Can Pluto Water Come Back?

In almost every hand was the drink fashionable that season, benedictine and Pluto water, with a sprig of mint.”

Kurt Vonnegut – Player Piano

Yes, let’s bring back Pluto Water! It’s very name suggests it should be able to pull off a rebirth stunt, right? Sadly, the one-time cult mineral water – ‘America’s favorite cathartic!‘ – was banned in 1971.

How come? Well, aside from its sulphuric stink and tonnes of magnesium sulphide, Pluto Water was high in lithium. When that became a controlled substance in the early Seventies, oddly enough just as Pluto arrived in Libra, it was goodbye to the one-time global phenom.

You can still visit the Pluto Spa to bathe in the waters but you can’t drink them. (Interestingly, some recent studies have found mental health benefits from naturally high-lithium water.)

Pluto Inc naturally morphed with the times. These days they’re still close to the original Pluto Springs in French Licks, Indiana and making presumably quite strong cleaning products. But no everyday consumable has been as iconic a brand as Pluto Water in its day.

It sold millions of bottles a year and fans like stunt artiste Harry Houdini and the musician Louis Armstrong (who drank three bottles a day at one point) helped make it ultra-popular with men.

“Misery really likes company. Jocks always try to stay together when they’re reducing hard. We’d always pair off to hit a box together for a long session. Or three or four guys would hit the Pluto Water together.”

Billy Pearson – Never Look Back

You see, a “catarthic” is an elegant euphemism for laxative – Pluto Water was mostly renowned for its potent ‘flushing’ effects and it’s core slogan reflects this: When Nature Won’t – Pluto Will.

This is super-resonant to anyone astrologically inclined because Pluto transits are comparable to a psychological colonic – complete with the forcible discharge of hazardous material you’ve been retaining for dubious reasons.

The astrological Pluto is also associated with cultural subcurrents, clandestine desire and underworldly people. French Licks, the spa town built around Pluto Springs, has a suitably plutonic history.

It’s far too lengthy to go into here – this article has a heap of info – but it was the gangster Al Capone’s favorite retreat, one of the original owners had to relinquish possession as he was sentenced to be executed by hanging for his part in the Civil War but was then reprieved and demanded it back and there was a mysterious fire at around the same time the plutonic springs ceased to be naturally sparking.

The 1929 stockmarket crash and consequent depression killed the spa market for ages: A Jesuit monks collective purchased Pluto Springs a few years late and and immediately dammed all the springs up with concrete.

They weren’t reopened again until 2007! Pluto Water’s marketing conflated the Greco-Roman god of the underworld with the Christian conceived ‘red devil’ villain so it (sort of) makes sense.

If your natal astro is Pluto-prominent or you can recall a recent (current?!) Pluto transit, you’ll know that damming things up just means they erupt elsewhere. FYI there is more than one spring – the neighboring one is called Prosperine, an old name for Persephone and while I am sure the water is as effective, it didn’t prove so simple to brand.

Perhaps it’s time for Persephone Water?