Ophiuchus Tips for Astrologers ~ Pluto

Pluto, Charon, Nix and Hydra

Scientists this month announced the discovery of a fourth moon orbiting Pluto.  In a typical display of Perfect Cosmic Timing, one of my new Solar Ophiuchus friends Gloria sent me a link about it in response to my recent post on Astronomologer about trans neptunian cubewano object Quaoar and Pluto (see 50000 Quaoar ~ Singing & Dancing New Gods Into Existence).

Naturally the Comments and discussion in response to the news article were all focused on the bitterly contested decision of IAU to reclassify Pluto as a Dwarf Planet. The bottom line correctly and diplomatically stated by MSNBC Cosmic Log author Alan Boyle was this:

Although having moons is certainly cool, that doesn’t automatically qualify a celestial body to be a planet. A fair number of craggy asteroids possess a moon, or even two. The way the IAU sees it, a “planet” is a roundish celestial body that circles the sun and has “cleared the neighborhood of its orbit,” which is widely seen as a deficient definition. A “dwarf planet” is a sun-orbiting celestial body that’s big enough to crush itself into a roundish shape, but hasn’t cleared out its neighborhood. The way I see it, dwarf planets are planets, too. But I realize a lot of smart folks see it differently.

Astrology & Astronomy: Spirit and Form

Astronomy-Astrologer Galileo Galilei was placed under House Arrest by the Roman Inquisition of 1615 for supporting the Copernicus Theory of Heliocentricity

Up until the Inquisitions of the early 1600′s Astrology and Astronomy were like Chiron the Centaur, two halves of the same animal. Astronomy is the root and foundation of the celestial arts & sciences. Divination and prognostication were outgrowths of the original calendar and navigation-based uses for the celestial arts. Indeed, the separation of science and spirit hurt both partners, but Astrology was the hardest hit and left the worst off for it.

The Astronomy-Astrology partnership is not mutually exclusive. Astrology cannot function independently and still claim to have any basis in the reality of the living cosmos. As Astronomers unveil new discoveries many ancient concepts become clarified, perfected, and sometimes also proven erroneous however right they seemed to be in the beginning. The Sun, for instance, does not orbit the Earth; it’s the other way around. Many Astronomers lost their lives and their freedom for refusing to recant the newly discovered fact of Heliocentricity.  They were defending the literal, physical truth.  The Church was defending The Bible, God’s Holy Word.

How can we marvel at the wonders of the Universe being brought so close by Hubble, Chandra, and the various NASA Missions and still be so sure the underpinnings of Astrology don’t also need regular updating to keep up? Yet we continue to pick and choose which of the various scientific developments we want to embrace. And we make our decisions to pass up new concepts and discoveries based on what criteria?

I submit for your consideration that all the prophecies we have clung to about the New Age bringing Light to chase away the Darkness, all promises of saving the world, healing humanity, and finding the key to living healthy and free from the need to painfully die are for nothing if we fail to gracefully ride the waves of change, evolve and ascend.

The Pillars of Eagle Castle (Constellation Serpens) Credit & Copyright: Emanuele Colognato & Jim Wood

Aquarian Age solution components have been and continue to be placed on the table before us in a professional manner by Astronomers. Take the emergence of the so-called 13th Zodiac Constellation for instance.  Ophiuchus and Serpens are packaged in an outer wrapping of stars and deep space objects bearing such names as Snake Nebula and The Star Queen which is more often called Eagle Nebula (sheer coincidence in the context of the scorpion-serpent-eagle celestial alchemy?). Inside the wrapper, the rich metaphysical topsoil consists of history and myth vividly displaying a faultless divine physician and man of wisdom bearing in his careful grasp the Serpent of Illumined Wisdom crowned by Corona Borealis the Northern Crown. Maybe we weren’t sure about what an ophiuchus was at first or exactly who this Asclepius being was.  But research, testimony and evidence exists and a collection of it is now freely accessible to fully inform us as to the essentials. And we find that under the topsoil layer, deeper into the potting mix is buried treasure in the form of the all-but-forgotten Great Goddess, God’s other half.

