About Pluto's Child

This site is an experiment for me. I started working on it with Pluto going into Capricorn and trining my Virgo Sun/Pluto.  It occurred to me during the 2008 presidential campaign and election of Barack Obama (also born with Pluto in Virgo) that Pluto going into Capricorn signifies (among other things) a changing of the guard from the Pluto in Leo generation (those born from approximately1939 to 1957 – like both Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example) to the Pluto in Virgo Generation ( approximately  1956 to 1972). Since my Pluto’s early in Virgo and also rising and conjunct my Sun, I was thinking this would be good time to explore finding my own voice.

It also represents a changing of the guard for me in my personal life.

Most of my work in Astrology has been in support of my mother’s work. Like a dutiful apprentice (or a good Virgo son), I worked to enable her to use the new “information superhighway” to sell her books and distribute her daily forecast.  Our website (estherandson.com) was one of the very first astrological sites on the internet in 1994.  We did reports and consultations via phone and e-mail and mom spent a good deal of time connecting with other astrologers via an e-mail list.  That was before blogs and facebook and twitter and all the rest that has come since.

As Pluto teaches over and over, things change.  Mom passed away in 2006 after struggling with arthritis and dementia. I spent some time trying to keep her forecast going after she was no longer able to keep writing.  But between taking on the tasks of being her primary caregiver and moving into a new house, it didn’t seem to make sense to spend the time to keep it going.  So I let it go.  That is one of the lessons Pluto teaches.

For the time being at least, I’m not intending to offer consultations or open any kind of individual astrological practice. I’m experimenting and exploring and looking, I guess, to find and develop my own voice. I grew up with astrology rather than coming to it as an adult and I hope to use that perspective to inform what I do and write on Pluto’s Child. I intend to explore a variety of topics, from world political and social events and trends, to my own personal day to day observations.

Astrology was developed and continues to evolve based on observation within a complex network of micro and macro historical and cultural environments. In my own life, I have had many opportunities to observe for myself what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to using astrology.  It seems to me that others should be able to have the same opportunity.  Just as one’s physical health is a complex combination of environmental and genetic influences together with the ongoing process of learning ‘what works’ and what to avoid, using astrology in my own life is based on many years of observing what happens under a variety of different astrological influences.

For this site, I put together an assortment of tools that are essentially the tools I make use of every day to look at the numerological and astrological stuff going on. I don’t use these tools to make my decisions – I use them to inform my decisions.  I offer them here to allow others to use them (or not) as they see fit.  I’ll be happy to offer any clarification or input that I can, via comments, but what I’m really hoping is that I can find a way to help others make use of Astrology on their own.

I’ve included the numerological info based on a book mom wrote called simply Numerology. For each number up to 100 there are interpretations for the individual as well as daily cycles. There is also information in that book about astrological decanates which is essentially breaking up the Zodiac Circle into 36 sections of 10 degrees each instead of 360 degrees.

The four links above will take you to four different input forms:

• Horoscope Reports:

This is will calculate your chart based on your birthday and prepare a report giving you the degree influences taken from the book Degrees of the Zodiac by Esther V. Leinbach.  Degree influences offer a very interesting addition to chart interpretation. These help to understand how the basic sign and house placement of the planets are expressed.

The Places Database is working pretty well now. (Only Canada and the US so far – more countries coming!) There is also a bitmap of the horoscope included in the report so the processing takes a few seconds to write the file.

• Numerology Cycle:

Enter a date to see the numerological influence on that day.
Hint:If you enter the date of your last birthday, you can see the numerological cycle of the year you are on until your next birthday. Or check out an important or significant day in your life.

• Name Numbers:

This is pretty self explanatory Just enter your first, middle and last name.  Right now, the Name fields are set up as individual fields for each letter. The Auto Tab code should work on most browsers now. At this point, there are 12 letter limits on the first and middle names and an 18 letter limit on the last name.
You can also use this tool to enter things like your street name or business name – essentially any word you want to find the numerology for.  This no requirement for any name field but any entry other than a letter will only result in a zero value so entering a number will not be included in the total.

• Name & Birthday Numbers:

This is like the Name Numerology tool but includes a date tool to include your birthday too. The interpretation result for the date here is different than the interpretation in the Number Cycle tool.