The 2018 Pluto Challenge

Pluto is the key to understanding what will go on in the world in 2018, because its path will cross the ecliptic – for the first time since 1930. Any time a planet crosses the ecliptic, its influence upon the world is strongly felt. Pluto is the planet of destruction, but also of transformation, regeneration and rebirth. It has been associated with concentrated power and with all kinds of extremes. Its capacity to destroy, reshape and reform is tremendous. The symbol of Plutonian regenerative power is a phoenix rising from the ashes, but before the bird can stretch its wings, there are bound to be ashes. And ashes there are. As I’ll explain later, Pluto’s influence has been gradually increasing, getting stronger ever since 2008 when it came within the Moon’s sphere.

Before proceeding, let us touch upon a bit of astronomy first. Pluto is an outsider among the planets of our solar system. Its orbital path doesn’t lie in the same plane as those of the other planets, but is inclined at an angle of 17°. It is also more oval-shaped, or elliptical. Whereas all the other planets, including the Earth satellite Moon, reach up to 8,5 degrees of celestial latitude (Venus 8,5°, Mars a bit over 6°, Moon a bit over 5° and the other planets even less), Pluto considerably surpasses those boundaries.

But what is celestial latitude? Every astrologer should know that, but let me explain. It is a measurement north and south of ecliptic (the Sun’s path) in the ecliptic coordinate system (the other measurement in this system is celestial longitude, measuring celestial bodies’ distances east and west of 0°Aries). Easy, right? But a picture tells more than a thousand words! Picture 1 shows a 1000-years graph of planetary latitudes, and you can easily spot Pluto which rises above and below the paths of the other planets. Note that the zero line is the line of the Sun – the ecliptic.

To understand what we can expect from the 2018 Pluto crossing of the ecliptic, we must go back in time to see what processes and events coincided with its past crossings. I have checked the exact years of those crossings to see what important events happened then – or around then. As nothing happens in isolation, history can never repeat itself exactly, of course, but I wanted to see if there was a cohesive thread that ran through those periods and could be linked to the current moods, atmospheres and processes.

Picture 2 shows the 1000-years’ Pluto latitude and the years when it crossed the ecliptic. We’ll get back to those years later, but to understand what Pluto has been doing at those times, let us first look at Picture 3. It shows the same 1000-years’ Pluto latitude, but with the addition of the Moon’s latitude. The Moon has a very regular up-and-down motion, constantly climbing above the ecliptic by 5° and dropping below it by the same number of degrees, completing the whole circle in a month.

 

My research has shown that the Plutonian processes of destroying, manipulating, annihilating, cleansing and »purifying« of old structures (in nature and society) start when Pluto crosses the Moon’s limit of 5° of latitude, either from north to the south or from south to the north. It is in those periods, lasting for about 20-30 years (20 with the N to S and 30 with the S to N), that the most global changes in nature and society tend to occur. Crucial changes often take place in the 12-month period surrounding the exact date of the crossing.

The »5 degree rule« is logical, considering that the Moon is the basic transmitter of planetary energies; everything that the Moon touches, comes to life and shows its force. This is valid in all fields of astrology, from mundane to natal, horary and electional. Without the Moon, nothing really happens. Energies of the planets that are not linked to the Moon, by any of the several aspects and dispositions, tend to be kept hidden. It is true that Pluto does show its power even when not within the Moon’s sphere of influence; many of the strongest, most devastating earthquakes and volcano eruptions happened when Pluto was below (or above) the 5th degree of latitude. This planet’s turning points at its maximum northern and southern latitudes are especially prone to the Plutonian outbursts, but, again, nothing happens in isolation! Aspects in longitude, declination and right ascension must be taken into account, as they are equally powerful. But in the end, the Moon is always »somewhere there«, activating Pluto by transmitting its power to the Earth.

