We should start with the question, what is autism?
Autism is a developmental disorder of childhood, usually diagnosed between two and three years of age. At that time it becomes apparent these children, who appeared normal physically and mentally from infancy, are not developing. They are not developing socially. They are not even developing the skills--language, eye contact, feelings of attachment and desire--needed for socialization. Such children have been called autistic because they seem content to live in their own (aut=self) world.
Medically, the definition of autism has become complex, developing several subcategories. Its divisions may, as is the case with Bipolar Disorder (see “Patty Duke and Manic Depression” at Home Page) be tainted with non-autistic disorders.
Two of autism’s main early divisions, called Kanner’s Syndrome and Asperger’s Syndrome, have their characteristics set out in tables in Appendix A and Appendix B, respectively, below. Appendix C compares their differences.
For a practical picture of one autistic child, the biographic description below is taken from The Siege (1967) by Mrs. Clara Claiborne Park about her autistic daughter, Elly (book cited below; numbers in parentheses show page quoted).
Later authorities on autism found fault with Mrs. Park’s work. I liked her book. Mrs. Park was a careful observer. She was passionately interested in her daughter’s odd isolation, and pragmatic in her efforts to affect it. She was honest about her motivations. She was, at the time, working against the gradient of American psychologists (erroneously, it seems) blaming the cold, uncaring parents, particularly the mother, for her child’s autism. Their unsubstantiated targeting of the autistic child’s mother made their own behavior censurable and often even bizarre. Considering that climate, Mrs. Park’s quiet, persevering work is a monument of sanity erected in a country of fashionable diagnostic reactions.
Elly was, I understand, a Kanner’s Syndrome autistic child. I do not have her birth data, so cannot include her chart. Instead, the charts of five children for whom we have no description--just the label, autistic--are presented. All of them share a common pattern, which, for the time being, is representative of Kanner’s Syndrome. Whichever subclassification they belong to, their pattern is shared, unique, and noteworthy.
Mrs. Park on Elly:
Elly had been something over a year old when her progress began to slow. Nothing had happened to her--no illness, no absence, no change in the environment. (8)
One speaks to her, loudly or softly. There is no response. (3)
She will sit, contented, in her crib for hours. She rocks and rocks and rocks.
(Doctors) said, “She seems like a child who has been raised very much alone.” Alone? In a house with three older brothers and sisters, neighbor’s children constantly in and out? She was alone, but she created her aloneness, sought it, guarded it. (4)
(At the beach, age two): [Elly is now] walking easily. On she walks, into family groups, by picnic baskets, sand castles, and buckets. She grazes human beings by a quarter of an inch. You would think she does not see them. But she does see them, because no matter how close she comes, her eyes fixed, it seems, on some point beyond them or to one side, she never touches them. (5)
Elly did not point. Nor did she try to get objects that were not within her reach; she seemed unconscious they were there. Content in crib or pen, when removed from them she crawled freely from room to room. But it was motion, not exploration. She did not push or poke, open drawers, pull at lamps, or tables. (Yet)...unconscious of so much, she was conscious of the location of every edge or limit; she could be left safely on any bed. (7)
Elly didn’t try, but the few things she had learned to do she had done neatly and successfully the first time she got around to it. She was never sloppy, never hesitant. (9)
As time went on, she began to acknowledge some rudimentary desire. (She usually would not use her own arms to reach for something she wanted.) Instead, she firmly picked up the human arm that happened to be nearest her and threw it toward the object desired. (9)
Through sound I could achieve no contact with Elly. Her sense of sight was hardly more promising...except in exceptionally favorable situations, she ignored me too. Unless I came very close. When I touched her, she noticed that. And although she did not seem to hear or see, her small legs and arms and fingers moved. She could inhibit her senses, but she could not entirely deny she had a body. (43)
What did Elly want enough to meet any conditions for getting it? Not a cookie, not a toy, not a ride in the car. A baby who like a Zen adept acquires the knack of inhibiting its desires approaches something akin to the Zen satori. Serene, in perfect vegetative equilibrium, it can be content to do nothing at all. When a creature is without desires the outside world has no lever by which to tempt it into motion. (45)
As 18-month-old Elly flipped the pages of her colored picture books, what did she see? ...I could only observe that she flipped the pages rapidly, steadily, with never a pause. Once--only once--she had shown she recognized a picture, of a blue teddy bear like her own. That was at seventeen months. Months passed, one year, another, and never did Elly give another sign that she could see a picture. (55)
One day--she was two years and eight months old--I was putting on her snowsuit. Ordinarily she was eager to go out, but today she acted oddly. Instead of submitting passively to being dressed, she tried to get away, and as soon as the suit was on, she headed upstairs. (She was involved with a set of colored parquet shapes, composed of diamonds, triangles, and squares). ...as I watched incredulous, (Elly had) selected four diamonds and combined them into a larger diamond, rejecting in the process a couple of right triangles that came to hand. She did this twice more, then began on the squares, working with a concentration that is difficult to describe. For twenty minutes her whole attention was focused on the task. The abstract, meaningless shapes seemed to have intrinsic importance for her. (57-58)
We have the chronicle of her first words: “Teddy” at 14 months; “mama” at 15 months, and “dada” at 16 months.
