Born in the USA—America’s Pluto Return—2008—2024
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between—Oscar Wilde
The sound of falling statues reverberates through the bones of slaves from Africa buried in mass graves. Bronze tyrants tumble from their pedestals, and the dolorous ghosts of millions of native Americans, great herds of buffalo and forests of giant Redwoods emerge into the waning light of this epoch.
As Pluto’s gravitational force dredges up the grisly truths that lie buried under streets and skyscrapers, America journeys down into the Underworld to be scooped out, humbled, and reborn. Pluto’s transits in our own birth charts, and in the charts of nations, are never tepid or benign. They are always slow, relentless, and transformative.
When Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008, the fissures in financial systems widened and the blight in governments exposed disturbing division and misuse of power. As Leonard Cohen released his prophetic single, You Want It Darker in the September of 2016, Pluto and Jupiter were forming a square that intensified in January 2020 by conjunction. Neptune, purveyor of contagion, illusion, deception, and deceit, slipped in behind the green curtain, a making a slippery trine to Mercury in the US birth chart. The star-spangled banner fluttered in the winds of change.
Pluto’s opposition to Mercury in America’s birth chart (2017-24) reminds us that the foundations of The Land of the Free are dug deep into the black earth of genocide, slavery, and appalling exploitation of the nature. Mercury presides over communication, intelligence, propaganda, paranoia, media, and travel. The old certainties have become unmoored.
America is not the only modern nation to rise from a brutal past, but as people march through the streets, emboldened by anger and grief, Pluto irradiates Mercury in self-protective, emotive Cancer in the American birth chart of July 4th, 1776.
Pluto’s imminent Return in the American birth chart has cast a long shadow over events in America since 2017. Pluto edges ever closer to an exact opposition (until 2022) to President Trump’s Achilles heel—an excruciatingly painful Venus/Saturn conjunction, a well-defended place of personal vulnerability. It is unlikely that Trump will be re-elected, unless to bring the United States of America to its knees at Pluto’s behest. Neptune squares the President’s Gemini Sun and Sagittarius Moon till 2022; not a comfortable transit unless we surrender, accept, and bow our head to our compassionate heart.
As Pluto stirs up all that is putrefying in the basements of government and financial institutions, the scent of anarchy pervades the old order and a frisson of terror reverberates through the thick-piled carpets of the establishment. America declared its independence from Britain in 1776 when Pluto was moving through Capricorn and Mozart was composing music that roused passion and pain.
Pluto will be in Aquarius from 2024 to 2044 as we begin to make reparations for historic injustices and re-image a world where exploitation of people, animals and nature will be relegated to his-story. Jupiter and Saturn enter Aquarius as 2020 comes to an end and we (hopefully) begin to address the collective trauma that defines the experience of so many people whose lives are still curtailed by inequality and blatant injustice.
Herschel “discovered” Uranus, that planet associated with breakthroughs and revolution as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Both France and America come full circle. Back to a time of upheaval, revolution and epochal events that marked the late 1700s. France will have a Pluto Return when Pluto moves into Aquarius, a reminder of the 10 blood-stained years of terror that uprooted ancient institutions and shaped a new nation by the collective will of the people.
The first Industrial Revolution was under way as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Captain Cook and William Bligh searched for new consumables in southern lands as Pluto’s passage through Aquarius marked the beginning of the climate crisis that now threatens our survival as a species.
We face into the collective uncertainty of a second wave of COVID-19 in some countries, and a global economic depression, as the Pluto/Saturn/Jupiter conjunction square Eris of 2020 casts a long shadow over our lives.
In America, the intensity of the aftershock will reverberate for years to come as Saturn transits the American South Node (karma) awakening the ghosts from the past. Jupiter magnifies the need for social reform as it conjoins the Moon (the people) in the American birth chart, followed by a solidifying transit of Saturn in 2022 and a Chiron Return in 2025 which may bring a deep healing, a new sense of belonging and rooting in this Land of the Brave.
The coming years will reveal inconvenient truths and painful consequences for past actions.
Pluto’s Return in the birth chart of America symbolises the end of a status quo that has excluded so many for so long. Thomas Jefferson, who owned more than six hundred slaves wrote, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
The death rattle of the old order is amplified by political rhetoric and resistance to change …. law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual, wrote Thomas Jefferson with supreme irony.
America’s Pluto Return heralds a new epoch, a new dream. For America. For us all.
For more information about Pluto’s transit through your own birth chart, please email: Ingrid@trueheartwork.com for a personal consultation.