The Kuiper Belt & The Astrophysical Solar System

Note to Readers: Aug. 30 was the 20th anniversary of the discovery of a new region of space — the Kuiper Belt. That’s the region of space immediately beyond the orbit of Neptune. I covered this discovery in a subscriber article two weeks ago. One of our contributors, Alex Miller, has written a new article on a related topic, which we’re sharing with all readers. Alex is a specialist in these newly discovered small objects, and also in deep space points. –efc

By Alex Miller

As we stand (or sit; by all means, make yourself comfortable!) on our tiny blue planet and stare out at the cosmos, there is much we can intuit just by its structure and organization, from our perspective. In the astrophysical metaphysics of the solar system, as in real estate, it’s about three things: location, location, location!

Our solar system is comprised of several component parts that can be broken down into groups and sub-groups based upon their make-up, appearance and celestial address. First, there are objects both visible and invisible to the naked eye.

The visible objects of our system, Sun through Saturn and including our Moon, represent tangibles, those things in our lives that are apparent and of material or verifiable substance. They are with us daily in an obvious, in-your-face, often physical way, giving us something to grab on to as we structure and navigate our lives.

The invisible objects, those points beyond Saturn and in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, represent facets of our lives which run deeper, less within our conscious control or understanding, more ethereal, intangible or difficult to pin down. This includes both things for which we need the cooperation and assistance of others, and those which are beyond the reach of any mortal to affect.

Among the visible objects, we can sub-classify further, based on planetary composition. The Sun, of course, stands alone as the center of our system, the fiery hydrogen furnace which brings light and life to our world. The Moon is a special case also, as our sole satellite, the only thing in the cosmos over which our world exercises any direct control.

The inner planets, Mercury, Venus and Mars, are rocky worlds, very dense and harshly physical, representing our most tactile experiences, the ones we can best get a handle on and manipulate to our own ends. These inner planets (also known astrologically as ‘personal’ planets) and what are called the ‘Lights’ (the generative Sun and reflective Moon) symbolize our basic components, what is truly ‘us’: our vital life essence (the Sun), our body and emotions (the Moon), our senses, the ability to reason and communicate (Mercury), to attract (Venus) and to enact (Mars).

Only after dealing with these personal issues can we proceed to the societal level, as symbolized by the visible gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn. Being gaseous, they are more amorphous, harder to grab hold of, requiring the cooperation of others. They are vastly larger and more all encompassing than the inner planets, having broader scope and greater breadth, but they can also be somewhat impenetrable, difficult to plumb to their depths on one’s own.

Before we can get there, blocking our way, we find the first of the invisible barriers, the asteroid belt comprised of more than a million rocky fragments, minor planets that lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. More than half the total mass of this region is concentrated in its four largest denizens (with the largest, asteroid Ceres, comprising fully one third of the total mass of the region). The vast majority range in the 1-100 km diameter range — mere specks of mass but carrying cosmic impact.

As both rocky and invisible to the naked eye, the asteroids represent a mix of metaphysical qualities. Their solidity gives them a tangible aspect similar to the inner planets, so in part they represent things we can grasp, take hold of and direct to our purpose. But as ‘invisible’ (or more properly, unseen without artificially enhanced vision), there is also a quality of being beyond our control, with inner workings deeper and less obvious than the surface realities represented by visible objects.

Many of these tiny rocky worlds have been named for mythic or legendary figures, a global pantheon of deities rich in symbolism and metaphor, such as Isis, Lugh, Odin, Siva, Quetzalcoatl and Merlin. Others have been given personal names like Johnny, Sonja, Barry and Nancy; place names like Poltava, California, Israel and Chicago; prosaic names like Beer, Storm, Crocus and Fireman; named for historical figures such as Paracelsus, Plato, Ramses and Coppernicus; Rock groups like Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles; literary or fictional figures like Tolkien, Rabelais, Moliere and Picard.

The meaning of these oddly named asteroids may often be more difficult to ascertain, but they all have application in the lives of those for whom they feature prominently in the birth chart. Navigating this preponderance of diverse challenges and opportunities is a lifelong process, as the asteroids form both a barrier and a bridge to what follows.

