The Old English word hlǣfdige means loaf kneader and it’s companion is hlāford a shortened version of hlāfweard meaning loaf ward. These words have come down to us as lady and lord. The provision of loaves of bread was so powerful that the words have designated English aristocratic power for a thousand years. Bread and cereals are associated with Ceres. For me, Ceres is the ruler of Taurus. Ceres gathers to herself and her erstwhile partner Pluto takes things to himself. The act of collecting resources is the common thread but the method differs. Ceres gathers her own produce while Pluto takes others produce. These signs both relate to power. Ceres ability to feed or starve the earth results in her overturn of Jupiter’s decision to let Pluto take their daughter but is not powerful enough to overtake Pluto completely. Pluto gets the bad reputation while Ceres is seen as heroic but the flip side is in childhood Pluto is praised and Ceres condemned. Children need to learn to share their toys. A two year old screaming “Mine” is not praised for being heroic. The terrible twos are due to two zodiac signs – Aries and Taurus as the second zodiac sign. Independent and fiercely possessive. Characteristics associated with survival.
Virginia was sighted on April 26, 1607 at about four o’clock in the morning and the horoscope shows the Colony of Virginia has five planets, Ceres, and Pallas in Taurus. The 2nd house represents the native’s own places for personal skills and material wealth. This is not money but includes physical assets like fields, and storehouses like tobacco warehouses. The 2nd house is the estate be it humble or grand. Each of us is lord or lady of our own estate.
Pluto was unknown in 1607 and 1851 but as more is discovered we can add further detail into old horoscopes. Sometimes astrologers suggest that outer planets and anything undiscovered at the time should not be used in interpretation. This idea is akin to believing we are the center of the solar system and this is not accurate. The planets are timekeepers marking a particular place in the continuing natural cycles. They don’t influence us, they tell us what time it is.
Virginia 1607-1644
The 1607 horoscope of Virginia has tremendous focus on the building of asset wealth while surviving with an Aries Pluto rising and the slow transit of Pluto through sequential conjunctions with Pallas, the Sun, the Moon, Ceres, Venus, Mercury, Uranus, and Mars in just 28° of arc. These conjunctions began in late May 1612 and continued until February 1644.
The Aries Pluto period. The colonists would die of disease, they would be killed, and they would also need to take resources from the native population or supply from England. The first years were harsh but the worst period was the winter of 1609-1610, there were initially 500 colonists but after the winter there were 61 and they were sick and dying. The colonists were burning their houses because if they left the fort they were killed. That winter is recalled as the “Starving Time” and it is known the surviving colonists cannibalized the dead.
Pluto transits Virginia’s stellium, 1612-1644. The colonists began to build a life in Virginia and faced many more challenges but in 1611, John Rolfe cultivated a sweet tobacco and in 1612 he established commercial cultivation. His introduction of tobacco became the cash crop needed to build the economy. This started to change everything. The colony was building wealth and started expanding. In 1622, the colony underwent a coordinated attack intended to destroy it and a third of the settlers were killed. In 1644, as Pluto was completing its last conjunction with Mars, the colony was attacked again and a similiar number of colonists were killed but they represented only 10% of the population. Virginia went on to be the wealthiest and most populous colony. By 1775, 21% of American colonists lived in Virginia. After this almost unbearable early refining, the colony had endured and built a foundation that endured further revolution and civil war. Virginia will soon be 414 years old and this means she has survived an entire Pluto cycle and almost three quarters of another.
1851 Pluto Return
Virginia has major Taurus elements and these are naturally resistant to Pluto. This causes the effect of the Pluto return to be more nuanced and balanced between both signs than a Pluto return in a horoscope with less Taurus. In 1607, Pluto was on the second direct pass of the degree. Therefore, the second direct pass of Pluto was used to determine the Pluto return on May 5, 1851 at 3:01 p.m. in Richmond, Virginia.
This was a truly momentous event for Virginia. Property ownership requirements had been maintained in order to vote. In order to draw new settlers, new states had universal white male suffrage in the 1790s. Over the next thirty years, the older states removed property restrictions and started to disenfranchise free African Americans who could vote until then – Connecticut in 1814, New York in 1822. By 1830, only two states still required ownership of property to vote – Virginia and North Carolina. In 1830, Virginia held a constitutional convention and loosened property ownership requirements but did not resolve the tension over power sharing between owners of eastern estates and western Virginians in the state. The die was cast. You can almost hear the distant echo “Mine”. Pluto takes other people’s possessions.
In 1851, he returned and eliminated property ownership requirements for the elections of the House of Delegates and Governor while representation in the Senate would rest on population and property but in the process the institution of slavery was shored up including a new restriction on the Commonwealth not allowing the government to manumit the slaves and even denying Virginians from manumitting their own slaves. There are five planets in the 8th house, Pluto’s natural house. Three are in Taurus. Pluto came to take away Taurus’ property. The demanded changes would have quickly eliminated slavery in Virginia but Ceres enacted a terrible partial return price. Pluto could have the votes but she would keep the slaves. This action led to the loss of western Virginia.
The next Pluto transit through Virginia’s stellium would see secession from the United States, western Virginia secede from Virginia, the bloody Civil War so devastating that 40% of all northern and southern war dead would be in the Commonwealth, ruin of the economy, large numbers of Virginians had undergone starvation once again, all the slaves were freed, Reconstruction began and ended, and finally the period ended with the 1888 Presidential election that was the high water mark of voters until 1952.
Meaning of the Pluto Return
The Pluto Return did not return with ferocity of the “Starving Time” but the Pluto transit of the stellium was every bit as traumatic to the entire Commonwealth as the struggle to survive and build a life in 1612 to 1644. The Jamestown Massacre of 1622 killed 400 settlers, a third of the colonists. Pluto was at 12° Taurus 56′, close to the presumed cusp of the 2nd house and in orb of completing a Grand Earth trine activating Virginia’s Virgo north node conjunct Neptune. On May 12, 1864, in the fierce hand to hand combat at the Bloody Angle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, the corpses lay four or five deep and still they fought. At this most deadly battle in Virginia, Pluto lay again at 12° Taurus 1′. In the month of May 1864, there were 58,785 casualties at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse.
When Pluto returns to himself, it is a reforging. This time will remeet the initial conditions of the beginning. It is not the return that devastates and refines, it is the Pluto cycle itself.
Virginia’s horoscope has special meaning for Americans. Her Ascendant is conjunct the United States Imum Coeli, her Taurus Moon is square the USA nodes, and America’s Cancer Sun is conjunct asteroid Virginia. The mythical Virginia was daughter of a Roman centurion and fiancee of a tribune. While her father was away fighting for Rome, she was kidnapped to become a slave so a corrupt judge could rape her. When her father with his supporters arrived to protect her, the judge ruled against him and forced the crowd to leave. They disbursed and her father to protect her virtue and deny her enslavement stabbed and killed her. He was arrested but his supporters came and fought back, destroyed the fasces, and they restored the Roman Republic.
Virginia was first and she bears powerful initiatory and stabilizing energy. That energy is always necessary to begin. As the first colony, her success or failure directly created a foundation for the other new colonies. Her success caused transatlantic trade, and created communication, trade and military networks with native tribes. She wrote the first successful playbook. She was one of only thirteen who created the United States. E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many, One. She was hlǣfdige and hlāford. She grew the wheat, kneaded the dough, and produced but it is her death (Virginia’s Pluto transits) that makes Rome free.