Before continuing – and digging deeper into the scheme – I cannot avoid mentioning declination. Although, for the purposes of writing this article, my focus has been primarily on Pluto’s latitude, declination is an equally strong measurement, and Pluto’s turning points (equator crossings, OOB stages and northern/southern maximas) have always had remarkably strong echos in society. I have found that Pluto’s crossing of the celestial equator has always synchronized with »Plutonian« (destructive, cleansing, deadly) changes in society. Let us turn our attention to Picture 4. Such a crossing occurred in 1618, for example (from South to North), when the The Thirty Years’ War[i] started. This was a war fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. It was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in human history as well as the deadliest European religious war which resulted in eight million fatalities. The 8-year War of the Austrian succession[ii] started in 1740, the year of the next Pluto/equator crossing (N to S), and American Civil War[iii] started in 1861 when Pluto crossed the equator from S to N again. The last Pluto crossing occurred in 1987-88 (N to S). The Black Monday stock market crash occurred on 19 October 1987, within a month of the exact crossing (which took place in November) – and on the day when it was activated by the Moon’s transit over the Pluto/equator. An unusually high number of extreme weather events, plane crashes and other incidents happened in October and November 1987[iv], and again in 1988 when Pluto returned to the equator. The world’s deadliest peacetime maritime disaster with the estimated death toll of over 4,000 happened in December 1987, while the worst terrorist attack on UK soil dates back to December 1988 (Pan Am Flight 103 with 270 fatalities). Most importantly – Al-Quaeda was formed in 1988. As other forms of extreme Islamism developed out of this organization / movement, 1988 could be regarded as a year when another »big« war started. What’s more – power structures changed profoundly in the course of the following years – the Chinese Democracy Movement, the Chech, Hungarian and Romanian revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall of 1989, all lead to a dramatic collapse of the Soviet communism at the close of the 1980s.

Let us now turn back to the Pluto latitudes to see what global events and processes took place at the time of its historic ecliptic crossings.

1275

Due to scarcity of resources I am here only mentioning a peculiar weather event. The 1275 Pluto crossing (exact in August of that year) introduced one of the most severe droughts in North America, lasting from 1276 to 1299. Known as The Great Drought[v], it is now believed, among the scientific community, to be a climatic interval in the Holocene Epoch that affected much of what is now the western United States. It had a profound influence upon the plants, animals, and prehistoric Native American cultures of the region.

1435

According to an internet article[vi], the 1430s were a decade of extremely long and cold winters in Europe. »The climatic conditions during the 1430s were very special. With its very cold winters and normal to warm summers, this decade is a one of a kind in the 400 years of data we were investigating, from 1300 to 1700 CE,” says Kathrin Keller, a climate modeller at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research in Bern.[vii] »The decade saw freakishly bad weather – and if the cold didn’t kill you, famine, disease or poverty might,« adds the journalist. While it is not known which years were the worst, it is obvious that those were the years around the Pluto/ecliptic crossing. Remember the 5 degrees rule!

»What cannot be answered by the reconstructions alone, however, is its origin – was the anomalous climate forced by external influences, such as volcanism or changes in solar activity, or was it simply the random result of natural variability inherent to the climate system?«, asks Keller.

To which I am prompted to ask: »Or was it Pluto, Ms. Keller?«

1523

Around this time, a large part of Europe experienced a revolt against aristocracy which resulted in a 2-years war, starting in 1524. From wikipedia: »The German Peasants’ War[viii] was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking Europe from 1524 to 1525. It failed because of the intense opposition by the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. It was Europe’s largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789.«

Health? Little we know, but the native people of Mexico, for example, experienced an epidemic disease in the wake of European conquest, beginning with the smallpox epidemic of 1519 to 1520 when 5 million to 8 million people perished.[ix]

Weather? It has been extremely difficult to find any cohesive study of the world’s climate in those years. I have to rely on bits and pieces that I have found on the internet. Speaking of Morocco, for example, this region did experience a severe drought in the 1520s. »Other decadal scale droughts happened in the 1350s, 1520s, 1800s, 1880s and 1980-90s,« say Justin Sheffield and Eric F. Wood in their book Drought: Past Problems and Future Scenarios (Earthscan, 2011).

As such climate conditions also prevailed (in North America at least) in the decade around 1275, the year of the previous Pluto N/S ecliptic crossing, we might have a pattern developing here.

