The United States’ Pluto Return: Bot and Sold

Reading George Orwell’s 1984 in 1983, my teenage consciousness imagined a controlled society forced upon humanity, a species hard-wired for freedom. That, of course, is the underlying American belief system – that we all want freedom.

Since 1983, this astrologer has ready many a book on authoritarian societies large (you know, countries) and small (you know, cults and families). What this astrologer didn’t know is that it was preparation for times to come, a repeating earth pattern that I was studying and would one day understand from direct experience.

Avid OHA readers with astrological bent know that this focus on controlled societies and cults leads back to the personal horoscope. Yes, let’s talk Pluto and Scorpio control which, at its base, is emotional and uses death to coerce.

What has surprised me most is how easy it is to move from freedom to control and how participants walk into it, are not forced into it as my teenage mind imagined. Pluto can force but also lure with temptations – this is how a lot of spies come into being, lured by temptation, forced by threats of blackmail.

The Internet is a temptation.

Bot and sold

Recently I learned that digital bots – a computer program that performs automatic repetitive tasks – outnumber humans on the Internet. Rumor has it that soon 90 percent of activity on the Internet will be bots. In other words, it’s all controlled.

Health information, for example, has been “curated” for most of the life of the Internet. Search any illness and the same information in almost the same words will appear a million times. No matter how far or long one scrolls, organic real-person unique perspectives can’t be found.

The term “bot,” short for robot, is in English a close synonym to “bought.” The Internet, like American culture, is about money. It’s now “pay to play,” as they say.

With natal Pluto in the sign of Capricorn, the United States has evolutionary lessons on all things Capricorn: authority, social structure, ambition, control, reputation, hierarchy, and success. Positive manifestations allow us to contribute to our society in healthy and organized ways. Negative manifestations include ruthless ambition, status seeking, stinginess, and using people for one’s own gain.

The United States’ Pluto return occurred in 2024. The term “evolution” suggests forward, growth-oriented movement. Yet evolution – like any energy – is neutral and can move in any direction. At this junction, our first Pluto return, we’ve evolved forward in many ways – there is more freedom of movement and choice here than in many other places.

In backward evolution, freedom is available if you can afford it. Freedom as commodity is the Capricorn crystallization of a mental concept that is owned by no one.

American benefits come at the Capricorn cost to other nations whose natural resources are relinquished due to Capricorn power and whose people are often killed as pawns in political power struggles. Books can explain this; bots, I’m not so sure.

5,000 Ways to Democratize Corruption

That the Internet has been “bot and sold,” still leaves Americans with choice, the choice to go to the pizza place across the street rather than ordering from the company that paid the most to be at the top of the search result.

There’s still choice – but barely – to buy local although most local retailers can’t afford to stock the many items that now can be delivered in a day through our colossus national retailer.

This week in a “bot and sold” moment, the president of the United States offered every adult $5,000 if they vote Republican in November:

Trump said the rationale behind the proposal was the country’s “tremendous economic success,” saying the U.S. “is making so much money.”

The Orwellian irony here is that the President’s followers are probably avowed anti-socialists who are now accepting a socialized bribe. And for $5,000 folks may even be voting to lose their right to vote!

In my younger years while traveling abroad I made an offhand comment about the corruption of a cerain place. The response from an American man was that it was great because everyone was in on it, not just people at the top.

In the past, American corruption was the domain of politicians and lobbyists. Lobbyists have the official role as Corruption Managers.

Now, we’re all in on it!

Some supporters of the president hang flags and banners on their houses and cars. Others, I’ve noticed, have gone underground since the 2024 election with platitudes such as “they (politicians) are all corrupt.”

Who are “they” but us?

We can’t hide now. It’s us.

The Group Mind

Which brings us to the group mind, ruled by air-sign Aquarius. Pluto has now moved into that sign for the next two decades. The American moon sign is in Aquarius, so we are now evolving emotionally (moon), which is tough for Aquarius which wants to keep detached and in the mental space. And being a fixed sign, is fundamentally stubborn in its view of the ideal society.

