Pluto
_I: And speaking of satellites that give life… We also find satellites that give death. Why is Pluto no longer called a planet and is it even considered more of a satellite than a world in itself?
_AM: First let's look at what a satellite means. The word Satélite comes from Etruscan and has been taken by Latin, pronouncing “Satelles, satellitis” when referring to the courtiers or guards of a king or prince. This was the name by which the bodyguards of someone important were known, who accompanied this main person at the royal court all the time. This led to the stellar description, when the worlds were taken as gods. Thus, the rocks that accompany and surround them all the time were considered their guardians or escorts, that is, “satellites”.
_I: Ah, now I understand it better, because we usually say satellites only to the machines made by humans that fly around the planet, but we don't usually recognize that the Moon is a satellite, and what the other planets have are satellites, not Moons.
_AM: As we said yesterday, our Earth satellite is called the Moon. Mars has two satellites: Phobos and Deimos. Jupiter has about 79 satellites of which the most important are Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto. Although Saturn surpasses them all, with a total of 82 satellites on average, the most important and striking are Titan, Enceladus, Mimas, Tethys, Dione, Iapetus and Rhea.
_I: 82??
_AM: Well… It's a very big planet. Not counting the millions of rocks that form its famous rings. Beyond that, Uranus is about 27; Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Ariel and Miranda being the most important. Neptune has 14, of which Triton and Thalassa stand out. And Pluto, after all, has 5, although 4 of them are just rocks, and one is especially striking.
_I: Charon.
_AM: Charon is about 3 times smaller than Pluto, but still, it is the largest satellite in relation to the planet it circles. Well... If we can call them planet and satellite.
_I: Why?
_AM: Because Pluto has a rather strange and peculiar orbit. For a planet to be considered such, it must have a fixed orbit around the star it surrounds, and this is not the case with Pluto. Its elliptical orbit is so elongated that it intersects with the orbit of Neptune, being in certain periods of the year the eighth planet in the solar system and sometimes the ninth, giving Neptune the position of last planet in the solar system (the ninth), and returning the rest of the year to its number 8 position. Neptune does not move from its orbit, but Pluto does. And not only that, but it also has a short orbit over an invisible point, as if it were a satellite of a non-existent axis.
_I: How can this be possible?
_AM: It is because of the strength of Charon. This satellite is only 19,640 kilometers from Pluto. To understand this, imagine that the Moon was about 4 times larger and about 19 times closer, being able to see it the size of a tennis ball in the sky.
_I: Pretty big, really…
_AM: The force of the Moon's gravity would push the Earth with such power that it would take it out of its orbit, and would drag it with it, in a kind of dance in which both stars would move with an invisible axis between them. This is how Charon and Pluto dance. For this reason, after the discovery of Pluto in 1930, it was called a Planet, but a few decades later, due to these irregularities, it was considered a Planetoid, the largest of a group of loose stars in the confines of the solar system called “ plutoids” in his honor. Like Uranus, this planetoid rotates with a twisted axis at approximately 120 degrees, compared to Earth which does so at only 23 degrees. This positions Pluto north in the equatorial zone, making a complete rotation in a little more than 6 Earth days.
_I: It must be the coldest planet in the solar system.
_AM: Well... Its distance from the Sun means that the light affects it little, about 230 degrees Celsius below zero on average. It takes light about 5 and a half hours to reach Pluto from the Sun, and a human would take a little more than 9 years. Although we couldn't do anything there, since it is not only a frozen world, but also too small.
_I: How small?
_AM: Quite a bit, more than the Moon. If you extend a planisphere of Pluto over the Earth, it would cover only the territory of the United States, and Charon would extend throughout the territory of Alaska.
_I: So they practically cannot affect us…
_AM: Well, its effect is quite subtle, but still, shocking. Pluto is named after the Roman god of the underworld, whose Greek equivalent is Hades. Guardian of Hell, he is also the custodian of all the minerals that are hidden beneath the Earth, which makes him the richest being in the Divine Pantheon, hence his name, Pluto, which in Greek (ploutós) means “wealth.” , abundance".
_I: That's why the government of the rich is called Plutocracy, right?
