I have been asked to speak a little about all that is happening in the heavens at this time and in the coming year.

As we have heard in our recap of the events that have happened in the world this year, the planet Pluto has been demoted from planet status. Yet it is this very body which plays strongest in the astrological happenings of the next year.

Pluto forms the outermost region of our solar system, along other small bodies in the same orbit.

This is the region from which comets come from, which move from this belt circling the sun and the other planets, into an inner orbit of the sun, and back to the belt. The most famous example is Halley’s comet which makes its inner orbit of the sun every 76 years.

So although Pluto is no longer a planet, as a marker of this region of the periphery of our solar system it is very important and in the context of the idea of the point periphery.

In Pluto we find two impulses, one cosmic and light infused, and one dark and subterranean, devoid of this light. The first is of an expression of Greek Phanes, the origins of creation, the primal will impulse in the Orphic mysteries. We are thus given one aspect as this primal source, but we also meet Pluto in the personage of Hades, lord of the underworld. In this shadow land we meet the aspect of Pluto as an uncontrolled Will force, shown in the abduction of Persephone and expresses powerfully a will impulse based in the material which is expressed both through a despiritualised sexual impulse and a violent impulse. This aspect of Pluto is moving away from the spiritual and towards power.

It is interesting that at the time Pluto was discovered in the 1930s, at this very same time came the creation of the first atom bomb. From this first awareness of Plutonian energies, a raw and unyielding will impulse, a force of great power and magnitude, we are brought to meet it again in a much more powerful way.

The forces of Pluto are being fired by its conjunction with the Galactic centre, a conjunction which is happening on this very day, at this very moment. Now the galactic centre is like the sun to us, and while the sun is the centre of the solar system, the galactic centre is the centre of the whole milky way galaxy. It is a power centre about thirty kilometre’s wide, but hundreds of times more powerful than the sun. It is in this conjunction that these Plutonian energies are fuelled.

It is my personal thesis these forces will enter into our sphere in the lower, Hades aspect of the energies of Pluto. This comes from the events of the previous year in the heavens when on the 29^th of March a solar eclipse occurred.

A solar eclipse is quite a special event, but in the blotting out of the sun, there is also a great potential for dark forces to enter into play. If we consider the time of year as that of the vernal equinox we meet this balancing point at which the scales can be tipped either way. Looking back at what has happened in the world since then we already see an ascent of these energies.

This eclipse happened in the astrological sign of Pisces, a sign of healing, and gives an idea of the overshadowing of this healing impulse which is so needed in our world at this moment.

This conjunction happens again on the 17^th July and again on the 28^th of October, when it is the most perfect and prolonged. This last conjunction is particularly worrying as the time of Samhain and the threshold of the gaimos or dark side of the year when the sustaining forces of the sun are less intense, and there is such a potential for these dark forces to enter in.

It was not my intention here to predict the apocalypse, nor to predict an unavoidable faith, but to give an awareness of these difficult times we live in. But a very wise man once said for every one step we take in higher knowledge we must take three in character. Here we have helped create this world we live in, and we may also counter these forces by choosing to create something new. Destiny is not something of chance, it is not something of choice, it is not a thing to be waited for, but to be met and achieved. It is up to us as beings of light, as a community and as part of the community of men to say no to these forces encroaching. It is our right, ability and responsibility to make our own destiny.