it than affection, the money decision with a power question hiding inside, the relationship where the real negotiation has never been said out loud. The territory line in our own event data is blunt about it. Desire meets the thing it doesn’t want to see, and there is no looking away before the segment ends.
In Virgo, all of this arrives in practical dress. Not a grand confrontation. The specific arrangement, the specific habit, the specific weekly thing you do for someone and have started to resent.
What each pass does
Pass one, September 15. The question gets raised, usually by circumstance rather than by choice. Something surfaced and you noticed it. Most people do not act on a first pass; they register it and carry on.
Pass two, October 20. This one carries headline weight, and it sits in the middle of the Venus retrograde, five days after Pluto turned direct. The orb runs from October 7 to October 28, so the window is three weeks wide. This is the pass that goes into the thing. Whatever got raised in September is now the actual subject, with no forward momentum available to escape into.
Pass three, December 9. Venus is direct, Pluto is direct, and the orb runs December 2 to 16. Worth noting where that sits: the Venus retrograde’s shadow closes on December 15, so this final square is nearly the last act of the entire cycle. Whatever this question turned out to be, December 9 is where the answer gets applied.
A note on the two degrees
Two small things about where this is happening, both of which depend on using the real sky.
Venus is at about 40 degrees of Virgo for all three passes. That degree exists because Virgo is about fifty degrees wide in true sky sidereal (the system Z13 is built on), so numbers past thirty are ordinary there.
Pluto is at about 2 degrees of Capricorn. In tropical astrology it would be in Aquarius, and the question would be a collective one about social systems. Here it is Capricorn, and the question is about what you built and whether it is actually yours. For a square to Venus, the Capricorn version is the more uncomfortable and, I think, the more useful of the two.
Practical notes
- October 7 to 28: the second pass is in orb. The exact hit is October 20 at 06:53 UTC, but the whole three-week window carries it.
- Watch for the control question. The tell for this aspect is noticing that something you call love or preference is doing the work of control, in either direction. That recognition is the assignment; acting on it immediately is not.
- Do not resolve it in October. The second pass is for going into the question, not for settling it. Settling belongs to December, when both planets are moving forward.
- December 2 to 16: the third and final pass, with the exact contact on December 9. The Venus shadow closes on the 15th. If there is a decision to make, that window is where it can hold.
- If nothing surfaced in September, that is normal. First passes are quiet for most people, and the October window is loud enough to make up for it.
Related: Five Months Underground | Love Rolls Up Its Sleeves: Venus Enters Virgo | The Weather You Don’t Control: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto
If you want to know where 40 degrees of Virgo falls in your own chart, and whether these three squares are landing on anything of yours, you can build a chart at Z13 for free. Real constellations at their real widths, which is why our Virgo has a fortieth degree at all.
Up next: Venus disappears from the evening sky this month and comes back before dawn. The evening star and the morning star have always been the same planet, and the switch happens in late October.