In other words, it will take a lot to break through the American vision of a Disney culture to see the Las Vegas culture beneath it.

Pluto is knocking; let’s see how long the Aquarius moon public will ignore or rationalize (air sign habit) the knocks.

The American cultural myth of freedom disdains the idea of group mind – we are all unique individuals! Yet our strong sports culture and dualistic political system is just that, group mind.

Group mind is part of our horoscope – it’s where we relate to a community based on like interests or ideals (religion is more emotional and Piscean). Sports, rock concerts, clubs, guilds, organizations, political parties, etc. are all representations of group mind.

Will the group mind be “bot and sold?”

It’s the End of the World – Again

This week’s news included another “end of the world” message due to rogue AI. For youngsters here, the world was going to end in 2000 because of computers and 2007-2010 because of financial collapse, and in 2020 because of illness. About every 10 years now (instead of the usual 100 millennium fear), we’re all going to die.

And we are.

Death is the underlying root fear that can never be cured and will always be effective in influence. Traditionally, religion dominated in the death threats and promises; since 2000 it’s been in the realm of technology.

That humanity may destroy itself is a reality.

Americans, as the most powerful destroyers then, must decide: Is $5,000 enough to end the world?

Related blogs:

The End of the World
Gods in the Age of Aquarius
Pluto Authoritarianism – Pluto Union
The Future is up in the Air

The United States’ Pluto Return: Own-to-Rent Culture

As we age it’s common to think of the past with nostalgia forgetting unpleasant aspects of experiences such as planning a picnic and not having a radar handy on a computer or cell phone. We remember the picnics that happened and forget the ones that were rained out.

The backward glance also lends insight into culture changes that are more subtle. We know, for example, that smart phones changed our lives. But do we remember that folks were less likely to cancel plans when they had to call you in person? Do we remember we had no way to track whether the bus was on its way? (I still recall having to wait an hour for a bus that I missed with no way to call anyone or call an Uber).

One subtle change I see that I’m sure is noticed — if not by people then by their bank accounts — is the shift away from ownership. Growing up, I often heard the phrase the “possession is nine-tenths of the law:”

.. not a literal legal rule. It means that holding or controlling physical property gives you a strong practical advantage, making it harder for someone else to take it back, though true legal ownership still wins in court.

Take music, for example. There was a day music was owned in physical form (records, CDs, etc.). Today it’s more common to have a much wider variety through subscription services. It’s a joy and pleasure to consumers although financially more challenging for those that want to make music for a living.

Subscription and license are forms of leasing or renting.

And it’s understandable, of course, that in instances like software licensing the seller provides ongoing support that costs money. But those are also sometimes sold separately anyway – a product and a service agreement.

Pluto in Capricorn Return

The United States turned 250 this year, a couple of years past the 248-year cycle of Pluto. It’s the nation’s Pluto return in the sign of Capricorn.

Pluto was in Capricorn from 2008 – 2024. Most all of us on the earth today – US and other countries – have lived through this aspect so can speak from experience.

At the beginning of the cycle the housing market collapsed due to over leveraging. Another way to look at it is simply pure greed by a few players destroyed the lives of many others. And others maybe should have known what they were getting into but finance and mortgages were made more complex.

At the end of the cycle the centers of power sealed in the corporate space including surveillance, logistics, and natural resources. Power had been shifting for a long time from individuals representing constituencies to individuals of corporate sponsorship.

Capricorn is ruled by Saturn which was once considered the last planets in the solar system until Uranus was discovered in the 1700s. The United States was “born” as Uranus was discovered which as a period was called the Age of Enlightenment.

Capricorn is authority, control, social structure, and hierarchical organization. Aquarius is group consciousness, fixed ideas, fraternities, and idealistic social organization.