but it takes some time to realize that the new word is being substituted for the old one, that is, at any given time she has a one-word vocabulary. Not only that, she is not using them to communicate nor to label. By the time she was two years old, Elly had spoken six different words.
She had no idea of language as a tool to make things happen.” (74) (Elly’s words) were things-in-themselves that led to nowhere and nobody. (75)
Elly did not see, but what she did not see was people.” (87)
Such is the description of one autistic child. All autistic children are not the same. Some exhibit more fear and anxiety. Some, more objectionable--and difficult to live with--behavior. Some appear to include forms of schizophrenia and psychosis. Indeed, at first some professionals diagnosed autism as childhood schizophrenia.
Autism, from our point of view, is not schizophrenia, not even childhood schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a distinct astrological disorder, specifically spelled out in our paper on that disorder (see “Paranoid Schizophrenia and John Hinckley, Jr.” at the Home Page). I have a relatively large file on schizophrenia, including some, like Hinckley, showing schizophrenic conditions astrologically only during the period his disorder was greatest--when he tried to assassinate the President. The acute phase of a mental disorder is referred to as its “timing.” Unless an individual is always equally mentally ill, then timing for his illness must vary. When timing varies, when something comes and goes, it likely has astrological indicators. So, timing is very helpful in identifying the astrology of disorders because the planets which foster them are then forefront, i.e., dominant, in the chart..
With schizophrenia, all adults (including young adults) who have experienced it have the same astrological indicators. I assume, tentatively but reasonably, the indicators are the same for childhood schizophrenia (for which I do not have charts). It is not likely indicators would change just because of the difference in age of onset. Difference in age of onset is accounted for in two different ways: (1) by progressions, the typical way astrology finds events, and (2) by house--that is, in this system, chart--location and rulership. The 1st chart has important implications about childhood, or at least the identity formed in childhood. So it is possible that childhood schizophrenia shows the usual schizophrenic excessive mars and neptune emphasis more pronounced in the 1st chart than the 3rd (of mind), which has fewer timing implications.
Only one of the five autistic children listed below has any schizophrenic tendency. All of them, on the other hand, shared one common pattern: each has saturn and pluto forefront--that is, predominant (to be defined below)--in their harmonic charts for their 3rd houses (mind). Four of the five of them have saturn and pluto forefront in their harmonic charts for their 1st houses (identity). So does the fifth, but his is weaker. Indeed, he--Noah Jiro Greenfield--is known to have become (how much?) a functioning adult.
Present literature on autism also brings mental retardation into some definitions of autism. This site includes a paper on mental retardation (see “Mental Retardation and Astrology’s Ancient Malefics, Mars and Saturn). An autistic child could be mentally retarded. A mentally retarded child might also be autistic. Astrologically, however, the two conditions are separable and quite distinct.
Without astrology, mental health professionals are forced to build up their definition of autism out of the black box of the various symptoms that willy-nilly present themselves attached to autism. This astrology discriminates autism from mental retardation from manic depression from schizophrenia, and also shows when they occur mixed in one individual.
To make the astrology, and therefore, ontology, of autism clearer --what, indeed, is the significance of saturn’s and pluto’s dominance in autism?--it is necessary first to discuss some of astrology’s backdrop.
We are Life which has assumed material form in order to enter a material world. For a time. For certain purposes.
The spiritual is never as limited as the material. To come here, we have to take on limitations. For one, a body is required. It represents one part of our admission ticket. The other is formed by our group as well as individual reasons for coming.
As spiritual beings, we come here with a game plan, a set of specifications, a map which sets the parameters of our incarnation. Some maps are very specific. More, probably, are general in some areas and quite specific in others. Some may be poorly detailed. We do not pretend to know all the reasons for coming, but they must be manifold. At this level it is can be difficult to know exactly what was intended. We cannot tell by whether a man is successful, rich, famous, or even happy. Any of these--as well as being a failure, poor, unknown, and miserable--could be means toward a spiritual end we are unaware of.
Our astrological chart is just such a map. It shows, in the language of symbols, the parameters of each incarnation. It is a set of complex specifications to build up an individual and then run him. We would--you are correct in the implication you have just drawn--be machines except that ours is a map of consciousness. We always have the choice to become more consciousness than a machine--so to speak, more than our specifications. We state this verbally and non-verbally all our lives in our wish to grow up, to become responsible, to become parents (creators), to give back.
