Crisis Solar Returns for the U.S.
Crisis Solar Returns for the U.S.
Pluto in Capricorn: A Sidereal View
November 2024
There has been a lot of talk lately about the entry of Pluto into tropical Aquarius, but if a powerful telescope were trained on Pluto now, one would see it about a degree of right ascension west of the alpha star in early Capricorn, called Algiedi, which is a double star. Less than a degree east of Algiedi is the beta star in Capricorn called Dabih from Al Sa’d al Dhabih (“the lucky one of the slaughterers,” which refers to the sacrifice of a goat—the scapegoat—near the winter solstice to absolve people of their sins). Dabih is also a double star with five components, a multiple system. Algiedi, Dabih and possibly the nu star, Alsat, all in the horns of the goat are, according to Ptolemy, of the nature of Venus and Mars (Algiedi) and Venus and Saturn (Dabih). Manilius said of this group in his Astronomicon that it relates to “…whatever needs fire to function.” In other words, ores, furnaces, smelting, casting, forging and metallurgy. I would add to that, bullets, whose lead and steel alloys are melted into projectiles as well as copper that is formed into shells that hold bullets large and small. Saturn is dignified in Capricorn and Mars is exalted there. Hard reality and uncompromising force characterize Capricorn.
These stars among the horns of the goat are among the oldest of the standard stars in the Babylonian pantheon, called “Normal Stars” by 19th century Jesuit scholars. The Babylonians took them as ecliptic markers thousands of years ago when the zodiac was being mapped out as ecliptic emphasis slowly superceded equatorial emphasis. The stars in the horns of the goat were chosen because they were inside the bounds of the zodiac, which is 8° to 9° on either side of the ecliptic so as to include Venus (probably) at her greatest extremes in celestial latitude. Algiedi has almost 7° of north latitude and Dabih has about 4 ½° of north latitude. They have marked out the first third of Capricorn since remote antiquity. In recent historical time Pluto has been among the stars in sidereal Capricorn from 1773 through 1792 and entered the sign of the Seagoat again in 2021 where it will remain through and including 2040.
Capricorn is a hard sign and Pluto is not renowned for sweetness and light. In 1776 when transiting Pluto was last near those stars in early Capricorn, the friction between American colonists and the British government had already reached the point of open military conflict in April 1775 with thousands dead by the time of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
The American Revolution was a nasty slugfest during an era when a modest colonial government could expect to be crushed by the pre-eminent European power of the day: the British Empire. The U.S. had the best political leaders of that generation on the American side of the Atlantic inspired by the 18th century Enlightenment, yet with few strategic advantages; but with help from France at critical moments, the Americans carried the day. Even so, it was a fight we were lucky to win. It happened because of good leadership from Washington in particular, who was first and foremost a soldier, and indignation and bitterness at the heavy-handed abuse heaped on us by the British that translated into courage in the field. The spirit of the Roman Senate and the British Parliament in better days was renewed and the torch of representative government on the European model was renewed and relit on the western shore of the Atlantic. But it came about through bloodshed. It was the result of struggle, not polite disagreement, but fire, shot, death and deprivation. Our independence was earned in the crucible of war.
The transit of Pluto through Capricorn was felt acutely in France, which in 1789, when the French Revolution began, was completely bankrupt. The French nobility, the clergy and its associated businesses and part of the bureaucracy were completely untaxed. France is the biggest country in Europe by area; she had become too big to feed after a bad harvest in 1788 attended by drought and a severe winter in 1788/89. People in France were literally starving to death amidst plenty among the wealthy who could buy what they needed. The government was inattentive and indifferent to the people. In addition to a violent reaction to a failing government, the free-wheeling French Revolution spawned the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a completely open-ended document that went even farther than our Declaration of Independence. These two documents and their respective revolutions, the American and the French, became the models for all subsequent Western democracies, but they both came about through struggle, a refusal to tolerate injustice and eventually widespread disorder that toppled the old regime, which in France became wholesale slaughter.
