When Empires Collapse, Wise Ones Look Up

A Survival Manual for the End of Illusion: A Field Guide to the Cosmic Reset Unfolding Now

Nov 18, 2025

Two thousand years ago, three of the world’s most famous wise men looked up and followed a star - a signal of truth, written in the sky, the birth of a consciousness that would change the world. It led them to a child whose message would outlast every empire that ever rose to silence it - love one another.

That was it. The simplest sentence in history, but the hardest for civilization to live by, and too powerful for empire to tolerate. Ever since the moment that truth was uttered, empire has been trying to own the light. It nailed the messenger to a cross and built cathedrals over his bones. It crowned kings “by the grace of God” and waged wars in his name. It sold salvation, taxed faith, and wrapped love in law, and yet, the heart kept beating; the truth couldn’t be killed.

For two thousand years since those wise men followed the message born beneath that first star, the heavens above have kept time and kept score. As kings on earth trampled the sacred message, building dynasties on distortions and castles from corruption, the sky has brought a reckoning like clockwork every 240 years or so, to test what humanity has done with love.

Each time the planet Pluto has crossed the part of the sky known as Aquarius, empires have fallen, love has been tested, and truth has survived. Across two millennia, the Plutonian pattern has repeated religiously - you can almost set your watch to it - bringing destruction through Aquarius not to punish but to purify, calling us back to the truth, offering us the chance to try again.

Every time Pluto enters Aquarius, the world remembers what it forgot. From Nero’s Rome to Constantine’s cross, from Charlemagne’s crown to Hamilton’s republic, each cycle begins with love and ends in law, until the heavens tear it down again. This is the story of every empire that tried to own the light.

When the message of love became religion, Pluto tore down Rome.
When religion became empire, Pluto split the church.
When empire became money, Pluto sparked reform.
When money became monarchy, Pluto raised revolution.
And now, in this modern era, Pluto’s back, knocking once again.

For the next twenty years, Pluto will grind it’s way through Aquarius for the ninth time since the birth of Christ - when this age of empires began - tearing down whatever power claims to rule the truth and offering humanity another chance to remember the sacred call:

Return to love…
Return to truth…
Return to your heart…

To understand why everything right now feels like it’s falling apart and why this passage of collapse is not doom but destiny, it serves us not to look around in panic, but to follow the example of the ancient wise ones….

Look up. Look up. Look up.

This writing leans on the wisdom of planetary pattern recognition. If you’d like to know more - and why I don’t believe in astrology - read all about it HERE

Portions of this piece were previously published in
the October 19 Weekly Wrap-Up

The Plutonian Cycle of Reckoning

Every time humanity turns love into law, Pluto in Aquarius comes to burn the law and free the love. That’s how the Plutonian pattern has played out repeatedly for thousands and thousands of years.

Pluto’s first visit to Aquarius in this age happened right after the crucifixion, destroying the very empire that nailed love to the cross. From 60 to 84 CE, Pluto punished Rome for trying to silence love - Nero’s empire burned, the persecutors fell, and the love they tried to silence spread like wildfire through the ashes.

Two centuries later, Pluto returned from 305 to 328 CE to find the rebels of love turned into rulers. Emperor Constantine ended persecution, legalized Christianity, and united the world under one cross, but in crowning faith, he chained it. Love became law, and spirit became system, planting a karmic time-bomb that would detonate again and again each time Pluto crossed Aquarius.

When Pluto entered Aquarius again from 550 to 573 CE, it tested the empire that claimed to rule for God. Emperor Justinian had tried to legislate heaven on earth, to turn divine truth into legal code, but on Pluto’s watch his “New Rome” crumbled under plague, debt, and pride.

From the ruins rose Charlemagne, another man certain he could unite the world under one faith, one crown and one rule, but Pluto’s passage through Aquarius from 795 to 817 CE scattered his empire like dust, proving again that love can’t be forced by law or sword.

Next time Pluto came, from 1041 to 1062 CE, the Church itself split in half - East against West, Rome against Constantinople - each claiming to own the truth. The faith that began with love had become a business of belief.

After that, power moved from altar to treasury and the Church sold salvation and waged crusades for profit, until Pluto returned from 1286 to 1307 CE and tore down the throne again. The Templars fell, and the age of priests ruling over conscience began to end.

Two centuries later, Pluto returned from 1532 to 1552 CE and this time gave the hammer to Martin Luther. Conscience rose where control had ruled, and the heart reclaimed its voice in what became known as the Reformation. The pulpit’s grip broke and the people remembered they could meet God without a middleman.