But, the point here is, no specifications, no admission. Our specifications anchor us in time and space. Time and space do not exist in the spiritual realm. Our specifications give us senses, and lay down the qualities we need to understand them. Our specifications give us our personal skew, our angle of inclination to the universal one that creates our idiosyncratic experience.
So, yes, we are all incarnated. Some of us, however, are more incarnated than others. Our physical bodies make it appear we are all equally here. We are not.
Autistic children are one of the groups of people who are less here. Their physical bodies are here; their identities are considerably somewhere else.
Most families of autistic children already know that. They just cannot explain why. Here, using this universal language of creation--astrology--it becomes understandable.
To do that, a few concepts besides those of astrology are needed. The first is from the psychological perspective on the early development of the infant. The second, from ruminations on the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah.
I borrow from the work of Jungian psychologist, Erich Neuman. It is from his book, The Child:
The young of the higher mammals are born in a state of relative maturity; either immediately or shortly after birth they are small adults which not only wholly resemble adult animals but are also capable of living unaided. In order to attain a similar state of maturity the human embryo would require a pregnancy of from twenty to twenty-two months. In other words, the human child, after the nine months it spends in the womb, requires another year [italics ours] to attain the degree of maturity that characterizes the young of most other mammals at birth. (1)
With his “true” birth [i.e., around 21 months from conception] the human individual becomes, quite characteristically, not only an individual of his species but also a part of his group. (18)
As the child approaches the end of the post-uterine embryonic phase [i.e., around 21 months] and becomes a human individual, not only has its body-Self, but moreover the ego has developed beyond its germinal stage and achieved a certain continuity with the child’s developing consciousness....With the consolidation of its ego, the child gradually enters into the development of consciousness, culminating, finally in the polarization of the adult consciousness. (20)
The primal relationship [the mother/infant bond that allows the infant’s optimum development] is the ontogenetic basis for being-in-one’s-own-body, being-with-one’s-Self, being-together, and being-in-the-world.” (26)
Paraphrasing Neumann, the human infant is not fully incarnated--that is, he has a body, but not a consciousness suitable to orient and use it--until about one year after his birth.
A year is actually quite generous. What loving parent, after all, would turn their child out on his own at one year? Never mind, during that first year the infant establishes the foundation for his consciousness here. He establishes the rudiments of sight, hearing, movement, speech, association, belonging, and so on.
During, especially, months 10 through 21 from conception, then, his awareness must go through a radical transfer. It is from up there (or, at least, not here) to down here. He still has a long way to go to be fully here, but the major shift has occurred. As he is more and more established here, he learns on all levels at an incredible pace.
If our autistic children are like Elly, they appear to develop normally during that first year. Then, something happens: whatever recognition of this world, whatever skills were developed either disappear, or fail to grow.
Isn’t that strange?
What model could explain such a phenomenon?
The best model is an astrological one. As already stated, the two planets responsible for this bizarre turn of events are saturn and pluto. They have the effect they do because of where--which in these charts often also imply when--their influence preponderates. To understand that, we need a better understanding of the implication of the order of the planets.
The order of the planets along with types of consciousness associated with each were listed in the Styron paper on clinical depression. Here they are again, somewhat modified:
The planets from inner (closest to the sun), mercury, to the most outer, pluto, form a loose type of gradient. It is one of types of consciousness, from most familiar to least familiar from the personality’s point of view. To simplify considerably, planets represent the following forms of consciousness as they are ordinarily experienced by us:
Let’s fill in the range of meaning for the outer planets (knowable only through their influence
on inner, planets of personality). At the same time, let’s put the list in an order that represents
the descent of spirit into matter. We reverse the first group:
At saturn, in the now correctly ordered list, the “individual” breaks from the spiritual world to incarnate in one particular body, in one particular personality. By taking form and limitation (saturn), he loses the freedom of formless, i.e...., certain aspects of his spiritual life. Saturn is, at first, a completely dark experience. Spiritual perception has been lost; bodily perception is yet to come.
The temporary darkness is a good thing. Otherwise conscious life would find itself in a rapidly changing body--the foetus, within a body--the mother, within a material world--Earth. That could be rather unpleasant.
After birth, gradual acquisition of the principles of function of the planets jupiter through the sun enable Earth consciousness. They enable orientation in time and space. They enable the attraction/repulsion and their variants necessary for experience at this level. They provide the astrological principles out of which personality is built.
