Haumea and Pluto

Fanning Evolutionary Flames at a Molecular Level

By Lianne McCafferty

Many of us are looking toward Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius as the next big shift. It signals a further step into air which began with the Great Mutation of 2020 when Jupiter and Saturn conjoined at 0° Aquarius: an era of air might be most welcome with its less materialistic ethos looking beyond the physical. I’m sure we’re all imagining a myriad of life-changing inventions and technological developments ranging from continued exploration of space, growth of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, gene therapy, human cloning, cryogenics and artificial wombs. The list is only limited by the confines of the mind. Yet for any innovation to be born, a spark of life is needed, a creative energy to fan the flames. So, might there be another dimension to this, a deeper evolutionary force at work?

In my ongoing research on dwarf planets MakeMake and Haumea, their archetypes have become my new normal. It is Haumea’s creative genius and prominence in the upcoming Pluto Aquarius ingress that has led me to the world of genetic engineering, cloning and other scientific manipulations of DNA, the stuff of life.

Haumea is Hawaii’s most ancient deity. She is Mother Goddess to the island, its other gods, and particularly Pele, the volcano goddess. There is hardly a more spectacular sight than lava spewing forth from the earth then cooling to form new land. Haumea is the midwife of nature and in her myth repeatedly transforms from an old woman to a young girl, bearing children from various parts of her body, thus ensuring further generations. This mythological imagery is also quite Plutonian. Haumea is a double-edged sword: the matriarch of destruction, but also of creativity, fertility and regeneration, the latter of which is demonstrated perfectly in the nativity of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown. Haumea sits in her clinical 6th house (if the time of birth is accurate), in a Virgo stellium conjunct chart ruler Venus. Mars, also present in the stellium, aptly describes sex in a test tube! The chart itself is full of fire, including both lights.

Haumea’s discovery chart (time unknown) has a strong fire-air signature – more on this later. Sitting in Libra (again the double-edged sword) and conjunct Jupiter, Haumea forms a benefic triangular aspect pattern with Sagittarius Mercury, Venus and Aquarius Neptune. Haumea’s creative potential is limitless, and events connected to her often seem to occur on a collective scale. She was discovered just after the 2004 Boxing Day Indonesian tsunami, a devastating event which killed nearly 300,000 people. Thus, Haumea walks a fine line, a balancing act between creation and destruction. This naturally leads to the question of ethics, a crucial consideration when something wonderfully innovative can destroy as many as it benefits.

Some of us may already be familiar with Haumea in the charts of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Japan [see Astro-Databank at astro.com], but in both bombings, a Leo Sun-Haumea conjunction (with Pluto also close by in Leo) sits on Japan’s Saturn. Mars and Uranus are on Japan’s Gemini Haumea, describing not only the twin explosions, but detonation from the air. Astrology has a way of painting incredibly powerful pictures, here one of fiery death and devastation born from what was once just a spark of creativity. Similarly, Dante’s narrative poem Inferno also conjures horrendous images of depravity and torture in the bowels of hell, and the latter words of this following quote resonate strongly with the misuse of creative power, “Hell…is the realm of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen”.Dante’s natal Haumea [see astro.com] sits in a Grand Air Trine with the Sun and Chiron, and his Leo Mars-Neptune conjuring the conflagration of the explosions.

Although Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the prominent nuclear events of the 20th century, the Russian Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested, creating the largest human-made explosion ever. The energy released by the underwater earthquake preceding the 2004 tsunami was 1500 times that of Hiroshima; yet the Tsar Bomba far exceeded this force, suggesting human-made destruction can ably compete with that of nature literally and metaphorically, shaking the ground we stand on.

Haumea and fertility

Returning to Haumea’s link to fertility, my interest, as a former professional equestrian, was piqued by news in autumn 2021 that Olympic show-jumping stallion, Arko, had been cloned. This announcement was made in September 2021 by pet cloning company, Gemini Genetics, when the foal was already a few weeks old. The company most likely waited a while post-birth to ensure a healthy outcome.

