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PLUTO - Sower of Celestial Seed

When, on the twenty-first of January 1930, Pluto was for the first time recognized by human eyes searching for it in an observatory near one of the most sacred mountains of the Indians of Arizona, a new depth of being and of tone was added to human consciousness. A symbol of new perceptions and of a new organization of universal life had been wrenched from the skies, for man to use in his endless quest toward a more cosmic understanding of the meaning of all. Taking its place in the vast orchestra of the solar system, the deepest of all known cosmic gongs was being heard. Humanity, for the first time, recognized this distant, awe-inspiring, booming voice. The message it is slowly conveying to awakened souls and minds will become the foundation and seed of a new world.

The recognition occurred — by a most symbolical "coincidence" — when Pluto was circling around its North Node, a point traditionally known as that of greatest projective power for any planet. This point was touched first in 1929, just before the Wall Street crash; just before the Depression forced our consciousness into new depths of realization and made us yearn more strongly than before for a new type of social organization. Late in 1912, Pluto had first been in conjunction with the point of the summer solstice, opening as it were the cycle of Mediterranean and Balkan wars which spread two years later to the whole of the globe. More than any other planet perhaps, the slow motion of Pluto symbolizes deep-seated cycles in human history. For, of all planets, Pluto is the one to express those recurrent impulses which, welling as it were from inter-stellar depths, seal the fate of empires and knot the colored threads which will eventually appear on the warp and woof of Time as new patterns of civilization.

It was asked at first whether Pluto was to be considered a real planet, largely because of the unusual eccentricity of its orbit. But we might answer this by another question: Is the seed really a part of the plant? Indeed it grows out of the plant; yet its function is not to be understood in terms of this particular plant which bears it and from which it will fall into the dark humus. It is in the plant, yet not of the plant. It is the messenger of the future vegetation. Its allegiance is to the "new life" that is to come. It belongs not to the particular plant, which, if perennial, begins to die the moment the seed reaches the very first stage of maturity, but to the species of which the particular plant is only one of billions of ephemeral manifestations.

Pluto is only the size of Mars; a small planet compared to Saturn and Jupiter, and far from the root-power of the whole system, the Sun. But likewise the seed is small and ordinarily remote, grown at the farthest point from the life-center of the plant — almost ready to drop away from the plant in its mission of rebirth. For in the seed rests the power of rebirth. In its concentrated, well-protected mass lies hidden the Mystery of mysteries: the mystery of immortality. Because of the seed, death is overcome. The species remains intact, alive, creative — because the seed carries in its shrine the magic Pattern, the potent nucleus, which defies death and again and again brings birth anew.

Uranus transforms; Neptune dissolves, and at the same time feeds the new prenatal growth; Pluto is the hierophant of the mysteries of actual birth into the New World. Who ever fails to withstand the transforming power of Uranus must become disintegrated by Neptune. For such a one, Pluto is the awesome lord of death. But he who passes the Uranian tests and enters into the Neptunian Sea of Light need not fear Pluto, even through the final ordeal of the Temptation; for Pluto will show him to the gates of rebirth and of immortality. Immortality: the state of being always different while the same.

Thus we wrote while studying the symbolism of Uranus. But now we must go deeper, more concretely, into the significance of the "lord of Hades". We must see him as the symbol of the great seeding process which is the sole guarantee of immortality. Many are the seeds that wither or decay on the ground. But this is because Nature is awesome and reckless in its prodigality and apparent nonchalance. Nature refuses to depend on the individual. It cannot take the chance of the failure of individuals. For each post there must be many individuals ready to assume the function. Immortality, in this sense, is a generic fact. Though the substance of many seeds be lost as seeding substance — it becomes manure to fertilize the soil — yet the seeding process cannot be defeated. It is the process which matters. Substantial immortality is a process and a goal. It is the flag won by heroes, for the whole. Others experience immortality only in a formal and abstract sense; not in the total realization which belongs to the seed that mothers forth the new vegetation.

The seed must needs descend into the depths. Christ descended for three days to hell before rising in his luminous "Christ-body" which is actually to be seen as the spiritual seed of the new manhood. Likewise, Orpheus descended into Hades. It may be that those are all aspects of the universal "solar myth" in which the course of the Sun and its fall in the western skies are pictured. But in ancient symbolism the western lands were the lands of the Mother-principle, and even America is called Patala (the antipode, or Hell) in ancient Sanskrit texts — if we accept some modern intrepretations. The West is the feminine, maternal principle; thus the womb. Into the womb the male seed falls. It is the Hades realm of the seed, whence it arises as a new being after forty weeks (or symbolically forty days) in the darkness of Kali, the Dark Mother.