Each of these planets is correlated with parts of infant development. Each sponsors physical as well as emotional and psychological components. Here the more psychological ones are mentioned:
Jupiter represents incorporating, among other things, sucking. Later, it turns into interest in exploration and expansion. Exploration and expansion lead to self-confidence. Self-confidence even eventually leads to graciousness. We can all afford to be gracious in areas we are superior in. The EQ factor is likely most correlated with jupiter. People who tend to rise to the top in social situations have prominent jupiter. Mohandas Gandhi, in our system, has prominent jupiter.
Mars represents assertiveness, including the negative outcomes that occur because of premature or too powerful assertiveness. When the infant refuses his food, he is declaring himself an entity independent of his nurturer. Mars’ consciousness helps him separate himself from other things as well as other people. It sponsors the motor part of skill development. Later yet it sponsors much of our competitive and conquering spirit. Our great generals, like Patton, have prominent mars (mars only sponsors the martial part, not its success.)
Venus represents the principle of cohesion and attraction. By smiling, the infant inadvertently “creates” a more pleasing environment (a pleased mother). Venus’ principle underlies the adage, “you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.” It sponsors both pleasing and appeasing behavior. Later it develops our sense of harmony and aesthetics. People others--male and female--fall in love with are those who have prominent venus. President John F. Kennedy and Princess Diana are examples.
Mercury represents everything about communication--talking, hearing, and thinking, and later, writing. In the infant, it shows as the first efforts at speech, and his eventual mastery of at least one of our many languages. Writers have mercury emphasized in their charts, often in the form of sun or moon in Gemini, ruled by mercury. An example is Jean-Paul Sartre, who has sun in Gemini (conjunct saturn, to give it that serious twist).
Moon represents automatic consciousness and behavior. We need automatism, otherwise we’d be learning to walk all over again every time we decided to walk. Likewise for other automated behaviors as well as automated thinking. As the infant learns, what he learns becomes subject to automation so he doesn’t have to keep re-learning it every time he uses it.
Sun represents essence, so it does not so much "do" as evaluate. It appreciates and understands. Whatever sign the sun is in, it appreciates best the qualities represented by that sign. For example, in Gemini, ruled by mercury, it appreciates thinking, writing, and communicating better than those without a strong mercury.
We left out Earth. It doesn’t usually come in a list of planets of personality. Astronomically it comes between venus and mars, attraction and repulsion, love and hate, respectively, about which we learn a great deal in our sojourn here. Astrologically, since most astrology is geocentric (geo=Earth; centric=centered), Earth is at the center of our world. Astronomically that is not true. The sun is a the center of our solar system.
That is the general order of things. All of these rudiments of personality come in one package--the potential for personality. Some may precede others a little in time, but after that they are all active, simultaneously building personality. They never stand alone in any chart, but combine to produce varying qualities. Venus plus jupiter forefront gives us our most charismatic, and usually very fortunate, people, like Paul Newman. Venus plus mercury gives us our poets, as well as persuasive speakers, like Martin Luther King, Jr.
Actually, put in this order, the planets now share a similarity with another symbolic diagram--our second important concept--the Kabbalistic Tree of Life of esoteric Judaism.
Not all, and not even usually Jewish, Kabbalistic literature makes a correlation between the Sefirot (Sefirah, singular; in Hebrew sefer means book), that is, the numbered stations shown below, and the planets. It has been done, however, for at least several hundred years. While later is not necessarily more correct, it can be useful. The planets correlated with the Sefirot can increase our understanding of incarnation.
The planets are not equal to the Sefirot. The planets were created and operate on the same principle--that of cosmic order of creation--as the Sefirot. The Sefirot, however, are representative of the primary in Creation. The planets are derivative of those same principles.
Here is our Tree:
I should add I know little about Kabbalah as a set of practices. Symbol sets like this one, however, invite pondering. They practically demand it.
Several differences exist between this placement of planets on the Tree of Life and a simple list of the descending order of the planets. What are they?
Notice that the top three--among the Sefirot, the supernal ones--Kether, Chockmah and Binah are represented astrologically by neptune, uranus, and saturn. They represent stages in Creation incomprehensible to us. The Tree, at least, implies saturn is definitely not a planet of personality.
What else?
An unnumbered position, with no associated planet, exists at Daath. Daath, says the literature, is not a real Sefirah. That is why it is in parentheses. That it is there at all, then, is puzzling.
What else?
Among the planets, pluto is not represented.
Maybe Daath and pluto are correlated? But, Daath, if correlated with pluto, is below neptune. As a matter of fact, sometimes pluto is inside neptune’s orbit. So its position is not a problem. The problem is Daath’s unofficial status. If the other Sephirot represent principles of creation, then what does Daath represent?
And, if pluto correlates with Daath, then is pluto not a planet of this solar system? But, of course it is. But, is it perhaps not, somehow, a functional, that is, creative, part?
