THE US PLUTO RETURN

THE US PLUTO RETURN

The US Pluto is in the 2nd House of the US Sibly Chart. Pluto is where we find our power, and where we can feel our survival is at stake. The 2nd House is resources, and America, of course, has been the world’s wealthiest, and most powerful, country for over a century.

The hard aspects from Pluto to its natal position are interesting to trace. The opening square, in 1850, occurred during the longest continuous period of economic expansion in US history. The opposition, in the late 1930s, occurred as the US was about to embark on 2 major wars, booming economically and reshaping the world as it did so. The closing square, in the early 80s, saw the final stages of the Cold War, out of which America would emerge triumphant as the world’s only superpower.

So there has been a pattern of a re-empowerment of the US in the years following these Pluto-Pluto dynamic hard aspects. Maybe that will allow us to peer into the future, as the US completes its first Pluto Return – Pluto conjunct natal Pluto. The exact crossings are done, but I won’t consider the transit over until Pluto is out of sign, in Aquarius in Nov 2024.

The Return marks the start of a new cycle. The old leaping from strength to strength will be complete, and the US will need to begin to find a new relationship with its sense of power and survival. Capricorn – the sign of natal Pluto – climbs to the top of the mountain, like the goat it is. The US shows no sign of losing its wealth and of continuing to augment it. But nonetheless, she will soon be no longer number one, as China surpasses the US economically.

So who will America be if she is no longer number one? America is a society of winners and losers. If you are not a winner, you are nobody. America will no longer be the winner. This will require a profound shift in collective identity. The collective has uneasily seen this coming for some years now – these transits are like trends, they are operative for many years before and after – and this perception contributes to the hostility and fear of China. There are good reasons to be wary of China, but America adds its usual edge of paranoia and demonisation, which also seems to be part of her character. The US needs someone to demonise. The heavily tenanted 7th – particularly with polarising Gemini Mars there, in square to Neptune – provides the astrological description of this tendency to project evil onto other peoples and countries.

It won’t be as simple with China as it was with the USSR. China is the US' main trading partner and cannot, for this reason, be completely ‘Othered’. And there is the wretched business of China becoming wealthier, and holding more cards. Having in many ways to be deferred to.

From the outside, things may seem to carry on as before. But I think the new Pluto cycle that is starting will drag America psychologically inwards, for there will be nowhere else to go. It can’t carry on beating its chest at the top of the world, and putting evil handily out there somewhere. America, in other words, will be growing up.

Donald Trump, who doesn’t have the empowering transits to be re-elected as President, could be seen as the last, brash shout of an old America, attempting to make her ‘great’ again. She already is a great nation, there is no doubt about that. Maybe, by being forced into this reckoning with who she is, she will come to see that, instead of having always to assert it.

Interestingly, by some metrics, the US will, for demographic reasons, surpass China again economically later this century.

 

 

PLUTO'S BALEFUL EYE

Pluto is within 3 minutes of his stationing point. That baleful eye is homing in, and you will soon be caught in his direct stare. Pluto's reality check. He is only menacing, however, if you are hanging on to how you used to be. If you can go with life and its irrestistible unfoldment, there is joy and new depth to be found. 

 

Pluto is the instinctual life that rules us, but which as 'civilised' humans we deny. We 'Other' it in alien reptile form. Pluto is the call to live from the viscera, from the body, to let life live us.

 

 

THE LIBRAN SHIFT TO SELF-AWARENESS

The Sun is now in Libra. The first 6 signs of the Zodiac represent self-development. In Virgo we harvest, we reap the bounty. And then in Libra we step back, or we step outside ourselves. Libra gives the objectivity of Air, not just to know others, but to know ourselves also. We appreciate the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' within. The paradigm has shifted into a new dimension, into self-awareness. Pay attention to dreams at this time, for they tell us who we are.

Month by month during the year, we are given a different lens through which to see our natal Sun; it is a kind of cooking in which the wholeness that is uniquely our own can gradually emerge.

 

 

HITLER, SAINT or CHICKEN?

The most important things are not in the astrological chart. Is this the chart of Hitler, or a Saint, or a chicken? You can't tell the moral choices someone will make: how honest they are with themselves, how they treat others. Their existential intelligence: are they happy with the rules society gives them, with what appears to be 'the real world', or is there something other calling? The chart describes the pipework around their beating heart, but no more. It is the astrologer's experience and intuition that is able to connect the two.

 

 

SUN, RAIN, SOIL and WIND

Fire, Water, Earth and Air are the 4 elements that make up the universe, both for Europeans and Native Americans. It is an ancient way of understanding the world that we share. Isn't that wonderful? Old ways like this live in our viscera, even though we may have forgotten them. It just takes a bit of smudge and honouring of the Elements for that ancient thing to awaken in us.

I like the Elements because they are concrete, they are close to experience. They are not the abstractions that we have got used to. You want to understand the universe? Here are the equations, but you won't understand them. And even if you do, your senses will not be invited in to share in the knowing.

But even Fire, Water, Earth and Air are, to a degree, abstractions. Abstraction has its place, for it can reveal underlying principles. All the same, I prefer to say Sun, Rain, Soil and Wind. You can feel them, taste them, smell them, even as you are reading this.

As astrologers, I think we tend towards the abstract, and even the cerebral. In a reading, the Elements are more fundamental than the signs. If we are close to them, then they speak through us. Note to self: before my next reading, I will go outside and say hello and thank you to each element in turn.

Everything is to be found in allowing ourselves to be drawn, with gratitude, into that sensory experience of the world. You don't need books or teachers or spirit guides. That is all this thing is, that some of us call shamanism: allowing the spirit to incarnate through its delight in the natural world. And you can do it in a city.

 

 

ASTROLOGY, the UNIVERSE and the TRICKSTER

The rational mind is a tool for navigating the sublunary dream which, for now, we inhabit. The universe is infinite, human consciousness is tiny, with a tiny amount it can understand. When we reach the limits of what we can know rationally, the universe helps us know that by sending in a trickster. Astrophysicists probing the vastness of the universe suddenly find that 95% of it is missing. That is the trickster at work. They give it a name: dark energy/matter, as though naming means they know something about it. They still don't get it.

It is the same at the other extreme: the quantum world, where there are no definite objects, merely probability waves where cause and effect can be reversed, there is action at a distance, and the observer's intention influences the course of events. Again, it is the trickster at work, showing the limits of rational understanding.

As astrologers, the trickster comes in almost as soon as we try to demonstrate in a repeatable way the accepted truths of astrology. Jung found this when he tried to correlate Sun-Moon synastry with successful relationships: the correlation broke down. It was Jung who proposed the idea of a trickster in this context.

It seems to be only at the extreme ends of its quest for truth that science discovers the limits of rationality, and even then does not necessarily recognise it. I think we astrologers have a better ongoing understanding of that limitation, firstly because we are gaining knowledge through a non-rational faculty, the intuition; and secondly, because when we do try and pin our knowledge down, it quickly melts away.

 

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An astrology chart carries the appearance of objectivity - hence the attempts to validate it scientifically - but really there are any number of things an astrologer can say. Our skill lies in saying the things that are true (which enchants the universe: how could he have known that?) and helpful. The chart reaches out and tells us what the client needs to hear about right now, whatever their presenting issues.

That said, it is still wondrous when the symbolism in the chart finds literal expression on this earthly plane. There is a trickster in our craft that goads us with the appearance of scientific objectivity, and then flits into the shadows, laughing, when we try to prove it. She is a teacher: keep the mind soft, don't try to pin things down, and wisdom can flow through you.