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Thursday, December 16, 2010

From An Astrologer’s Notebook: Pluto Clocks World Concerns

 

 
600px-Pluto-map-hs-2010-06-c180
Pluto as photographed by the Hubble telescope
photo credit: NASA/JPL
 



As I stood at the sink washing up, something occurred to me - namely that there's a pattern to the 'overhanging' concerns we all go through.

You know, year in, year out. World stuff.

I’ll give you an example: I was born in the 1950's. Back then, the world was all into the 'cold war' between the USA and Russia. That all began to break down while President Reagan was in office (1981-1989) and the really cleared out during Pluto’s trip through Sagittarius, a traverse which began back in 1996 and which concluded in late 2008.

During that time, a new concern had arisen – terrorism. Specifically, terrorism driven by religious extremists.

About the time I headed off to take my evening shower, it struck me: we’re always in a Plutonic Twelfth House concern mode. The whole world! All the time. You, me – everybody. This is how we live. And considering that I can easily look back 150 to 200 years and see this self same trend at work, it’s likely that we human beans (that’s right – beans. As in ‘string’ or ‘garbanzo,’ take your pick!)…that we’ve  been doing this self same Pluto/Twelfth House thing since time immemorial.
Which brings up two questions: when was time immemorial? And am I the only one who thinks ‘Plutonic Twelfth House’ sounds vaguely like a sideways theft from Shakespeare?

And no, this is not Astrologica of the Completely Exotic Kind. Not by a long shot. In fact, it’s pretty simple. All I need is to remind you about a couple of things.

The first is what Ye Olde Natural Zodiac Wheel looks like. That’s not hard, right? As for that term, that’s just shorthand for the zodiac pictured in ‘natural’ horoscope order with the first sign (Aries) positioned in “first” slot of the wheel – what we think of as the “9 o’clock” to “8 o’clock” slot of our watch. And so the zodiac cycles around, counter clockwise, to  Pisces, last sign of the zodiac. Et…voila!

 




 



The other thing is about zodiac quadrants. The “quarters” of the above wheel each contain three signs. And while the assertive vs. receptive (yin/yang) qualities of each sign alternate between yin (here lettered in blue) and yang (lettered in red) as you go around the wheel, each quadrant has it’s own meaning.

Those meanings come from what? They come from the idea that the bottom half of the horoscope wheel is all about things private, personal and local (in you or to you). The top half of any horoscope wheel (no matter what signs are there) pertain to things worldly, public and seen by all.
 
 


Upper Lower
 



The horoscope wheel also being a relative picture of the earth, the left side of it is east, the right side is west. This is all about how Earth revolves through the day – the reason why the Sun rises in the east and all that? The Sun rises is the east because the Earth rotates in an easterly direction. 

So east is about moving into the future….and the west where the Sun sets…or another day ‘done’; what is now past, passed by, known or already experienced.

From this we get the left/right halves of the horoscope representing this same set of ideas…
 
 

 
Left Right
 

 

Put these together and you get….
 
 

 
Quardrants 4 color
 



Okay….so maybe you didn’t need to know all that for me to make my point. But I’ve been wanting to get these ideas for a bit now…humor me, okay?

Anyway…back to the cold war and when it broke down. It really melted away while Pluto was in Sagittarius – the last sign in the 3rd quadrant.

The big era of worry before that had been about world epidemics – things like polio. The first safe polio vaccine was announced in 1955 – while Pluto was wrapping up its transit of Leo. And just as in more recent times, that began the ‘breakdown’ of polio as a world scourge and world concern. As Pluto moved into Virgo (a sign much associated with health and health care) during the 1960’s, polio went out.

That was also the rise of ‘health care systems’ – the beginning of ‘institutionalized’ or ‘corporatized’ health care around the world.

Similarly, as the east/west cold war broke down, so we had the rise of religious fanaticism. And – surprise! Sagittarius is the sign of religion, particularly the dogma, rites and rules of religion…a totally different thing from spiritualism, which is Pisces.

For those looking for religious fanaticism to go ‘out,’ that means you have a while to wait. If the rule is that the ‘breaking apart/solving of the problem’ happens as Pluto moves through the middle sign of each quadrant (and the ‘cross-quarters’ point therein – which would seem in each prior case to time when Salk’s work began to pay off and Reagan got into political swing)….if we have to wait for Pluto to reach 15 Aquarius (the 4th quadrant’s cross-quarter point) – that doesn’t happen until 2032.

That would mean that religious fanaticism would be on its way out beginning in 2043.

But it also means it’s going to happen.

As for me doing the dishes, yes, these are the sorts of things I think about when scrubbing pots and plates.

What do you think about?


 

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