Pluto, Scorpio & Letting Go of Fear and Death

Snake Nebula Constellation Ophiuchus (lower edge of photo)

This is the end of the line for the Scorpio Mission to keep us enslaved and in perpetual fear of death. We don’t have to blame anyone for anything.  It is what it is, or rather it was what it was.  But the reign of the Dark Masters is over. Let go of it. It worked from the beginning of the pre-Libra “ancient zodiac” up until the Cosmic Alarm Clock went off at Harmonic Convergence 1987. But it’s time to fully awaken now and perform our duties at the changing of the Aeons.

Many of us are re-embodied Ancient Masters of the Celestial and Alchemical Arts. Do you feel it? If we insist on defending the Ancient Zodiac by clinging to the very symbols we should be transmuting — the Scorpion of death and the Lord of an Underworld that spells “organized crime” in all of its forms to most of us — we will be demonstrating our fear and refusal of meaningful change.  If we want to Ascend we need to escape the gravitational pull of the living symbols that constrain us. It’s time to ground the final new Light Codes so the new harmonics and planetary frequencies can do their magic.

The choices couldn’t be any clearer. This is what we came here to do. Nobody said it was going to be easy.  But the Universe and the Astronomers have made it real darned simple. Picture plugging in a new computer peripheral. The message on your screen reads “Windows has detected New Hardware. Install?” Just point and click ‘Yes.’

That having been said, you know how operating system upgrades go.  The companies that write them don’t take “no thank you” for an answer. One night you shut down your computer and instead of the “Shutting Down Windows” screen you get “Windows is installing new updates…please do not turn your computer off.” If you turn the computer off, it just loads the updates in the morning when you turn it on again, so there is no escaping the inevitable. The same concept applies here. It’s too late to say “no thank you.” The incoming new morphogenetic field forms are time sensitive Galactic-Universal mandates that cannot be stopped. They come in on waves of solar plasma that bathe our planet in northern and southern lights that keep reaching farther and farther down from the poles, and on the pulsations of gamma ray bursts and the light of the stars and vibrations of the other solar system planets whose frequencies are being upgraded as well. Ophiuchus is here and that is all there is to it. Now we need to figure out how to deal with it. So sign or no sign let’s keep pace and work with it beginning now.

Responding to Changes in Pluto’s Domain

At right, the Celestial Sphere’s view of the IAU vote on Resolutions and the reclassification of Pluto on August 24, 2006 at a General Assembly held in Prague, Czech Republic. How would you interpret this?

The initial work of the IAU in carving Ophiuchus out from the Scorpio sector of the Ecliptic Plane between 1928 and 1930 simultaneously deconstructed a deleterious Zodiac form (it broke Scorpio open) and laid the foundation on which 21st Century Astrologers would later be able to rebuild (it gave Ophiuchus a house of its own).

The Astrology machine would never have, of its own volition, chosen or found a need to institute major change. Focused on housekeeping and refining of the basics and with nothing more exotic than new planets and asteroids added here and there, what would have been the point or the need?

Locked in to the old Astrology form and with no necessity-based reason to think outside the box, the question of rethinking or renovating Astrology would have been silly. Without a reason or motivation no amount of imagination would have sufficed to give even an otherwise freely willing Astrologer an adequate vision of why change was in order, what sort of change to make, or how to go about it.

And then came the Space & Computer Age.

The 1987 Harmonic Convergence gave us a clear heads-up that all existing frequency-driven forms were candidates for sweeping change. The 2-minute warning was implicit in the name of the event: Harmonic Convergence.

