Mundane Astrology...Saturn Pluto Conjunction—An Approximate 33 Year Cycle
The Saturn Pluto conjunction influence can often bring about the de-crystallization of structures of government, statehood, laws, customs, etc. This cycle occurs fifteen times during the five hundred year Neptune Pluto cycle and three times in every century.
The average Saturn Pluto conjunction cycle lasts about thirty-three years. I use the word “about” because both planets have rather eccentric orbits. Pluto’s is 0.248, Saturn’s is 0.056, compared to the Earth at 0.017. In the 1850’sand 1860’s, Pluto moved relative to the Earth at a much slower speed than it did in the 1980’s, when it was at perihelion, or closest to the Sun. Thus, the length of time that the two planets take to travel (measured in longitude) from conjunction to conjunction will vary. Also, if Saturn is in its retrograde phase at the time of the conjunction, as it was for example during the 1982/83conjunction, as much as two years can be added to the cycle.
The dynamic impact point of this cycle can last for about two months. This point in the 1982/83conjunction occurred at 270and 280Libra, squaring the U.S. 1776Pluto. A severe economic recession was occurring in America at that time.
When Saturn and Pluto travel together, their influence can often work so as to bring about the catabolic destruction of all structures of government, statehood, and styles and customs . The destruction is then be followed by a rebirth into the new.
These two planets are karmic in nature. In easily identifiable ways, they seek to balance unjust conditions, circumstances, and situations. Some examples:
World War One and the Saturn Pluto Conjunction
In August, 1914, when the First World War began, Pluto and Saturn were in their New phase, conjunct at around 0° Cancer. Saturn activated the Neptune moving 30° ahead of Pluto , which as the first, or opening, Crescent phase of PL/NE, was the aspect that activated this war. World War I destroyed the old Europe. It destroyed dynasties and class structures and models of government that had lasted for centuries.
Saturn Pluto Cycle in World War Two
On September 1, 1939, Adolph Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. Many historians group World Wars I & II as part of the same process, in that World War II was the conclusion of what began in August 1914. Some historians call them the German Wars. At that time, at the beginning of the Second World War, in the Saturn Pluto cycle, Pluto was located at 0° Leo, and Saturn was at 0° Taurus. They were making the closing square, which implies, symbolically, an end of something. When this synod is in an exact aspect, its energies are dangerous and karmically volatile. It was out of World War II, and as a reaction against the Nazi nuclear research, that the Americans developed the atomic bomb.
Historically, the Saturn/Pluto synod influence acts to purify structures of government. This influence seeks to eliminate the old and the worn-out; it eradicates evil when nothing else can. On the day the Second World War began, Saturn/Pluto was in a dialogue with Adolph Hitler’s natal Sun, where Saturn conjoined it and Pluto squared it. The influence of this synod went on year after year to destroy him. Step by step, his power was stripped away, his provinces and conquered nations lost, his armies captured and destroyed, until finally he ended his days in an underground bunker/cave.
This war began on the third quarter synodic square, whose influence works differently from that of the conjunction or first quarter square. That it was a third quarter Saturn/Pluto war might imply some ancient karmic problem, a very ancient evil, whose origin traces deep into prehistory. This war might have been a mass cleansing. At least 65 million people were killed in that war. This figure denominates the greatest number of people ever killed in a war.
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
The best example of a historical Saturn/Pluto conjunction, or the New phase of this synod, is that found in the Constitutional chart of the U.S.A.
This synod sits on the ascendant of the chart. In the astrology of history the first house represents the people of a nation. So this synod placed here indicates the will of the people.
This synod also defines the nature of the originators and framers of this document, the Founding Fathers. Since the Founders were the chosen representatives of the people, this
document represents the will of the American people. Any nation that has a Saturn/Pluto conjunction, like Israel, would have natural friendship and sympathy with the American people. The founding chart for Israel also comes with the SaturnPluto conjunction.
This synod addresses any problems related to the exercise of political power. When a people reach a certain high level of self-rule, they must face the dilemma of faction, which I have discussed elsewhere.
Saturn/Pluto in its New phase is the Constitutional chart’s single most powerful focus. It rests on the ascendant—this implies that the American people have a past of dealing with the problem of faction, and points possibly to the karma of bondage and slavery. This chart also promises that this people will one day become wealthy (Pluto), but that the wealth will derive from hard work (Saturn).
Both planets are located together in astrologic Aquarius, possibly demonstrating the power of the legislative branch of government, implying that it may be just a little more powerful than the other two branches. The Congress has always had the power of the purse, the control over government spending.
I am assigning this synod to the U.S. Congress.
