The U.S. Pluto Return

What the heck is going on? The U.S. has been in political and social chaos for a few years now. People are deeply divided. Facts don’t make an impact on discussions. A pandemic swept through—actually a few since the virus kept mutating. Political corruption keeps being revealed. Gun violence is raging. The Congress passed a tepid bill only to have the Supreme Court dismantle gun control in New York State. Not to mention wiped away abortion rights for women just yesterday.

But this is not a political post. This is about astrology.

The U.S. is going through a Pluto return. What’s that?

Pluto has traveled all the way around the U.S. birth chart and returned to the same degree. This happened on February 20, 2022. Pluto made an exact conjunction to its natal degree at 27° Capricorn in the 1776 US Sibly Chart. There’s a bit of controversy over the exact time the Declaration of Independence was signed, but Pluto is a slow moving planet, so it doesn’t make that much difference for this part of the chart.

OK, so Pluto has returned. So what?

Pluto is the planet of death, the underworld, and rebirth. When Pluto comes calling, we have to look under the covers to see what we’ve hidden. We hide what we’re ashamed of. Also our traumas. All the ugly scars, wounds, mistakes and awfulness. We fight this. Nobody likes airing their dirty laundry, much less facing fears and shame—feelings that we’re sure will kill us and harm the world if we let them loose.

And we’re talking about a country here. A country that was full of Native Americans before the Europeans showed up. A country that used enslaved people for labor and treated those people in ways are so horrific I don’t even want to write it down. See, that’s Pluto. Pluto says you better look at it.

Whew! It’s intense, and I’m a Scorpio. Ruled by Pluto. I’m pretty comfortable with the underworld.

Pluto will bring all this shadow stuff to the surface so it can be healed. How do we heal it? We just feel it. We just face it. We don’t fight the feelings. But we don’t take it all out on somebody else either. We breathe. We meditate. We do what we can to put people with integrity in leadership positions in government and corporations.

(I hear you laughing. See how bad the corruption has gotten?)

The good news is after this reckoning, after our walk through our unconscious, after we bring all these wounds to the surface to be healed, we get to be reborn. The U.S. is remaking itself. We will emerge from this new and fresh and full of light, just like any newborn. We can reclaim what still works about our original vision, and there’s a lot of good there.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men – people – sentient beings – are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” There’s one revision. We could change “their Creator” to “Universal Consciousness,” but that’s just me. Maybe you, too.

When it all gets to be too much, take a break. Meditate. Listen to this chant. Then get up and pursue your dream for the U.S.

Peace to all beings. May we all remember who we really are.