Goodbye Pluto
Written by jude Sunday, 23 August 2009 13:44
Goodbye Pluto – our time was so short.
Jude Davies
It is official: Pluto is no longer a planet. It’s a dwarf planet. Five hundred of the 2.500 astronomers who attended the 26th assembly of the International Astronomer’s Union voted so. It may be comforting to know that there are many who can’t accept this. Already there are bumper stickers for sale over the internet imploring: Honk if Pluto is still a planet.
While Pluto may be a mere dwarf to astronomers, it has been a giant to astrologers since its discovery in 1930. It takes 248 years to orbit the Sun, and can spend between 12 and 30 years in a sign due to its “special” orbiting path. Because of this, generations of people feel its influence in a similar way, according to the sign it is in.
Thus astrologers can understand and even predict the way groups of people of the same age are likely to act en masse. For a clear example of this we can note the “baby boomers” generation has Pluto in Leo. Leo is the sign of the eternal child – generous, warm, spontaneous and also self-centred willful and inclined to boast. Leo sees itself as the king of the signs and finds it hard to abdicate.
The “MTV” generation has Pluto in Scorpio; they play by their own rules, seek to grow by tearing down what existed before, have a fascination for sex. And now – Pluto is in Sagittarius, among other things the sign of fanaticism. We can look ahead and glimpse the spirit of the times to come. In 2008 Pluto moves into the austere sign of Capricorn known for its love of restriction and effort.
Enough! You can see surely why we love this tiny far-flung heavenly body. Pluto may be small of girth but for astrologers it offers big insight.
But there is another darker face. Pluto is the planet-noir. If it were a person it would be lurking under a dim street light – in a trench coat, collar up, cigarette in cruel mouth. This is the god of the underworld. In our personal astrological chart Pluto rules power – how we use it and misuse it.
Astrologer and director of the Chiron Centre one of Australia’s pre-eminent schools of astrology, Brian Clarke’s first reaction to the astronomer’s decision was to email his students.
“Thank God - Pluto’s gone – no more raping and pillaging. We are all saved. Just remove Pluto from every chart!”
He was of course joking. When asked if Pluto’s changed astronomical status means anything to astrologers he says no.
“Astrologers don’t live in the scientific world. We use the traditional definition of a planet – the wanderers among fixed stars.
There are many bodies in the sky that are worth studying imaginatively, and certainly Pluto remains one of them…besides, who owns the skies?
Did you vote? –
I didn’t – it’s not our decision. For us Pluto is still there.”
It is true Pluto will remain in charts and astrology books and astrologers will continue to contemplate just what its message is in each chart they study. Let’s face it the Moon and the Sun are in there as ‘planets’ why not a dwarf planet as well?
There is another way of seeing IAU’s decision though. In recent centuries Uranus and Neptune have been discovered and added to the planetary list. There’s good evidence that adding a planet corresponds to times of significant change. Uranus was discovered in 1781. Astrologically Uranus rules radical change, idealistic group endeavours and it heralds new beginnings.
The year it was discovered Los Angeles was founded, the American Revolution ended and within a decade the US constitution was drafted, the French revolution began, and a prison colony was established in New South Wales.
In 1846 Neptune was discovered. Astrologers say Neptune rules sleep, dreams and compelling images (hence photography and advertising). It includes the fascinating and illusory worlds of glamour, and our hopes and fears. It rules atmospheres, both emotional and otherwise and poisons that travel via atmosphere.
In that decade the Californian gold rush began fueling the hopes and dreams of thousands. Anesthesia was demonstrated for the first time and a man’s tumour was removed as he slept; the first air-conditioning was installed in a French hotel. But most prophetically of all, the world’s first oil refinery opened in Ploiesti Romania in 1856.
So what does it mean to remove a planet? Sure it is still there in the sky, but so were Uranus and Neptune before we discovered them.
As Pluto is snipped out of books and charts over the land we can look at what that gap might mean. In the individual chart Pluto talks of raw power, without niceties, that emerges from our sunconscious. With a willingness to accept responsibility for our lives and experience we can learn to recognize this power and work with it. With that avenue deleted, perhaps the exploration of our own potential, our inner space research will fall out of favour. Things will happen on big and small levels that will seem more important.
And now that Neptune with its worlds of glamour and illusion is the outer-most planet, it is likely that the seemingly more important things will be powerful and provocative images over which we have no control. In this environment it is easy to become people who are mesmerized by sights, sounds, feelings that aren’t ours, and who have forgotten about the real power that exists in our own personal experience.
So farewell Pluto. We did love you. We loved your doggie name. (Mickey Mouse’s dog first appeared in the year Pluto was discovered.) We forgive you your eccentric pathway in life and your small and not quite round size. We understand that you didn’t clear the neighbourhood around your orbit as a good planet should. We know how hard that can be.
We only ask that you remind us now and then of our own power to know, to act and to get it right. Don’t let us get swallowed completely in Neptune’s dreams.