In sum, if the inner planets represent the energies that drive our life, the asteroid belt is that life itself, the daily muddle and hurly-burly, the warp and woof of how our lives unfold, the bit players and major actors who strut across our stages and create the drama of our existence. And as with life, making sense of this region can be a monumental task.

Beyond the asteroid belt we find four gas giants, two visible, two invisible, perambulating through a region of space also populated by groups of smaller, rocky, asteroid-like minor planets, the centaurs and damocloids, which bridge the gaps between them. Of the visible planets, Jupiter represents cultural and societal structures, how we interact with each other en masse, and it is the largest planet in our system, emblematic of the urge to expansion, increase and growth. Saturn represents governance, how we organize and rule ourselves, and its rings denote the boundaries we set between us; generally it symbolizes contraction, limitation and maturity or decline.

Damocloids are very unusual celestial bodies, appearing to be long-period comets that have outgassed and thus no longer trail a coma. The first to be discovered, Damocles (which gave its name to the category), has an eccentrically inclined orbit which takes it from Mars’ aphelion (the furthest point in its orbit from the Sun) almost to Uranus. These objects are reddish in hue and very dark, with among the lowest albedos (reflective quality) in the solar system. Of the three dozen known to exist, only a few have been named, making them of doubtful utility to astrologers, but their capacity to link such vast regions of space suggests that they perform a bridging function and may act as guides, taking us from the realm of personal or societal concerns to the truly transcendent.

Centaurs are a similar class of objects, principal among them Chiron. All have been named for mythic centaurs after their forebear, which was described as having a hybrid mix of both asteroid and comet traits, much as mythic centaurs are half human, half horse. Their orbits are confined to the region between Jupiter and Neptune, and they also appear to perform a linking function, uniting social concerns with matters that transcend human capacities to influence or control.

After Saturn, there is nothing visible to the naked eye in our system, but it’s not empty space! Two more gas giants, Uranus and Neptune, conclude the major planets, but beyond Neptune there are vast numbers of small, rocky or icy worlds in the Kuiper Belt, a region whose most famous member is Pluto, formerly accounted the Sun’s ninth planet.

If the inner rocky worlds are personal, and the visible gas giants are societal/collective in nature, then the invisible gaseous planets Uranus and Neptune represent the world of the transpersonal: generational and evolutionary energies which guide and inform whole sectors of the populace at once, all of whom share Uranus and Neptune placements by sign. Uranus is the urge to freedom and individuation, to be what we uniquely are without curb or hindrance. Neptune represents the contradictory urge to merge and become one with all existence, an abnegation of self.

Like the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt is comprised of large numbers of separate celestial entities, but it is far vaster, perhaps 20 times as wide and as much as 200 times its mass. Whereas most of the asteroids are rocky chunks, Kuiper Belt denizens are largely composed of frozen ‘volatiles’, chemicals with low boiling points such as methane, ammonia and water, to which adhere small bits of more substantial matter. Their solidity is somewhat of an illusion, or more properly, an accident of location — if these bodies were to travel closer to the Sun, their frozen components would burn off and leave just dusty remnants.

Sometimes known as TNOs (for Trans-Neptunian Objects), more than a thousand of these bodies have been identified, with up to 70,000 predicted to exist. There are two subsets of TNOs, both impacted by Neptune’s orbit: the plutinos, which include Pluto, Orcus, Ixion and Huya, locked in a 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune (meaning they circle the Sun twice for every three revolutions of Neptune); and the Scattered Disk Objects (SDOs), such as Eris, whose orbital planes have been inclined erratically far off the ecliptic by Neptune’s gravitational field.

These points collectively represent forces so far beyond human control or intervention that even the concept of conscious interface with them is meaningless. With orbits as long as several millennia, a typical human lifespan covers a mere fraction of their journey, but their impact in human experience is no less powerful, when placed prominently in birth charts or by transit. They represent the suprapersonal — concepts and energies wholly above human cognition or understanding, but which result in very down-to-Earth events and circumstances when they come into contact with major planets or points in a natal chart.