We should envision Pluto as the solar seed — and in a generalized way as the seeding process, as the Sower of seed. It is the seed of the solar plant. Thus perhaps the great eccentricity of its orbit; thus, moreover, the remarkable fact that its orbit actually intersects for a short distance Neptune's. For approximately eleven years [more recent observations have increased the duration to approximately 20 years.] in each of its two hundred and forty-nine year revolutions around the Sun, Pluto finds itself nearer the Sun than Neptune can ever be; even though during the rest of the time it winds its way far beyond the orbit of Neptune.

This is a great symbol. Pluto, during eleven years, forces its way as it were inside of the circle or aura of Neptune. Indeed a cosmic fecundation. During these years the Plutonian seeds are deposited within the orb of Neptune: Neptune being the "Sea of Light", or "astral sea", which is truly a cosmic womb. The two planets represent the two great magnetic polarities of the solar system as a Sun-centered organism; while Uranus is the electrical result of their polarized intercourse. Pluto is the Father; Neptune the Mother; Uranus the Son. Beyond the sphere of Saturn, the sphere of particular and limited beings, they represent the three hypostases (manifestations) of the cosmic Trinity: the three major "Rays" of the occultists; the three primary colors (red, yellow and blue — Pluto, Neptune, Uranus); the tonic, sub-dominant and dominant of European music; and all similar trinities, whose names are countless.

This moment of cosmic fecundation occurred (quoting an official astronomical authority) the last time between September 31, 1736 and July 21, 1747. The significance of this period can readily be seen. It marked the beginning of what we have called elsewhere the great Avataric Period, which encompasses the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Three centuries; three new planets discovered; three totally different rhythms of human living — the Uranian vibration of the eighteenth century which brought the Revolutionary era, democracy (a new principle of social structure) and electricity — the Neptunian vibration of the nineteenth century which brought communism, Bahaism, spiritualism, humanitarianism, and the total change of the substance of human behavior — the Plutonian vibration of the twentieth century which is manifesting through the modern hells of war, but also through the slow birth of a new world-consciousness. The eighteenth century was a period of fecundation; the nineteenth century, of fruition; the twentieth century, of the sowing of seed.

The cycle, in each century, begins most definitely after the twenties, the first twenty-five years of each century being a period of clearing up. The generation of the men who fought the War of Independence, who dominated the French Revolution, was born during or around the years Pluto was impregnating Neptune's orb with its seed. (Thomas Paine was born in 1737; so was John Hancock. Jefferson was born in 1743). Then was sown the seed of the three hundred year Avataric Period, the end of which is not yet in sight. Then began to work great Souls, perhaps unrecorded by names, whose full power is yet to be felt. It was close to the time when the seer Swedenborg "saw" the coming down from Heaven of the New Jerusalem: not a period of results, but one during which causes were formed and seeds sown. While Pluto was then passing through the zodiacal sign Scorpio (which it rules, according to some), Neptune was in the early degrees of Cancer — the degrees of the summer solstice, which symbolizes the "Marriage of Heaven and Earth" — thus the beginning of the seed-process. As Pluto reached that point in 1912-1914, the cycle of the Great War opened.

Of previous Plutonian fecundations we need only mention that of the late fifteenth century which sounded the real keynote of the Renaissance; that of the late tenth century which marked the early beginning of the Gothic period. Interestingly enough, musical activity of great significance seems to impress its stamp upon such periods; witness the apex of classicism in Bach, the climax of medieval music, and the consummation of monodic plain-chant during the three periods above mentioned. These periods are fulfillments which are also beginnings. They are karmic periods, in a planetary sense much more than in an outer human sense.

If the first phase of the present Avataric Period began with a Uranian keynote, it is because, from the point of view of human evolution and growth in consciousness, Uranus represents the first step. Says the Christ: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." Behind Uranus stands Pluto. But it is only after the subtle, dissolving and compassionate action of Neptune has operated that the path which Uranus opened can lead to the Glory of the Father. Rebirth must first be dreamt of, envisioned by seers and poets, before it can be actualized and experienced in substance; and Neptunian love needs to water the soil before the Plutonian seeds may take root.

Seed, Soil and Sun: this trinity of elements constitutes life in all realms. Ancient Scriptures often mentioned it, under many names. To us now it takes a new meaning, because of new symbols to which it may be correlated. Pluto is the seed, the Earth is our "soil" and the Sun is the great vivifier, the Source of Life and Light: God-in-the-Highest. But to this God-in-the-Highest, that is the Sun, answers the God-in-the-lowest, that is the seed.

