PLUTO IN THE SIGNS
The War Generation:
1936-1950: Pluto in Cancer
Winston Churchill "The Best Briton"
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This was the "cult of personality" generation, the age of dictatorship, where great leaders held sway over millions, held absolute power over the masses, and led them into internecine wars and mass slaughter. This was accomplished by military might, or simply by the power of the real --or made up-- charisma of the dictator. Sometimes the power came first, and the charisma was tacked on to the dictator at the end, to make tyranny more palatable. All the leaders of the world were dictators, regardless of what politics they enshrined. Hitler (Aries), Mussolini (Cancer), Stalin (Sagittarius), Churchill (Ophiuchus), Roosevelt (Capricorn), no matter which side you were on, or where you were, there was a Pluto-Cancer demagogue at the top. This trend of following bigger than life leaders continued on into the Leo generation, and they began to lionize the spiritual and political leaders of their time more by their physical appearance or jargon, than their true natures and abilities. Pluto in Cancer was the worship of grand military figures, while the Leo-Plutos went to the East to sit at the feet of Zen masters and to demonstrate as followers of rebellious philosophers or youth crushes. All cult of personality leaders are eventually revealed to be maniacs, conspirators, perverts or liars.
The Baby Boomer Generation:
1950-1968: Pluto in Leo
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Pluto and Leo go well together, NOT. This is a life-or-death challenge, and despite the cat's nine lives, Pluto wins. The people of this generation consolidated to achieve political power and form a youth constituency that terrified the establishment. Leo scares its prey, its opponent. Domination, cult-of personality, and leadership were important issues for Pluto-Leo. The downside is a tremendous ego, which they celebrate in the Eighth House of the Dead, by going back to imitate their ancestors. Being a fixed sign, they can't escape their own history.
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The last time Pluto was in Leo was 1701-1721. One look at the clothes and hair of that era tells you a lot about Leo. Ornate, grandiloquent, almost foppish, with great care to make the hair the centerpiece of beauty and awe.
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The latest incarnation of Leo is July of 1950 to Oct. of 1968, the generation that grew up to be the hippie youth movement, where hair again was a political statement, as well as personal adornment. Instead of silk and frock coats, this generation chose working class denim and sandals to reject the bourgeois “charcoal gray” suit and wing-tip shoes of the businessman. The change in consciousness brought about through the "death" of the old traditions and the drugs used to open the doors of perception were all key elements in the Lep Pluto. Free love was a major inroad into the straight-laced ideas about sex, although the ego could not yet be separated from it.
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In both eras, the rise of a new Leo generation meant revolution and unrest. They seized on the value of breaking ossified laws and stereotypes. They rejected the system and wanted to return to a simpler time, a tribal arrangement. This brought on a new cultural hierarchy with musicians, gurus and shamans captivating the public while privately harboring sex and drug addictions. The Pluto-Leos are defiant, but trapped in the jungle, and the new societies they created were destroyed or self-destructed. The rebellion was just as much an ego trip as it was a cultural leap forward.
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Pluto means change is impossible without death, so only adaptation can help the Baby Boomers stay relevant in today's world as they face the grim reaper. They are all in the same boat with the younger generations in a sea of trouble, disruption and insecurity. As the cat loses his teeth and roar, he'll have to move quietly to avoid a gruesome fate courtesy of the Hyenas.
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Pluto in Virgo: Cleans up the Mess
1968 -1986
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"Like a Virgin", Virgo's anthem, was released by Madonna (a Leo) in 1984
When Pluto staggered into Virgo, at the end of 1968, the hippie era had crescendoed, the world woke up to chaos. The younger siblings of the Hippies inherited all the sex, drugs and rock and roll, with Big Hair but without the politics. The “me generation” followed the self-glorification ritual of Pluto-Leo in marketing but not in their purpose.