After the hard-fought eight year-long revolution (1775-1783), but with its causes still fresh in the minds of veterans and civilians alike, James Madison, later the fourth president of the U.S. (1809-1817), wrote the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, which are the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It is supremely ironic that Madison was a slave-holder.
Every American who has reached adulthood and made it through the public school system knows the first amendment: free speech, which means you can say anything and not be worried that you’ll be hauled off to jail. The first amendment specifically protects the freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Donald Trump wants to revoke the licenses of media networks that disagree with him publicly. That would be a serious first amendment violation, if he were to follow through with the threat, which would likely go to the Supreme Court directly. Even this far-right Supreme Court would have to find in favor of the People of the United States versus the President of the United States or forever completely relinquish its already tenuous pretense of impartiality. In democracies people fight out their differences on the floors of Congresses and Parliaments. If Trump ignored the Supreme Court and/or dissolved Congress, the Republic might not be dead, but it would be on life-support until and unless those who support it can resist tyranny and return to power. If the Republic were to die, that would mean a return to darkness and the end of Constitutional protections, such as those laid out in the Bill of Rights. The people who voted for Trump were probably not thinking of what his election could mean. Democracy is messy and a little unwieldy in the large, but it’s far better than being told what to do and threatened directly and indirectly if you don’t do it.
This is what Pluto in Capricorn is about: serious discord and lack of unity out in the open from top to bottom, from the man in the street to the president of the republic, who wants to get around the checks and balances of the American government and remake it into a personal dictatorship. That’s not approximately what Octavian did in Rome two thousand and fifty years ago, when he became Caesar Augustus: rather, that’s precisely what he did when he made a rubber stamp out of the Roman Senate and became the first Roman emperor. The Roman Empire has been somewhat romanticized since then, but make no mistake, Caesar ruled through fear. He had absolute control of the military. He had those who publicly disagreed with him killed. It kept the peace more or less because people got the message. That’s how Putin operates; that’s how Xi operates; that’s how Kim operates; that’s how Trump wants to operate. We and Western Europe evolved somewhat differently because of the American and French Revolutions in the 18th century. Probably, due to the long tradition of the independence of our three branches of government, the U.S. can be put right and recover from the efforts of the far right to rescind our constitutional freedoms, but we’re now at a crossroads with fateful choices to make. The forces on the right want to remove the choice. When Trump speaks of not having elections in the future he isn’t joking. That would happen if Trump dissolved Congress, ignored the Supreme Court and dared people who disagree with his policy to do something about it. That could happen on day one. Trump’s health could easily provide an excuse to invoke martial law. The key to his aims is control of the military.
People often speak of Pluto as if it were an idyllic transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Transformation is a much too much over-used word that is a euphemism for the way Pluto usually operates. It should not be lost on a soft American population that has had most things handed to it that Pluto is usually harsh, hard and an overwhelming force that often overturns lives and introduces unwanted and sometimes violent change and repression onto the staus quo ante. Pluto in Capricorn is not tranquil; it represents fierce winds and heat as the gloves come off and sides square up: one side symbolic of autocracy and on the other, the resistance it evokes in contrast to Aquarius, which is an adjustment to the tumult that characterizes the Pluto in Capricorn years, although Aquarius is not without severe disruption and even revolution itself. Before Uranus was discovered astrologers were satisfied that, while they are not the same, they’re close enough that Saturn was granted dual rulership status over both Capricorn and Aquarius. The Indians still do that. Many people expect Pluto in Aquarius to manifest as a celebration of humanism, tolerance and escape from oppression—a type of kumbaya moment or newfound heaven on Earth, but that is unlikely even when it comes true decades into the future because Aquarius is the detriment of the Sun. In the meantime, the contrast between Pluto in tropical Aquarius and sidereal Capricorn is stark. One has only to look around at what’s happening in the world to evaluate the matter. Transiting Pluto has been approaching the first major group of stars in Capricorn for three years. It spends all of 2025 conjoined alternately exactly and very close to the alpha, beta and nu stars in the Seagoat. American politics are about to become more of a hardball affair than at any time since the Civil War (1861-1865).
© Kenneth Bowser, 2024. All rights reserved.