We sail across a silent, darkened body of water. Neither shore can be seen, future or past.

"Come on down to the River of Sight and you can really understand." -Neil Young

No star nor candle helps to guide our way. A stillness hangs in the air yet the helm holds steady and true. A slender strip of dark frayed cloth hangs from the highest mast, worn and limp. Looking out, the eye narrows for reflections unseen, the ear listens for rhythms unheard, the nostrils flair; every sense erect, alert. Anticipation crowds out reflection. These silent, powerful currents flush all but the deepest memories, forcing us to forget the earlier shore.

  Using the stellar map of the original Thirteen Colonies, we have been following Pluto's trail across the centuries, looking for clues to its identity. Born on July 4th, 1776, this nation has a horoscope in the same manner a person does. Each reflects the stars at birth. The planets describe archetypes in our life. Pluto is the archetype of emotional focus and concentration.

US Pluto

This can be the accumulation or loss of resources, and lump sums of jointly owned finances, whether they be taxes, loans, or credit buying. A country's national map also shows these things. Here it is the national debt and the IRS. But Pluto also represents the emotional anguish, grief and moral outrage which can accompany death. It can evoke a darkened spectrum of colors, ranging from loss, passion, and jealousy, to envy, revenge, and spite. It is a powerful contrast of rich textures and hues.

  It's not unusual for people not to like Pluto.

  The early presidents of the United States were not the only ones to wrestle with Pluto's minions; these ambassadors to the Lord of the Underworld, the international bankers. Napoleon Bonaparte also labored to throw off this yoke from his back.

Napoleon

When he sold the territory we now know as the Louisiana Purchase to the United States, he was able to raise credit free funds from outside of the banking system, enabling him to finance his army debt free.

"The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency: their sole object is gain."

  A few decades later, another independent European thinker observed the state of affairs during the Civil War and commented on the prevailing winds blowing across the Atlantic at that time:

  "The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world."

Otto von Bismarck

  Following Lincoln's assassination, Germany's Iron Chancellor made the following prediction.

  "The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the Untied States great enough to wear his boots. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America, and use it systematically to corrupt modern civilization. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance."

  Domestically or internationally, whether president, Emperor or Chancellor, the observations are the same.