1682

Here we go, a big new war escalating again. It is fascinating (and horrifying!) to see how often in history a Pluto crossing of an importnat astronomical point ignited a big and long-lasting war, or at least huge mass protests. The closer we get to the present age, the clearer the picture gets. It seems that a lot of the built-up pressure and pent-up aggression is strongly released when Pluto touches any of those points.

And it so happened that the long-suffering Europe decided, in 1682/83, to finally get rid of the Turks (Ottoman Empire) who had been controlling vast territories of South-Eastern and Central Europe for over 300 years. »The Great Turkish War or the War of the Holy League was a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League consisting of the Habsburg Empire, Poland-Lithuania, Venice and Russia. Intensive fighting began in 1683 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. The war was a defeat for the Ottoman Empire, which for the first time lost large amounts of territory. It lost lands in Hungary and Poland, as well as part of the western Balkans. The war was also significant in that it marked the first time Russia was involved in a western European alliance.«[x]

Weather? The 17th century was the peak of the Little Ice Age which extended from 16th to 19th centuries. According to some sources it started in 1618 – the exact year of Pluto/equator crossing! But coming to 1682 we get the real peak, as the winter of 1683/84 was one of the coldest on record in England and central Europe. »One of the four or five coldest winters over the British Isles (& large parts of Europe), and the coldest in the CET record. The 15th December 1683 saw the onset of a great frost in England & central Europe: Thames frozen down to London Bridge by 2nd January 1684, with booths on the ice by 27th January and for more than a fortnight thereafter – coaches were observed on the ice and the royal court (King Charles II) visited the fair held on the frozen Thames. Other rivers across Britain were so affected, e.g., the Tees in NE England – they didn’t get the attention of the Thames! Many birds perished. This great frost was claimed to be the longest on record.«[xi]

It can be inferred from other bits and pieces found on the internet that this was also a period of drought. »In 1686, a military engineer in Romania described how “for three years now I have not seen a single drop of rain”«.[xii]

1770

Speaking of the weather and the Little Ice Age, it’s interesting to note that »the NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all separated by intervals of slight warming.«[xiii]

Reports speak of another interesting weather feature of 1770: long-lasting extreme magnetic storms.[xiv]

The period around 1770 was quite deadly to humanity for other reasons, too. Between 1770 and 1772 there was the Great Russian plague. »The Russian plague epidemic of 1770–1772, also known as the Plague of 1771, was the last massive outbreak of plague in central Russia, claiming between 52 and 100 thousand lives in Moscow alone (1/6 to 1/3 of its population).«[xv]

In another part of the world, an even greater tragedy took place – the Great Bengal Famine of 1770[xvi]. People were dying of hunger by millions. »The first of these famines was in 1770 and was ghastly brutal. The first signs indicating the coming of such a huge famine manifested in 1769 and the famine itself went on till 1773. It killed approximately 10 million people, millions more than the Jews incarcerated during the Second World War. It wiped out one-third the population of Bengal. John Fiske, in his book “The Unseen World”, wrote that the famine of 1770 in Bengal was far deadlier than the Black Plague that terrorised Europe in the fourteenth century.«[xvii]

What’s more, many people were plagued by small pox. »In 1770, a great epidemic of small pox raged in Murshidabad and killed 63,000 of its inhabitants.«[xviii]

I must add here that, according to my research, large-scale epidemics are synchronized with the Neptune, not with the Pluto cycle. But Pluto and Neptune were in an exact parallel in 1769, the year before these outbursts, so there is a link – and a warning, as they are slowly making their way to another parallel in 2020 (!).

1930

This was the last Pluto/ecliptic crossing before the present one, so let us look at a closer picture.

 

The crossing was exact in August/September of 1930, but the Plutonian influence upon society was already strongly felt in 1914 when Pluto came withing the 5° (the Moon’s sphere) of the ecliptic. World War 1 broke out then and was soon (in 1917) followed by the Russian Communist Revolution.

On 29 October 1929, within 10 months of the exact Pluto crossing, Wall Street Crash initiated the Great Depression of the 1930s. The negative effects of economic depression became global and lasted until the beginning of World War 2 (1939). The depression was made worse by tough weather conditions: in the States, this was the Dust Bowl[xix] – a long period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s, while in Russia, there was the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 that killed millions.[xx]

World war 2 lasted until 1945 – the year when Pluto finally left the lunar sphere.

