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

Mythological Misuse, Cultural Syncretism, and the Erosion of Philosophical Integrity

In Parts I and II, we dismantled the philosophical, ontological, astronomical, and Ayurvedic incoherence of introducing Pluto into Jyotisha.

In this section, we turn toward the mythological manipulation and cultural conflation that undergird Professor Harness’ last attempt to legitimize Pluto through symbolic association with Vedic deities like Yama, Varuna, and Prajapati.

This approach reveals not a bridging of wisdom traditions, but a misappropriation of Vedic symbols to justify Western psychological projections. What unfolds is not synthesis, but symbolic confusion. While the critique is aimed at this particular article, it addresses a widespread trend in contemporary astrology: the tendency to retrofit meaning rather than recover it from rooted systems like Jyotisha.

1. Mythological Retrofitting Is Not Metaphysical Integration

(And the West’s Archetypal Desperation Is Not the East’s Epistemology)

One of the most glaring issues in Harness’ attempt to integrate Pluto into Jyotisha is his reliance on symbolic resemblance and mythological suggestion as valid grounds for metaphysical inclusion.

In his view, the outer planets must hold importance because their mythological names resemble certain Vedic deities, Pluto and Yama, Neptune and Varuna, Uranus and Prajapati. But this entire project is based on a kind of symbolic opportunism, not philosophical depth.

As we’ve discussed earlier, these planets were:

• Named arbitrarily: Pluto by an 11-year-old girl because she liked the Roman god of the underworld

• Not named by astrologers or mystics with inner sight, but by astronomers aiming for classical continuity

• Given meaning retroactively based on synchronicities around their discovery (e.g., Pluto = atomic bomb; Uranus = French Revolution)
  

This methodology reveals a crisis at the heart of Western modernity: the collapse of a living metaphysics, the loss of cosmic order, and the desperate attempt to re-enchant a disenchanted world by projecting mythic meaning onto newly discovered physical objects.

In a God-starved culture, where metaphysical grammar has been eroded and religion is reduced to psychology or discarded altogether, any new discovery becomes a blank screen upon which collective anxiety, aspiration, and longing can be projected. Astrology in the West became increasingly tarot-like—an open canvas of archetypes shuffled into the sky, loosely guided by intuition, synchronistic narrative, and the authority of personal experience.

Pluto, in this framework, became:

• The deep unconscious

• The alchemical death/rebirth archetype

• The shadow of modernity

• The post-Freudian Hades
  

But this is not metaphysical science. It is psychological storytelling under astrological disguise.

And most crucially: it has nothing to do with Jyotisha.

Jyotisha never waits for a planet to be discovered in order to assign it meaning.

Meaning is not manufactured. It is revealed through structure, function, and inner realization. That the difference between Jñāna, and all other insights, wisdom, knowledge, information, etc.

Unlike the West, which had to rediscover myth through Jung because it lost its metaphysical ground, the East never lost it (atleast to that extent, Jyotish has its own issues that also need to be addressed). Its astrology is not a therapeutic tool for modern neurosis. It is a map of karma, a method of liberation, and a language of Time itself.

Myth in Jyotisha is not a tool for meaning-making in the absence of God. It is an echo of realization in the presence of cosmic law. And law cannot be retrofitted.

So when Harness tries to equate Pluto with Yama, he is not honoring Yama, he is stripping him of his specificity, erasing his cosmological role, and reducing Vedic metaphysics to Western archetypal psychologism (which is already integrated into Jyotish but not as its structuring foundational philosophy but instead as an implication and/or application of the system that arises from those foundational ideas).

This is not cross-cultural synthesis. I would not want to go there, but it is a sort of colonization of thought by projection.

2. Myths Arise from Jyotisha, They Do Not Justify It

One of the most critical misunderstandings in Harness’ argument is the direction of inference. He assumes that mythology validates astrology, that if Pluto can be associated with a god, it earns legitimacy. But this is backward.

Myth arises from metaphysical and psycho-cosmic insight, not the other way around.

For example:

• The stories of Vāmana Avatāra, where Viṣṇu takes dwarf form to humble the pride of Bali, emerge from a deep Jyotishic and psychological observation about Guru (Jupiter): the wise teacher who expands by humbling, the heavy who becomes small to penetrate pride.
  

In this sense, the myths surrounding the Grahas are post-realizations, not preconditions. We do not need a myth to validate a Graha; we understand the myth through the function of the Graha.

Harness’ attempt to retrofit Pluto into Jyotisha via superficial mythic resemblance ignores this entirely.

He imposes symbolic correlation from outside the system, instead of letting the structure of Jyotisha and its embedded metaphysics speak for itself.

This betrays a lack of internal understanding and opens the floodgates for unrestrained symbolic inflation, a system where any planetary body can be granted importance if we can find (or fabricate) a myth to match.

3. Cross-Traditional Equivalences Must Be Earned, Not Assumed

There is nothing wrong with comparative religion or cross-traditional metaphysical dialogue. I absolutely love it. I believe in unity in the essence of the message of all religions, but when it comes to the socio-cultural surface level aspects of religion, the religion that the massess practice (and the not the mysticism of the few), there are big differences, and that where the unity through a compassionate comparison begins to fade away. Comparisons must be earned through shared philosophical grammar and epistemological integrity.

To compare Yama and Pluto meaningfully, one would need to:

• Trace their cosmic function, not just mythic narrative

• Explore their philosophical contexts: Dharmaśāstra vs. Greco-Roman Theogony

• Establish experiential correlation within a common spiritual discipline
  

Without this, one is simply trading in poetic resemblance, not metaphysical correspondence.

Jyotisha does not function through resemblance. It functions through resonance, and resonance requires structure, law, method, and verification. Pluto has none of these in the Jyotishic system.

4. Neo-Vedic Is Not Vedic. And the Difference Matters

The phrase “Neo-Vedic,” as used in Harness’ article, masks a deeper philosophical conflict. "Neo-Vedic" often means Western ideas cloaked in Vedic terms. It attempts to modernize Jyotisha by grafting onto it psychological, archetypal, or New Age frameworks that are alien to its structure. I am all for Modernization. I practice Psycho-analytic Jyotish which may be perceived as a Modernization by many but I believe Jyotish has always been a psychoanalytic tool for self-awareness on the path to become a better and more conscious humen being.

Let us be clear:

• There is no such thing as “Vedic Pluto.”

• There is no mention of Pluto in any śāstra.

• There is no Upāya, Mantra, Daśā, or Bhāva designation for Pluto in classical Jyotisha.

• There is no reference in Ayurveda, Tantra, or Yoga that links Pluto to bodily functions, chakras, or karmic timelines.
  

Neo-Vedic becomes, in this context, a euphemism for departure, not evolution. It does not expand Vedic thought; it evacuates it of rigor and replaces it with symbolic free association.

Jyotisha Is Not a Canvas for Projection like Tarot

Dennis Harness’ attempt to include Pluto in Jyotisha fails not because Pluto is uninteresting, but because Pluto is unnecessary. It fails not because it doesn’t mean something to someone, but because Jyotisha is not a system based on personal meaning, it is a system built upon cosmic law, karmic timing, metaphysical coherence, and spiritual purpose.

Professor Harness’ mythologizing of Pluto is not an act of reverence. It is an act of appropriation. And in doing so, he misses the most sacred principle of Jyotisha:

That everything must arise from Pratyaksha (as K.N. Rao also teaches, he calls it a Pratyaksha Shashtra), not imagination, but perception.

Not projection, but realization.

Not story, but structure.

Not invention, but inner vision.

Jyotisha does not borrow mythology.

It reveals it.