This is a graphic from my first Startistics web site in 1997

With the advent of computers and database programs we began to have access to all of these wonderful catalogs of celestial objects and fields of stars and the equipment with which to spit out volumes of data making it pretty hard not to be able to get some sort of vision about what is possible. The planets and stars supplied the juice. Some people began to notice there was an unexpected extra constellation walking on the Zodiac Belt. All it took was the development of graphics based computer operating systems running programs with the ability to freeze key moments in Time to be able to capture and show them to you. We didn’t have that yet even in 1987. We had the sky atlases, but not the planetarium programs. Now we do. Look. Here it is right here, the show-and-tell. Can you read this? It’s Celestial Body Language. It couldn’t be any clearer if it was written in stone.

Color lithograph of the Dendera zodiac, Landgraf Karl, La pierre zodiacale du temple de Dendérah. (Copenhagen, 1824).

For the record, I freely admit I can’t see Astrologers making the shift to Astronomology and I’m not suggesting you do. There is too much work involved and nothing ever stands still.  The stars keep wandering, the numbers change daily, it would be tough to turn out a cookie-cutter report generator because the celestial real estate parcels are uneven and there are 88 of them from pole to pole. But I will say this. Without the show-and-tell that comes out of the whole sky there would be no way to connect you with the wonders of the Universe and show you the language in which the conversations are being conducted among the elements and events of the Celestial Sphere. The key word in that last sentence is “sphere.” As the story goes, Columbus’s voyage to the New World demonstrated the Earth was not flat. And I say to you, dude, the canopy of the sky envelopes the sphere of the Earth as though it, too, were a sphere. Even the Egyptians knew this when they aligned the Great Pyramids to Orion’s Belt! The earliest Zodiac to which our Western Astrology traditions directly connect is the Zodiac on the ceiling of the Temple at Denderah. It is a rendering of the whole sky, not 12 equal divisions of the heavens with animals and things associated with them. Photo credit: Napoleon and the scientific expedition to Egypt.

I’m not going to argue for or against the decisions made by IAU.  I don’t have to. The sky map shown above speaks for itself. The resolutions were voted on and adopted and unless we want to keep shooting ourselves in the foot we will accept IAU’s Resolution with grace and start working cooperatively with Astronomers because it’s the next right thing to do.

There are spheres of thought and philosophy in which few Astronomers live, but perhaps when Astrology comes more in align with the physical cosmos and begins to work with Astronomers as brothers (as well it should) a revived sense of camaraderie and maybe even respect will begin to creep back into the relationship. We may even begin to feel like Chiron again, a two-part whole being at peace and harmony with it’s two very different but now wholly unified animal species.

Pluto, Still Lord of the Underworld

The Underworld is shrinking before our very eyes. Scorpio’s “Planetary Intelligence” Pluto has been reclassified for not following the rules all the other Planets follow. It’s up to us to keep that ball rolling.

Planet beings are just that: sentient life forms that have evolved into a higher state of consciousness. The life paths of planets are essentially governed by the same set of Universal laws we live by, including the Law of Cause & Effect or else identification and resonance between us would not be possible.  And neither would Astrology.

To the extent mythology, allegory and metaphor bring the personalities of the planets to life and give meaning to the physical effects of their cosmic cause which we experience, there is an element of poetic justice in Pluto’s having been adjusted in stature for his non-conforming behavior. Astrologers are loath to throw Pluto under the bus but Pluto’s own Zodiac Sign animal has been compelled to respond in some manner (referring again to the sky map of August 24, 2006 pictured above).  And we will tender an answer to the implied question “how so?” in the next article in this sequence.

Hades-Pluto | Roman god of wealth & the underworld, abode of the dead

From Pluto’s perspective has anything changed? Probably not, but maybe. The realities of Pluto exist on their own merits, are perfect on their own plane, and likely do not respond to Earth’s legislation. On the other hand, as we read in Alice Bailey & Djwhal Kuhl’s Esoteric Astrology, the Earth does not only receive and respond to incoming energies but produces and projects vibrations of Her own.¹ Hence, the cosmic realities can definitely be influenced by what goes on here on Earth.  If this were not so, why would this planet be of such great interest and value to so many off-planet cultures (assuming that is a true statement; you might know, but I have only read that in books and on the Internet)?