If, in principle, it is not a part of this system, what is it?
One clue to the possible function of Daath (and pluto) comes from its Hebrew meaning. It means “know.” In its fullest sense, it implies “knowing intimately” as implied biblically when a man "knew" a woman.
One Kabbalistic book (Gray, cited below) suggests a bridge exists at Daath. He suggests it is the kind of bridge over which, when we are returning to the spiritual world--when we die--we can carry only that which we really know. What do we really know? That which is etched deeply into our consciousness.
So at Daath, when we are going up the Tree, that is, dying, there is a kind of critical juncture, a center of gravity, a fulcrum--a switch, perhaps, from horizontal to vertical--to the whole other world of the supernal Sefirah. In our substitutions, the supernal Sephirot are represented by the planets saturn, uranus, and neptune.
When incarnating, or coming down, life passes through Daath in order to experience through the seven planets of personality (including Earth) of dimensioned existence. Returning, it can only carry back that which was truly, intimately known. Such knowing is different from book learning. In involves knowledge that is private, exclusive, exceptionally personal. It cannot be given, is not tradable, and, once established, cannot be lost.
So, if Daath’s correlation with pluto holds true, then pluto implies an intensely personal knowledge. Or maybe, pluto acts as a filter, separating the existential wheat from the chaff. When pluto is regulating--i.e., in a set with--another planet, its presence implies powerful and intimate experiences of that planet. For instance, venus is the planet through which many of us declare our love for another. If pluto is with venus and forefront, we will deeply experience venus’ “love,” which is not agape, but the love based on attraction/repulsion and love/hate. So, venus + pluto for the individual who has it forefront in his chart means he experiences the extremes, along with all the pitfalls, of Eros, the personal, subjective love of attraction and repulsion..
Which other planet appeared fundamental in defining autism? Saturn. Now the implication these planets have for autism can be seen.
First, saturn is above pluto (Daath). So, together and predominant in a chart, we are not going to see much--if we see any at all--personality because those two planets involve processes in creation that happen before personality is developed.
Second, desire, as we understand the word, only starts--going down our Tree--at jupiter. So, we are not going to see much, if any, desire in people characterized by forefront saturn and pluto.
Third, we are going to see an intense focus--the instruction of pluto “to know intimately” whatever it is focused on. Here, with autism, on saturn.
If saturn is the “place” in the process of incarnating where life takes on limitation in order to assume discrete form, then what qualities can we expect to see associated with saturn?
Without planets of personality, saturn’s principle is nearly invisible. Or rather, it is perceived as an absence rather than a presence. That is why predominant and excessive in the mind chart of an individual he “disappears,” that is, becomes clinically depressed, as was the case with Styron. Therefore, we can learn a little more about saturn’s influence only by seeing its influence on planets of personality.
Saturn with the moon “freezes” the usually volatile moon. It creates what we term rigid and dour, or at least fixed and serious personalities. Saturn with mercury usually slows down thinking or focuses it in narrow channels. It may also deepen thought because of the serious twist it puts on it. Saturn with venus may sour love or turn it into duty. Saturn with mars restricts aggression and action, and at its worst, is life-threatening. Saturn with jupiter may restrict expansion (jupiter) too much, but it often leads to well-considered, mature growth. From the perspective of the planets of personality, with their facets consisting of curiosity, intelligence and wit, humor and charm, justice, and graciousness, saturn’s influence is not desirable. Still, as the list shows, saturn with a planet of personality often deepens--through retarding or frustrating it--that planet’s influence, giving it the finer burnish resulting from the committed, longer-lasting behavior that comes from experience.
Such is saturn’s influence seen through the helpful lens of its effects on other planets. Saturn by itself, without a planet of personality, has a positive contribution correlated with its original function. As the place in the Tree where the spiritual assumes the limitation of becoming individual, it is the sponsor of form. Form is not crystallized out of Being based on nothing. Form occurs because of pattern. Pattern is how all of what we know is maintained. Saturn sponsors form through pattern. It sponsors a rich world, but one without emotion--a world of archetypes.
Therefore, pluto plus saturn dominant (forefront) in a chart, should give us an individual with an intense interest in form and pattern, who has very little personality, and who exhibits very little emotion.
That’s a description of Elly.
Some of the other differences between the order of planets in the Tree above and the order they show astronomically are: (1) the sun (at 6) is where Earth should be (between mars and venus), and (2) the moon (at 9) is where the sun should be (interior to mercury). Both changes are significant, but not the proper subject of this paper.
Returning to saturn and pluto, we do not have to limit ourselves to their theoretical descriptions. We can consult astrological literature.