Neither Capricorn nor Aquarius are emotional so may miss the emotional and psychological effects of systems of organization that may be efficient or “perfect” but don’t connect with human emotional needs.

Uranus rules Aquarius which is the sign after Capricorn. So, after the end (Saturn) comes awareness (Uranus).

The technology we enjoy today was developed as transiting Uranus and Neptune passed Capricorn then Aquarius. And we see the results.

There is technology and there is control. They are combined, not one or the other as folks tend to argue on one side of this unusual coin. Technology was developed from centers of control. The myth of the lone genius saving humanity through technology is pure, idealistic, Uranus.

Pure Uranus does not fare well historically or currently. That’s the true myth of Uranus which is the genius is not recognized in his/her own time.

Own-to-Rent Culture

If possession is nine-tenths of the law, then we may be left with a tenth of law in a rental culture.

While folks may feel they “own” their homes, the land is still subject to taxes or right-of-way so there is never true ownership.

Ownership is an astrological second house rulership opposed by the eighth house of taxes (death and sex) where others come in for intimacy, sharing, or intrusion.

The second and eight houses are a polarity which is an energy that exists, not a choice. Where there is ownership, there is also the need for sharing, for commerce. No man is a second-house island although there is a myth of self-reliance that also exists in my country.

With Pluto now in Aquarius, there may come enlightenment in this transition to own-to-rent. If we never really own anything, what are we protecting, what are we controlling?

America’s Expanding Shrinkage

In the early 1990s, a Japanese friend commented on the Walkmans that Americans were using. He said he assumed Americans liked things big. Japanese electronics, I learned during a visit there, were much smaller, compact, and technologically advanced from what was available to me locally.

Why was this technological gadgetry and efficiency not available in the US?

Business logic tells me that we didn’t want the competition. But energetically, my friend may have been onto something.

As the American economy expanded, so did the products, so did the food, so did the bodies. Prior to 1980 research suggests obesity rates 13% to 15%. After 1980, rates expanded rapidly to the current 40%+.

Expansion and contraction

There is a Chinese parable about a farmer Sai Weng. When his horse runs off the neighbors comment on his bad luck. His response: Good luck, bad luck, who knows? Later his horse returns with some companion horses increasing his herd. His neighbors comment on his good luck. His response: Good luck, bad luck, who knows? In this parable, good and bad continue to shift back and forth.

Expansion is often viewed as positive, good luck. Contraction as negative, hard times, loss.

Was the expansion of the US economy good or bad? We have more things, and more pollution, and more car payments, and more utility bills.

And more health issues; or less good health.

Today we have inflation that is reported around 3.5% to 4.0% yet “affordability” is a major issue which doesn’t occur at 4% increases. Shrinkflation is the new term for paying more for less. Over here in Ohio, I’d say effective inflation is 10% – 20%. Expansion and contraction in the same package.

Shrinkage is expanding. It’s almost comical at times how small portions have become in relation to the growth of the price.

Jupiter and Saturn

Jupiter is the planet of expansion and historically considered a beneficial planet associated with good tidings and good luck. Saturn in contrast is contract and view as difficult times with added responsibilities. These are value judgments rather than energetic principles that can be good or bad.

Today’s response to the expansion of bodies are new pharmaceuticals that shrink the body. Research suggests about 3% of the population used these pharmaceuticals in 2024 and now it’s about 11%. If we follow the expansion cycle of the body, it may reach 40%+.

As we shrink the body, what else may expand in response? First thought is the liver that is ruled by Jupiter. Pancreas, I see, is also ruled by Jupiter. This is logical too as the weight loss drugs affect the pancreas and must, like all drugs, be processed by the liver. Dialysis centers, research suggests, will be growing at a compound annual growth rate of 5%+.

Saturn rules skins, bones, teeth, and knees. Shrinking bodies would help the knees. Research suggests that supplements are needed with weight loss drugs for calcium and vitamin D due to reduced food intake.

Changing bodies: good or bad?

