Elbert Benjamine
The three most recently discovered planets – Uranus, Neptune and Pluto – are called upper-octave. This is because they seem to express the influence of a long known planet on a more intense level of vibration.
Uranus, for instance, stimulates mental expression characteristic of Mercury, in a greater degree of intensity.
Neptune influences toward romance and art, as does Venus, but far more dramatically.
And Pluto expresses through group activity even as the Moon expresses through the family group or that larger body called the populace.
Uranus and Mercury are decidedly intellectual planets.
Neptune and Venus are both social planets yet Neptune, under a certain type of progressed affliction, can cause an individual to withdraw from social contact with others.
This is chiefly because the person becomes so supersensitive to the vibrations and thoughts of people that it causes them distress. They retire from human contacts to escape the pain preferring to enjoy their own inner lives.
Pluto and Scorpio
In regard to group activity and receptiveness Pluto is clearly the upper-octave expression of the Moon but there is no evidence, as yet, to consider it a vital planet like the Moon.
Instead, along with Neptune, Venus and Mars its classification more closely designates it as a social planet.
This shouldn’t surprise you when we consider the paradoxes of Scorpio, the sign which is ruled by Mars and Pluto.
We customarily do not consider water, or the watery signs, to be aggressive.
Scorpio has the sensitiveness, the receptive qualities, and the emotions typical of such signs; but along with these qualities, there is also an element of force and aggression. It has an aggressive quality suggestive of fire. After all, the Moon rules water in its customary state.
When such water is converted into steam, it expresses on a higher level, it is then a gas instead of a liquid and under pressure is able to exert just such a driving force as we witness in the drastic expression of the upper-octave planet Pluto.
Astrology and occultism deal with forces other than those essentially material.
The seven lower-octave planets in their influence draw the interest to affairs of the physical world and to the way physical substances act.
Jupiter, it is true, inclines to religion; but a religion based upon either a belief in or a philosophy derived from physical experience.
Upper-dimensional activity
The three upper-octave planets draw the attention, to the extent they are prominent in the birth chart or the thought-cells they map are given unusual activity through progressed aspects, to non-physical forces or non-physical states of existence.
In the careful analysis of the birth charts of 100 astrologers, whose time and date of birth was known, it was found that Uranus was prominent in all of them. So we can say quite definitely that Uranus is the planet of astrology. Yet in most of these charts both Neptune and Pluto were also prominent.
Their prominence seemed to make more certain that the individual would be drawn to astrology; for not all persons who have Uranus prominent become interested in the stellar art.
Their upper-octave vibrations, quite conspicuously, facilitate the recognition by consciousness of four-dimensional energies and upper-octave forces.
Electricity, which Uranus also rules, is not a four-dimensional energy; but planetary energies seem to be. And our research has now quite definitely established that those who are conspicuously associated with radio work have the planet Pluto prominent in their charts.
Radio waves are not four-dimensional, but like electricity, belong to the etheric borderline region between three-dimensional and four-dimensional existence. But thought transmission, especially from the discarnate realm which Pluto rules, is of the four-dimensional order. And many of the psychic impressions ruled by Neptune are also of this order.
All three of the upper-octave planets encourage upper-dimensional interests.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge