Sometimes it really does seem like the world is obsessed with death — every day, basically. This may be the root of all of our social ills, and our failure to fix the physical ones. Greed, for example, is driven by death-obsession (in case you were ever looking for a rational explanation).

Illustration of Albion by William Blake (1757-1827), from ‘A Large Book of Designs’.

Pluto, now minor planet (135340) Pluto, was discovered in 1930, between the two world wars, and just before the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and fascism throughout much of Europe. Named for the lord of the underworld from Roman mythology, he was known for wearing a helmet that made him invisible, and then he would kidnap people to the underworld. I’ve read that shrines to Pluto were often abandoned, as nobody wanted to go there.

One of my reads on Pluto as a collective entity is that it represents the obsession with death that seems to permeate societies everywhere, and most individuals within them. People are driven to do strange things when they don’t confront their fear of the unknown, including many shades of treating one another badly, running from their problems, drowning them in alcohol, failing to get help, and many other permutations.

Modern astrology often construes Pluto as an evolutionary force, meaning that it can drive people to the point where they have no option but to grow. Yet the way Pluto works, this often feels like “grow or die.” It’s nice that we have this (even though many people seem to prefer self-destruction to growth).

Pluto also represents some of the deepest drives in biology and in the psyche, including anything associated with hormones. It is therefore an aspect of the “unstoppable” sex drive that has so many people terrified today. This is not usually about someone else’s sex drive, though. The scariest one of all is your own, and what you may perceive in others but which has its main residence in your mind and your feelings.

Though astronomers did not know it at the time, Pluto was the first object to be discovered in the Kuiper belt, a massive reservoir of small objects outside the realm of Neptune. Kuiper himself conceived of the idea but did not believe that it existed, but when the first object beyond Pluto was discovered, his discovery was confirmed.

That object was called 1992 QB1. It was given minor planet designation 15760 but left unnamed until last year, when its co-discoverers, David Jewitt and Jane Luu, named it Albion, after a reference from the poet William Blake, for whom it means “primeval man” or proto-human. It’s also the oldest recorded name for the island of Great Britain, potentially named for the White Cliffs of Dover (seen in the film Quadrophenia, among other places).

Title page of Blake’s prophetic book, ‘Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion’ (1804-1820).

My take on 1992 QB1, which I’ve been tracking since I was given an ephemeris by Robert von Heeren in 1998, is that it can take us past the “death works” or “grow or die” concept of evolution, into something gentler. QB1/Albion is beyond Pluto, after all, and part of another world; its orbit is different from that of Pluto and it has a different vibration as a result.

Now through Tuesday, the Sun will be making an exact opposition to QB1/Albion, which will bring out some of the properties of this object. If we take Blake’s interpretation, there is perhaps some unsullied, intact proto-human inside all of us, waiting to be invited into the room and into awareness.

By my reading of this point, we can allow ourselves to be guided into growth by things other than desperation, force, coercion or dire circumstances. But this has to be a voluntary act, by definition: an experience of willingness and of choice.

That is another way of saying getting beyond the dark obsession with violence, death and attack. That is possible, though there has to be an alternative, and there is one. The calling of life is stronger than the calling of death. Yet due to the complexities of the mind/ego, it can take training and considerable unlearning even to admit that any of these possibilities exist.

As proto-humans, we have it in us to feel what originally called us into existence. This is the first thing to make contact with: the will to live, which is the same as the will to grow, and for us, the desire to heal. This is not an ultimatum. It is an invitation.