Who knows?

Shrinking bodies amidst shrinkflation. Makes sense – less food for more money helps the body lose weight. It’s a resonance, the energy of the times.

Contraction of the body in this culture – thinness – is viewed as positive regardless of underlying health. Dieting is part of the American culture of abundance. There are still a lot of diets out there that “crash” into contraction. Often expansion results later because of the imbalance and unsustainability of continued contraction.

Expansion and contraction are a kind of polarity and astrology’s highest lesson is balance of polarity. The business cycle follows this imbalance with expansive growth followed by “crashes.”

Our culture; our bodies.

Siders Family Astrology: Another Ohio Family Cult

In the United States it is said that violence is the price of freedom. If that’s so, cults might be the price of privacy.

Cult is a shorter form of culture, a subculture. You might have a friend in theater who talks of nothing but Broadway. That’s a subculture. Or people devoted many hours to online gaming or gambling. Those are subcultures.

Cult is used when the subculture is all-inclusive and controls the environment, controls who you can talk to, what you can eat, etc. Authoritarian regimes, then, make cult into culture.

In southern Ohio in 2016, the four-member Wagner family murdered eight members of the Rhoden family over child custody. Three of those members are in prison, two having confessed (younger brother and mother). One stood trial – the older brother – and was found guilty.

During that trial it emerged that he was raised in a cult-like way: homes in rural, remote areas; homeschooled (with mom doing a bit of homework); broken girls brought into the home to be mated to the brothers; dad involving them in crime from an early age.

The older brother took the stand in his trial and said that he once drove away but then turned around and came back.

Physical freedom from the cult was possible. Emotional freedom was much more difficult.

The Siders Family

The newest cult-like family to emerge in Ohio is the Siders Family in Vinton County. Unlike the Wagners, this is not a crime family (unless that is revealed later).

This family consists of a husband and wife, the husband’s parents, and 16 children. Reading a story, the wife (Elizabeth) had three sets of twins, one that died. If I’m doing the math correct, that still leaves 15 separate pregnancies.

Their crime, why they are in the news, is child endangerment. Supposedly the children all lived in one room; not sure how accurate that is; maybe they were just hiding.

The horoscope contains ten planets in 12 houses amongst 12 signs. That’s a lot of detail. Looking at the charts (birth times unknown) of the four adults and all their points of interaction would involve quite a bit of time, and blog.

Blogs come about when a theme emerges – in this case the sign of Cancer. As the situations suggests, it’s Cancer in extreme.

Belonging

Cancer is a cardinal water sign ruled by the moon and associated with mothering. From a larger perspective, it’s about belonging. The first “belonging” we have – although not for all of us – involves mother and family. When that doesn’t occur, life may be emotionally difficult.

Mothers traditionally feed infants through the breasts, through their bodies. That kind of closeness doesn’t occur much after mothering ends. Some continually seek it.

Belonging in Cancer is emotional (water sign). It’s family dinners, kisses and hugs, sharing of food, feeding others, watering the plants, and buying your spoiled-brat feline a $75 scratching post (which he had better start using soon).

In contrast is Aquarius (air sign) where belonging involves shared ideas and ideals. Reading about Civil Rights activist and late Congressman John Lewis, he found belonging with others in a shared ideal to end segregation. He was also close to his family. Both Cancer and Aquarius belonging were part of his life.

Good belonging is sharing dinner and family (or family-like group) times and then allowing everyone to go next where they need to go.

Bad belonging is when dinner is over and you find it’s difficult to leave. Cancer, ruled by the moon and carrying qualities of females, may often use guilt as a tool to keep people together. Guilt and family go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Ariel Castro of Cleveland, Ohio with sun in Cancer kidnapped and held three young women in the early 2000s until one escaped in 2013. Upon demolition of the house he claimed they had all been happy there.

Tenacity is a quality of the sign of Cancer and when combined with possessiveness may stifle rather than nurture growth.

