Monsters
As Saturn moves backwards down the ladder of early Libra, it is now returning to an exact conjunction with the Midheaven (top-dog status) in the Sibly chart of the USA.
Saturn authorizes things: it names people and entities to positions of authority. In this placement it is submitting the country’s corporate and moral leadership to an exacting redefinition process, clarifying who bears the staff of state. At the same time, Pluto (corruption) is continuing its long, slow opposition to the collective Sun-Jupiter-Venus conjunction (ethics and values) . The square between them is showing us who really sits on the throne in this kingdom.
It sounds like a cliché, but it must be said: This is a battle (T-square) to the death (Pluto) for the nation’s moral (Jupiter) core.
The Eclipse of January 14th, which took place as Saturn was stationing, was in Capricorn (the sign governed by Saturn). Last Thursday, after the stunning energies of the week before had prepared the ground, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that allows American corporations more rights than they have ever had before. The transits that showed up in Haiti as crumbling physical edifices (Saturn) and mass physical death (Pluto) showed up in the USA as the crumbling of the edifices of a government: another phase in the death of this democracy.
Layer by layer, the full meaning is being revealed of the USA’s Pluto in the 2nd house (money) — the signature of plutocracy.
Our government’s perfidious lobby system has long been in place, as a corrupter of the legislative process; and Wall Street’s crimes suddenly became front-page news two years ago when Pluto entered Capricorn and the karma of capitalism crashed into public awareness. But once Abramoff had been packed off to the slammer, the headlines forgot about K Street. And when the pundits announced that the recession was easing up (Nothing to see here, folks; just move along), we were to believe that the free market had staggered to its feet. A show of closure was performed last week when the titans of the finance industry were trotted out before the TV cameras to mumble semi-apologies into microphones.
It is clear that the powers-that-be have every intention of trying to cover up the rot at the core of the system, rather than digging it out to allow healing to begin.
Now that the Saturn-Pluto square is in full gear, we are seeing a new kind of national sacrilege: the cherished American notion of “free speech” has been pulled into the slime. The ruling last Thursday auctioned off US elections to the highest corporate bidder; not merely effectively (Pluto) — as it has always been –but explicitly (Saturn in Libra: through rule of law). Far more destructive to the republic than the strident warnings that get big news coverage — such as the complaints of tea-bag patriots or the name-calling of alarmist pundits — this judicial act re-defines (Saturn) the empowerment (Pluto) of the larger-than-life business entities to which Americans have vouchsafed their commonwealth.
The corporations have been given new life, but they have been given none of the responsibilities that go with life. Companies like Bechtel, Bank of America, Monsanto, Exxon et al are allowed to live and grow and sue for their rights, like humans; but they can’t go to jail. Should they be fined, their immense wealth will protect them from financial danger.
Moreover, unlike humans, they are held by neither a social nor a moral imperative to “do right” (Pluto opposed US Jupiter). Humans tend to form allegiances to this or that wider group, but corporations have no incentive to identify with any public good; their only allegiance is to their shareholders. The profit motive is morality-free (not immoral, necessarily; simply amoral.) In any case, with non-US citizens on their boards of directors, why should multinational corporations identify with America’s proud First Amendment trip? Are they likely to revere the spirit behind the law? Of course not. But Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big You-Name-It, are to be treated as if they had the same status as a creature with a sense of allegiance, a conscience, and a heart.
Pluto governs monsters: perversely unnatural creatures that are often the results of experiments-gone-horribly-wrong. This is the archetype behind the malformed atrocities of literature; the deformed villains and the hybrid demons with beasts’ faces and birds’ claws. Legends depict such beings as both terrifying and powerful; as humanoid but devoid of human feeling.
At this point in the Pluto-Saturn cycle we find the USA in the role of Dr Frankenstein. The super-corporations are our monsters. We created them, and they are dangerous.