_AM: That's right. Pluto is the richest of the rich, custodian of the mineral world, king of hell, symbol of Death, where all corpses end up when they die: under the earth. In Greek tradition, it was believed that when a person died, he must cross the Acheron River, and thus reach the world of the dead. But to achieve this, they had to be transferred to the other shore by Charon (Kharón), the ferryman of Hades, who asked for a coin to do the service. For this reason, Greeks and Romans placed a coin under the tongue of the deceased, so that they would have a way to pay him. If they had no coins, Charon would hold them for a century before passing them on for free.
_I: Tragic… So, Hades and Kharón or Pluto and Charon, have always gone together, and represent the guardians of the underworld, custodians of the Dead.
_AM: And this is where this planet (or binary planetoids) influence our subconscious. In Death. As we have said previously, the greater the distance from the Sun, the more subtle the presence of a world affects our lives. And because of Pluto's location at the threshold of the solar system, it represents the end, which sometimes intersects with the subconscious of the soul, the eternal reverie of Neptune. That end is the crisis, the sudden change, the break, the end of something that keeps us united to life, to the light of the Sun. This is how Pluto and Charon welcome Death as a process of expansion into sidereal space. , outside the attachment of solar gravity, towards the universe itself.
_I: So it represents physical death?
_AM: No, it represents subtle death, the force of the innermost shadows that pulse to the great transformation, to the way in which you experience changes. The presence of Pluto announces the way in which you will experience changes in your life, detachment, death and resurrection. There is no way to escape its undeniable force, since all life goes towards change, every organism tends to die. Pluto reminds you that changes are inevitable, and that they are necessary. Well there is no conception without orgasm. There is no life without birth, there is no growth without effort, there is no learning without error, there is no evolution without crisis, there is no death without life. Pluto is the presence that shows beauty in the shadows, in the hidden. It is impossible to see him in the sky like the others, Pluto is invisible to our terrestrial eyes, he is hidden in the darkness, and you cannot predict when he will appear in your life. He is the unexpected, that is why he is the king of crises, of illness in the sense of stopping, of reviewing what has been done to start again.
_I: Pluto takes me to review my shadows… To be able to create. Is this why we talk about this world in the Sacral chakra?
_AM: Well, the Sacred is where the duality of this binary system of planetoids speaks of polarity, of balance in creation, manifestation. The Sacral chakra contains the Plutonian and Scorpion organs, where everything that was seen with the light passes into the deepest of shadows, where the essence is absorbed. The lowest energies are hidden there, it is the underworld of the physical body, it is the death of what entered you, it is the center that makes some go to heaven (to the body through the bloodstream) or to hell (to be compressed as fecal matter in the large intestine). And it is the same energy of dissolution and death that is translated as transformation, since it is the one who obtains something with a form, to dissolve it and generate a new one, with a new usefulness and purpose, making it pass the crisis that turns it into something surpassing and transcendental. . Thus, this chakra, in turn, is related to creation, since life is reborn from the shadows. What dies nourishes life, transcends it, creating a new being in the womb or in each cell that is nourished by your body.
_I: Life is born from death...
_AM: It is Reincarnation. You yourself have died and been born many times, and you know it, you remember it. It is the energy of Pluto that reminds you that it is possible to return after his trial, that it is his presence that prompts you to transform into something new.
_I: We all deny Pluto, even today we say that it is no longer a planet, that it is no longer important, as if classifying it in one way or another does not have the presence that it has in the same way...
_AM: Whether it is a planet or satellite, whether it is a binary system or a simple lost rock orbiting irregularly around the Sun, its position is the limit, reminding us that everything that begins ends, and that everything that ends is the seed of a new beginning.
_I: Therefore, it reminds me that if I seek to truly transform, I must allow myself to die. Only then can I be reborn.
_AM: But the attachment to the Sun, to the Light, keeps us linked to what is good for us, what makes us what we are today, clinging to this existence, feeling that limits are protection, making a prison a home . And yet, attached, tied, we continue crying out for a change, which can only be given by the strength of Pluto, who will not warn when it arrives, and will destroy what you are to allow you to truly be.
_I: To renew oneself it is necessary to let go of the old. To be reborn, it is necessary to let yourself die... And if I do, on the other side I will find the riches that were hidden beneath my shadows...
_AM: Are you ready to die?
_I: Yes, I am ready to be born.