Happy 92nd Pluto.
On February 18, 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered the off and on again planet Pluto.
It was such a long-awaited event, the New York Times covered it. Two years later, the animated cartoon character Bluto came to life in the Popeye cartoons. Below is one of my favorites. Bluto and Pluto, the Greek god, have much in common–they both try to win their beloved by trickery, they are dark and foreboding, but the similarities end there: Bluto is all about brute force; Pluto finesse.
The stories about Pluto highlight his charm, his invisible helmet so he can sweep his beloved Persephone away from a rather domineering mother Demeter (Ceres) who was never letting her little girl grow up and leave her side. Bluto, on other hand, the trickery was never suave — he is no suave and debonair Cary Grant. Instead Bluto has a heavy-handed approach to winning the “beauteous” Olive Oyl, and before too long, she always wakes up and yells he is an “ogre.” Perhaps the story of Sleeping Beauty or even Beauty and the Beast segues into this scenario, too.
Probably as it is hard to deny a good story; unlike us, they seem to be immortal.
Pluto the Planet
For Pluto, brother of the Sky God, Zeus or Jupiter, as the Romans and astrologers call him, tricked and wiled his way away from astronomers forever until Clyde Tombaugh finally tracked him down on February 18 1930, ninety-two years ago, at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. This happened just when Leo was falling asleep, and the Virgin was slyly moving into the heavens, and Tombaugh, eagled eyed, caught Pluto unawares.
Regulus and Pluto
Pluto’s sun is directly opposite Regulus, thanks to precession and the royal star has since left his favorite sign. He is now in the first degree of Virgo. I could never pinpoint at time for Tombaugh’s findings, I made up one of my own, giving the discovery the rise of 17 Capricorn 48 or according to the Hyperion, symbols, a Valedictory Address, because a farewell can only be accorded to something once it is properly understood as being over.
How that works when I finally track down the real time should be interesting.
The discovery has a grand trine in water, from the Moon at the Midheaven at 03 Scorpio 45, to Venus exalted in Pisces at 01 Pisces 58. From there, the water triple ends, ironically right at Pluto itself, 17 Cancer 46, thus making an opposition to its rise. Pluto is a Splash with only one opposition and two conjunctions — the first between Mercury and Mars at the end of the twelfth house, and the second between the Sun and Venus, at the end of the first — it was seem to be a long sought prize filling the days of Aquarius, the Water Bearer.
Fixed Star Benet Nash
For the time I am suggesting, the Fixed Star “Benet Nash” is right next to the discovery chart’s Part of Fortune at 25 Virgo 59 , in the eighth house no less. The star just two minutes off the Arabian part gets the symbol of “Sympathy and Service” from Eric C. Matthews, and so is called “partile.”
Islamic astrologers of yore hailed Betet Nash as a “destroyer of nations.” Wonder if it appeared as a precursor to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in February 1258? 1 I checked, and makes a Grand Square with the other three sinister planets . I will post this another time.
More recently, Benet Nash’s appearance comes just as the industrial world was just about to go into a Great Economic Depression. Since then, progressions and transits have changed that point but its appearance in the sky right after Black Friday October 1929 and was a woeful harbinger of what was to come.
Footnotes:
- 1I checked, and makes a Grand Square with the other three sinister planets . I will post this another time.