In his book, Astrological Symbols, Robert Hand describes the principles of the planets. Under saturn is the following:
The difficulty with Saturn comes from two sources, only one of which is widely understood. That is the one that has given saturn its reputation as the “greater malefic.” “It is not pleasant when reaching out to grasp something to be told it is not attainable. It is not pleasant to encounter one’s limitations the first time... It is not pleasant to encounter rules that thwart one. Nor is it pleasant to encounter the natural but unlovely consequences of one’s mistakes. Sometimes one’s collisions with the rules of the game are so violent that they can kill, or at least destroy what one has painfully wrought over the years...the well-known difficulties with Saturn energy, result from not understanding either one’s own limitations or the rules of the game. (69)
The truly serious problem of Saturn lies in the idea of reality itself; namely, the equation of reality with truth. ...reality is structure, and so is Saturn. Reality is limitation, and so is Saturn...(70)
From Hand, again, on Pluto:
As the outermost known planet, Pluto symbolizes the end of the process that Uranus began: that of breaking down the reality structure of normal consciousness...Pluto symbolizes the radical transformation of consciousness and being that must result...Pluto is hard to handle if one is bound up in the universe of Saturn. Pluto operates with extreme power, and being a force beyond the ego, when it manifests it usually causes one to feel out of control...Pluto [with Saturn] can symbolize a complete breakdown of ordinary reality. (79)
But, of course, he is writing of saturn/pluto when they are experienced together after one has achieved an identity . What happens when their influence is strong before identity is achieved?
Autism. For an autistic child the instructions to build an identity--a lot of which is located in the 1st chart--are essentially canceled when saturn and pluto predominate.
It is possible to do more than quote other people about saturn and pluto. I have my own research.
So, what about saturn?
Excessive saturn effects on mind in the “mind” chart (3rd house) is already covered in the Styron paper.
Saturn on an Angle, therefore permanently prominent, is a powerful denier of the good things in life. Much, of course, depends on its sign and house rulership (area of life influenced) as well as contrary benefic influences. In general, Angular saturn fosters low self-esteem, failure, inadequacy, and deficiency. In the money chart it makes money scarce. In the health chart it makes energy scarce. In the career chart it fosters low-man-on-the-totem pole positions, and so on. It fosters Job-like experiences, including the constant undervaluing of one’s worth and integrity by others, as happened to Job. On the positive side, it sponsors people who have thought more deeply about life. As the story of Job illustrates, however, those are not people we usually value highly, especially in cultures which worship youth and play.
What about pluto?
Women often become mothers when (at the appropriate age for childbearing) one of their Angles is progressed to, or transited by, pluto. A first-time mother experiences a radical change in her world view. Her focus turns inward to the needs of her unborn, and later infant, child. It is a time for nurturing of the seed of Life.
Pluto has a connection to the unconscious. It is forefront, usually as moon aspecting pluto, in the 3rd house (mental interests) in the 7th chart (relationships with others) of psychiatrists and psychologists. They have an interest in getting “underneath” the planets of personality to look for “seed” causes. In finding those seeds, and exploring them with the patient, they “mother” the individual back to mental health. Pluto represents an intensity of focus and a radical change of awareness. The unconscious not only speaks a different language from the conscious mind, it operates under different laws.
Pluto transiting our moon--a event which can be drawn out over several years--often signals we will be separated (pluto) from an important female (moon), usually because we feel inadequate or she was perceived as over-bearing.
Pluto conjunct an Angle means the toddler was frequently overwhelmed, usually by his mother because she is the major caregiver. Instead of carefully nurturing his individuality through its various stages so he could become an independent adult, she allowed her anxieties and needs to invade his tiny world. As an adult, he--mostly unconsciously--is always expecting the world to overwhelm him. He expects he will be inadequate because that was his prevailing early experience. As an adult he often collapses prematurely or builds exaggerated defenses designed to avoid “overwhelming” experiences.
Some astrologers say pluto predominant makes an individual charismatic. Not me. Charisma comes from venus and jupiter, to which neptune is added for movie-idol adoration. Pluto on an Angle has nothing to do with charisma. Pluto on an Angle produces an essentially defensive individual. Some defenses do appear to be offenses. They are designed to re-direct the viewers attention: here, but not here. It is attention-grabbing, but it is not charismatic. Pluto is anti-charismatic. Its message is: don’t come too close, and I’m not interested, and sometimes even, I don’t even exist. The message beneath that is: don’t interfere with my freedom! because such interference is what the Angle/pluto individual experienced so painfully as a dependent child.
Continuing with specific examples in our effort to better understand the influence of pluto, we look at specific individuals who had pluto predominant.
