The U.S. Pluto Return (Part One)
It is possible to see the conjunction of transiting Pluto to its natal place in the horoscope of the United States as really beginning on Jan. 6, 2021. What supports that notion is the similarity between what happened on that day to what happened in capitol of Italy in 1922. That’s when an army of angry fascist marched on Rome and forced the elected Prime Minister to step aside and hand over the reigns of power to the definitely unelected head of the Fascist Party, Benito Mussolini.
This event was quickly followed by the rise of right-wing totalitarian regimes in Germany and Spain and a left-wing totalitarian in Russia. It was also followed, in 1930, by the discovery of Pluto. This is why, when we think of Pluto one of the things we think of is power, particularly absolute, governmental power in the hands of a single individual. In other words, we think of fascism.
It should be noted that during the 1920s there were intelligent, well-meaning people who thought fascism was the wave of the future. They saw liberal democracies as unstable and ineffective. To these people the rise of a strong leader who would shut down all the bickering and the politics and just do what was right for the country represented salvation. And to the astrologers who felt this way, and there were some who did, the discovery of Pluto opened the way to a bright new age.
Of course, it didn’t exactly work out that way. With Pluto, power is just one means to an end and that end is always transformation. The rise of fascism in Europe led to World War II which transformed the world in ways that Benito Mussolini would have never imagined. This transformation came at a terrible cost, millions of lives and worldwide destruction, but the kind of fundamental change Pluto represents does not come cheap and it does not come easy.
Once we see this relationship between Pluto and fascism we understand why the approach of the U.S. Pluto Return has sparked such extreme rhetoric. On the one side we have people making ludicrous comparisons between wearing a mask and the tortures experienced by victims of the holocaust. On the other we have the fear that changes in the election laws in various states will lead to one party rule. Each side calls the other undemocratic and the “f” word (no, the other "f" word) crops up quite often.
There are some who say that, instead of attempting a fascist takeover, the people who invaded the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6 were really trying to prevent one. This was the mission that motivated many of those who believed that the 2020 election had somehow been rigged. Pluto favors extreme ideas and we also have Neptune currently opposed to natal Neptune in the U.S. chart, as aspect that exalts belief and dismisses rational thought. The combination of these two aspects will dominate the coming year, twisting facts, undermining truth and arming both side of the political dichotomy with absolute convictions based on faulty thinking.
But does this mean that the United States is teetering toward a fascist government? Will fascism become the means of our Pluto transformation in the same horrible way that it transformed Europe in the 1940s? Astrologers read the signs and the planets but the final outcome always depends on choices made by human beings. In this case, those choices will be made by the American people and by certain individuals among us who will be forced to decide what kind of country they really want.
My feeling is that these people will ultimately steer us away from the fascist cliff. but I am an optimist. I have to admit that the astrology of the situation, with the Pluto Return in the US chart accompanying the Neptune opposition, lends itself to a more pessimistic assessment. And to make matters even more interesting, there are several other equally pessimistic possibilities out there and any one of them could make a political transformation seem like the better option. Stay tuned for a discussion of some of those possibilities.
