I have been seeing signs from this side of the pond in the UK in the past few weeks that the wonderful optimistic feeling that has always characterized the prevailing attitude in the United States is crumbling, the belief of the great American dream is being openly questioned. Years ago a website called endoftheamericandream.com would never have existed, but it does now. America is suffering on the back of one of the nastiest and vicious economic downturns in it's history, Americans are war weary and fed up of their boys and girls flying off to the Middle East and not returning home, Americans see gas prices rising, see once great companies failing, see poverty rife and hope drifting away. More than anything, the days of being able to get to great heights from a humble background are long gone. To make money, you have to have money or be born into it. To get into power, you have to have raise millions and millions to even get your voice heard. What's all this got to do with Astrology? A lot.
The US was declared independent in July 1776 and right now the planet Pluto is starting to oppose for the first ever time in US history the position of the US Sun, the life-force and energy of the nation. The day of independence is the 4th July although I have seen a chart from Astrologer Peter Novak (that really does work) that sets the agreement for the independence on the 2nd July 1776. Whichever chart you use, the US Sun sits between 11 and 13 degrees Cancer. At this minute, Pluto is residing at 11 degrees Capricorn in the sign opposite and slowly creeping forward. Pluto has an orbit around the Sun of 248 years and so it hasn't quite completed a full circuit since the US was formed. This opposition to the US Sun is the last major astrological aspect that Pluto will make against the US chart before it returns to it's original degree point of 27 degrees Capricorn, the position it was in when the United States was created. This then is a critical time.
Pluto may be the slowest planet circling our solar system, but it is by far the most powerful. Pluto is a planet of regeneration, it works by stealth slowly destroying the fabric of what we know and hold dear to us, pitting powerful forces against us and also empowering us to make the changes we all need to further ourselves. Without Pluto the world we live in would be a sterile, boring place. Pluto is profound change, it is intrigue, mystery, control, sex, sharing, secret, jealousy, life and death, Pluto is terrifying and fun all in one tiny power packed lump of rock circling our Sun.
Pluto in opposition pits huge undeniable forces against our very being. We are being controlled, tested, manipulated. How do we react? Do we fight the change, do we try to stand up to the threat that is opposite us. The problem is that Pluto is undermining us, countering our every move, it has all the answers, you are facing your own mortality. You cannot win ever when Pluto comes calling, eventually you have to submit. It is asking you to change and you will change or die. You can be dragged kicking and screaming, locked away for years on end until you accede to Pluto's will, or you can be more flexible and allow things to go the way Pluto wishes. Once you allow Pluto to have it's way, there is no going back, no return to the past, things will never be the same again, but more often than not the changes that come are for our own benefit. What you sow you reap and if your intentions have been right, then even the most difficult Pluto transit will send you in the correct direction, one that will eventually benefit you. If you have not been doing the right thing or ignoring the warnings, then a Pluto transit can make things incredibly tough in the future and picking up the pieces that Pluto the wrecking ball of the universe destroys all around you will be a long, slow and incredibly tortuous process.
This is what is happening now to the United States. All of us will be touched by Pluto at some point, either through a conjunction, sextile, square, trine, inconjunct or opposition to our Sun. When that moment comes we move on. It's a right of passage and a time when we learn profound lessons. We learn that there is a greater force out there that is controlling our destiny. The opposition is one of the most difficult of all the aspects as we face the full might and power of Pluto directly working against our wishes. The US is now faced in my estimation by the biggest threats that it has faced in it's entire history, and the US will either fight on, or submit and change. US history says that the country will try to take on any threat and will expect victory, but this is one battle that cannot be won.
That may sound alarming but it a cold hard assessment of what to expect as this opposition arrives. I am not going to sugar-coat the truth, no I look at things in a realistic manner from a detached perspective. The US has tried to play power games in the world for it's own interests in the past few decades, controlling the politics in the Middle East and in other parts of the world so that it could get it's hands on the oil and resources (sometimes economic, sometimes material but sometimes even human) it needs for it's economy to function. Ignoring the debt crisis that has been building and building for years on end, meaning that it owes trillions of dollars and having no possible way of paying it's dues. Debt, power, control, human slavery, manipulation and underground resources are all ruled by Pluto and now chickens will come home to roost as Pluto holds judgement on the United States and how it has gone about it's business and it's handling of these issues since it's inception. The threat of the Islamic State is I think going to test the US much more than anyone imagines. Years of mismanagement, control and contempt for the way that the Middle East is governed in relation to the resources that it possesses and the traditions of the region has lead to this moment when a force backed by huge finance and sheer hatred for Western values is rapidly taking hold. Take the Taliban and Al Qaeda and times it by 100, and that is what I feel you have pitted against America and her allies. It's now time to pay some big karmic debts, and I feel that the most powerful nation on earth will have to pay a lot of them.
Remember, I live in a country, the United Kingdom that once ruled a quarter of the globe. That crown has now slipped, the British empire is no more and we are now even struggling to keep our own country together. The UK's natal Sun is at 10 degrees Capricorn (created 1st Jan 1801), we have just experienced the Pluto conjunction and we have just been through the worst depression in our own history. This is similar in nature to what is going to face the US, and soon. What goes up must come down, nothing lasts forever. The Egyptians, the Roman Empire, the Greeks, the Ottomans, the British, all those examples of great ages that imploded. Is the American domination of the globe failing, has America bitten off more than it can chew, is the dream coming to an end? In 1922, Pluto opposed the UK Sun from the sign of Cancer. At that point the British empire was at it's greatest extent and British values encircled the globe. It has been shrinking ever since.
The Pluto opposition to the US Sun is going to last for a couple of years and I feel that the structure of the US is going to be severely affected. More than anything, the change may well be internal, from within, from the people itself and their own attitudes. Yes, American attitudes are changing, realism is setting in, there is fear and the United States through this difficult aspect will be slowly maturing. Until you have been through tough times, you feel that anything is possible, dreams can be realised; this is the innocence of youth speaking. In relative terms the US is still a young nation, and that more sceptical, realistic view on life only comes when you suffer and make mistakes, and then have to pay for them. You only learn about life and gain wisdom when you have been around the block a couple of times, and Pluto on the US chart is only now close to finishing it's first cycle.
Is the American dream ending? In once sense I think yes it is. History combined with Astrology tells me that the golden age for the United States is over. Other nations like China and India stand in the wings waiting to take over the baton. There is a shift of emphasis, a changing of the guard in the global balance of power. The US is already looking far more inwards and retrospective and it was only dragged into the conflict currently occurring in the Middle East kicking and screaming, fearing the worst after the horse had bolted out of the stable door. This is not the confident pro-active America that use to nip dissent in the bud before it got too entrenched. That's the way it used to be but you can feel that priorities have shifted, and the world's policeman has more pressing and urgent problems closer to home.
No, this is a reluctant war the Obama administration is entering into because he knows that it is one that will only stir up yet more anti-Western sentiment. Obama also knows that there is unrest at home about America's involvement. I suggest his main concerns are domestic ones as people are hurting still, the divide between rich and poor is widening exponentially and the very premise of the United States that anyone can make it big is for many is now just a pipe dream. The fact is that reality is now kicking in, America is waking up, it is maturing, becoming more sceptical and worldly wise. Pluto the voice of ultimate truth is returning back to whence it came, and because of this the land of the free and the home of the brave is changing forever more...
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