Another two hundred years later, Pluto crossed Aquarius again from 1777 to 1797 CE, this time coming for kings still claiming to rule by heaven’s design, and returning the power of love to the people. In America, they declared they’d be ruled by no king; in France, they stormed the Bastille. “We the People” replaced “By the Grace of God,” the revolutions gave birth to modern democracy, and for the first time, liberty tried to carry love’s torch.

Every time love has been made into law, the result has been eventual collapse. Pluto always returns to Aquarius to test the truth of what we’ve built - it can’t just look like love; it has to live like it.

The Ninth Turning

So now, as Pluto sets off on its twenty-year journey through Aquarius for the ninth time this age, the empires of our modern world once again come under audit, and democracy and capitalism - born from Pluto’s last pass - are both being held up to the light and pressure tested.

Once again, Pluto whispers the same refrain:
Love was never meant to be law. It was meant to be lived.

Pluto won’t stand for nations that cry freedom while secretly enslaving their people.
Pluto won’t stand for churches that preach love while sowing division.
Pluto won’t stand for institutions built to protect that instead corrupt.
Pluto won’t stand for leaders who speak of unity but thrive on fracture.

Pluto doesn’t just come for structures, but for people living out of integrity too. From princes to politicians to prime ministers to presidents, all are being held to Pluto’s account - it doesn’t care about titles, only the truth.

And as Pluto brings down its judgment, just as it did two thousand years ago and every two hundred years since, a bright new star burns above us like the one the wise men followed - this time not heralding the birth of kings, but the remembering of hearts. As the heavens sound this Plutonian note for the ninth time this age, humanity is being asked once more: Do you remember love?

Under Pluto’s watch, everything that cannot hold love will fall, and everything that can, will rise - not to wear a crown, but to embody a new consciousness.

King on the Run

Just as Pluto in Aquarius tests churches and monarchs, it also comes for presidents who think they are king, and none more so than Donald Trump, who right now is living on borrowed cosmic time, the skies saying clearly that his days wielding power are numbered.

Perhaps Trump has been reading his own chart and knows what’s coming down the pike, because in recent week he’s been acting like a man who knows the jig is up, and is scrambling to assert his authority before it slips through his fingers, knowing he’s running out of time.

His chart for the months ahead reads like a slow-motion implosion; every move he’s making now - the bluster, the chaos, the cash-grabs - reeks of a man who senses the universe closing in.

He boasts he might run for a third term, but the cosmic math says he’ll be lucky to crawl to the end of this one. November brings the backlash, December rips open the shadow he’s tried to bury - the scandals, the secrets, the files that never stay sealed. January throws him into collision with the truth, and by February, the stage lights dim as the same cycle that made him king demands its own pound of flesh.

You can feel it in his behaviour - the manic pacing of a monarch who knows the mob is gathering outside the gates. He’s not ruling anymore; he’s running. Every new outrage is just another bid to stay one scandal ahead of the eclipse barreling toward him.

Because when Pluto calls time, it doesn’t matter how many jets, lawyers, or loyalists you’ve bought - the piper must always be paid.

The Days After Trump

Donald Trump’s time may be running out, but don’t assume Pluto in Aquarius is here just to remove a man from office. It’s here to remove illusion, and in that way, Trump is not Pluto’s nemesis - he’s Pluto’s messenger, the loud, chaotic alarm clock announcing that the age of American denial is over.

Just as Pluto is testing the church, the monarchy and the presidency, it’s also testing the nation that calls itself the shining city on the hill.

America’s founding myth was freedom, but its machinery was hierarchy - the very same contradiction Constantine hard-wired into Rome almost two thousand years ago. Under Pluto’s watchful gaze, that design is being stress-tested: its institutions built on image instead of integrity are cracking because they were founded on illusion, not truth.

America was the first nation to institutionalize liberty - to turn conscience into constitution - but every empire that tries to codify the soul eventually ends up worshipping its own reflection. The “city on a hill” has become a modern day Rome with Donald Trump it’s Nero, fiddling while the empire burns.

But Trump isn’t the nation’s disease - he’s just the symptom, the Plutonian exposure of what was always there: the craving for a savior, the addiction to spectacle, the confusion of faith with fame. What comes after Trump isn’t peace - it’s reckoning.

Pluto in Aquarius doesn’t rebuild empires - it excavates them - and for the next twenty years, the United States will undergo the long dismantling of everything it mistook for strength: wealth without morality, patriotism without compassion, faith without truth.

As Pluto crosses the nation’s Moon in Aquarius, the collective identity will begin to unravel. The myth of exceptionalism will fray. The divisions that Trump exploited won’t vanish when he does - they’ll intensify until they’re healed. America will be forced to see itself naked: not the world’s savior, but another fallen empire grappling with its own ghosts.