Also according to Ascended Master Djwhal Khul through Alice Bailey in Esoteric Astrology, Pluto is and always has been a non-sacred planet. Other non-sacred planets include Mars and the Earth. The idea is that planets become sacred through evolution of the planetary logos. Hence the focus on Earth, New Earth, the Earth Star and Ascension all refer to that process and we are an integral part of the spiritual journey of our most beloved Earth Mother Gaia.

It is obvious from the sky map screen capture pictured above that there is a point being made by the Living Cosmos.  It is written in the stars and can be read using the language of what Galileo called “the Starry Messenger”.² The message is written in plain Universal Body Language and it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to decode it. We can at the very least get that a meaningful event has transpired at the level of the Planetary and Celestial Sphere Logoi. And that event apparently involved:

• Pluto
• The Mind and Heart of Ophiuchus
• Serpens and the control of Serpent Power
• Quaoar
• The stinger tail stars of the Scorpion

You will not find all the available evidence of this event in Tropical or non-Astronomy-centered Astrology though you may find a piece or two.  Still, Astrology as currently practiced is not equal to the tasks to which we must be able to put our celestial art-science either now or in the future.

Astronomy-centered Astrology, you will be relieved to hear, is in fact being practiced beautifully and masterfully by December 7 Solar Ophiuchus Nick Anthony Fiorenza at Lunar Planner. I have not checked Nick’s stance on Pluto and Scorpius lately, but I trust that however he deals with it is the way his Ophiuchus Consciousness is guiding him to deliver it to us. Although I note he’s still using the Scorpio symbol between Libra and Sagittarius on his Astrology art offerings as though Ophiuchus should remain forever nonprofessional and anonymous. Be that as it may, I embrace Nick’s practice whole-heartedly and with full support notwithstanding whatever quirky Astronomy-purist perspective I may personally espouse in the context of “Astronomology.”  I will freely admit that the techniques I employ may merely represent a bridging mechanism to prove a point and get this planet off the Scorpio Death & Taxes flypaper.

As long as people and other species of Earth Life are still dropping their bodies and moving on to new ones there will be an Underworld and so from that perspective the Lord of the Underworld still has his Kingdom. The Christians didn’t succeed in killing Hades off so it is unlikely the New Age will be successful at that either, not that anybody wants to get rid of Hades. Personally, I like him. He speaks to me. You can read what he’s said to me in my Bedtime Stories chapter of The Quintessential Ophiuchus. The story of Hades included in Bedtime Stories should also serve to add perspective to our interpretations of the energies of Pluto and his interactions with the other Planetary Logoi.

Asclepius Karma Cleared | Pluto Metaphorically Slapped on the Wrist

Now that the IAU has set boundaries around Constellation Ophiuchus, Asclepius can be seen to have been released from Death’s grip in Scorpio, revived, and returned to us per the ancient prophecy contained in Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

“Ocyrrhoë, the daughter of the Centaur Chiron, attempting to predict future events, tells her father the fate of the child Æsculapius, on which the Gods transform her into a mare. * * * She was not contented to learn her father’s arts only; but she sang the secrets of the Fates. Therefore, when she had conceived in her mind the prophetic transports, and grew warm with the God, whom she held confined within her breast, she beheld the infant, and she said, “Grow on, child, the giver of health to the whole world; the bodies of mortals shall often owe their own existence to thee. To thee will it be allowed to restore life when taken away; and daring to do that once against the will of the Gods, thou wilt be hindered by the bolts of thy grandsire from being able any more to grant that boon. And from a God thou shalt become a lifeless carcase; and a God again, who lately wast a carcase; and twice shalt thou renew thy destiny.” Ovid, Metamorphoses II, FABLE X, Ocyrrhoë. (Roman epic C1st B.C.E. to C1st A.D.)