Gemini Genetics! Astrology never ceases to amaze us with its infinite ability to astound through both literal and symbolic manifestation which speaks for itself in the triwheel (unfortunately no time of birth for Arko but most foals are born during the evening-to-early morning phase). The clone announcement has a Grand Air Trine of a Haumea-Mercury conjunction, Jupiter in Aquarius and Gemini Midheaven which picks up Arko’s Venus and Gemini Genetics’ IC and Haumea, the latter opposing Arko’s Mars.

One of the various reasons to clone a sport-horse is money, and the Taurus Scorpio axis here suggests such financial incentive. Racehorse breeding is incredibly lucrative, but thoroughbreds destined for a racing career require a live cover, i.e. physical mating. However, other horse sports have used artificial insemination for many years since it is easy for a breeder to go online and purchase frozen semen from their favoured stallion, then inseminate their mare, or implant an embryo into a foster mare so the biological mare can continue competing. That said, once a stallion is deceased, its frozen semen stocks are finite. Water cannot be turned into wine, unless a clone, which is usually fully fertile, can be produced.

Of course, this isn’t just finance-led; it is also incredibly emotive. UK-based Gemini Genetics is partnered with US Viagen Pets and Equine: cloning is a growing industry serving pet lovers, livestock, sport horses to advocates for endangered species. So, the question must be asked: how long before cloning technology jumps to humans? The Haumea-Uranus opposition in Gemini Genetics’ natal chart describes the pioneering science, yet Pluto completing a t-square raises the question of how do we evolve and break boundaries without upsetting the balance of nature? Cloning occurs naturally in single-celled organisms, some plants and fungi, yet when human-made, will its focus remain on replicating the original or seek to improve it?

Here there is a resonance with the alchemical process of turning lead into gold. In her book, Dynamics of the Unconscious, Liz Greene writes “…alchemy accomplishes what Nature leaves imperfect…the alchemist saw [her-/himself] as the transformer of this natural chaos, the individual who stepped in and interfered with God’s noble but imperfect creation in order to accomplish its ultimate evolutionary design…it concerns transforming the raw substance of human nature and releasing its potential of inner divinity…” Yet the integrity of the alchemist is an important factor aligning with the ethical issues genetic engineering raises. There is a macro and micro version to this: the macro involves the magnus opus [or great project or purpose] as the overall engineering project, the prima materia being the defective genetic material or that which has potential to be refined – something that must have blackened and calcinated, the first stage of alchemical transformation involving heating and decomposing raw matter that has decayed or is dysfunctional. On a micro level, the basic steps of cloning a DNA fragment such as joining together the pieces of DNA (ligation) then inserting the new DNA into cells (transfection) could be linked to solutio, coagulatio and submilatio, subsequent stages of the alchemical process.

So how did our understanding of DNA come about?

A rare conjunction of Pluto and Haumea at 24-25° Leo, three times between 1954-55. heralded a revolution in the understanding of genetics. And astrological hindsight suggests that the relationship between these planets might be intimately linked to the evolution of life.

In 1953 Francis Crick & James Watson published a paper in Nature titled ‘A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid’ which describes their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. It is important to bear in mind that the conjunction was within 30 or less throughout the 1950s due to the slow speed of these planets. Pluto has long been associated with the splitting of the atom which coincided with its 1930 discovery, therefore it’s not unrealistic to associate Haumea with the splitting of the nucleus or DNA. In the conjunction chart, again there is a strong fire-air theme, to which I promised I would return. The meaning of fire is clear enough, creative action, energy and life; but where does air fit in? DNA is a code and language, the mother-tongue of life itself and the duality of the double helix here is demonstrated by the Gemini-Libra trine.

Crick and Watson’s natal charts both have Haumea inconjunct an Aquarius planet, so unsurprisingly their work led to a breakthrough as all hard aspects force change to some degree, with the inconjunct in particular bringing a shift or change of direction. Both nativities have Haumea-Venus aspects in water as well as Pluto in Cancer, and water is indeed the source from which all life emerged.

DNA has become integrated into the zeitgeist through both further scientific research and popular culture. Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, has Leo Pluto and Haumea rising sextile Mercury in Libra, echoing the fire-air theme. Jurassic Park is the story of dinosaurs cloned from prehistoric DNA for a theme park island, and its film premier chart showcases this with an impressive Gemini stellium, but also contains a caveat – Chiron in between Haumea and Pluto. We must be mindful of the consequences of tampering with the evolutionary process. Recall that in the story, the dinosaurs escape and reestablish themselves in the food chain!