Since astrology is in many ways an imprecise art, in examining this chart, one would also have to define Uranus and the Moon as secondary indicators of the U.S. Congress.
In any historical chart the Sun represents the executive power, whether it be king or emperor, tyrant or dictator, president or prime minister. In the Constitutional chart, the Sun, Venus, and Mercury are located in a thirteen degree span in late astrological Virgo. The Saturn half of the first house synod exactly inconjuncts the Sun; while the Pluto half is loosely inconjunct Mercury and Venus, but in a partile inconjunction to their mid-point.
The inconjunct or quincunx is traditionally in astrology an aspect of separation. In historical astrology, this quincunx in the Constitutional chart manifests as a “separation of powers”. In our example, the inconjunct from the synod to the Sun/Mercury/Venus grouping, it is the separation between the legislative and the executive.
The judicial branch of government, represented by the Jupiter/South Node/Mars conjunction in the Fifth House, has a more subtle connection with the synod. Saturn trines Jupiter, implying that on some levels the legislative works in harmony with the courts, helpful because the legislative branch passes the laws. But Pluto makes the trioctile, another separation aspect, to the Mars/South Node, thus creating a separation between these two governmental powers. The South Node is often an indication of past experiences, past karmas. That Mars sits on the line of the nodes shows that “the violence and mischief of faction” was a major concern to the framers of the Constitution.
Buried in the trioctile (135°) energy of Pluto to Mars is the prohibition against Bills of Attainder. These Bills, which allowed legislative bodies to try and condemn to punishment individuals and other factions, are one of the more virulent misuses of legislative power found in the history of the rise and fall of republics.
The Jupiter/South Node/Mars in the 5th house has to do with legal guarantees of the right of the individual to pursue creative happiness.
The exact square of Jupiter to the Sun is a further demonstration of the separation of powers between the executive and the judicial. The Founding Fathers debated long and seriously at the Philadelphia Convention over the problem of judges remaining independent and unbiased. The control of the judge by the emperor, by the consul, the tyrant, by the king or queen, was a form of corruption never really solved in ancient Greece or Rome. Not even the Emperor Julian was able to work this out. Yet Madison, Washington and others did establish a free and independent judiciary, one that has remained intact for over two hundred years.
In Federalist 10 Madison, explaining a technique to keep judges honest, wrote that “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause”, another demonstration of the power of that 5th house grouping.
This chart’s Mercury disposits its Jupiter. That configuration represents the power given by the Constitution to the President to appoint judges, including Justices to the Supreme Court. Yet Jupiter and the Sun are square, indicating a judiciary that is often quite independent of and even in conflict with the executive. Once justices are appointed, they follow independent paths, ones quite different from the policies of the president who appointed them, just as Madison intended. President Eisenhower expressed a bitter disappointment in the performance of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a man Eisenhower himself had selected. During the Watergate scandal in the early 1970’s in America, President Nixon received no assistance whatsoever from the Chief Justice that he had appointed. In a decision of the Court, rendered on July 24, 1974, the president was ordered to turn over all tapes and documents related to the Watergate break-in. By August he resigned.
Franklin Roosevelt, one of the most powerful presidents in American history, sought to reduce–some thought destroy–the power of the Supreme Court. His efforts were thwarted by the Congress, but really by the Constitution, all of which can be seen in the action of Jupiter square Sun in this chart.
While this synod gives the American Congress an almost measureless power, sometimes Saturn/Pluto influence will reverse itself and turn on this legislative body. The legislative branch of government represents the American collective mind, including all its good and bad qualities. In this branch of government are found the very best legal and philosophical minds along with the most corrupt politicians. For two centuries Congress has been riddled with scandals and corruption. On synodic squares, oppositions and conjunctions this branch of government has its hubris completely stripped away and is often completely humbled. The McCarthy phenomenon, a religious, anti-communist crusade in the late Nineteen-Forties and early Fifties of the 20th Century, grew out of the legislative branch of government. It destroyed the careers and the lives of many prominent Americans. Then it destroyed itself.
