"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."
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http://khaldea.com/rudhyar/nmnm/nmnm_pluto.php
