At the end of December Ixion will go into Capricorn, where he will transit for the next twenty something years, except for a few months from August to October next year. We had our first taste of this in March and April of this year, a couple of months which saw the collapse of the share market and the onset of the first wave of the virus.
To understand this Capricorn ingress better, let's look back at the Sagittarius cycle which is just ending and also at the previous Scorpio cycle. Ixion's orbit is just 3 years longer than Pluto's so, like his fellow Plutino, he takes a couple of years to ingress into each sign, but in round figures we can say he ingressed into Scorpio in 1965 and Sagittarius in 1996.
IXION in Scorpio
The period from 1965 to 1996 saw an increased interest in the occult and in magical practices. And because Ixion brings a passionate individual approach and Scorpio is all about relationship, this was a period of sexual and social liberation, with the early 1970s seeing the growth of the modern feminist and gay movements.
And because each transit highlights the opposite sign, in this case Taurus, we had the 'greed is good' movement in the eighties, epitomised by the movie Wall Street. The lead character celebrated in this film, Gorden Gecko, is a very Ixionic character, essentially a sociopath who is out for whatever he can get.
IXION in Sagittarius
In Sagittarius for the past 24 years, Ixion has been overthrowing preconceptions and encouraging radical philosophies as well as conspiracy theories and fake news. The period from 1996 till today has been marked by a heightened sense of freedom and individual rights and a growing sense of the inevitability of these rights.
But as we draw to the end of the cycle some of us have lost sight of the fact that these rights nestle together within a community, and that one person's rights cannot infringe another's. Insensitivity to this has led to the fiercely partisan situation we have today, where it is my way or the highway in many places in the world.
Alongside this has come a freedom-of-belief approach to spirituality, which has also created the fervent fundamentalist backlash that we see at the end of this cycle. Ixion in Sagittarius has seen the birth of pluralism, the acceptance that we can each believe what works for us. But a lot of us have gone along with the crowd on this, without really accepting the validity of anything other than our own view.
And because we immerse ourselves in bubbles of media and friends that simply support that view, it is only at moments of crisis that we are called on to step outside that.
IXION in Capricorn
So what can we expect from Ixion in Capricorn? Unfortunately it is looking like crisis is going to be a keyword. The goal of this transit, I suggest, is to adjust our systems so each of our individual approaches can flourish within the collective. However Ixion does this by taking action on impulse and asking for forgiveness afterwards, rather than permission before, so there will be much taking advantage in the form of corruption and even a rise in criminal regimes.
Volatility in the share market is certain, from our experience when Ixion was stationary at 0 degrees Capricorn in March and April, and when the stock market falls it means people are losing wealth, so we are likely to see all the loopholes in the system being exploited in response and the system itself likely being perverted by the criminal actions of leaders and of people from all walks of life.
And these pressures will motivate us to strike out in search of new ways of governing ourselves and new systems and institutions which can be put in place to foster individuality within the system.
Of course there will be a conservative backlash and the opposition to Cancer suggests that this could take the form of a 'return to family values' pushback against the evolving diversity and decentralisation of social structures in this period.
So the sojourn in Capricorn is likely to see the flouting of laws and the manipulation and corruption of social institutions for illegal ends. As well as a push to remake these institutions to allow for each of our personal passionate missions. And the end result of this is likely to be greater individual freedom within society for us to pursue our passions.