In 1990 I became fascinated with druidry and neopagan ritual after reading Marion Zimmer’s amazing book The Mists of Avalon, and searched high and low for information on magic and witchcraft. During those pre-internet days, it was difficult to find what I was looking for. I happened on a women’s workshop taking place at the beach where I met a real witch and began studying with her. I had been playing with the tarot for years, and of course I was a professional astrologer by that time, but I fell in love with ritual and sympathetic magic.

The new age bookstore that I frequented in North Carolina where I live was very limited on the subject, but a book called Drawing Down the Moon had a resource guide that provided newsletters and other publications with source material for my new quest. Just a few years later (Uranus/Neptune conjunction in 1992-94), internet chatrooms on America Online and elsewhere began to provide an infinite amount of knowledge on all kinds of magic, witchraft, and paganism.

Pluto entered Sagittarius in 1995, transforming (Pluto) the realm of publishing and information (Sagittarius), a process which included taking underground realms of power and magic (Pluto) and spreading them to the masses via the media (Sagittarius). Today, any teenager can buy a pentagram, a cauldron and a scrying mirror. The popularity of the Harry Potter book and film series began under the passage of Pluto through Sagittarius which began in 1995 and concludes this year.

The first Harry Potter book was published on June 26, 1997 with Pluto traveling retrograde through the early degrees of Sagittarius (3 degrees, to be exact). The outer planets are also called transpersonal planets because they download a new awareness into the mass consciousness that is the harbinger that transforms the realm over which the new sign rules. Pluto, being the planet of death, endings, rebirth and the occult, is the natural ruler of Magick. Pluto experiences involve the use of fundamental energies of creation and destruction in order to provide transformative experiences, and harnessing these energies is the role of all magickal practices.

Aside from the obvious connotations of magic, Plutonian themes of death, darkness, rejection, despair, abandonment and power prevail in the Harry Potter books. JK Rowling says, “My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry’s parents. There is Voldemort’s obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We’re all frightened of it.” True, but this is not a subject typically found in children’s books.

The Harry Potter series has taken these Plutonian themes and truly brought them into the mainstream through a variety of media Sagittarius) including books, film, board games, computer games, audio boooks and even, in a fiesta of Sagittarian entertainment, a theme park. It’s only fitting that the last Harry Potter book, in which the death of our hero may occur, enters the mainstream consciousness just as Pluto leaves Sagittarius for Capricorn. Children who have grown up reading Harry Potter are now entering their adult life (Capricorn) – the first generation to have grown up with an understanding of magic.