Albert Einstein had excessive pluto in his 7th chart (relationships with others). Three of his four suns aspected pluto (and few other planets), and three of his four moons also aspected pluto (and little else), with moons ruling an Ascendant and 3rd house (in this chart, the way one’s mind works with and appears to others). That much pluto influence to lights (suns and moons) is way above the norm, which is 1.5 for each. Einstein was intensely focused. His focus was not on the unconscious of others, but on the mathematics of time and space, the seed thoughts of universal creation. He was an admitted failure in relationships. He considered himself a poor husband. He hardly knew his own children. He didn’t intend to be a weak husband and father--in time he just discovered he was. With his suns and moons poor in aspects to planets of personality and strong in relation to outer planets, his attention was on the abstract. (Uranus was his other 3rd house, mental, influence. Uranus sponsors the insights of invention and discovery.)
We have seen that pluto sponsors qualities of intensity, withdrawal, protectiveness, and abstractness.
What about saturn and pluto together?
Together they present somewhat of a problem. If their influence is constant--a condition and not just an event--such individuals, as is the case with autistic children, rarely come to the attention of astrologers. If they do, it is certainly far less often than do popular public figures like movie stars, politicians, singers, and famous athletes, all of whom have prominent venus and/or jupiter.
As an example of a condition, one individual has saturn conjunct pluto conjunct his Ascendant in Cancer, with saturn ruling his 7th house of relationships. Both are non-harmonic, so they occur in all charts. They pick up lights--both harmonic suns--in his 7th chart of relationships with others, so are emphasized in that chart. As a child (and even as an adult), he was constantly overloaded by his incessantly, mindlessly verbalizing mother. Since she never responded to his signals of discomfort and distress, he never learned how to diminish her really unpleasant behavior. As an adult he attracted it all over again because he was developmentally so far behind others in defining his own boundaries. Therefore, as an adult, he gravitated continually toward isolation. For him, it is better to exist for himself alone than “not exist at all” in relationships. Other than this effect on his relationships, he is a fine, intelligent man.
Richard Nixon provides an example of an event. He resigned, at age 61, as President of the United States on August 8, 1974.
Richard Nixon--7th House Chart
On the day of his resignation, his relationships with others (7th chart) reflected:
| pb north node | 9 Pisces 36 | (coming from 12 Pisces 41 at birth) | |
| pb9 pluto | 10 Pisces 18 | (coming from 16 Pisces 06) | |
| pc9 pluto | 10 Pisces 45 | (coming from 1 Pisces 32 at conception) | |
| c saturn | 10 Pisces 02 | ruler of C Asc; co-ruler of c 12th house (18 of 27°) |
Rulership of saturn over C Asc, plus its lighting by the NN, makes this a predominant condition for the time of his resignation. All of them are in Pisces in his birth 7th house. They show a deep feeling of failing, and being failed by, others combined with a sense of powerlessness. Looking at their original positions (in column 2 in parentheses), they constitute a “fault.” The fault became more exact with time, suggesting he was likely to have such an experience. (The public, political aspect of his resignation is in his 10th chart of career and social image.)
Amelia Earhart had a condition influencing the end of her life which became an event of unknown duration.
Amelia Earhart--7th House Chart
| b saturn | 0 Scorpio 48 | in c 4th house | |
| c7 pluto | 2 Scorpio 16 | in c 4th house | |
| C Asc | 1 Leo 30 |
What does it mean? Her Ascendant acts as a light for saturn/pluto, which will become active at the appropriate time in her life. Since saturn and pluto are in her 4th house, the appropriate time is at the end of her life. Since we are looking at the 7th chart, the area of influence is relationships at the end of her life. Lighted saturn/pluto describing her relationships late in life means she will feel completely alone and emotionally abandoned at the end of her life. This condition implies she was alive after her plane crashed, because it is unlikely she would feel that kind of isolation if she died in the crash.
Last, but not least, I have my own experience. Born with saturn on one Angle, and pluto on another, I am not autistic (some people might think so). I prefer more privacy than is considered normal. I need regular respite from others. If I do not get it, I slam shut in much the same way some autistic children do. My saturn and pluto are non-harmonic, therefore in all charts. They, therefore, acquire extra emphasis in harmonic charts which provide them lights. I do not, as is the case so far with autistic children, have preponderance of saturn and pluto in my 3rd house (mind) chart. Only saturn is emphasized in my 1st chart (identity). However, both saturn and pluto are emphasized through lights in the 7th chart of relationships. So it is through relationships that I most experience the extremes of this influence.
I also had a powerful saturn/pluto event: harmonic saturn progressed to Angular/moon/pluto/node in my 7th chart (relationships). I then had two Angle/moon/saturn/nodes for this chart--the one I started out with, and a progressed one, which also included pluto. With it, a condition (Angle/moon/pluto) was turned into an event (+ saturn). Moons and nodes increase orb and progressing harmonic saturn moves very slowly. This particular “event” has lasted several years, with more to go. Under this combined influence I lost--sometimes self-sponsored and sometimes other-sponsored, usually through breach but twice through death--my connection to all my friends, the overwhelming majority of my family, and my community of 28 years. From my point of view, seen more in retrospect, our connection just ceased to exist. Either that, or it became so painful I did not want it to exist, and closed off from it.
