It was a
warm Wednesday afternoon. Dolly Madison was doing what any hardworking
wife would—packing the valuables before the big
move. She carefully ensured that the original portrait of George Washington
was safely stored before the removalists departed. It was a hurried move.
The new tenants; British she understood; were coming to re-arrange the
house.
Reconstruction
is Pluto stuff and Pluto was also coming to visit Mars in the
American horoscope for the first time. It was August 24, 1814 at 9:06
pm when the British torched Washington and flame towers were visible
for fifty miles while transiting Pluto squared Mars. But
President Madison and his wife had already evacuated Capitol Hill.
Unfortunately, they left the cutlery on the table.
Transiting
Pluto Opposite U.S. Mars in 2004
 The
US eventually won the Battle of New Orleans and repelled the British
altogether, but not before tasting the warlord Mars and its even more
intense tag team partner Pluto. Almost
a century later, by 1904, Pluto returned to Mars to stay for almost
two years. Born that year was Robert Oppenheimer, eventual head of the
Manhattan project that produced the first nuclear bomb. Albert Einstein
had just formulated his The ory of Relativity, and apart from an uprising
in the Philippines and some notable racial lynchings, America was at
peace—except in San Francisco where the earth moved
beneath their feet. Evacuation was a necessity this time with no time
to pack. Four days and four hundred and ninety seven city blocks later
they put the fires out. There were over two hundred thousand homeless,
the commercial and business centers were now a memory and the San Francisco
earthquake had become part of US history. It followed the worst New York
disaster prior to September 11 when the paddle steamer General Slocum caught
fire three hundred feet from the banks of New
York's East River taking over one thousand lives. Thank goodness Pluto
had left Mars and wouldn't be back until 1968.
What a frantic
year 1968 was as Pluto squared the US Mars again. Topping the US
charts was a song called Fire by the Crazy World of Arthur
Brown. The inferno was in the jungles of Vietnam, and mirrored in the
streets across America. Race riots followed the assassination
of black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Presidential frontrunner
Robert Kennedy was the next victim, shot down in June.
The nuclear
submarine USS
Scorpion sank to the floor of the Atlantic, taking 99 sailors
with it. A B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear weapons crashed in Greenland.
237,000 cubic feet of contaminated ice, snow and debris had to be
removed to an approved US storage site. North Korea captured the
US spy ship Pueblo in its territorial waters, leading to
a year of diplomatic stand-offs.
The only beneficiary was Olympic long jumper Bob Beamon who did a real
Pluto/Mars (extraordinary athletic effort). In what has been termed the
greatest Olympic performance of track and field, Beamon jumped further
than anyone else would for a quarter of a century, breaking the existing
world record by almost two feet.
Again today,
icy Pluto faces off with the flaming US Mars, specifically active around
April/May, and the last quarter of 2004. What might it mean for the
future? Fireworks, if the past is anything to go by. Already, the USA
finds itself divided over foreign occupational forces, this time in
Iraq. The nuclear specter and diplomatic stand off with North Korea
return to the spotlight. US concern may drift back to the South-East
Asian region of the world. President George Bush is justified to feel
wary. The connection of his Uranus (sudden) to the US Mars (violence)
has made pre-emptive strikes an ongoing reality at home and abroad.
There's more to this than simply Pluto/Mars difficulties for the leading
politicians. Saturn also joins the US Sun in 200,4 and the last two times
that occurred saw the resignation of Richard Nixon and the sudden loss
of Franklin D. Roosevelt. You'd imagine it might not exactly enhance
the current administration's chances for staying in power. The threat
of a terrorist missile will call for watertight security (forgive the
pun) as the two luxury liners Queen Mary Two and QE11 berth in New York
in April. Pluto/Mars simply cannot be ignored.
In summation,
General Eisenhower once described the nuclear age as the future of
humanity hanging on a cross of iron. Perhaps one day we can deal differently
with Pluto/Mars energy. Maybe the collective spirit of humanity can
rise above the temptation of constantly equating power with force.
For it to happen in 2004 would take a giant leap of faith. We could
use some more Bob Beamons.
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