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The Virgos played out all the fantasies of the Leo, and were the raw meat for their parent's hyperbole, but in the end Virgos turned against idealism, bravado and hypocrisy, cursing the Baby Boomers and their wretched fallacies. They saw the value of material wealth, security, and sobriety; and they began their own reinvention. Pluto ushered them in as supplicants and servants to the older generations, slaves to the traditions of the dead, but in the end, the earth sign Virgo accommodated to their hellish confusion, and made itself indispensable to it. Better the king rat then the starving lion.
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This generation was born innocent into a corrupt and fraudulent world; they can only seek to perfect their skills, hone their tools, until the next generations have the numerical strength to change things in any meaningful way. They are experts, fixers, inventors and craftspersons.
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This is the first generation to have computers as a fundamental part of their life. They may be more active on the internet than in the brick-and-mortar world. There is a current of fear running through them--FOMO (fear of missing out). Pluto acts a restraint upon this generation, tending to strangle them, or bury them. This is the first generation that went into debt-bondage to the banks, in order to gain an education.
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This generation possesses the ability to transform the way the world sees health. Medical research, world-wide diseases, medical discoveries, and the links between mind and body will be focuses for this generation. It may also be the last generation that believes the world's problems can be solved without violence.
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This might be called the "counter-revolution" against the mighty forces that had risen up during the sixties. The heroes of the sixties were assassinated; everyone from John Lennon, to Salvador Allende, to Patrice Lumumba. The state gathered its remaining wits about it, turned itself over to the military, and crushed the mob that threatened Law and Order. Those fools that still believed in the blithe spirit died off and only the strong survived. Those who had resources and knew how to use them, or those who could clamber up to the top of the heap became the ambitious capitalists of a new era that worshiped capital and utility. Pluto-Virgo was a roll-back to the essentials of life, which was money. The pseudo-tribal vision of the revolution crumbled into the less spiritual goal of amassing millions while the rest of the world lay supine or stupefied.
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Pluto in Libra: the Clash of Cash
1986-1996
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If Pluto in Virgo deified the Madonna-whore and the material world, Pluto in Libra, starting Nov., 1986, was more invested in the now-all-powerful-system and its inherent unfairness and corruption. The economics of capitalism had drawn the lines, and the many who were in the underclasses objected. They came out with a renewed call for justice, using their indignation as well as their racial or gender origins as a new identity, and developing a new technology to shatter the monopoly of culture that was being forced fed to them by old-fashioned media. This is the age of the specialist, the expert who knows more and knows faster than his opponent at the table.
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Society was sharply divided into two warring camps: the haves and the have-nots. The lure of easy money, debt, and scheming investment bankers gave rise to a new bloated parasite class, with dollars as the new ideology, with a free reign in the shady world of Wall Street, where greed reached new heights, and the poor became poorer. The gulf between them grew to an ocean of hate and despair.
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Thus the Hip Hop generation emerged, using the bass and the boombox to pound out their contempt and mistrust for the society that had promised equality, but failed to deliver. The white man's leadership and culture had polarized society almost beyond repair. Stagflation and gridlock were the underlying factors in a slow movement back to Americanism and and a tightening of the laws against the poor. The youth had no choice but to fight back. The Black Panthers of the sixties may have used guns to make their point, but Pluto in Libra had to use the mike to spread their message and establish their power-base. Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" was an intellectual message, not a cry for what would be revolutionary suicide. Instead of the blog and hashtag, used today as unexpurgated expression, the truth in the 90s could only be found on the cassette tape, enabling everyone to become artists in their own right. Pluto-Libras didn't just listen to the top ten, they created their own. This was the beginning of democratization of culture, the influence of a younger consumer and the notion that each generation should create its own architecture and social norms.
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Public Enemy came out with Yo! Bum Rush the Show in 1987, artistically stylizing the militancy of the Hiphop community against police brutality and racism.
