Pluto Opposite Sun

Pluto’s effect on the natal Sun of the USA

This Pluto opposite Sun transit acts as a force for creative destruction. Creative destruction clears out what is old, worn out, non-workable, dysfunctional; it occurs because it must in the nature of things; it occurs in order to bring in the new, the functional, the effective.

Pluto, more than any other single activating agent in astrology, performs this function. In that sense, it works as karma.

Perhaps the most famous Pluto opposition Sun that happened to a serving president of the United States was the opposition by transiting Pluto to President Woodrow Wilson’s natal Sun. He was born December 29, 1856, and his natal Sun was at 7° Capricorn 47΄. When Pluto made this opposition (October 2, 1919), he had a stroke, and essentially became incapacitated for the remainder of his presidency. Transiting Pluto was opposing his natal Sun at 7° Cancer 46΄, an exact aspect. This was when he was trying to get the backing of the US Senate to ratify the League of Nations treaty, and that attempt was failing.

When he recovered from his stroke, he was only able to function as president and take care of business for about half an hour a day. After this short period, he would always break down. During the period this Pluto was going into exact aspect of

opposition and out of it, his wife, Edith Bolling Wilson (born Oct 15, 1872), effectively ran the country, until Wilson’s term was completed on March 4th, 1921. She herself was a remarkable lady; she was descended from the Plantagenet kings of England, from Pocahontas, the Indian princess (& savior of John), and from old Virginia planter aristocracy. She takes her place in history as the first de facto female chief executive of America. She acted as a nurturing, mothering wife/partner (again that Pluto in Cancer) and carried him into retirement, and took care of him until his death in 1924.

Wilson was an effective president in many ways, especially as pertained to domestic matters, but he certainly did not understand foreign affairs or the European situation very well. The Versailles treaty, crafted by the English and the French as a kind of revenge against the Germans, and agreed to with the tacit approval of the US foreign policy establishment and President Wilson, singularly by its injustice and severity on the German people, led to the rise of Adolph Hitler, and thus to that continuation of the First World War called the Second World War. The judgment of history on the League of Nations is negative: It was ineffective.

For whatever reason, however, as a force in the universe, Pluto appeared on the scene and stopped that president completely and totally. It took away all his power in an instant. He was no longer a player in the goings-on of the world; and in fact America, as Cancerian nations tend to do at times, withdrew for almost 20 years from the world, became “isolationist”, until it could no longer do so, when that war renewed itself.

Plutonian transits are hard to write about. Plutonian events are often impossible to see until the mask drops. The problem of Pluto opposed the US Venus in Cancer was that an economic housing bubble that had been building for at least a decade burst. The deeper problem of this opposition was that before the crash of the bubble almost no one knew there was a bubble that was going to crash!

The Pluto Jupiter Opposition demonstrated a dissatisfaction of the American people with their elected leaders, and an election in November 2010 dismissed many of them from office. In foreign policy, the administration was pursuing policies of careful dis-engagement around the world. On May 2, 2011 Osama Bin Laden was shot to death by a Special Forces team (Pluto was a little over a degree away from exact opposition of Jupiter).

Pluto Opposite Sun: Looking at the Declaration Chart

Now we come to the opposition of Pluto to the natal Sun in the US chart.

To review: in a nation’s chart, the Sun shows its leadership. In the 1066 AD coronation chart of William on Christmas Day, the Sun represented William, the King of England. On May 10, 1940 the Sun of the same chart represented Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister. Aug. 8, 1974, Richard Nixon, President of the United States, resigned. That day transiting Saturn conjuncted the natal US Sun: They were both at 13 degrees Cancer. 29.54 years later this transit occurred again, and a beloved retired president, Ronald Reagan, died quietly in his sleep. It was still about the same thing: leadership. He was given a long, dignified funeral.

The Sun is also the heart of a country, everything it stands for. The Sun is the purpose, the drive, the will of the people who put the country together. In the USA chart, it is “we the people”, who under the rule of law, guarantee everyone “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. And that is essentially what has been created for the last 235 years, and what has made America perhaps the greatest nation in human history.