On the subject of monsters, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a precursor to this idea of tampering with life. Her angular Pluto in Aquarius describes the re-animating electricity. Also, there’s a hint of what soon might actually be approaching us with Pluto’s forthcoming ingress. With her angular Capricorn Haumea and Sagittarius Moon sextile Pluto, Shelley was someone with foresight regarding the realities of scientific experiments promising immortality or regeneration. Her angular Mars in a Virgo stellium trine Haumea echoes the energies of the first test tube baby.

Shelley was possibly inspired by the commonplace exhumation of bodies for medical study in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1752, concurring with Haumea in early Scorpio, the Murder Act was passed in England which permitted dissection of executed murderers. Prior to this, bodies were often exhumed at night by ‘resurrectionists’ and sold for medical study, a practice which continued after the act was passed due to lack of supply. Such ghastly entrepreneurship was not limited to cadavers; murders were also committed solely for the corpse’s value, both financial and scientific which gruesomely describes the Taurus/Scorpio axis. This look backwards is very relevant as Haumea ingresses into Scorpio imminently: the first ‘taster’ was in November 2022-April 2023; then the full ingress is between October 2023-October 2049, providing context to the likes of a report in businessinsider.com titled ‘Why Haven’t Scientists Cloned Humans, Yet?’ The author observed: “Therapeutic cloning is almost identical to reproductive, except…the embryo is cloned for the sole purpose of extracting stem cells which have the incredible ability to turn into any other cell in the human body, which means they're great for developing new treatments for disease and have the potential to repair or regenerate tissues and organs.”

The first ingress in 2022 has an outlying Scorpio stellium in an already watery chart whilst in the full 2023 ingress, Taurus carries the weight along with more air and fire. As I wrote this section, I stumbled across this exciting development: “…In 2021, researchers from Queen Mary University of London demonstrated that mammal DNA floating in the air could be collected and sequenced. This is really the first time [that] airborne samples have been used to look at mammals, and it’s very exciting…we’ve learned that airborne DNA is a lot broader than what we originally gave it credit for, and I think this paper opens the door for expanding into new areas.” – qmul.acuk/media/news/2-21/se: ‘Study Provides First Evidence of DNA Collection from Air’.

Haumea aligned with Pluto

I’ve briefly mentioned the Haumea/Pluto relationship and their similar evolutionary energies: Huamea regularly rebirths whilst Pluto regenerates. Both are about life and death and thus understanding their relationship and cycles might reveal deeper perspective on Pluto’s Aquarius ingress. Haumea’s location and eccentric orbit of 283-309 years is like Pluto’s. However, their cyclic relationship is not the easiest to track with its non-concentric pattern. They spend a lot of time ‘chasing’ each other, often seemingly within hands-reach before pulling away again. Perhaps there is some sense of repulsion as with magnets, both so powerful that they only dare to come together out of absolute necessity. Interestingly, Haumea has an extremely fast rotation of four hours so perhaps it’s worth considering that, despite her slow orbit, there might a dynamo effect and the potential for vast creative output.

What makes Haumea significant here is her square to the Pluto ingress, and as with all planetary cycles, history is our best guide. As mentioned, their cycle is complicated: the 2nd-5th centuries saw a series of squares, the 6th-8th centuries oppositions; with squares again in the 13th century. The 16th, 18th and 19th centuries saw conjunctions, the latter in Taurus with more on this in a forthcoming sequel to this article in Journal. The already discussed Leo conjunction in the 1950s saw the start of an exciting cycle on a molecular level. The current square became exact on 8 May 2022 at 28° Libra/Capricorn then moves to Scorpio-Aquarius becoming exact a further 13 times or so until 2028 so, more or less in orb through the 2020s. A trine between them begins in the 2050s, then a waning square in 2097, so this is a cycle to be viewed through a long-range lens with Pluto’s Aquarian ingress being a significant marking point.

