Plutone retrogrado e ritorno in Scorpione

Plutone retrogrado e ritorno in Scorpione is the astrological pattern through which Mirage reads an approaching reversal in the world around her. Pluto’s pause before resuming direct motion, followed by its return to Scorpio, marks the end of a temporary interval of mercy and restraint: in Mirage’s account, power is about to revert to its older, more infernal habits. Her forecast gives a cosmic form to the fear gathering around former members of 24fps, several of whom are now arrested or unaccounted for.

The Astrological Turning Point

Mirage describes Pluto as having reached a station, appearing to rest before it resumes direct motion. Its movement matters because Pluto is the ruler of the underworld, and the consequences of its retrograde passage are, in her system, the inverse of what its apparent direction might suggest. For an ordinary planet, a change toward direct motion might promise improvement. For Pluto, Mirage argues, the retrograde interval is the more beneficial one: while it lasts, people who possess power may learn mercy and wisdom and put them into practice.

She gives that temporary influence a recognizably everyday face. Megalomaniacs become considerate and ask how others are doing; stray dogs greet postal workers; property speculators abandon projects that would violate the land; boys who once wrote death slogans on walls begin attending Mass in respectable clothes. These examples move between the political, the commercial, and the domestic. Their comic contrasts make the period of relative kindness seem both tangible and fragile, a reprieve rather than a lasting transformation.

That reprieve, Mirage warns, is about to end. As Pluto resumes direct motion and heads back toward Scorpio, it will return to its older infernal and nihilistic ways—to the familiar routine rather than a new moral order. The turning point therefore carries a double meaning: an astronomical transition and an anticipated return of destructive habits.

From Planetary Motion to Political Fear

Zipi asks whether Mirage’s forecast means that the president will be reelected. Mirage redirects the question from a single electoral result to a wider change in mood: she predicts that everyone will become more paranoid because each person will be affected differently. The warning does not describe one uniform political outcome. It imagines a climate in which distinct personal adjustments add up to generalized suspicion.

The return to Scorpio makes this forecast more pointed. Pluto has spent years moving back and forth near the boundary of Libra, alternating between retrograde and direct motion without fully leaving the sign. Mirage describes that stalled passage as a sequence of obstacles, like repeated difficulties at a border, and says the movement has intensified Pluto’s already harmful effects. The prolonged hesitation has not simply delayed a change; in her reading, it has concentrated the pressure surrounding it.

DL notices the personal implication that the planetary account brings into view: Scorpio is also Brock Vond’s sign. The forecast thus connects an immense, impersonal cycle to a specific political figure. Pluto’s return does not establish what Brock will do, but the association makes Mirage’s ominous reading feel close to the novel’s existing conflicts rather than remote celestial speculation.

Mirage as Astrologer and Informant

Mirage’s authority has grown out of a history of retreat and return. After going back to Fort Smith following the events in Trasero, she tried to reject what she had learned through astrology, keep her feet on the ground, and submit again to family ties shaped more by resentment than affection. Instead, she came to believe that the stars had chosen her and that interpreting their messages remained her destiny. The tension between her attempted renunciation and renewed vocation gives her warning the character of a reluctant return to a role she had tried to leave behind.

Her work is systematic as well as intuitive. Mirage has entered the information she possesses into a computer, using it to cast horoscopes and update the astrological files of former 24fps friends. She checks how their lives are going and sometimes contacts those who appear to be in difficulty. Astrology, in this practice, becomes a means of keeping a dispersed community in view: personal histories are stored, revisited, and read against planetary movements.

Mirage’s earlier reading for Zipi shows how that practice acquired trust. When Zipi was going through the worst period of her divorce from Sheldon, Mirage consulted the stars and said that Sheldon was involved with a Virgo woman who worked with him. The astrological lead proved correct. Zipi responded with astonishment, while Mirage explained the result through Venus’s position in relation to his sign. The episode made Mirage an oracle to her sister; Zipi later sought her tips for horse races and won enough at Aqueduct to keep extra change in her purse. That modest success helps explain why the later warning is taken seriously without turning it into proof of every prediction.

The Warning Meets the 24fps Network

The present alarm begins with a concrete report: Howie has been arrested for possessing cocaine, although he had never used the substance. After learning this, Mirage starts calling former 24fps friends and discovers that two, perhaps three, have become unreachable, disappearing from circulation without explanation. The uncertainty over the number matters. These are not confirmed deaths or a fully understood operation; they are missing people, an arrest that seems inexplicable, and a network unable to tell what has happened to its members.

The report reaches Prairie through Zipi’s late-night call from Long Island. Zipi is relaying both Mirage’s warning about Pluto and the troubling news about the old group. Her call is therefore more than a delivery system for astrological information: it carries the fear of people who do not know how to respond to arrests and unexplained absences. Mirage is frightened, and Zipi is frightened as well; neither knows what to do.

Meaning and Limits of the Forecast

Plutone retrogrado e ritorno in Scorpione links the novel’s political unease to a cyclical account of history. The image of Pluto hovering near a border, repeatedly moving forward and backward, makes the expected shift feel delayed but not averted. Its eventual return to Scorpio supplies a pattern for the anticipated resurgence of paranoia and destructive power, while Brock’s association with Scorpio draws that pattern into the human sphere.

The passage also preserves a difference between interpretation and evidence. The planetary account is Mirage’s way of making sense of change; the arrest and missing 24fps friends are the immediate facts that intensify her fear. Their convergence gives her warning narrative force without resolving the mystery or confirming that astrology explains the events. The stars offer Mirage a language for recognizing danger, while the unanswered disappearances show how little that language can tell her about what to do.