A look back on Michael Lutin's article

I gotta say I have been thinking a lot about Michael Lutin. (No he is not dead, I'm just feeling sentimental). As some of you remember Michael was the resident astrologer for Vanity Fair magazine for a jillion years. He left around 2008 and I'm not alone in saying it was a big loss to VF. On a related note can anyone tell me why Rob Lowe got a VF cover this spring? I thought I woke up in 1983 when it arrived at my house.

Anyway, Michael's column was your usual, "Hello, Leo this month you and your loved ones will fight like cats and dogs.." This is astro information people want to read and Michael delivered, a delicious pithy accurate monthly report. But in December 2006, Michael broke free from the "Hello, Leo" choker and said what was coming in what can be best described as a fair warning shot. I almost cried when I read it. Why? Because all of us astrologers were fearing the aspects and knew a whole world of hurt was about to come our way and no one was talking about it in mainstream astro resources.

I read it twice and thought, "Holy shit, Michael is telling the world what we know. Send that man a million dollars and a protective cup!"

Now, if you did not read what he wrote on that chilly winter day, I have it here. Read this piece and see if Michael did not hit a ball out of the park.
I met with him at a book reading about a month or two after it went to press and I said, "I'm so glad you did it." And he said, "I had to do it. I felt compelled to warn people."

Yep.

here's a snippet.

While Pluto is in Capricorn, Uranus will be leaving the sign of Pisces and reaching the end of the Zodiac, and sometime between 2009 and 2011 the dam is going to break. The last time this happened was at the end of the 1920s. When Uranus comes to the last degrees of Pisces, it will spell the end of an era. People will figure, "Aw, the hell with it. The end is coming anyway, so give me a double martini."

As we get closer to that time, people will put all their chips on the table. The stakes will get higher. (Incidentally, America began the war in Iraq when the sun was at the end of Pisces—a perfectly moronic time to start anything.) Metaphorically, culturally, and sometimes even literally, Uranus at the end of Pisces can seem like a torrential flood that comes out of nowhere. Everything that has piled up and been swept under the rug comes spilling out. To the apocalypse crowd, it will seem like the wrath of God, because lots of people are going to be headed toward self-indulgence, turning up the music and dancing, even hurrying the end, much as they did in America during the 1920s.

When Uranus hits the 29th degree of Pisces, before it pops into Aries, even the Pope could have a stroke over the upheaval the world will find itself in. Uranus in Pisces washes everything away—every hope, every prayer—and the only thing that saves you is the ability to surrender to the inevitable shift. Once Uranus hits Aries, however, a whole segment of the population is going to rise up. When the government becomes business and business becomes government, the people will fight back, and the ensuing struggle will lead to the eventual transformation and rebirth of America.

Pluto in Capricorn is going to change America from the inside out, threaten our very existence, challenge our economy, and divide the country politically. The government is going to be so paranoid during those years that it doesn't really matter who gets in in 2008.

Pluto in Capricorn means the ascendance into overt power of corporations in relation to the government. But that situation will change when Pluto enters Aquarius, at the end of the 2020s.

Uranus in Aries is going to be the 1960s all over again. The greatest time of upheaval will be between 2015 and 2019, when the square of Uranus in Aries to Pluto in Capricorn will create the seeds of revolution everywhere. Forces of repression are going to clamp down even harder on those who want to speak their minds.

Then, in the years 2023–25, the final stages of the Pluto return and the Capricorn effect will reach a climax. Some astrologers believe that an empire lasts no longer than one Pluto cycle, and by 2025 this cycle will be played out. And no matter how you look at it, the U.S.A. is an empire.

Just as the British Empire began enduring sunsets after the fledgling colonies won their independence, our turn may be coming. The Pluto return of 2025 will demand a redefinition of the United States and create the ultimate identity crisis. We will have to put ourselves on the line, as we did in the 1770s.

The period of turbulence that lies before us all in America is not God's wrath or the work of radical Muslims, and it has nothing to do with the hole in the ozone layer. It is a necessary and inevitable step in the evolution of this country that will result in a reworking of the Constitution in the last half of the 2020s.

This political, social, cultural, and economic change will mark the rebirth of the United States as a more global nation—a member of the world, if not the leader of the world. This is a threatening challenge to the notions of land ownership, security, wealth, and supremacy our Cancer nation has enjoyed for more than two centuries. The dollar will not likely go back to its post–W.W. II strength. Other countries will reject our exploitation and demand instead our cooperation. Luckily for us, the horoscope of the U.S.A. is strongly influenced by Venus and Jupiter, so we'll never go totally broke or hungry. We will, however, have to play ball with the rest of planet Earth as we never have before. From now on it's cooperate, or else.

No one is really to blame. We've brought ourselves to this crisis, through a combination of individual freedom and economic gain, as well as a blind, isolating grandiosity. America is a fabulous place to live: you can come here, think up something you want to do, and be successful at it. But we've gotten fat and we've gotten lazy. So don't blame George Bush or Bill Clinton or any of the elected officials in Washington. A country gets the leaders it deserves, and when we're ready to rise from the ashes of a fallen empire, we will find the leaders to help us do so. It will happen, but not in 2008. We have to go through the Pluto transit first.