I suspect a similar astrological condition (Angle/saturn/pluto of some duration) is forefront when a spouse (male or female) and parent (father or mother) just “suddenly “ ups and abandons his family and disappears. Sometimes, in time, he starts a new identity and even family. Occasionally, on television, we see a story about one such individual finally located by those he has abandoned. In the several I have seen over the years, he had no response to the anger he received from his first family. In emphasizing the righteous anger of the abandoned, the tele-story acquires that tone tele-journals so like to present. It also obscures reality, making it appear the individual, in full possession of his faculties and options, simply decided to destroy his whole identity, obliterating every connection accompanying it. He did not destroy his identity, but it was destroyed. As happened with Styron with his clinical depression, all attempts to explain so extreme a state to individuals--loved ones, possible healers--to whom the experience is alien are worse than fruitless. They actually compound the problem.
Being an astrologer, did I anticipate, therefore unconsciously create, those effects (of saturn and pluto)? I did not because I had no understanding of their combined influences. Understanding came only after several years of their predominance. It could be said then, after those several years of that experience, I got “daath” on saturn/pluto. With that new understanding, their effect in the charts of autistic children became visible.
Hand, in a later article, calls the experience of saturn/pluto the “shrinking transformation.” Occurring to individuals who already have an identity, its effects are severe, but not as severe as they are for autistic children, who start out "shrinking."
Saturn and pluto Angular are not, by themselves, life threatening. Relationships are painful, so painful that emotional sharing is either prevented or destroyed. Coming early or later in life, predominance of saturn + pluto creates powerful similarities among individuals experiencing it. When it occurs later, the individual has prior experience to fall back on in maintaining some identity. The autistic individual does not.
All of the above descriptions of the effects of saturn, pluto, and their combination prominent in a chart are based on either conditions (that is, they were permanent in the chart), or events (that is, they have limited duration). With the events, all except pluto Angular occurred in charts of individuals with adult identities. Once personality is established, saturn and pluto do not create autism. They foster changes in focus, breaks in relationship, and together in the same set, extreme social isolation. Once the individual has an established identity, the isolation of saturn/pluto may be unpleasant, but the individual is still functional. He still has access to having developed a personality.
Charts below show that autism is the result of an astrological condition, not an event. The astrological condition is excessive saturn plus pluto. Their area of influence is powerful enough in autistic children to reverse, or nearly totally impede, development of personality. They do so because their influence occurs in two charts fundamental in defining our identity and thought processes. The two charts are those of the 1st house (identity) and the 3rd house (mind). Their areas of influence within those charts are to Angles plus 3rd houses.
It is time, now, to look at the examples of our five autistic children.
For an explanation of the astrology used on this site, go to “About This System” listed among other papers on the Home Page. For those who do not want to do that, there is this note: this system uses only conjunctions, applying and separating squares, and oppositions. Orbs with lights is 5°; without lights, about 2.5°. Birth planets (including their harmonics) rule only birth houses. Conception planets (including their harmonics) rule only conception houses.
Returning to our autistic children, below I show first their 1st house chart of identity ; second, their 3rd house chart of mind; last, their 7th charts for identity in relationships. Those interested in each child’s total saturn/pluto should print the material, then cut and paste it by child.
All planets in each set are not included. Only saturn, pluto, Angles and rulerships are listed. That highlights pattern and its emphasis. Lights are included because they potentize any set. They do so because lights represent consciousness; planets, the type of consciousness illuminated. So, if a non-light planet of personality is included below it is because it is included because it is necessary to establish rulership of Angles and 3rd houses. The significant conditions--saturn, pluto, the Angle, and their rulerships--are in bold to make them easily visible.
Planets of personality in the “autistic set” undoubtedly make some difference, I just do not know how much.
The 1st House Harmonic Chart of Identity
1. DEREK--1st House Chart
| (a) | C MC | 1 Capricorn 09 | ||
| b mercury | 2 Aries 04 | ruler of B MC in c 3rd house as well as B Asc | ||
| c1 moon | 6 Cancer 22 | |||
| c pluto | 2 Libra 19 | |||
| c saturn | 3 Libra 43 |
This Angle/mercury/saturn/pluto is a core condition which contains no harmonics. C1 moon--a harmonic moon--“develops” it so that it applies to this chart, that of the 1st house.
Why be interested in the 3rd house within the chart of the 1st? Shouldn’t our interest be the 1st house within this chart?