But that’s in extreme. Most Cancer-ruled folks are taking care of things for us and making us feel “at home” or comforted.

The Siders

Where is Cancer in the horoscopes of the four adults?

Elizabeth (wife) has moon in Cancer and Saturn, the sign of restriction, in Aquarius. Clearly Elizabeth enjoyed the emotional comfort of a large family but was restricted in idealistic social life with those not related. In other words, she had no friends.

Gary (husband) has Jupiter and Chiron in Cancer which is abundant family but also wounds from family. He also has Pluto conjunct Venus in Scorpio which is controlling and intense in love. Possibly Elizabeth even going to the store created feelings of abandonment. With his Mars conjunct sun in Libra, he may have also been violent but feeling like he was fair (Libra) in some way.

Gary Sr (father/father-in-law) in pictures appears off and with Aries sun, may have had a head injury as Aries rules the head. His moon/Uranus in Cancer suggests his mother tried to be nurturing but may have had emotional instability. Mothering for him would be a need, or at least a need for consistent mothering rather than on-and-off nurturing. This inconsistent mothering appears to have affected his ability to have relationships.

Christina (mother/mother-in-law) stands out as being a bit different, possibly the woman-behind-the-curtain in this entire situation. Cancer is there – Venus. But that makes family feeling a pleasure, not a requirement. Moon, however, could be in Cancer but is close to Leo. Tricky here. She does have Uranus conjunct sun in Leo which is the need for attention. Add moon in Leo or close to Leo and this may be the seed sprouting the family possessiveness. She may be the one appearing most in her “right mind” but may have orchestrated the situation so she would never have to relinquish motherhood – the time when children leave to be on their own. In this way, she may be similar to Angela Wagner in wanting control of the daughters-in-law and all the grandchildren.

Elizabeth

Of the four adults, Elizabeth has the “gentlest” horoscope, none of the tension seen in the other charts with fixed Taurus also showing up a bit to square Scorpio, Leo, and Aquarius placements.

Sun/Jupiter/Venus in Virgo and Mars in Gemini – both mutable signs – for Elizabeth allowed her to both disassociate from the situation and tolerate it as a helper. She may have complained at times, or even often, but doesn’t carry the fixed and cardinal energies that outright fight.

Moon in Cancer likes the comfort and any resistance would most likely present as illnesses including of the stomach and nerves such as anxiety. Possibly she was given medications to keep her natural compliance in check. But she clearly is fertile; it still seems the math is high, so I do wonder if any of the children were having children.

Virgo is traditionally the sign of service. Service is often associated with cooking and cleaning but sometimes our “service” is emotional. Like the children, Elizabeth marrying at a young age may have inadvertently entered a cult and been recruited to mothering and serving everyone in that small house.

Uranus in Gemini: Are your thoughts yours?

You’re lucky, very lucky. Lucky that I was not the first person on earth. If I had been, there would be no coffee and no bread.

For an entire lifetime I could look at a coffeeberry or stalk of wheat and never see breakfast of coffee and toast. Never.

Today I can be a connoisseur of both and feel like I know all about them, like I created them. But I know it never would have happened.

Likewise, while I can admire the genius of current digital inventions, they are entirely dependent upon practical uses of electricity that were developed long ago. And plastic. And much else.

American culture reveres the “lone” cowboy, hero, or genius who, like politicians, take credit for the whole without acknowledging precedents, tax breaks, and social systems that open their paths while those same precedents can also close the paths of others.

Which brings us to Artificial Intelligence or AI which you will hear about every day now. And why? AI learns and it learned to repeat itself.

What is it repeating?

Thoughts

Eastern culture has a practice of meditation with one exercise involving the examination of thoughts. Not where thoughts lead, but thoughts themselves. Not solving a problem but watching the mind that is trying to solve a problem.

Western culture does not have this practice and it’s a wonderful time to learn as AI is selling our thoughts back to us. Our thoughts, posted in countless forms digitally, is the food of AI. And those thoughts are our minds.