Of course most of us are familiar with Pluto, and its original inclusion as a ‘full-fledged’ planet was important for astrologers, for it showed without doubt that, as regards celestial bodies, size doesn’t matter. Anyone who has ever experienced Pluto, directly or vicariously through the charts of others, has no qualms about continuing to use it as a major body, despite its 2006 demotion by the IAU (International Astronomer’s Union) to ‘dwarf planet’ status. Pluto paved the way for our understanding of the importance of all these points, which may otherwise have been sidelined and neglected as of no major consequence.

Speaking of Pluto’s demotion, this was a direct result of the discovery of Eris, perhaps the best-known of the TNOs. Whenever a new point is discovered and named, and it enters the collective consciousness, there are symbolic events clustered around this entrance that help to define its effects, and such was the case with Eris.

Found in January 2005, the discovery team toyed with several less classical names for this new body, including Xena (of “Warrior Princess” fame), but settled on Eris when making their official proposal to the IAU in September 2006. Eris is named for the Greek goddess of strife and discord, and just the month before, the IAU had come to terms with the vexing problem of what a planet should be defined as, based on the can of worms which Eris’ discovery opened. Was this a new planet? How many more would be included in the list as dozens of new bodies came to be revealed in this largely unexplored region?

In the two weeks before Eris’ name became official, the IAU released its new definition of planetary status, and in the process demoted Pluto to dwarf planet. In typical discordant Eris fashion, this circumstance caused much global grumbling and dismay among scholars and schoolchildren everywhere, for whom the roll-call of nine planets, and Pluto especially, had become a cherished tradition.

Thus, right out of the gate, Eris confirmed her resonance with the mythic image for which she had been named, and further support for her meaning has not been lacking. As an example, Eris in the United States natal chart (the Sibly chart) appears retrograde at 8 Capricorn, opposing the nation’s Venus and Jupiter at 3 and 5 Cancer. Venus rules values, and Jupiter rules politics, and nothing defines the U.S. as much as the constant bickering over values-based social issues (the justifiably termed ‘Culture Wars’) and the hyper-partisan, backbiting political squabbling, both Eris-engendered.

The fact that this lack of cooperation and comity, even basic civility, has increased apace in Washington D.C. in recent decades may be a direct result of Eris, too. The presidents we choose to represent us interact with the nation’s horoscope and evoke energetic manifestations, influencing the Zeitgeist, or spirit of the times. Due to Eris’ slow passage, every president from Bill Clinton, under whose administration the partisan divide first became most egregious, through Barack Obama, who has been accused of not being an American at all, have had natal Eris in tight square to the USA’s own, ramping up the tension and fractious, quarrelsome states she evokes. This sad state of affairs continues after November, whoever wins, as Mitt Romney also fits this pattern.

Reflecting on the controversy surrounding Obama’s birthplace brings us to another TNO, Haumea. Discovered in 2004, Haumea is named for the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth, and makes a bold show in Barack Obama’s birth chart. The dispute over the validity of Obama’s Hawaiian (!) birth record emerged as early as the 2008 campaign, the year Haumea received its official designation, but didn’t achieve full-blown status until the fight over health care reform began in earnest in 2009.

The canard that Obama was actually Kenyan-born, and thus ineligible for the U.S. presidency, spread like wildfire through the conservative community, and at one point, only 38% of the general population were willing to credit his Hawaiian birthplace beyond a shadow of a doubt. Haumea’s baby-shoe footprints are all over this controversy — the adherents to the movement to discredit Obama’s U.S. citizenship even became known as the ‘Birthers’!

At 0 Virgo in Obama’s birth chart, TNO Haumea conjoins both Pluto at 6 Virgo, symbol of personal power but also secrets and conspiracies; and Uranus at 25 Leo, ruling revolutions or challenges to authority, and xenophobia as well as alien status (that is, non-citizens). Haumea is also exactly inconjunct natal Jupiter (one sign off from being opposite), ruling politics, at 0 Aquarius. Obama’s birth is a political hot potato, and Haumea also opposes Chiron, the wound-maker, at 5 Pisces. If more confirmation of Hamuea’s role here is needed, we can look to her transit position.

