We’ve talked about the implications of the Pluto in Capricorn era since 2008, when it began by gutting our economy and altering our cultural landscape. The important piece to remember between now and the early 2020s is that Pluto, planet of total transformation, is moving through a constellatory space it hasn’t occupied since the 1770s. That’s right: we are now revisiting themes, emotions, and challenges reminiscent of the American Revolution. Unless you’re a history buff, you may not know that the original revolution was eerily similar to what we’re going through at this moment, down to the roots. According Gordon S. Wood, a professor at Brown University, it was the economy, stupid. Adding astrological intrigue is the fact that it wasn’t just the economy, but SPECIFICALLY A HOUSING BUBBLE that made the American Revolution unfold the way that it did.
From a recent piece in the New York Times:
For the colonists, as for us, first came the boom. During the height of the French and Indian War, which lasted from 1754 until 1763, money flooded into the colonies, especially New York, where the British Army was headquartered. At the same time, the New York Legislature issued large numbers of bills of credit.
All that cash sloshing around resulted in lavish displays of wealth — notably by British officers, whose opulent living was emulated by the locals, especially in New York.
Housing prices soared during the war. But when credit tightened afterward — thanks in no small part to a prohibition on the issuance of paper money by the colonies under the Currency Act of 1764 — real estate owners who could not pay their debts lost their land.
Pluto lives in the second house of the natal chart of the USA — the house ruling money, income, and material possessions. Our obsession with stuff was written into the DNA of our country. But Pluto is now taking us to task for overvaluing what we own, and not recognizing how much we have in our hearts and minds. It started with the obscene materialism of banks and corporations and then moved into our homes, forcing tens of thousands into foreclosure. We can’t know what comes next, but we do know that it’s time to get serious about what we value, or Pluto will force a reckoning. In the next fifteen years, denial is just another word for disaster.
Happy Birthday, America. It seems that bootstraps are the new black.
