― Marshall McLuhan
Dear Friend and Reader:
In an edition of Planet Waves earlier this month, I said that the U.S. Pluto return is just beginning. We’re experiencing the first return of Pluto to its position at the time of the signing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation — the birth of the United States. The same transit is happening to all of the United States charts at once, and it’s happening now.
And during the past two weeks, we have seen some of the more visible effects of that.
With the Pluto return, you would expect some sort of upheaval. For personal transits, most people only live as long as Pluto square Pluto (varying from age 35 to about 60 depending on the era). All have planetary transits involving Pluto and get a taste of the evolutionary medicine, usually uncovered by an astrologer 20 years later, and they realize oh, that’s what that was.
In the Western world, very little lasts 248 years. Countries are constantly reformed; empires rise and decline fairly quickly. Emanuel Pastreich, a symbolic presidential candidate I interviewed recently, said that the approximately 250-year mark is a frequent point of transition or collapse in dynasties and the longer-lived societies of Asia. He’s a historian and speaks the languages, and has a clue.
For those curious, here is some of my 2019 coverage of the Pluto return. So, with it now in full force, let’s go through some events that have arrived recently.
OK, let’s roll.