What's The Matter with US (2019)

So this is what a Pluto Return looks like.

Since no person and very few institutions reach the age of 248, the Pluto Return is a rarely studied phenomenon in the wild. We just never get to see it.

But the US, which is arguably the oldest continuous government in the world, is just a few years off from having ours. At 27 degrees Capricorn we are at least a couple years off from Pluto’s first pass to its natal position from 1776. (Yes The US has a birth chart just like you do, and it is astonishingly accurate.)

On an editorial note, the first thing that should strike us here is that as tumultuous and heated as our political situation is today, there is a loooong way to go before the situation fully resolves itself. So if you take anything away from this article it is to hang on to your hats. Or more practically. . . don’t bother holding on to your hats, because they probably won’t make it through the inferno anyway. You’ll be lucky if your hair doesn’t all burn off as the underworld comes to the surface and threatens to engulf absolutely everything.

Another point worth noting is that Neptune is still in Pisces. Put simply, Neptune has to do with dissolution- dissolution of borders, of boundaries, of sanity, of reason, of objectivity, and of reality itself. It is the planet of madness as well as the planet of Christian self-sacrifice and redemption. It is also the planet of enlightenment, however as the planet of delusion, it is often hard to tell if one is actually enlightened or “just trippin’” as the drug induced Neptunians often put it. With Neptune, nothing is ever what it seems, and by summoning forth our deepest desires to transcend the banality of the mundane world, it will do anything - anything - to chase the beauty of a fantasy, even if that fantasy dries up like a desert mirage the second we get our hands on it. Romantic Love, drug-induced euphoria, the ecstasy of fame. . .junkies of all sorts chase these experiences with a religious fervor and often - if not always - at the cost of ruined lives, sacrificed for a dream they can never fully grasp. Such is the power of Neptune to stir our most powerful longings for transcendence, for home, for God, for the perfect satiety of the womb that people willingly throw themselves off cliffs for even a taste of transcendence.

Astrologically, Neptune rules Pisces, so as the watery planet passes through its home sign, there is simply no escape from its whirlpool powers to draw us all into a version of insanity and total undoing. It will not be until Neptune passes magically into Aries that we will be able to “sober up” for a moment and look back at the long night before to see what damage we have done. While we are in it, the more we reach for sanity and objectivity, the more it recedes from our grasp. When drowning in Neptune, we all must eventually go under, no matter how reasonable of beings we think we are.

It is not hard to see this dynamic playing out in our culture.

While Neptune’s drug of choice, being ever associated with Dionysus, is Wine, the Poppy speaks Neptune’s language even more insistently. The current opioid epidemic, quietly and invisibly, undoing the country from within is a Neptunian crisis par excellence. It is quiet, invisible, and almost languorously sinister in its siren’s draw to relief from hopelessness in the dreams of death and another, better world.

More prosaically, we see Neptune’s work in the Fake News phenomenon and the blurring of realities it promotes, which, if you read across multiple political outlooks is simply staggering.

We can see Neptune in the de facto overrun of western cultures by largely antagonistic and non-integrating foreigners, who are breeding at a multiple of the native populations. Thus through the famous Neptunian “dissolving of boundaries,” we see the very concept of nationhood being dissolved in the great, Penthean powers of the western world.

Technologically, the Deep Fakes phenomenon has not even begun to reach its potential for wreaking mayhem, but we can say with all certainty that “seeing is believing” will not be the truism it has been since we first evolved our optic nerves.

Socially, the dissolution of gender is happening at a breakneck pace with ubiquitous amateur porn, soft prostitution, transgenderism, and mandated sex change operations for children becoming the norm. We can see it in the urge to save and redeem every last grievance group left on earth, starting with such marginalized populations as the trans population and then extending to every intersectional victim combination imaginable.

Both salvation and victimhood are Neptune’s playthings, and the desire to save every last soul, no matter how misunderstood or “insignificant” is Neptune to the swishy core. These experiences can be both terrifying and ecstatic, depending on your perspective. There is something religiously exhilarating about self-destruction or working against your own interests (be they heteronormativity, racial homogeneity, or national sovereignty) through self-sacrifice, shunning self-interest for self-abnegation.

Neptune relishes these experiences, which may seem to some like their entire reality structure is going down the drain and there is nothing concrete to anchor to. And indeed, with Neptune, there isn’t. This is the backdrop we have found ourselves in for years with many more to go ahead of us.

So with this understanding that reality is melting before our very eyes, we now turn to the deeper American Pluto Return that is starting to build steam and may have catastrophic elements all its own, though less in the realm of imagination but more in the realm of pure power.