The seed must descend into the depth and the darkness of the soil, there to give witness unto the power of the Sun, unto Life. And this is the great challenge of our Plutonian century: the challenge of the seed, the challenge for men to become as seeds, to demonstrate God in the lowest depths of the Earth-womb, to be shrines of the Living God where the darkness is the deepest, in the eternal Western lands where the Sun sets. Farthest away from the sunrise, farthest away from the triumphant God of the skies, seed-men are needed to incarnate the Plutonian urge, to consummate the cyclic sacrifice of all seed, to sink themselves into the matrix of futurity; thence to emerge some day as the new Life into which they died. For the seed must die, that the new plant may live.

God-in-the-lowest is not the celestial Being of splendor and omnipotence worshipped by the devotee. He is the God-seed that sleeps in the center of the head of men; the solar disc that is there hidden by veils of karma and of material thoughts; the divine Eucharist which is the true presence of God within man. This presence of the God-seed within man's skull (Golgotha in Hebrew means "skull") constitutes the great mystery of the divine Incarnation. God, the Universal, assumes the limitations and collective karma of humanity, the particular — that man may manifest divinity in his consciousness. Thus also the universal Center demonstrates itself to and fulfills every point of the circumference. Each man is a point on the circumference of God's being — just as each cell is a unit of the organic whole that we call the human body. This body is never perfect until man — the consciousness of the whole — experiences himself in every one of his cells, in every part of this whole. To experience oneself is to sow oneself: it is to project one's "Son" into the farthest removes of one's "earth".

This penetration of one's depths, and this revelation of oneself to oneself in every remotest part of one's being, is Pluto's Great Work. Psychoanalysis is the product of such an urge, especially as it is able to face and interpret the "collective unconscious". The Ancients spoke of it when they told the tale of the fisherman plunging into the deep to tear from it the "Pearl of Significance" — the pearl that is grown out of suffering; the iridescent sphere hidden in visceras, imprisoned in heavy shell.

Pluto is the mark and seal of the new messianic Revelation of God within the depth. Messiahs of old were reflections from the heavenly spheres. It is only since Gautama the Buddha and Jesus the Christ that men of this earth have borne the full burden of the God-seed; have borne it as Sons of the Earth as well as Sons of God. In this century, the great universal Revelation which has already spread through two centuries, is reaching bottom — is reaching the heaviest layer of the soil, whence only it can germinate, upward again, toward the Sun.

The message of Pluto is that of divine substantiality. The Soul can be made substantial. It can be made concrete. It need no longer be but a breath of heaven, but an astral vapor, but a thought soaring toward universal heights. The substance of the Earth can be regenerated. The substance of human souls can be redeemed. The karma of humankind can be burned. The thick pall of darkness surrounding our globe can be lifted. Men will be free to demonstrate in radiant bodies, in prosperous lives filled with abundance and health, the gods they are. This is the "abundant life", the life full of seed; man, the eternally filled granary — man, the Ark everlasting, bearing the seed of all that lives — man, the perfected microcosm which is today PERSONALITY.

This is the great message of Pluto, whose presence became revealed even in the midst of a bitter Depression; for men can only learn the lesson of abundance in poverty, the lesson of health in disease, the lesson of operative wholeness in injury and deprivation. It is the message of the Far-West, the great Womb — the message of America, the vast granary. And Pluto's message is also that of democracy; for the God-seed is hidden in every man, irrespective of birth-condition and of environment. There can be no king where every man is king by divine right. There can be but one rule: that of law. "In America the law is king", said Thomas Paine, father of democracy.

Because of this, America has been a welter of lawlessness. No kingship of the law can be established in the heart, mind, and soul of men, save after the experience of lawlessness. Pluto may "rule" gangdom; but it symbolizes also the Parliament of Man, the New Jerusalem, the "White Lodge of Masters" who are indeed the perfected Seed of humankind, who together constitute the "Seed-Manu" of theosophical lore.

Sun, Soul and Seed. Within the earthly bodies of men God has been sown. This is Kali Yuga, the age of the Mother, the gestation of a new humanity and a new earth. The age is dark and wet with blood. But after forty weeks, forty cycles of ten thousand years — but accelerated years no doubt — the new birth is to occur. This is the age of great arousal. The germ is stirring within the seed. The radiance of the living God is come. Many are the heralds. The Source of Power is one. Far in the West Pluto was discovered. Far in the West the new City may rise, the prototype of a liberated manhood; God-the-Host within the depths of men that are whole, men that sing Life; whose songs bless the earth with fulfillment.






This edition copyright © 2008 Michael R. Meyer
All Rights Reserved.





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