Pluto Reclassified: New Rules, Political Hijinx, and Archetypes

The hot topic now in the astrology world is the reclassification of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.

Before we can definitively reinterpret what this means astrologically, we will just have to wait and see whether this decision will stand because it has some powerful opposition within the astronomical community.

As Paul Rincon, science reporter for the BBC News, reported shortly after the August 24 decision to reclassify Pluto in a sweeping reordering of celestial bodies at the International Astronimical Union's (IAU) 10-day meeting in Prague, the chair of the committee, Dr. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, "implied that the vote had effectively been 'hijacked.'"

"I have nothing but ridicule for the decision," said Stern.

Stern is a formidable critic of this decision, since he is in charge of the NASA New Horizon's One-Way Mission to Pluto and the Keiper Belt, launched this January and scheduled to arrive at Pluto in 2015.

"It's an awful decision," he said, "It's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review for two reasons. Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like they tend to live in groups."

"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent. One of the three criteria for planethood states that a planet must have 'cleared the neighborhood around it's orbit.' If Neptune had cleared its zone, Pluto wouldn't be there."

My instincts as a news reporter are telling me the hounds may be running in the wrong direction as we rush to judgement, just to be the first with the story.

A little more skepticism about what is really happening here just might be in order.

It all reminds me of the way the press stepped in immediately, under the sway of conservative think-tank operatives, and determined that W had won the last two presidential elections, which were the result of flat-out cheating: fixed voting machines, stopping vote counts, back-room bullying and misuse of the courts of law. The "political analysts" came out and declared the steal a done deal and everything had to be done "right now," before it was too late for the inauguration.

No time to check the facts or sort out the issues. Sort of like a teenage Lothario pressuring a virgin to prove her love, "right now," before it's too late.

The New World Order was instantly inaugurated -- twice -- before we started to wake up to the fact we had been drugged and raped.

The election scams were easily effected by a compliant press running along in the herd mode without the slightest bit of backbone or journalistic integrity, which admittedly is not easy to come by when you are on the payroll of the subverters of democracy.

After you've been a news reporter for a while, you get to recognize the downwind scent of the sled dogs, and I can tell you -- it is distinctly Plutonian.

So the reporter in me smells a rat and says, "Watch out, this whole thing could spin around and make us look like a bunch of idiots for rushing to judgement."

But the astrologer in me sees an archetypal paradigm for these times at work in the submerging and hiding of basic instincts under the smokescreen of religious beliefs and ideology.

Pluto is now to be reclassified as a Trans-Neptunian Object of the newly discovered Kuiper Belt and called a dwarf planet.

So now we will subsume our animal instincts, the Lizard Brain, under the heading of beliefs, ideals and religion. This is starting to make sense, isn't it?

As in Holy War?

But really folks, wasn't it somehow always like this? Weren't these unconscious entrances and exits into corporality always classifed under the rubric of "The Mysteries," which in classical times was another way of refering to religion, that nebulous foggy tie that makes us believe we are all tied up together, like a bundle of muscles or fascia, prototype for the term fascist? Everybody likes to belong: singly we are weak; tied together we are strong?

We are living in the age of the inside-job: the manufacture of political crises and the looting of the governmental coffers in every government on earth as the corporations take over and manufacture all the false news they deem necessary to cover their nefarius tracks.

Ideology, or Neptune, provides the rationale for the practice of creative destruction coming now from the corporate think-tanks as governments are to be toppled in the name of religion (Neptune) and nuclear weaponry (Pluto) is used as a threat (Pluto) to cover the base instincts of predation (Pluto).

This little caper at the IAU is just another example of the trends of the times and therefore speaks to the issues of the age of the demise of democracy.

On the other hand, we do have some forward-looking or ameliorative mythological interpretations of the new "celestial bodies" in the the new rules of categorization. For example, if Pluto and Ceres, now both dwarf planets and Trans-Neptunian objects, are on a commensurate level, that would co-relate nicely with the myths concerning the Wheel of the Year and agricultural cycles of the earth. Being a (dwarf) planet would give asteroid Ceres, loosely defined as a fertility symbol, a more integrated place in our interpretations, rather than being ostracized as an asteroid, as we have her now.

Now Ceres can be a Dwarf Planet. We just need to think of some meaning for Charon, or Pluto's boatman, the third member of this dwarfie trio. Let's see, what sort of device could we get into as into as into a Handbasket to Hell? How about Politics? Already taken by Saturn? How about political lobbying? That might do very nicely for a new astrological corelation for He Who Guides Us Over the River Styx.

And now, we have the female element coming up quite strong. There is Xena, Wonderwoman and Foreigner. We could be Xenaphobic and Xenaphilic, depending upon our aspects to SuperWoman From the Other Tribe.

Sounds like the rebirth of Lilith to me. Hooray!

And then there is Sedna, the Plutonian equivalent of incest, child abuse and all that domestic-violence-victim-and- recovery-from-victimhood-stuff. Kind of like Chiron for the daugher's sexual wounding within the family of origin, a wounded-healer archetype.

Heck, this could go on and on as more of those little ice goblets are discovered by more and more powerful microscopes. It could get very crowed out there and we wouldn't have enough room on our astrological charts to include all the newcomers to our conscious awareness.

Population density could definitely get out of control.

Looked at in terms of manageable proportions, maybe this Trans-Neptunian Object idea is a good idea for classification.

So, if this thing sticks, and I kind of hope it doesn't because Dr. Alan Stern makes a lot of sense in his opposing comments -- and I hope the thing will be revisited and a real, democratic vote given to all the remaining 90 percent of the members of the IAU, who just happened to get gypped out of their votes because they already had gone home from the conference when this so-called consensus vote was taken at the last minute.

Yes, I know, that's how the consensus process works: just wear away the patience of all those who have the least to gain, so they leave in exasperation at the niggling, and the most devoted and intense few will get their way.

Somehow it doesn't seem very democratic to me, but in the end, all things can come to their opposites if taken to extremes and the truth of the matters can easily be presented in terms of their opposites.

Neptune and Pluto are working in tandem, here again.

But just in case my wishes don't come true and this IAU decision sticks, these were my two cents worth, humbly offered in changing times.