So these are two separate phenomena that I would like to tease out in this essay. The point of mentioning the Neptune phenomenon first is to underscore that none of us are in our right minds right now, so trying to dissect and distinguish subtle astrological phenomena may take some extra attention, lest we simply compound our confusion and, with it, the terror of dissolving. Plutonian phenomena are distinctly different from Neptunian phenomena, though both play on our deep unconsciousness and can thus bleed into one another if we are not careful to delicately tease them apart. My goal here is to do just that. That the Pluto return is only an American phenomenon and the Neptunian dissolution is global might help to focus the mind here (though nearly every American phenomenon has a global impact these days. More confusion. . .).

First the astronomy: Many people are familiar with the “Saturn Return,” which marks the return of Saturn after around 30 years to the position it was when we were born. It takes Saturn about 30 earth years (or 1 Saturn year) to orbit the Sun, and when it does, it returns to the place where it imprinted itself on our psyches at birth. Some people are familiar with the “Solar Return,” which is another name for your birthday! The Sun returns to its position of your birth like clockwork every year. And while he lunar return is usually used to describe the progressed lunar return every 28 years, the Moon has her return to the same place every 28 days (though this is seldom a celebrated event given how fleeting and frequent its effects).

But every planet has a “return,” which is the period of its full revolution. Mars takes about 2 earth years, Jupiter around 12, and Pluto takes about 248 earth years to spin all the way around the sun. The Pluto Return is therefore an exceedingly rare event, but we can expect it to be among the most tumultuous of singular astrological events in existence.

Power is the center of Pluto’s orbit. Sex, Money, Politics, raw displays of violence accompanied by overwhelming and indifferent destruction, as in the Atom Bomb, are all in a day’s work for Pluto. He represents our subterranean urge towards power, regeneration, and survival. There are no morals for Pluto, since survival trumps all. If we are dead, then, we can’t be moral, so we must seek to live first, and we can develop the “niceties” of beauty, truth, and morality with what’s left over. This is the raw, reptilian calculation of Pluto.

He rules big business, back room politicking, and the exploitation of emotion for personal gain. He rules the mafia, organized crime, and anything that is inappropriate for polite conversation. Sadomasochism, sexual power dynamics, perversions of all sorts (and the nastier the better), are also a mid morning snack for the God of all the underwood, where we stow away our worst impulses and most sinful emotions. All of the 7 deadly sins hang out here in the underworld and play cards on the weekends until they occasionally make an impromptu appearance on the surface and express themselves in the most inconvenient and obsessive ways possible.

Where Pluto appears in our chart describes where Power reflects in our psyche. For the US, born on July 4, 1776, Pluto positioned itself in late Capricorn, the sign of tradition, structure, and long term planning. It is often associated with worldly success but also with grim stoicism and “realism” that is un-fun but usually turns out to be right in the end. This is where the power structure is in the US. A strong conservative basis in experience and Realpolitik, unclouded by the sorts of untried philosophical “certainties” and intellectual sentimentally that so plague our European forbears. Power by experts or scholars is shunned in favor of power by experience, planning for the worst, and the grim certainties that things never turn out as planned so better to be practical. There is no doubt an ugliness to this sort of outlook, but it is also the most durable by far, since it hardly ever gets caught in irrational delusion or puffy ideology - and when it does, it quickly and pragmatically cuts ties and gets back to business.

For the US, our Second House Pluto in Capricorn is the foundation of our Power. The structures of the constitution have done an astonishing job of holding together despite considerable strain from forces both foreign and domestic, to say nothing of the passage of time and the fancies and technologies of the modern age.

As an astrologer, I generally shy away from making predictions. And given the cloudy effects of Neptune right now, I am even more disinclined to say what is going to happen.

But I am happy to postulate some thoughts about what sorts of things our Pluto return may start to signify, and with them, extricate some lessons about what this rare transit might actually mean.

So it would be impossible to describe this astrological moment without discussing its prime protagonist, which is the Plutocratic figure of Donald J Trump. I think it is fair to say that most people who read astrological reports don’t like the man. Many despise him. And while it may be impossible, given the nature of the emotions Pluto stirs up, it is nonetheless advisable to take a moment and try to see at least these emotions objectively. Because the rage, despair, the wailing, the venom, the naked contempt, and all the other uncontrollably violent emotions people feel towards the president are all - all - the emotions of Pluto.