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Pluto in Scorpio: the Penis and the Worm
1996-1999
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By Oct., 1996, Pluto entered Scorpio for a brief stay, for a mere 3 years until Oct., 1999. Pluto was at its most secretive during this time, as illustrated by the sex scandal and subsequent impeachment of President Bill Clinton. China started to suppress access to the internet, while in the U.S., the dot-com bubble sucked billions out of the the economy, leaving legitimate businesses out in the cold. The governments of Pakistan and Yugoslavia collapsed from corruption and internal struggle. Society tried to bury its marginalized elements, and only managed to make them more insane, more resilient, more underground. A frenzy of fear dominated the last days of Scorpio, as the dread of the future, the year 2000, caused a worldwide panic.
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Pluto in Ophiuchus: Yoni and the Backlash
1999-2007
Eric Dylan, one of the Columbine shooters, is shown here in the Library.
By Oct., Pluto had moved into Ophiuchus, liberating the dark side of the female nature. This was also the start of the cultural swing to tolerate sexual and gender differences, a hallmark of the androgynous Ophiuchus character. It also highlighted the dangers of alienated youth, those who society had subjected to bullying, rape and brain-washing. Pluto in Ophiuchus marked the acceptance and glorification of the extremist, the geek, the autistic, the idiot-savant. The most magical and powerful people were the freaks. The manic-depressed or psychopathic elements stole the show, by any means necessary.
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The massacre at Columbine was the worst of of the many such mass shootings that followed suit. These arbitrary murders by >disaffected young white men as revenge for being rejected by more trendy students at their high school, showed other nihilists a way out of their subjective pain, by transference. The rejects declared war on the regime that spurned them. In response, those in authority reacted with a vicious attack on anyone suspicious or uncooperative. A new witch-hunt began to put anti-social elements in prison, millions of them. Governments acted with impunity, regardless of law or compassion. The war against terrorism began in earnest, as U.S. warplanes bombed Afghanistan, and George Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court. The destruction of the World Trade Center enabled the Bush administration to enact the Homeland Security laws, which tore up the constitution, and snuffed out any opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Israeli carried out a war of attrition against the Palestinians, without regard to human rights. Women and children were just as much targets as soldiers. A new wave of violence opened the Pandora's box of aggression, leading the U.S. into an endless war against a hidden enemy.
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Meanwhile, in the U.S., giant Ponzi schemes like Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, Qwest, Global Crossing, ImClone, and Adelphia all collapsed, ruining stockholders and clients alike, while the men who ran these companies got away with millions of dollars. Meanwhile, Martha Steward was convicted and sent to prison for a much lessor crime, sending a clear message that the double standard for women could be invoked at any time, recalling the time-tested methods of repressing powerful females.
As if to remind us of her power and lack of mercy, Mother Nature took a horrendous toll on 11 countries on the Indian Ocean, killing over a quarter of a million people in the Tsunami caused by the largest earthquake in 40 years.
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Pluto-Sagittarius: Liars and Bombers
2007-2024
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By the time Pluto entered Sagittarius, in late 2007, the world was rife with repression, recession, war, poverty and injustice, and was ready to blow. Sagittarius is a fire sign, compressed by Pluto, which can only mean explosion. The centerpiece was the wide-spread use of the Improvised Explosive Device (IUE), the suicide bomber, and the use of air strikes and drones to kill indiscriminately and without regard to civilian deaths. And the Molotov.
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Pluto in Sagittarius also snuffed out any hope of government transparency. Every unscrupulous liar and charlatan is rewarded for making profits by tricking people. The media lies, the government lies, the corporations lie, even the money is a lie; what is the truth? People have forgotten, and are hustled along like pigs to the slaughterhouse. The inhuman conditions at Abu Ghraibe shocked the world, but did not change U/S. policy, nor were any of those responsible brought to justice. Sagittarius Pluto is a bully, a tyrant. This period of Pluto's reign ensures the politicians become power-mad and use manipulation of the mass consciousness to control the masses, making violence civil unrest inevitable.