Two things can happen with this opposition.

First, this whole American experiment will collapse and die. And that can happen with the oppositions and conjunctions of Pluto. A transiting Pluto opposition destroyed the Nazis; Pluto displayed an aspect of nemesis that the Nazi’s never survived.

Second, many things in American culture will collapse, Americans will be forced back onto core values present at the Founding, and the culture and civilization will become healthier and better for the populace, and the idea of America could end up lasting lasting millennia, as did Rome, as did England, as did Israel, as did ancient Egypt and other older nations long forgotten. The healthiest nations always survive their Plutonian oppositions, and conjunctions, and they survive many of them.

Surviving the Pluto Sun Opposition

Other civilizations have survived the opposition. Using the 1066 chart of the founding of England, we note that in 1916 and 1917 Pluto was making an often partile opposition to the 3° degree Sun in Capricorn of this chart. On July 1, 1916, Britain and France were fighting the Germans in the First World War.  An attack began . It was the Battle of the Somme. This battle lasted to the 18th of November 1917. Over half a million British died in this battle (on the first day of the battle more British had been killed than ever before in its history). The end of the battle of the Somme was inconclusive: the lines remained essentially the same; armies did not advance or retreat, and yet many died. The British Empire was changed forever.

Mass death with no result was the essence of the trench warfare of the First World War. There were outcomes of this Plutonian influence on Britain, some of which took years for people to become aware of. The great wealth that the British Empire had accumulated in the last century since the fall of Napoleon in 1815 was expended and wasted in this war (Pluto represents great wealth). Many of those highly educated and brilliant men who would have led Britain after the war were killed in the trenches. The war leaders like General Douglas Haig were very popular during the war. When people began to understand how these generals stupidly sent these millions to their useless deaths, the generals grew extremely unpopular after the war. General Haig was never allowed to hold any kind of political office again. Popular writers like Lytton Stratchey mocked the Empire. Generally, the centuries long deep trust the people had in their leaders eroded. The British people began to withdraw their support for “Empire”; “Colonel Blimp”, a humorous distortion of the colonialist empire builder, became wildly popular; by entry into the 21st Century, there was no British Empire.

Yet this opposition did clear out what was no longer necessary for the people of Britain, and Britain,  entering intact the new 500 year eonic cycle of Pluto/Neptune in 1914, survived the cleansing. This war did wipe out four vast and huge empires in Germany and Russia and Austria and in Turkey.

In many ways, Britain did quite well: It survived (Pluto can mean survival). Israel and Rome had similar testing experiences, which as all great civilizations of free peoples do they survived.

A Question for the Pluto in Capricorn Generation

The Plutonian changes coming to America will be intense and forever. What can we assume will happen?

Will there be war? War could easily take place. What kind of war? Well, since it is Plutonian, could be a civil war. And since it is Plutonian, it will be a war of the people against entrenched powers.

Will it be as bad as World War I? That war was an eonic war. The old Europe died; colonialism and imperialism received death blows. That war destroyed structures that had been building up since the early Renaissance. Today we are well advanced into a new eonic structure. The influence of the Pluto Sun opposition probably will not be as devastating as what occurred in World War I.

What will happen to our leaders? What will happen to the elites in Washington?

They will be tested for flaws in character. If their flaws are deep, they will fall. Fate will be the judge of any weakness here. There will be no mercy for bad decisions. Lies can be disastrous; shortcuts will not work.

Expect to see a new type of leadership in America. In any kind of suddenly apparent disconnection between the American people and its politicians, and bureaucrats, and administrators, and judges, it will be the leaders who fall. The new leadership will lead by falling back on to the original founding core values of America.

It is all going to change probably in ways most of us can’t even dream of. This change will bring painful events, but it will cleanse the corruption (much of which we are blind to) out of the body politic. Welcome to the creative destruction of Pluto.

There are four Cancerian planets in America’s Declaration chart. To even begin to understand the meaning of all these transits of Pluto by opposition, we will have to wait for the conclusion of these oppositions, and we will need to wait for the end of Pluto’s conjunction to America’s natal Pluto.