They are primitive, savage, unenlightened, and they touch us at a level we would rather not see in ourselves. However given a target we feel is odious enough to deserve this level of raw rage, we often feel justified in taking the opportunity to fully vent these feelings like never before. The fact that most people can not view Trump with anything close to objectivity shows how powerful a hold Pluto’s rage can hold on the psyche. It is the truest force in us. It is nature itself. The rage of thwarted love, thwarted reproductive potential, of the humiliation of death and loss of status, of regret and remorse, these are the emotions that tie us to our most primitive selves, and when they take us over, we are simply out of control.

This is the experience of fully half of the country over the election and sustained presidency of Donald Trump. These are Plutonian emotions come to the surface in ways most of these people have never experienced - or been given a chance to experience - their entire lives. And Trump is the most perfect “trigger” to raise and raze these emotions from their quietly repressed slumber.

Pluto emotions, it has been noted, are where we make the animal sounds - sex, grief, death, and even torture and rape. It is the rending of garments, it is the gnashing of teeth.

And it has only just begun.

Pluto relates to that which is below the surface. In fact the word “Pluto” relates to the German word “Fluss,” which means river, and the English word “Flow.” And given that truth, it is as much Vinyassa yoga as it is the underground sex trade. The river flows beneath the surface, and beneath the river is where all the gold is buried. (And of course, a person who rules by means of his wealth is called a “Plutocrat.”)

Wealth is a mystery to most people, and those who access power generally access it by leveraging things below the surface, and capturing and harassing the powerful flow that animates all life. Advertisers leverage envy and status desires to sell products. Politicians leverage fear of death or resentment of other classes and races to leverage power. And businesses leverage self-interest over altruism in order to gain power and wealth. These are activities most well-adjusted people will not engage in. It is simply not done and stirs the apple cart too much for their polite society to function in the safe way they want it to.

Wealth and power stir the apple cart. They don’t give a fuck about the apple cart. They are ugly, sometimes hideous, but they are at the same time captivating and even mesmerizing. Because all of us have these ugly bits in us, but most of us are simply too well behaved to let them out. But when we see them exhibited in someone else, like Donald Trump, we see our own selves - completely disowned and disconnected - alive and vibrant in another person. It is why we can’t stop talking or thinking about those in power. They are speaking our own hidden language, living our own repressed code out in the world. And as our psyche yearns to be whole, we can not but be entranced by he parts of our own self lived out in another.

One of the most potent and psychoid (meaning symbol concretize into matter) representations of Pluto is Oil. Oil flows beneath the surface. It is black like our shadow. It is the source of magnificent wealth. It is comprised of dead dinosaurs and primitive reptiles. And it is the literal definition of power. It is feared and reviled by good, sensible people, and yet it is - visibly or invisibly - intertwined with every single aspect of their lives, from the power that lights up their laptops to the truck that delivered their organic apples to the food co-op and the solar panels to their home. Power is everywhere.

Normally where there are Pluto issues, oil plays a role, and we may be nearing a moment when American Oil production will become more valuable than Middle Eastern oil. That would be an extraordinary sea change and a powerful indicator of Pluto (power) returning home in his cycle.

We may find that a newly comprised Supreme Court revisits the widely reviled “Wickard” ruling which stretched Congress’s authority far beyond its original intent into intra-state affairs, allowing the centralized government to grow well beyond its intended scope. We may find the unruly and untamed leviathan of “agencies,” which have replaced congress as the day to day ruling bodies of the country curtailed and the power center returned to balance. A true “return of power” to the local level in the American-Plutonian sense.

If the Supreme Court revisits the most divisive issue in America, the abortion issue, this will have repercussions far and wide, including knocking at the fundamentals of feminism and its hold on American culture. As a stringent ideology par excellence, feminism is a juicy target for the “based” Pluto’s assertion of regenerative primacy and un-intellectual agenda setting over the heady academic constructs that underscore so much of this modern, enlightened philosophy. Pluto may represent the rage of the thwarted reproductive impulses of the archetypical “angry feminist,” but he has no patience for her layering an abstract compensatory philosophy on top of a primal urge. Uranus is the feminist. Pluto is, unapologetically, the rapist.

It has been widely postulated that the Jeremy Epstein pedophile ring was nothing but a blackmail and extortion scheme orchestrated by Mossad (the Israeli Intelligence Agency) to ensure that American potentates remain pliable to the interests of their own deep state. That virtually no one in America believes that Epstein killed himself (and that the story has fishily disappeared from headlines) shows that even sober people can see a pattern when it hits one in the nose. Would a Pluto return redound the restoration of power to the American people and extracting itself from the grip of a foreign power? The surfacing and purging of blackmail schemes is an ugly but necessary purging for a system to restore itself to health. Those following the numerous (often buried) Clinton scandals are salivating at the opportunity for these to be fully disinfected by the light of day and dredged up from the Plutonian depths for cosmic justice.