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Sagittarius swings from heroic human to the savage animal and back. Pluto in Sagittarius filters out the heroic sides, and the hidden monster emerges. Pluto in Sagittarius puts the monsters in charge. One Sagittarius dictator, Josef Stalin, lead his country to victory in war, but slaughtered an entire generation of Russia's 20-24 year olds before degenerating into a paranoid psychotic. For the Pluto Sagittarius, patriotism is very much a way for the head to avoid seeing what the ass is doing.
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"Liberty" is the catch-word of the day,
but slavery is the reality.
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Yet there are also the signs of the inevitable result of repression--explosion-- is occurring as riots and mass migration. We also see people organizing into reformist parties and crushing the "parity" parties at the polls. We see Sagittarius-type heroes emerging all over the world, sacrificing themselves for the greater good, for freedom and equality, and inspiring others to protest and rebel against the system. In 2010, a protester in Tunisia set himself on fire, and started the Arab Spring, which activated youth movements to confront the most reactionary governments in the region. Meanwhile, in the West, Adblock, a Canadian anti-corporate magazine was founded, and financed an alliance between environmentalists and anti-capitalists, giving birth to the Occupy movements that sprung up in 90 countries in 2011. Wikileaks' Julian Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden are the new heroes in this age of mega-data and the government spying on the emails and phone calls of its citizens.
The Players find Jihad
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With politics in such disarray, religion replaces ideology as the source of mutually assured destruction. It may be the only force strong enough to generate martyrs to fight in the new Crusade against Islam. As the result of the chaos of the civil war in Syria, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has established a new Caliphate guided by the one, Sagittarian Truth.
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The panicky reaction by the tottering regimes in the area, and their patron states, draws them all into the fray, sucked inevitability into a war against this new Islamic revolution. ISIS has a strength that all the corrupt regimes in the area can never achieve. ISIS came to power in 2015 with the capture of Mosel, a major city of over 3 million people, and has become a major player in the spot oil markets. ISIS has an internationalist character that is pure Sagittarius (always the world citizen) and draws thousands of recruits, male and female, from 90 countries to join Jihad.
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You can't buy this kind of allegiance, it can only come from the "beating of the Sagittarian heart, yearning to throw its body on the pillar of fire, then righteously take its stance in the heavens" (From the Book of Sagittarius).
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Many nations have sworn to eradicate ISIS, but no one wants to fight them on the ground. Sending bombers to attack ISIS cannot seem to prevent the spread of this new, viral crusade against Western imperialism, that in fact feeds it with its indiscriminate drone killing. ISIS is the major threat to the status quo, since they break all its rules. This titanic struggle between Islam and the dollar may erupt up into a nuclear war, since Israel is poised to strike with Pyrrhic weapons at any moment.
Turkish youth launches a Molotov cocktail at police during the 2014 protests
Might Makes Right, Lies Against the Truth
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As the bombs kill civilians in Islamic countries, in the West faces a deflationary economic depression, where people are strangled by debt and lack of jobs. The prisons and streets are full of marginalized men and women who become like the living dead. The youths are rebelling everywhere and have used smoking tires and Molotov cocktails to make their point. Their use is on the increase in street fighting from London to Ferguson and Paris to as youth routinely battle with storm-trooper-like police. With these tiny weapons, can they win?
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Can the David defeat the Nuclear-Goliath? The nuclear disaster in Japan seemed only to make the use of this deadly fuel more contagious, allowing for more cover-ups and accidents to happen. It also encourages them to use nuclear weapons, with the delusion they are survivable.
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For Pluto in Sagittarius, it is the choice we face: degradation into beasts in a war that never ends, or a complete revolution, the highest achievement of man's intellect. Pluto will remain in Sagittarius until late 2024, during which time the world may indeed be plunged into another world war, unless a new spawn of heroes emerges from the blood and mud to prevent it by sacrifice at the alter of history.