Due to its protracted orbit, Haumea did not make its first contact with the U.S. Saturn (representing the presidency) at 14 Libra until the late autumn and early winter of 2006/2007, just as the 2008 race began. Haumea was exact on that point when Obama made the official announcement of his candidacy in February 2007, prefiguring the controversy to follow. The issue permeated the 2009 health care battle, dying down a bit in 2010, but returned with a vengeance as 2011 and the next presidential campaign season dawned.

Possibly the biggest name to enter the fray in questioning the President’s origins was potential GOP nominee contender Donald Trump, who in March 2011 publically voiced his skepticism during an appearance on ABC’s The View. At the time, transiting Haumea had moved to 17 Libra, exactly atop Trump’s natal politics-ruling Jupiter, giving him the perfect celestial impetus to put in his oar on the subject.

The resulting fracas over the issue led Obama to release the long form of his birth certificate on April 27, 2011, at which point Haumea was involved in a kite pattern. Still at 17 Libra and now conjunct transiting Saturn (the President) at 12 Libra, Haumea was trine to both asteroid Kassandra at 13 Aquarius (raising the issues of credibility, doubt and belief) and asteroid Achilles at 16 Gemini (indicating the Achilles heel, or weak spot, for Obama which the issue was threatening to become). The trines formed the Grand Trine body of the kite. Haumea opposed to Mercury at 13 Aries (ruling news and the detailed birth record) formed the kite’s string, directing it into the public debate.

Dwarf planet Sedna is another Kuiper Belt resident worthy of mention. Discovered in 2003, Sedna has the longest-lasting orbit of any known body in the solar system, roughly 11,400 years, give or take a half millennium. Named for an Inuit goddess, Sedna’s tale is rich in imagery, but perhaps the most identifiable thing about her is that she lives in the deepest, most inaccessible part of the Arctic Ocean, and is thus a metaphor for isolation.

Several well-known recluses have Sedna prominent, including aviator and real estate magnate Howard Hughes and author JD Salinger, both with Sun squared Sedna. Hughes’ bizarre life of self-imposed isolation is well documented, and Salinger, author of the 1951 classic The Catcher in the Rye, never wrote another novel, published his last short story in 1965, and never gave an interview after 1980, though he lived another thirty years. Hughes’ Sun-Sedna is part of a T-Square with Neptune, representing his insanity and drug use, while Salinger’s is also in a T-Square including Jupiter, ruling renown and publishing.

Chess champ Bobby Fischer withdrew from the spotlight for twenty years following his 1972 victory over Soviet player Boris Spassky, refusing interviews or even the defense of his World Champion title. His Sedna lies semisextile the Sun, but is also conjunct Venus (ruling games), semisquare Saturn (career) and squared Jupiter.

Thomas Pynchon is another author famed for vigorously defending his privacy; he is captured in very few photos, doesn’t do interviews, and even his whereabouts are often in doubt. Pynchon shares a Sun-Sedna semisextile with Fischer, and sports an exact conjunction with Venus, at the fulcrum of a T-Square including Jupiter and Pluto.

Perhaps the most famous self-imposed recluse is film icon Greta Garbo, noted (if misquoted) for her Grand Hotel dialogue, “I want to be alone.” Correctly quoted or not, Garbo, once the most famous woman in the world, made good on that sentiment with her early retirement from film in 1941, at age 36. She lived a quiet, reclusive life for almost 50 years, avoiding the public eye and only dying in 1990, having never made another picture. Garbo’s Sedna closely squares Neptune, ruling films, and is semisquare Saturn, ruling career.

These are just a few examples of the Kuiper Belt family, which also includes Chaos (turmoil, disorder, and the limitless creativity of the void), Orcus (oaths made and broken, the unchangeable finality of death), Rhadamanthus (judgment, justice and punishment), Huya (‘the Rainmaker,’ both meteorologically and metaphorically, in the sense of attracting money), Varuna (the legacy we leave) and Quaoar (reproductive issues including cloning, in vitro fertilization and abortion), among others.

It’s a fascinating neighborhood, and one well worth exploring, if a bit far-flung and exotic. But admit it, weren’t you getting just a little bored with the locals anyway?