Pluto will slide in and out of Capricorn before November 2024 before settling in Aquarius until 2043. Although these ingresses should be viewed collectively, the angular emphasis when set for London cannot be ignored and is worthy of further study. In all three ingresses, Haumea is aspected by dispositors, Mars and Pluto, square Pluto in all three: trine Mars in the first, quintile Mars in the second and square Mars in the third forming a t-square.

Ingress/Chart 1: Haumea, as handle of the chart, is the standout feature with a pioneering Aries stellium suggesting major initiatives. The fixed square with Pluto at 0⁰ accesses a deep well of untapped creativity and with the nodal axis forming a t-square a strong developmental pull between past and future.

Ingress/Chart 2: Sun-Pluto is an apex of a t-square with Haumea and Jupiter in Taurus and trine a Gemini Moon. Might this be organic growth of resources involving cloning/genetic innovations?

Ingress/Chart 3: Leo Mars completes a t-square with Haumea and Pluto tied in with the nodal axis. How will we control our creative impulse and its offspring? Might we bite off more than we can chew? Undoubtedly, we will see huge revolutionary leaps in science but likely resistance too, particularly around our future identity and existence as humans, social organisations and with regards to our relationship with technology. Where do the boundaries begin and end, and will transhumanism become a challenging area?

I’ve mentioned that Haumea produced babies from various parts of her body, but she also brought the promise of pain-free natural childbirth. Playing with this theme, no one would argue against the most pain-free birth. I have no doubt there have been countless women in the throes of labour wishing they could instead have their baby passed to them fully gestated from a pod. Artificial wombs are already in development, albeit limited by legal and ethical constraints around full-term development of foetuses; but they unarguably offer potential to save premature babies as well as provide an alternative to those unable or unwilling to physically carry a baby.

They perhaps also resonate with the idea of the alchemical alembic vessel. Gender selection and elective births are already becoming common place. Shulamith Firestone, feminist and author of the 1970 book, The Dialectic of Sex, argues that “the biological family has always oppressed women and children”, and artificial childbirth would “free women from traditional child-bearing, female roles”.“The freeing of women from the tyranny of reproduction by every means possible, and the diffusion of the child-rearing role to society as a whole, men as well as women” [is desirable].This viewpoint captures the Aquarian evolution of societal organisation, so possibly the Haumea-Pluto squares describe a Scorpio-Aquarius standoff – natural versus mechanical sexual reproduction, female emancipation from both the pain of childbirth and imbalance of gender roles in society. Firestone’s Haumea inconjunct Capricorn Sun captures that discomfort in a patriarchal world.

The artificial womb and human cloning

Molecular geneticist, writer and researcher Arathi Prasad (unfortunately no birth data) also describes the artificial womb in her Guardian article, ‘How Artificial Wombs will Change our Ideas of Gender, Family and Equality’: she discusses the potential opportunities. But preceding any of these ideas was the discovery of nuclein1 in 1869 when Haumea and Pluto neared conjunction in Taurus (Pluto and Huamea formed three conjunctions at 25-26⁰ Taurus in 1878/79). And next in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World, a fictional description of a genetically engineered society produced in artificial wombs where the concept of mother and father are scoffed at, and everyone belongs to everyone else.

In Huxley’s chart, natal Haumea in a Gemini stellium is sextile Aries Mars, trine Libra Saturn. And transit Haumea then conjoined Huxley’s Leo Sun during the summer of 1931 when he wrote the novel.

Also born around the same time and sharing the Gemini Pluto/Haumea/Neptune signature was Huxley’s friend, J.B.S. Haldane [see Astro-Databank], author of Daedalus, or Science and the Future. Haldane was also a genetic and evolutionary biology scientist who first suggested the central idea of IVF and theories around human cloning, leading to artificial breeding of superior individuals. Both were forerunners in the realm of transhumanism and the ideas of reinvention and upgrade of the human. Yet where might these concepts lead us – to a detachment from the divine feminine and end of women as the Holy Chalice, the end of physical procreation even? In 2023 movie The Pod Generation couples generate babies in pods. Its release in late 2022 coincided with Haumea’s Scorpio ingress.