The usurpation charge brought against Asclepius by Hades that resulted in Asclepius’s death via Thunderbolt of Zeus has been resolved in Asclepius’s favor. Uncle Hades may have been reduced in stature from the Astronomers’ point of view but it still has a domain to police and plenty of souls prepared to go to the wall for him. What could be better than that?

Our task now as Astrologers is to activate a good sense of proportion about all of this and observe that a healthy, organic interaction of planetary and celestial energies exists between Scorpio and Ophiuchus and Pluto, Mercury and Mars.

Pluto’s position of authority and influence in its own domain remains unchanged as long as the domain of the Scorpion remains intact.  But although the stars of Constellation Ophiuchus were formerly subsumed in the Zodiac Sign of Scorpio and no separate Zodiac Sign has been forthcoming, sign or no sign, it is clear Ophiuchus cannot be considered as having Pluto as one of its Planetary Intelligences with the authority to speak for him.

The influence of Pluto in the context of Constellation/Sign Ophiuchus is uncertain at this point.  The first time in recorded history that Pluto transited Constellation Ophiuchus, the end result was a “demotion” in Pluto’s planetary status. Whether the action of IAU should be interpreted as being based on metaphysical reality or allegory is unknown. But we should accept the current State of the Union on its own terms and at face value at least in the context of Constellation Ophiuchus where the downgrade actually occurred. After all, the discoveries of Astronomers once seen in an Astrological context, have so far been in perfect cosmic timing. As far as I am aware, Astronomers are batting 1000. In fact, in the matter of the vote on August 24, 2006, IAU hit a base-clearing home run.

Asclepius and Pluto-Hades as Chthonic Gods

The term Chthonic comes from the Greek chthonios meaning “in, under, or beneath the earth” and relates to deities and spirits of the subterranean earthy and under worlds.

Fertility gods and rulers of the dead are normally Chthonic divinities. The term is most often used in relation to the Greek gods but where the term fits we can use it in a generic (unbranded) sense.

The classification of deities was not always black-and-white. Some deities were both Olympian (the affairs of Earth were of no interest to the Olympians) and Chthonic (the Earth was of vital concern to the Chthonic gods). The Chthonic deities generally included Hades, Pluto, Persephone, Hecate, Dionysus, Hermes, and sometimes Asclepius and Demeter. The reason one would need to know the classification of deities in ancient times was to be sure sacrifices made were properly offered, whether burned on a pyre to send the essence of the sacrifice up into the sky or covered and burned or buried whole in a pit.

Scorpio-Ophiuchus Relationships

There are some residual Karmic Family Relationship matters that need to be cleared up so Astrologers who choose to work with Ophiuchus will know all the angles.

As a matter of myth and history Hades had a problem with Asclepius retrieving souls from the Underworld and in the most popular version of the myth he had Zeus kill Asclepius on account of it.  The charge was most often “usurpation” or trespass.

As Zeus saw it, Asclepius was using powers reserved for the gods and he did not want humans to learn the secrets of immortality. So he had no problem hurling a Thunderbolt at his own Grandson. In other stories Zeus killed Asclepius for reviving three men whom Zeus had labeled as criminals and killed himself.

Oops!

But times have changed. Asclepius was removed from the planet via Thunderbolt of Zeus and moved into the sky. In the process he then also became a Liminal god, and he continued his healing work no longer as a mortal but as a god on equal footing with Uncle Hades. Or at least until the Christians put him and the rest of the Roman and Greek gods out of business.

On September 21, 2003 NASA drove its space probe Galileo into Jupiter to dispose of it. The Galileo probe contained Plutonium and nobody at NASA wanted to take a chance that Galileo would stay in a safe orbit and not hit Europa on which they believed they had found salt water oceans. So from a certain point of view we can see there may have been a little family karma going on there.