Through the late 2020s, Neptune’s move into Aries and Uranus into Gemini will stir the air like a storm front: radical reinvention, digital revolutions, and a population no longer content to be ruled by inherited power. This will be the birth of a new civic consciousness - one less about parties and more about participation, less about saviors and more about systems.

The next twenty years mark the deconstruction. Institutions that looked eternal will crumble under the weight of their own rot. Old alliances will fracture. Religion, money, media, and government will all face their truth-or-collapse moment.

But after 2043, when Pluto moves into Pisces, something softer will begin to rise - compassion after conquest, unity after fragmentation.

The fall of Trump won’t heal America - it will simply mark the end of denial. What comes next is harder, holier, and necessary: a nation stripped of illusion, rebuilding not around greatness, but around grace.

The Age of Knowing

Pluto in Aquarius doesn’t come to destroy civilization - it comes to purify it. It strips power of its costume, pulls the crown off the actor’s head, and reminds the audience that the play was never real. It exposes every false savior until we stop needing one. It burns down the stage until truth no longer needs a performance.

For two thousand years, humanity has knelt at the altar of belief - in gods, in kings, in money, in men who promise salvation. That age is ending. The next belongs not to the believers, but to the knowers - to those willing to see through illusion, question authority, and anchor power in shared truth instead of spectacle.

Trump, Netanyahu, Putin and the like are not the final villains in this story. They’re the dying echo of an old world, the embodiment of everything Aquarius came to end: ego as empire, faith as brand, power as possession. Their fall is just the prelude - and rest assured they will fall. The stars say Trump and Netanyahu will cop their reckoning next year, with Putin’s to follow in the coming years (along with a raft of world leaders who have forgotten who they serve). And then comes the long cleansing fire - the slow but certain rebirth of integrity, innovation, and collective purpose.

Because the age that Pluto is building - the age we are being broken open to remember - isn’t ruled by kings at all. It’s ruled by consciousness.

So let the old world tremble. Let the towers fall and the idols crack. This isn’t the end of civilization - it’s the end of illusion. Every collapse we’re witnessing is a clearing, every reckoning a return. The empire of noise is dying so the language of truth can be heard again.

We are not watching the world fall apart - we are watching it fall open. What comes next will not be built by kings or saviors or slogans, but by those who remember what love sounds like when it speaks through courage.

The age of belief is over.
The age of knowing has now begun.

The Wise Ones Look Up

These days, most of us are too busy to look up - we’re preoccupied looking down at the phone in our hands, doom scrolling. We dare not gaze skyward, for that would mean looking away, and what would happen if we took our eyes off the news circus for but a moment?

We can’t look up, so many say, we mustn’t look away; we must keep our eyes and our constant attention on what’s collapsing, what’s breaking, what’s noisy, what’s scary - with Trump in the White House, it seems our freedom is at stake. But therein lies the folly; if all that noise has your eyeballs - if you can’t bring yourself to look away - then it’s already taken your freedom, and it wasn’t even against your will. You’ve been gripped you by the fear, and now you can’t look away, or look up and see the signs that this time of collapse is written up above.

The wise ones of old never wasted much time looking down. The wise ones have always known to look up - always up - for in the skies above is where the real power plays.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now, that’s understandable. The passage of Pluto through Aquarius is never easy, but our modern world doesn’t help either. It’s built to keep us on edge. Social media floods us with global chaos - far more than our nervous systems were ever meant to hold.

If you need some relief, here’s what you can do:

Put down the phone.
Take off your shoes.
Stand on a patch of grass.
Breathe.
Drink some water.
Feel the sun on your face.
Look around.

What you see in front of you - that’s what’s yours to deal with today. You can care deeply about the world without carrying every inch of it. Some days it’s enough to just shine where you stand - to be kind to the barista, smile at the driver beside you, chat with the person at the checkout, or give more grace than you get to your friends, family, and co-workers.

You don’t have to solve world hunger before lunchtime. You just have to shine brightly wherever you are. If we all did that - if we all just shone where we stood - the darkness would have nowhere left to exist.

Because in the end, the message is the same as it’s always been: the wise ones always look up. The same heavens that end empires also birth new worlds.

The light has not left us; it’s just asking us to see it.

My intention in my writing is to lessen the climate of fear around world events by offering clarity and cosmic context for what’s unfolding; to bring context to the chaos. I believe our highest calling right now is to anchor in the vibration of love & truth and call in a more beautiful world, and to do that, we must lean out of fear. I hope you read this with an open, uplifted heart.