We were on
vacation in Canada, Land of the Free, when we got the news that Roe vs Wade had
been overturned. I’m being facetious about Canada, and my Canadian friends kept
reminding me that it isn’t perfect there. But it would be nice to live in a
country where a small group of religious conservatives are not the ones making the
decisions about the intimate lives of all women.
The day after
we got back to the US, I went to the doctor to get a mole removed. It was
completely voluntary, and yet, as I walked to my car in the parking lot, I
thought about how all medical procedures shock the body. No woman ever had an
abortion because it was a fun way to spend an afternoon. Women have abortions
because they can’t take care of a baby – emotionally, mentally, physically, or
financially. Some women who desperately want children have abortions to save
their own lives. Some women have abortions because they don’t want the child of
a rapist or abuser.
None of these
things matter to those five people on the Supreme Court, three of whom lied at
their confirmation hearings. And one of whom is married to someone who tried to
overthrow the government. They are fine
with dictating the lives of women, while not doing anything to mitigate the
burden of caring for the nation’s children. Other decisions they made during
the final days of June made it more likely that people (all of whom are former
embryos) will die from gun violence and air pollution.
And of course,
as a Lesbian, all my civil rights are on the chopping block. The only thing we
can be sure of is that, while Clarence Thomas is alive, they won’t repeal
Loving vs. Virginia. But he’s already mentioned revisiting the verdicts that
made gay sex legal, not to mention gay marriage.
Equally
concerning, these are the people who will determine who retains power, if there
are legal challenges to elections in the future. Why do we assume any of them
have any allegiance to modern democratic ideals, given their arcane and often
illogical interpretations of the Constitution? Strict “originalists” are all
about returning to a time when only white landowners had rights.
So what’s going
on astrologically? Why do we have this
rogue Supreme Court, three of them nominated by the most corrupt president in
history?
These are the
last days of Pluto’s passage through Capricorn, and it’s also the time of the country’s
first Pluto return. A Pluto cycle lasts 248 years, so this isn’t something that
any individual experiences. We do have other hard Pluto transits, and they
usually coincide with a deep transformation of some kind. This Pluto return signals
a radical realignment of the country’s character, while at the same time, since
Capricorn is a conservative sign, it’s also an effort to return us to older
beliefs and judgments.
We’ve seen this
in many ways, as Pluto has moved towards this point. There’s been a certain
fascination with our country’s origins. Even the success of a play like “Hamilton”
could have foreshadowed this trend. Then, more recently, we have Prof. Kendi’s
work, and The 1619 Project, by Nikole Hannah-Jones. More and more,
people are recognizing that we need to tell the truth about the past, to examine
our beginnings in a clear, unvarnished way. Advances in genealogy mean that some folks are suddenly learning that they have a mix of racial heritages.
All of this is
about coming to terms with who we have been, as a country. There were some
great ideas at our birth, such as the separation of church and state, but it’s also
true that this country is based on fixed hierarchies having to do with race,
gender and wealth. Slavery was already making people rich when the Articles of
Confederation were signed, and compromises were put in place to keep Southern
states happier. The three-fifths compromise is one of the most cynical ploys
ever enshrined in a legal system. With this kind of toxic beginning, it’s no
wonder that we had to fight a bloody war less than a century later, and that we’re
still trying to hold the children of the Confederacy at bay.
This is the
world that the Originalists on the Supreme Court want to return to. They can’t
literally put Black people back in chains, or take the vote away from women, The
Handmaid’s Tale notwithstanding. But
they’re going to try to get as close to it as they can. Meanwhile, other people
are fighting just as hard to define the country in a different way, calling out
the injustices inherent in our beginnings.
So it’s a time
for clarity. When a planet returns to its natal position, it’s a reckoning with
some aspect of its basic character. This is that moment. Those of us who do not
want to live in 1787 need to express our outrage. Luckily, that includes most
of us. The right-wing nutjobs get a lot of press, but most people are actually fairly
comfortable with diverse neighborhoods, gay family members, and a woman’s right
to choose. It’s this Court that’s out of touch. This doesn’t mean that there’s
no racism, homophobia or misogyny, but it does mean that these things are no
longer as respectable as they used to be.
My prediction
is that things will get very stormy, though, especially after Pluto goes into the
idealistic, revolutionary sign Aquarius next year. It doesn’t really get
settled in Aquarius until 2024, and then it stays there for the next twenty
years, and there will be a lot of radical political action during that time. In
addition, the country will experience its Uranus return in 2027. We were right in
the middle of a Uranus return when the Southern states rebelled against the United
States government in 1861. Do I think something like that could happen again? I
do.
I recently read
Hanya Yanagihara’s novel To Paradise, and the first part of it is an alternate
history, in which there was no reconciliation after the South seceded from the
Union. Rather, the Northern states enshrined more freedoms, while the South
kept to the old toxic ways, living as two separate countries side by side. In
some ways, this imaginative construction felt more real to me than many more
factual historical novels.
Coming back to
the world I actually live in, it’s easy to see that the Southern rebellion was
never really quelled, especially when the US government refused to defend those
newly freed from slavery, after the brief flourishing called Reconstruction. So,
in a sense, we have been two different countries, living next door to each
other and pulling the reins of power back and forth. Sometimes this makes for a
bumpy ride, and sometimes we don’t move at all.
I recently read
that the Texas Republican Party’s platform includes a referendum on seceding,
so Texas may be a bellwether. So, yes, it’s possible that this Pluto return
spells the beginning of the end of the United States, at least within its
present borders. So you might as well go out there and set off some fireworks
while you can!
Anyway, we won’t
get any more bad news from the Supreme Court right away, since it’s out of
session. And we saw Ketanji Jackson Brown sworn in, so there’s something to
cheer about. She may be wishing she had stayed on a lower court where she could
have more power!
The new moon on
June 28 gives us a sense of what the next lunar cycle will be like, and with
the sun and moon in Cancer, it looks like a pretty emotional time. Women are
grieving, and telling their stories about crossroads in their lives, times when
bodily autonomy meant everything to them. With Mars in the fiery sign Aries, squaring
Pluto, there’s also a lot of anger, with women raging against this disempowerment.
And the sun and moon square Jupiter, the planet which represents the legal
system, so there may be a flurry of legislative
and community efforts to repair the damage.
The full moon lets
us know what is primed to grow during this lunar cycle, and here we have a
conjunction between the moon and Pluto. So this will be a time when our
awareness of our own power crystallizes. The moon represents women, and Pluto is
all about deeper power. The Underground is a creature of Plutonian energies.
This is a
survival issue, and we women see this clearly.
It’s intimately tied into the basic identity of this country. Are we
actually working to become the Land of the Free, a place where all people have choices
about our life paths? A place where our
social contract enhances our possibilities more than it limits us? We’re at a crossroads.
