A Critique of Dennis M. Harness’ Pluto: A Neo-Vedic View — Part II

The Exclusion of Pluto Is Not a Historical Oversight. It’s a Philosophical Necessity.

In Part I, we demonstrated that the Grahas in Jyotisha are not symbolic placeholders waiting to be updated by astronomical discoveries. They are metaphysical constants, rooted in the ontological structure of space, time, and consciousness, grounded in the principles of Samkhya and mapped through the psycho-spiritual disciplines of Yoga and Ayurveda.

This second part explores further reasons for the exclusion of Pluto, not just as a metaphysical or epistemological mismatch, but as a categorical disruption to the Ayurvedic, astronomical, and temporal logic of Jyotisha itself. This view is not an isolated one. It’s symptomatic of a much larger pattern where modern astrology, starved of metaphysical clarity, clings to synchronistic symbolism instead of structural coherence.

1. Ayurvedic Integration: The Grahas Govern the Body, Pluto Does Not

Jyotisha and Ayurveda are not separate disciplines; they are twin expressions of the same philosophical vision, one inward, one outward; one concerned with time, the other with tissue; one governing karma, the other telling us about the bod-mind and its relationship to Nature, Seasons, etc. Both speak in the same language of Grahas and Doshas, both recognize the relationship between the psycho-metaphysics on the cellular.

In Ayurveda, each Graha corresponds to key aspects of physiology and psychology:

• Mars (Maṅgala) governs blood, muscles, Pitta, and surgical precision.

• Venus (Śukra) rules the reproductive system, ojas, fertility, and the pleasures that sustain life.

• Jupiter (Guru) manages fat metabolism, dhatu formation, growth, and the mental expansion required for healing. So on and so forth...

  
  

This matrix is not arbitrary, it is clinical, medicinal, psychophysical.

It is used to assess health, prescribe treatment, and diagnose karma in the form of physical symptoms. Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune are completely absent from this schema.

They are not associated with any doshic influence. They are not connected to any tissue, any organ, any function. No Ayurvedic text links them to diagnosis or treatment. Their inclusion would not clarify, but confuse.

Pluto cannot heal, because Pluto has no place in the physiology of karmic medicine.

2. Pluto and the Kuiper Belt: The Absurdity of Inclusion by Discovery

Pluto was discovered in 1930 and later reclassified as a dwarf planet, one of hundreds of icy bodies orbiting in the Kuiper Belt, far beyond Neptune. It is smaller than Earth’s Moon.

Its orbit is erratic, inclined, and eccentric. It is, by every astronomical standard, an anomaly, a cosmic remnant, not a planetary force.

If we include Pluto simply because it was discovered, why stop there? Why not include Eris, Sedna, or Haumea? All of them are real celestial bodies, some even larger than Pluto. Why don’t astrologers chart them with the same conviction?

The answer reveals the problem: Pluto was included not because of cosmic necessity, but because of narrative convenience. Its name (borrowed from Roman mythology), its timing (amid world wars and psychoanalytic revolution), and its symbolic flexibility made it useful to the Western psyche. Western Astrology in this manner is philosophically ungrounded and does not arise from any real tradition with any yogic influence.

But Jyotisha is not concerned with what is useful to the modern mind. It is concerned with what is true, what is ontologically necessary, and what is functionally coherent.

Pluto's inclusion on the grounds of discovery is a slippery slope toward infinite fragmentation and symbolic inflation. In a system that thrives on precision, parsimony, and philosophical integrity, Pluto is dead weight.

3. Temporal Irrelevance: Pluto Moves Too Slowly to Matter

One of Jyotisha’s greatest strengths is its ability to map the timing of karma (action, inter-action). Whether through Daśā systems, Gochāra (transits), or the division of the zodiac (Bhachakra) into Varga charts, Jyotisha gives us the capacity to see when karma will ripen, how it will manifest, and where it will demand action or surrender. Or simply to observe the play of Time.

This requires a certain temporal agility, the Grahas must move fast enough to register change within a human lifetime. Saturn already stretches this limit with a 29.5-year orbit.

Now consider Pluto:

• Pluto’s orbit: ~248 years

• Transit time per sign: 15–20 years

• Implication: entire generations share the same Pluto sign
  

Such a planetary body cannot be used for individualized karmic diagnosis. It cannot time life events. It cannot offer personal daśā results. It cannot activate bhāvas or nakṣatras within a chart in a way that is meaningful to an individual.

This is not astrology. It is sociology masquerading as mysticism.

Jyotisha is not a tool for generational archetyping. It is a tool for personal liberation. Including Pluto in the name of transformation based on how it was 'synchronistically' named by a little girl, is a betrayal of Jyotisha’s most sacred gift: the ability to understand the psycho-metphysical strucuture of space-time-consciousness.

4. Surya Siddhānta Proves Ancient Sophistication, Not Lack of Knowledge

A common defense for the inclusion of Pluto is the assumption that ancient astrologers simply “did not know” about it. This defense collapses under the weight of the Surya Siddhānta, the known (as the tradition is as old as time as stated by Surya Siddhanta itself) bedrock of Indian astronomy and astrology.

This text:

• Calculates the positions of planets with stunning precision

• Accounts for precession, eclipses, planetary conjunctions, and time cycles

• Contains mathematical methods that rival modern astronomy in conceptual elegance
  

It also makes clear that the inclusion of celestial points in Jyotisha was not based on visibility alone. If that were the case, Rahu and Ketu, invisible, non-physical points, would never have been included. If we begin considering Upagrahas, things become clear. I have already briefly made this point in Part I.

Instead, the ancients recognized mathematical necessity, relevance, and psychocosmic structure as the criteria for inclusion.

Had Pluto served any function aligned with the structure of karma, time, or consciousness, it would have appeared. That it does not, despite the vast astronomical knowledge of ancient seers, proves that its exclusion was not an oversight, but a considered omission.

Pluto is not absent because it is unknown. It is absent because it is irrelevant.

The inclusion of Pluto in Jyotisha, and by extension Uranus and Neptune, is not just erroneous. It is disruptive. It weakens the integration of Jyotisha with Ayurveda. It ignores the psycho-physiological sophistication of the nine Grahas. It inserts sociological drift into a system built for individual transformation. And it projects modern myth onto a method to metaphysics that never needed it.