But what is becoming clear is that as Pluto returns to its birth spot, the deeper elements of power in the country are coming to the surface, and we are starting to see the true power of the “deep state.” This is the power beneath the Power, which to me symbolizes a Pluto return like nothing else. If you are not favorable to Donald Trump, then this may be very difficult to conceive, since you likely believe that any force in the universe is justifiable in removing such a monster from power. Fair enough. But in many ways Trump is a foil, a sort of medicine which acts as a poison on the system and brings the disease to the foreground in order to clear. Like a homeopathic dose of power and corruption, he has forced the deep under-state, which is infinitely more corrupt, to surface so that the whole country can see its machinations- whereas before it was safely hidden and operating in the shadows.

Right now the deep state is hitting us all in the nose. And Trump, being Trump, has them hitting harder and harder and in more obvious ways. And with each unsubtle attack, they are exposing themselves more and more to the light of day, where Pluto does not normally travel. But this is how all healings occur. The sickness, the poison, the disease festers in darkness, torturing and killing the host as it feeds its own self. The cure comes through purging the disease from the system, and that always accompanies an ugly rise to the surface, in the manner of a Hexheimer reaction, as the sickness shows its gruesomeness as it exits the system once and for all.

To my eyes, Trump is a power symbol. He is famous, he is wealthy, and he is the most powerful man alive. He is what all men wish they could be and what all women - yes, all women - secretly yearn for in a man. But we don’t like this about ourselves. Men want to want to be honorable and brave, and women want to want men who are good husbands and fathers, or at the very least not obese! And yet the draw of power is magnetic, and those men who do not have it - and those women who can not attract it - seethe with envy at its sight. So ugly is this envy in ourselves that we can scarce bear to look at it. We leave it in our shadow boxes where Pluto can chew on it undisturbed. That is, until a transit such as this one causes Pluto to show himself outside us in the buffoonish manner of Donald Trump and we are forced to confront things about ourselves that we wish we never would have to. This is the cause of so much exaggerated emotion directed at The Donald. These are our feelings of disgust with ourselves, of shame of what we want and can’t have, and of raw envy at someone our smarter selves tell us we should disparage. It is a painful psychological conceit that literally tortures us into incohate rage at our inability to reconcile who we want to be and the biological power drive that works within us all, whether we want it to or not.

Trump has embraced his power drive. He owns it. He relishes in it. He lives it fully. And he shows all of us where we have repressed it in ourselves, sold it out to our “better” intellects, and that makes us deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

But it also makes him the perfect offset for deep state powers, which have terrified presidents for nearly a century. None have been so personally powerful as Trump and as competent and experienced as wielding power as Trump. None have been as unflappable in the face of outright sabotage and mutiny as Trump. And by his own doltish stubbornness, he has forced the deep state to reveal itself more and more at every turn, coaxing that sickness to leave the body even against its own will.

If I had to predict, then I would say that this is the “meaning” of the Pluto return for the USA. It is power meeting power in order to purge the decrepit power of its venom and restore, ultimately, a healthy and proper power center for the nation.

We have a long way to go before this happens. And given how polarized we are now as a country, the notion of a real civil war, of a hot or cold coup, of heightened censorship and repression of American First Principles, are very real, and the cleansing reaction of the country may indeed be violently ugly.

But we have years to see where this is going, and it could take decades after the Pluto Return is complete to play out all of the repercussions. But the crux may yet be the purging of the power centers of America and a revivification of the nation. Or it could absolutely be the nation’s complete and utter destruction. Likely it will take the latter before the former can restore itself, as is often the case when a rebirth is required. Death comes first, and it is seldom pretty.

Pluto must destroy in order to create. And it is how we handle the destruction that determines how well the creation goes on the other side. If we hold on, kicking and screaming, then the resurrection may indeed be hampered. And if we clamp down enough, there is no promise that the destruction simply extinguishes us once and for all. And what this would bring is anyone’s guess. Collectively it may be too difficult to follow the path of wisdom and gracefully let go into that good night, but we can all take a note for our personal self-destruction to hold it lightly and let our Plutonian purging pass with as little resistance as possible. But even for the highly conscious, this is a challenge. Or at least it should be. If it doesn’t hurt with Pluto, then you’re probably not there yet.

But that doesn’t bother Pluto. With a 248 year cycle and the eternity of death at his beck and call, he is no hurry to do his work, as he has been doing since time immemorial. From primal screams, to screams of passion, to screams of torment, terror, and death, Pluto’s cause is always with us, connecting us to the deeper realities which we might rather ignore, yet which we secretly crave in order to connect us to the life we all strive so desperately to live.