Madison and the Federalist Papers
As Pluto moved to the opposition of the Saturn part of this synod, that movement recoiled in on itself, reversed its energy, backfired. Those who were a part of this crusade tended to lose their own careers, and many of them fell into total obscurity. Senator McCarthy drank himself to death. The power of the legislative to do damage to the individual was checked and limited for nearly fifteen years. Madison believed that “In republican government the legislative authority, necessarily, predominates.“ He also had a deep mistrust of the legislative process:
One observation however I must be permitted, to add, on this subject [the legislative], as claiming in my judgment a very serious attention. It is, that in all legislative assemblies, the greater the number composing them may be, the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings. In the first place, the more numerous any assembly may be, of whatever characters composed, the greater is known to be the ascendancy of passion over reason. In the next place, the larger the number, the greater will be the proportion of members of limited information and of weak capacities. Now it is precisely on characters of this description that the eloquence and address of the few are known to act with all their force. In the antient [ancient] republics, where the whole body of the people assembled in person, a single orator, or an artful statesman, was generally seen to rule with as compleat a sway, as if a scepter had been placed in his single hands. On the same principle the more multitudinous a representative assembly may be rendered, the more it will partake of the infirmities incident to the collective meetings of the people. Ignorance will be the dupe of cunning; and passion the slave of sophistry and declamation. The people can never err more than in supposing that by multiplying their representatives, beyond a certain limit, they strengthen the barrier against the government of a few. Experience will forever admonish them that on the contrary, after securing a sufficient number for the purposes of safety, of local information, and of diffusive sympathy for the whole society, they will counteract their own views by every addition to their representatives. The countenance of the government will become more democratic; but the soul that animates it will be more oligarchic. The machine will be enlarged, but the fewer and often, the more secret will be the springs by which its motions are directed.
[from Madison, Jay, Hamilton, the Federalist Papers, Bantam Books, 1982, pp 297-298]
Consequently, the power to elect congressmen was placed in the hands of the populace, who were given the power and opportunity to throw their elected representatives out of office every two years.
As stated in the chapter on Pluto, faction, political parties, divisions, groups are necessary, but at the same time certain controls must be placed on them. The Sun, the heart of any political chart, sits in the 8th house of the Constitutional chart. This allows only one faction to take control at a time. Power is then passed on to a different faction, whether it be the Democrats or Republicans or Whigs or Federalists. This faction will have their power moderated and checked by that 1st house synod, the Congress, and also by that Jupiter, node, Mars in the 5th.
At certain times this tri-partite system of government has collapsed. This occurred when the laws–what this chart represents–were unable to control “the violence … of faction”.
In the 1960’s, when a Uranus/Pluto synod hovered about the Sun of the Constitutional chart, its dynamic impact point never touched the Sun. It did touch its Venus, and civil rights legislation (Venus rules laws) was then passed by Congress, including the Voting Rights Act (August 6th, 1965). It also inconjuncted that Pluto/Saturn synod in the first house of the Constitutional chart. During this period strife existed at home, in the form of assassinations of popular public figures, race riots, student unrest, strange cultural transformations, and rage over an unpopular war in Vietnam. This synod was going back and forth for five years, exact at 16° thru 20° Virgo, often exactly inconjunct one or another of the planets making up the Saturn/Pluto synod. The Sixties, as we now call it, was one of the high stress points in American history.
If enough pressure by a synod were ever brought to bear on this point, the nation could find itself involved in an even worse civil war than the last one. As with the American Civil War, this synod might reveal structural flaws that are now only dimly perceived. America may be one of the oldest systems of government on the planet, but it can still be blown apart by the chaos of faction.
Mr. Madison himself had a Saturn/Eris/Pluto synod sitting on his ascendant. This is probably why he understood so well the problems of this newly born democracy. the Eris in this position confers on him a certain immortality; his writings on politics will be remembered as long as those of Aristotle and Cicero.
The Saturn/Pluto synod in the Constitutional chart shows the karmic lesson. If one interprets slavery or bondage as Pluto, and Saturn as the defining quality of slavery, and at the same time the karmic changer of this condition, one can see how this synod contains the seeds of a future civil war. When Pluto moved into the square of the Constitutional ascendant (April 12, 1861: PL=8° TA 36′) and of its own natal position, Fort Sumpter was fired upon, and the war began.
The Constitutional Saturn/Pluto may bring other karmic tests and crises for the future. This must wait for the analysis of future astro-historians.
Plutonian power resembles a tank of unstable nitroglycerin stored in the back of a old pick-up truck finding its way down a bumpy dirt road. It must be used with care and balance, with respect for individual human rights and liberties. Faction can function both as lifeblood of a free people and as the destroyer of liberty; it can lead a people into the deadness of bondage or into the happiness conferred by freedom. Applied with care, with consideration for the prerogative and good and free will of others, within the form-giving and ethical intent of Saturn, this synod can give birth to a high civilization.
I call this quality Plutonian light. In the 18th century, Franklin and Madison and Jefferson and several others had it, and in the 19th century Lincoln and others had it.
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Source
https://www.historicalastrology.com/planetary-synodic-cycles/saturn-pluto-conjunction/
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