The “mind” in Western culture is simply the brain and its impulses. In Eastern thought, it’s a sense and the “objects of thought” a sixth sense – not telepathy – but manifested life.

We are experiencing our thoughts.

This sounds philosophical but it’s occurring in a more obvious fashion than in the past where we simply move along the path of stimulation, experience, and reaction.

Our thoughts and experiences are now for sale – to us.

Mercury

The planet Mercury in astrology traditionally represents communication, daily interactions, stimulation, and learning.

The glyph for Mercury is a circle (spirit) with the moon on top (mind) and a cross below (matter). Spirit, then, is sandwiched between mind and matter.

More than communication, Mercury is our experience of reality. Our thoughts on top start the experience which then becomes matter on the bottom. Our spirit is, let’s say, the slice of turkey between two slices of bread.

The top slice is the image and form of the sandwich. The bottom slice is the foundation keeping the sandwich together. Our sun sign is the turkey. Or ham. Or peanut butter.

Our moon sign forms the experience. Our Saturn solidifies it.

Uranus in Gemini

Mercury rules Gemini which represents our youth, especially teenage years, when learning and experiencing are most important as the growth that leads to the mature individual. What is not learned during this stage of development – such as a foreign language – becomes difficult to learn later in adulthood.

Uranus has recently entered Gemini for a seven-year stint. Leaving the fixed earth sign Taurus, you may have noticed how things have sped up from pandemic “shelter-in-place” to “now” – oh, sorry, you just missed now. It comes again in five minutes.

Uranus is enlightenment, ultimately, clarity. As noted in other blogs, enlightenment and clarity is sometimes refreshing (I figured out how to get rid of my acid reflux!) or devasting (I figured out that my spouse is not in Kansas City at a conference but in Las Vegas with a lover!).

It’s time to be enlightened about our thoughts. Or devasted by them.

Fears of AI

Our fears of AI taking over our lives, then, is fear of our own minds. We’ve already taken over our own lives with our thoughts.

The question then becomes, whose thoughts?

American culture is based on individuality and freedom. Feeling “unique” is an American characteristic, ironically, that we share. So, we all feel “unique” which means we all have learned to feel this way.

Is that thought our own?

When someone says, “That’s just how I was raised,” or “In my culture we do this,” they are saying, “I learned my thoughts.” Most practice the religions in which they were raised (and sometimes we have no choice).

Those that feel different than their family or culture, then, are most likely to venture out into their own thoughts, to examine, for example, why they are supposed to like the opposite gender but prefer their own gender.

A colleague of mine feared we’d all be equally smart with AI, all equal; my response is that when you scratch the surface, you can see what we really know. And if the electricity gets cut off, then we’ll surely know.

Equality, though, sounds nice.

Which thoughts are truly ours, developed by us, over time and contemplation?

AI, for sure, has created confidence in our positions whether fully understood or quickly gathered from videos and memes. But are these our thoughts?

The actor of your thoughts

In the British series Mum season three, last episode, there is a kitchen scene with “mum” making an hors d’oeuvre for a party while talking to her son. For a moment we think they are arriving, finally, at common understanding having experienced a very touching scene in the prior episode.

That, unfortunately, does not occur as this show mirrors the reality that folks don’t suddenly awaken and change. In addition to that, the son grabs a couple of hors d’oeuvres, a pet peeve so irritating to mum and to this viewer.

The actor playing the son, then, must understand that this action is obnoxious or irritating to certain people who will be watching. This simple act represents his ongoing lack of maturity and understanding of the needs and efforts of others.

The actor, then, is more mature, or at least gets insight into the fact that this can be inconsiderate to others.

When we have thoughts or use AI, are we like the actor understanding the meaning of the action or like the character that is experiencing the action?

With our thoughts – called “AI” now – will we be the actor or the character?

If we are so afraid of our thoughts, can we be the actor and change them?