Olympian Family Politics in the 21st Century: Jupiter-Pluto-Ophiuchus

The Jupiter Effect on the IAU Resolutions of 8-24-2006

As we discussed earlier in this post, while Pluto was transiting Constellation Ophiuchus in 2006 his classification was changed from Planet to Dwarf Planet (August 24, 2006), and that change was interpreted by everyone on Planet Earth as a reduction in stature. I did not present the imagery at right in my earlier post because I didn’t want to throw too much at you all in one chunk. People have a hard time following this stuff as it is.

You can see however that in addition to the precision aspects between Pluto, Ophiuchus, and the stinger tail stars of Scorpius (screen capture above) Jupiter had something to say about the IAU Resolutions as well. And as I have said before, when we see a planet at the old Southern Claw of the original Giant Scorpion (Alpha Libra, Zubenelgenubi, “the insufficient price”) we know that the judgment to be forthcoming is probably going to be a thumbs-down. Hence Pluto’s stats are found by IAU (and by Jove) to not measure up and he is dropped from the Planet category.

The vital Ophiuchus-centric result of this cosmic transaction is New Order. The statement is being made that Ophiuchus via its Sacred Planetary Intelligence “Messenger of the Gods” Mercury has free ingress and egress rights (can come and go as he pleases) in the domain of Pluto (i.e., in Scorpio the sign or in Scorpius the Constellation-sign).

While we are on our mission to transmute the scorpion into a lofty eagle (using the serpent as an intermediate step), it is apparent we will not know for sure how Pluto’s energy is going to fare in Ophiuchus until the next transit. Pluto’s next transit of Ophiuchus will not occur until roughly the year 2243. That might give folks on this planet enough time to give up their addiction to death and taxes. We may have to begin a new 12-Step “Anonymous” program for this purpose. I have no snappy name in mind for this program but if you do, leave us a Comment.

Jupiter Transit of Scorpio-Ophiuchus 2006-2007

Jupiter 2004 | from NASA's Cassini

We watched Jupiter’s transit of Ophiuchus (December 28, 2006 through December 2, 2007) with great interest. After what happened to Pluto in the Ophiuchus transit we didn’t know what to expect since it was the Thunderbolt of Zeus that ended Asclepius’s mortal life. The Jupiter Effect, however, was normal and Ophiuchus consciousness continued to expand and the light continued to brighten. So we infer that on the god planes, the patriarch of the Olympian Gods is still head-in-the-clouds higher than Asclepius and the end result of Asclepius being placed in the sky to continue his work (and return) is seen as a Gift from the Gods not a punishment.

Hades, on the other hand, does appear to have received at least token comeuppance and we’re wondering if the blast of Plutonium Jupiter received from NASA-Earth probe “Galileo” had anything to do with that.

For the Record – Liminal Gods

Because I mentioned Liminal gods above and I just hate it when I read an article and the author leaves me dangling, I am attaching an excellent paper I read online and saved. It will give you the exact picture you need when considering the power and effect of Ophiuchus consciousness in today’s world and in real-time.

• MChurch Role of Dreams in Cult of Greek God Asclepius

This is an honors student paper I originally found at http://www.sbc.edu/honors/HJSpecial_Iss04/MChurch.htm but it is no longer posted there. Fortunately I made a .pdf of it just in case the article ever disappeared. (I just hate it when that happens, don’t you?)

For more on the topic of Pluto in the context of Quaoar and IAU visit Astronomologer at 50000 Quaoar ~ Singing & Dancing New Gods Into Existence posted 07/20/2011 and the next article in this series Ophiuchus Tips for Astrologers ~ Quaoar.

Post rev. 07/23/2011 – moved paragraphs to preserve chronology; added a graphic and explanations to show Zeus’s part in the IAU vote of 8/24/2006