Scorpio energy can be incredibly healing and therapeutic. So, gene therapy, the therapeutic treatment which involves transferring genetic material into the body to modify or replace defective genetic material, is a relevant and emotive topic. Where it becomes emotive is not only in the range of illnesses it might potentially treat, such as cancer and genetic diseases, but also in stem cell therapy and the controversial source of the material – for example, embryonic cells or cells derived from other species. Might this controversy manifest through the square to Pluto?

Therapeutic cloning created replacement tissues, and in April 2019, the first bioprinted 3D human heart was created using the patient’s own cells and other biological materials. Mini-organs, or organoids, are already being successfully cultivated in the lab. And only recently in the US, a man successfully underwent a pig heart transplant. The reason for its brief success (very sadly he passed away two months later) was the heart undergoing gene-editing to help reduce the risk of rejection. Might it not be better to be able to grow a human heart for transplant rather than use another species, or should we use every viable resource regardless of its source?

Producing whole copies of organisms is called ‘reproductive cloning’ which echoes the myth of Haumea, and perhaps even Eve being created from Adam’s rib. It is already becoming commonplace with various mammals, yet human cloning is a contentious issue.

The closest we have come so far is the cloning of primates, the first in 1999 being Tetra, a rhesus monkey created by embryo splitting (Haumea in Libra, handle to the chart and apex to a Yod with Mars in Pisces and Saturn in Taurus). Then in 2017, macaque monkeys Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were created using somatic cell transfer where the genetic material comes from body or foetal cells rather than embryonic (both clonings have Mars conjunct Haumea in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries).

More cloned primates were announced in 20192. However, it was the birth of the first genome-edited human babies, Lulu and Nana, in 2018 that incited the most controversy. Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, conducted a secret project engineering HIV resistance genes and although both babies were born healthy, his work was widely condemned as unethical and highly flawed by WHO and the international scientific community. No birth details are available for the babies or He Jiankui, but a date for when a third party explosively published the news shows3 is available: the chart for this moment has a Huamea-Venus Libra conjunction as apex to a Yod with Chiron and Juno. In mundane terms, Juno describes people’s rights and Libra looks at both sides of the argument, so although Chiron suggests that this was probably flawed, there is also something valuable to be learned. Haumea-Venus also form a cardinal Grand Cross with Uranus and the lunar nodes, describing the familial innovation and the responsibilites that come with it.

There is such a wealth of futuristic innovation to explore here and certainly more questions than answers. I hope that in looking at not only Haumea herself but also Haumea in relation to Pluto, an avenue has perhaps opened leading to further research and understanding of our future evolution. I do wonder when Pluto enters Aquarius with Uranus still in Taurus if this will change, or at least challenge, our societal ethics and value systems regarding genetic engineering. If there lies the possibility of eradication or a universally effective treatment for diseases, such as cancer, perhaps some boundaries will need to be crossed. But a shadow-side may be its potential to filter the best stock, to build the best bodies and minds i.e. eugenics, therefore compromising human rights of equality. The next decade looks interesting for sure, so let’s keep an eye on Haumea and Pluto and the innovations they will birth.

Author’s note: Many thanks to Rikki Blythe of Fishtail Astrology for her alchemical insight.

---

This article was written in 2022 and originally published in the NCGR Geocosmic Journal Autumn 2022. To reflect the rapid progression of many of the themes it discusses, a follow up article is currently in the works to be published later this year."

Endnotes

1) Nuclein – any of a group of proteins containing phosphorus that occur in the nuclei of living cells.
2) On eureka.org: ‘Gene-Edited Disease Monkeys Cloned in China’.
3) Wikipedia: ‘He Jiankui affair’.

---

Images and Charts

Supplied by the author

---

Author: Lianne McCafferty

Lianne holds the Mayo School of Astrology Diploma (Distinction) in both natal and mundane astrology and has been one of its tutors for several years. In addition to teaching, consulting, speaking and writing, with numerous articles published in the likes of The Astrological Journal and the NCGR Journal, her current research is focused on asteroids and dwarf planets. As a former professional sportsperson and coach prior to transitioning into martial arts and achieving Black Belt in Shotokan Karate, she is particularly interested in the use of astrology to help enhance sport performance. Her website: liannemccafferty.com