Pluto, the Great Decider

The big guy is Earth, the little guy is Pluto

It’s the little planet that swirls at the edge of the universe, the one that astronomers have dissed and demoted so it’s no longer a planet in their scheme of things. But astrologers who dismiss Pluto as irrelevant do so at their own peril.

Pluto is the great transformer, the absolute bottom line. It takes no hostages, can’t abide victims, and basically just does its thing: working from the bottom up, from the inside out, it strips away veneers, facades, lies, duplicities, and exposes the ugly truth, whatever it is.  Then it smacks it down, destroys it, and says, OK, now build something better from the ashes.

Right now, the world is experiencing Pluto’s transit  through Capricorn, a sign that rules authority, structures, foundations, everything we have taken for granted for decades. This transit began in late January 2008, then Pluto turned retrograde and slipped back into Sagittarius between June  14, 2008- late November 2008. Take a look at this Wikipedia timeline for how Pluto brought havoc to financial markets – the subprime mortgage crisis, the sky is falling shriek from Wall Street and the Bush administration, the bailout for banks and everyone except The People.

Once Pluto entered Capricorn again in late November 2008 – Obama had won the presidency and for a little while, life seemed to be pretty good despite the chaos. But Obama inherited a mess and any secret undercurrent held by the status quo has been subsequently stripped of its veneer and exposed for what it is: a scam. From the health care debacle in the U.S.  to the Murdoch hacking scandal in the U.K. to the debt ceiling absurdity to the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, the monsters are being exposed.

And they’re running scared.

As Pluto continues to strip away the veneers (and it’s going to be in Capricorn until 2024), we are witness to chaos in the very institutions we thought were rock solid.  On a personal level, this transit forces us to look at the very things that may terrify us as individuals. I want security. I want a relationship I can depend upon. I want guarantees.  Unfortunately, Pluto denies us our desires if those desires aren’t rooted in what’s best for each of us and, in the larger picture, if those desires don’t serve the collective need. A paradigm shift can’t occur until a tipping point is reached.

So unless that point is reached, Pluto will continue to expose  the lies and strip away the facade of organizations and corporations founded on greed, opportunism, and corruption. Capitalism is a broken system and Pluto is tearing it apart chunk by chunk, enabling us to peer behind the curtain and see the wizards for what they are - small, frightened people clinging to ways that no longer work. As these institutions crash and burn, Pluto expects us to build something better in those ashes.

What’s that something going to be?