The U.S. Pluto Return

[Jim Eshelman]

Pluto doesn't complete its first orbit of the sun since July 4, 1776 until next year (though it moves into a 1° orb for the first time in March of this year). Tropical mundane astrologers have been talking about it for a while - they think it's already happened - and I'm in an online discussion with a respected colleague who thinks these are general phases, not locked to specific points in time or pinpoint timing, but much more general.

I decided to test whether EXACT Pluto-Pluto aspects have produced exacting timing of major events - and what those events might be - for earlier square and opposition transits. Here are the dates Pluto has squared or opposed its longitude on 7/4/1776. I will give about a month orb on the date and see what I find.

SQUARE: Jun 16 1849, Sep 10 1849, Apr 28 1850, Nov 5 1850, Mar 17 1851
OPPOSITION: Sep 22 1937, Dec 9 1937, Jul 28 1938, Feb 15 1939, Jun 6 1939
SQUARE: Nov 17 1983, May 1 1984, Sep 12 1984

For the first square (1849-51), nothing concrete other than the founding of several important cities all at once, and the St. Louis Fire that nearly burned down the whole city.

At the opposition, nothing specific.

!983 Oct 23 - Beirut barracks bombing
1983 Oct 25 - US invasion of Grenada
1983 Oct 25 - Microsoft Word (under a different name) was released in the U.S.
1983 Nov 7 - U.S. Senate - a bomb explodes intending to kill Republican Senators (nobody is hurt)
1984 Aug 30 to Sep 5 - Maiden voyage of space shuttle Discovery.

I don't know that any of these is decisive, especially since most concentrated on the first pass and seen disconnected from anything else. That seems too localized in time.

What I most noticed, then, is either NOTHING happening, or the U.S. being unusually withdrawn and out of the larger picture - not the place the news was getting made.

I don't think this amounts to much.

[Veronica]

Can you easily list in the past when Pluto had been at 5°Capricorn?
I'm thinking like the last 9 times? I'd ideally I'd like to see the dates it was at 5° Capricorn for an entire 25,000 yrs precession cycle. I'd also like to know where Pluto was in its orbital path in relation to the Sun at this degree, is it closest to the sun or farthest or something between?

[Jim Eshelman]

I can do this when I get to work, but... why 5° Cap? What's the distinction?

And to get exactly what you want, do you mean the range 5°00 to 6°00 Cap, or one degree either side of 5°00, or the exact moment 5°00?

I can look up Pluto's perihelion later, but I think its closest pass is in Libra.

[Jim Eshelman]

On the way to work, had time to look up: Pluto last reached perihelion September 5, 1989. It's heliocentric longitude 20°05' Libra (very close to its geocentric longitude 18°20' Libra) is where it would be closest to Sun (with only tiny differences) every two and a half centuries. (It's next aphelion - farthest distance from Sun - will be in February 2114 at - predictably - 20° Aries.)

[Veronica]

5° Capricorn is where Pluto was in 1776.
1528
1280
1030
782
534
286
38
I believe those are the dates for the prior returns.
I'd like to look at the dates past CE as well, not confident about my math but I came up with...
-210
-458
-706
-954

Me being me, I see the natal chart of the USA as a chart for the land itself and all its lifeforms not just humans,

I dont know what the real significanceof Pluto being at 5° Capricorn. That's why I wanted to look at what had happened in the past when it was there..

[Jim Eshelman]

Here are all the dates Pluto was at exactly 5°00' Capricorn (geocentric) in the last 2,000 years.

Feb 2 0043
Jun 12 0043
Dec 10 0043
Feb 16 0290
May 29 0290
Dec 21 0290
Aug 23 0291
Oct 14 0291
Mar 29 0537
Apr 17 0537
Jul 23 0538
Nov 14 0538
Feb 1 0785
Jun 23 0785
Mar 16 1032
May 7 1032
Aug 1 1033
Nov 11 1033
Feb 11 1280
Jun 18 1280
Dec 18 1280
Jan 25 1528 OS
Apr 6 1775
May 19 1775
Nov 29 1776
Mar 26 2023
Jun 7 2023
Jan 23 2024
Aug 28 2024
Nov 24 2024

[Jim Eshelman]

5° Capricorn is where Pluto was in 1776.

Yes, pn July 4, it was 5°56' Capricorn. You estimated the last couple exactly right, and the others close,

I'd like to look at the dates past CE as well, not confident about my math but I came up with...

I'll add these to the list below for another thousand years. It would be very fast to calculate Pluto's transit to U.S. natal Pluto, but to do it's passage of a specific longitude is more difficult (requires doing two layers of reports then editing to remove junk data). I'll see if I can get to it but have many visitors hitting the office within the hour.

[mikestar13]

Had a thought about longer term cycles on reading this. The US if it survives will have its Eris return in 2338 less than three decades before the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. What brings a tear to my eye is the profound fear that the nation won't survive that long. There are relatively few nations that do. England got its Eris return (to the 1066 chart) in 1625 and they are still here. 1625 marked the ascent of Charles I to the throne, definitely the commencement of a period of chaos. I expect Charles III will do a lot better than his namesake--he'd have to work awfully hard to do worse.

[Veronica]

It has brought tears to my eyes my whole life thinking that no nation, no life at all will exist much longer.
I always felt like we were killing our mom.

[Jim Eshelman]

Me too; but my brain then led me in a different direction. When young, I wasn't so keenly aware (nor was anybody) that we were killing the planet, but I was totally, deeply convinced that we needed to be putting all of our attention on getting away from the planet - a pathway of concentrating into cities as maximum ease and economy of providing everything people needed in preparation for migration off Earth into space.

It has just always seemed natural to me that we should be fully born from, delivered from, and eventually leave the Earth-womb behind. At some point, I realized that wasn't going to happen in my lifetime, and it was briefly disappointing. I still see it as the only longterm salvation for humanity.

[Veronica]

What an interesting thought.
What I have come to understand about myself and my ideas and perspectives and perceptions, is that I am usually always wrong about everything, or more so that my thoughts and feelings are limited, severely and that there are millions of other points of view that each have truth in them and that my experience is one small piece of it all, .

[SteveS]

I have now come to the belief that this astrologer (Doug Kellogg) may be on to something important as to what is happening to the USA politically where he writes about USA first Pluto Return:

Pluto convinces people to see reality on left-right spectrum. These terms are associated with the planets Jupiter (left) and Saturn (right)….

It scares me but I am old and it is not going to matter much longer for me. I just want to spend as much time as I have left-- out in raw Nature feeling its spirit.

I also believe it possible he is onto something else astrologically important mundanely that I am still pondering, which can be found at this link:

https://500yearparty.com/

Only the first section—Part 11.