The 2020’s: Part 4: USA Pluto Return

For the fourth installment ofThe 2020s: Beginnings and Endings series, we will look at the Pluto Return of the United States Pluto. Click on the links that are just below this sentence to navigate around the series.

Introduction: The 2020s: A Decade of Endings and Beginnings

The 2020s: Part 1: Character of a Crisis

The 2020s: Part 2: Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions in Air Signs

The 2020s: Part 3: Saturn-Pluto Conjunction 

The 2020s: Part 4: USA Pluto Return

The 2020s: Part 5: Cyclical History, 4th Turning, Uranus in Gemini

The 2020s: Part 6: Mars Jupiter, and Saturn Conjunction

The 2020s: Part 7: Conclusions

 

United States Pluto Return

The United States is currently going through its Pluto return and will continue to feel the effects of it for the rest of the decade. A Pluto return is when the planet Pluto returns to a specific degree in the zodiac for a given time. Pluto takes around 240 years to complete its return, which is much longer than other planets and so usually the concept is applied to longer-lived phenomena such as historical nations. Pluto was only discovered in 1930, and its use as a tool to understand countries, nation states, empires, kingdoms, or other political bodies is relatively new and uncharted. To examine a political body such as a nation state, an astrologer has to decide upon a key event that can be associated with the birth of a country, such as the creation of a constitution or the declaration of nationhood. Most people agree that the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 was a seminal event in the history of the United States. On that day in 1776, the planet Pluto was at 27 degrees Capricorn in the tropical zodiac. The most commonly cited chart for the United States founding is the Sibley chart, which has the signing of the Declaration of Independence at 5:10 PM July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Pluto entered Capricorn on  January 27th 2008 and became exact to the 1776 Sibley chart on February 20, 2022,  at 27′ 33” degrees of Capricorn. It then entered Aquarius on March 23, 2023. Currently, its at 27 degrees Capricorn and will re-enter Aquarius on January 21, 2024. It will retrograde one last time into Capricorn on September 2, 2024 and then will enter Aquarius for good on December 7, 2024. It will have a 5 degree orb from 27 degrees Capricorn on April 12, 2024, an 8 degrees orb on February 11, 2026 at 4 degrees Aquarius,  and it will reach a 15 degree orb on April 27, 2030, at 12 degrees Aquarius.

There are some thoughts on the span of time to judge when looking at a Pluto return. Writing for the Mountain Astrologer in 2019, Ray Grasse explains that the Pluto return should be viewed as a roughly 20 year period before events really settle into a concrete form.⁵ The orb used to understand the Pluto return is an important factor as well. A traditional astrologer might use a 3 degree orb, and a modern astrologer might use a 6 degree or 8 degree orb. Tarnas used a 15 degree orb when analyzing the planets in his book Cosmos and Psyche. Sign boundaries would be used by traditional and modern astrologers but Tarnas didn’t use them. The fact that his book has compelling arguments for historical events mirroring the planets seems to be an argument in favor of ignoring sign boundaries.

A Pluto return has general characteristics. These include instability, leadership crisis, civil war, revolution, reform, and collapse. These phenomena are largely centered on the breakdown and erosion of the fundamental institutions of a political body, such as that of the United States. The malaise can extend to the political, cultural, and economic spheres.

Different historical periods can be looked at from the perspective of the Pluto return,. When it is used to analyze historical periods, the Pluto return usually has a combination of civil strife and attempts at reform as a feature. Generally, I’ve noticed a pattern while looking briefly at dynasties and kingdoms of the ancient Near East in the first millenium BCE and first millenium CE. Some of these political bodies include the political territories of the Diadochi, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the Parthians, and the Sassanids amongst others. Usually, there are two cases when looking for a roughly 240 year period from the inception of a dynasty to major changes. There are nations that go through one Pluto return and then collapse. Then there are other nations that go through a few Pluto returns and eventually fall apart. Of the first group, there are ancient states that didn’t even make it to the Pluto return, or fell apart not long after.  An example of the first is the Kingdom of Epirus, while some examples of the second are the Parthians, Seleucids, and Ptolemies. As for the second group of nations that survived a roughly 240 year period, there are the Sassanids and the Romans. The Roman republic had at least three Pluto returns. The Roman empire lasted long enough for two Pluto returns. Its largest reforms took place after the first Pluto return, when Diocletian instituted the tetrarchy to combat the Roman Empire’s problematic leadership. Likewise, the Sassanids survived one Pluto return. Generally, political bodies that survived a Pluto return created major reforms to address previous problems and changed the structure of their political systems.

The Pluto return, according to the views of many astrologers, 1 will be a major source of change to the United States. It is related to the nation’s finances or may be in more traditional forms like a revolution, a collapse of the political system, and the creation of a new order. If it is related to the nation’s economy, it could be a monetary crisis, such as an end to the US dollar’s status as the reserve currency. Other options are a stock market crash, a financial crisis, or a major crash of the financial system. The reason the Pluto return is connected to economics is largely due to the Sibley chart and the placement of Pluto in the 2nd house, the place of wealth, money, and belongings. Historian and astrologer Richard Tarnas believes it is about death and rebirth. Whatever happens, the Pluto return of the modern world’s hegemon should have a global impact.