Pluto

“As Above, So Below”

…four short words capture the foundational insight of astrology: heavenly activity and human experience are in meaningful relation to each other. The Astrologer studies planetary bodies in motion against a starry backdrop, the astronomy above. Here below, linking those patterns to individual and collective life, forming a coherent narrative, arises by the Astrologer’s attending to, with equal interest, innumerable life histories and the unfolding of world events.

A second informing dichotomy, “As Within, So Without” links the inner complexities of human being as dynamically reflected in the realm of Other(s) – figures of influence, circumstance and events with which the individual must cope. In a therapeutic dialogue how often is the crux of suffering reached through painful recognition that the enemy, the oppressor, lies within? Healing is found in the shadow.

Far distant Pluto’s effects on society or individuals, are not easy to witness, to acknowledge or confess. Our deepest drives – for survival, power, conquest or revenge – call it Id, call it Lizard Brain, call it a cauldron of impulses to be tamed and redirected if there is any hope of civilized life, these are the Underworld of Pluto. At root is fear of our fate as mortal beings. We die. All of us. We live lives mostly in denial of that, aggression displacing acceptance. Necessary for survival it may be, yet it is uneasy ground for bringing forth our best selves.

“Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes.” Another bitter pill. Pluto rules both – great wealth, especially fierce competition for it and clever means of disguising it, and the tax man who comes to collect from great and small. The latter usually grumble and pay; the great, not so much. Think off-shore tax havens, shell corporations, the dark mansions of Belgravia. Think ill-gotten gains, the great crimes that lie behind great fortunes. Think Plutocracy.

Social power is rooted in economic power; it matters who has it and who doesn’t. Economic power manifests in that other sense of the word, power as fuel. No longer harnessed to animal labor or gears rotating by wind or water, the post-industrial world is propelled by petrochemicals. Power now is extracted from underworld fissures of Carboniferous biomass, transformed to coal, oil and gas.

When this country was a mere patchwork of colonial outposts finding its way toward economic independence from Europe, wealth was built in exploiting abundant natural resources entirely by human and animal labor. For European markets the most profitable production of cotton, sugar and tobacco, not to mention silver, indigo and rubber, could only be satisfied through enforced labor of unfree unpaid human beings. The hacienda system of Spanish colonial holdings and chattel slavery in the former English colonies of North America were both perfect Plutonian exercises in power. Are/were? Both systems have been superseded by other governmental authority and economic structures, yet the long shadow of injustice lives on. Alongside tales of courage, initiative and ingenuity are the shameful deeds and unsavory bargains of a repressed and forgotten national history. How, as citizens, are we to understand the past, all of it, that it might inform and shape the present?

One can imagine Pluto smiling at the edge of the Underworld, as educators are pressured, even threatened, lest they make anyone feel ‘uncomfortable’ about the past.