With over 70 million death toll, World War 2 was certainly one of the toughest Plutonian periods to date, but the period from 1939 onwards was accompanied by another critical Pluto phenomena – its out-of-bound phase which began in that year. (Out-of-bounds or OOB means getting beyond the maximum declination of the Sun which is 23,5 degrees.)

Interestingly, 1930 and 1931 saw the most wildfires in USA in the 20th century. Close to 55 millions of acres burnt in each year, with the numbers getting higher since 1926. Doesn’t this remind you of the 2017 wildfires that devastated so much land in USA, South Africa, Portugal, and even Greenland – which is highly unusual? See the whole list on wikipedia[xxi] The exact numbers are still missing, but wikipedia speaks of 2017 wildfire season in California as being the most destructive on record.[xxii]

Picture 6[xxiii] shows the relation between wildfires and global carbon emissions which is supposed to cause global warming. Judging by this scheme alone, the two are not connected, and global warming is not caused by humans. Global climate change in general has much more to do with the Pluto transits. These cause extreme weather. The connection between Pluto and extreme weather has been discovered by the late weather astrologer Carolyn Egan several decades ago. Of Pluto, she wrote that it causes cold and all kinds of extreme weather (from extremely cold to extremely hot). My own research into Pluto declinations and latitudes, as well as aspects by longitude, confirms her findings. Plutonian weather is violent, destructive, tending to cold and dry but also extremely hot (in summer), and leading to extremely strong hurricanes, cyclones and floods.

Pictures 7, 8 and 9[xxiv], commenting the weather in 1929, speak for themselves. 1929 was a year of worldwide extreme weather, prompting Chechian scientists to bring up the debate of climate change. So here we go again in the 2010s, because time runs in circles! (The present climate change has been observed and spoken of since mid 1980s, true, but look at the declination graph and see the then Pluto crossing of ecliptic which was the beginning wave of the changed climate conditions!)

 

2018 – and beyond

Here we are – at the current Pluto/ecliptic phase. We have been going through it for a while. Picture 10 shows the demarcation lines, starting around 2009 and ending around 2028. Picture 11 shows the outer planets’ 2018 latitudes.

 

Several typical Plutonian phenomena have occured since 2008/9. The Great Recession[xxv] started in 2008 (echoed also by the Pluto/Capricorn transit) and continued throughout 2009 in the USA and some European states but lasted until 2013/14 in several other countries. In January 2009 Barrack Obama, the first African American to assume the USA presidency, took office. (I’m associating Pluto with the black.) Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was introduced on January 9, 2009. Cryptocurrencies are a special form of revolt, directed towards the establishment and its monetary power structures. This revolt stems from the same kind of deep, intense rebellion that has often been observed to manifest in the Plutonian periods. Much of the Plutonian potential for secrecy, greed and manipulation, as well as high-technology genius and perfection, can be associated with Bitcoin and related currencies.

As for society and politics, the closer Pluto has been getting to the ecliptic, the more intense the Plutonian wave of unrest. The Arab Spring[xxvi] which lasted between December 2010 and December 2012, was a revolutionary wave of violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups and civil wars in North Africa and the Middle East. The Syrian Civil War[xxvii] which resulted from those unrests, started in 2011 and is still ongoing. The Islamic State (ISIS) which was founded in 1999, gained global prominence in early 2014, and its cruel, inhuman ways have shocked the world. Boko Haram operated in a similarly fashion on the African continent. The number of terrorism-related incidents, which also come under Pluto, raised sharply between 2010 to 2016[xxviii]. And we must not forget the European Migrant Crisis [xxix]of 2015, with about one million people crossing the borders to come to the »promised land« in half a year alone. The total number of forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2014 was almost 60 million, the highest level since World War II.

World weather is getting increasingly tougher, with the numbers of wildfires, droughts and powerful, devastating hurricanes getting higher each year. One of the strongest earthquakes in the recorded history also happened in the current Plutonian period: the 2011 Honshu earthquake.

In 2016, people came to the streets in the USA, following the presidential elections which turned out in favor of Donald Trump. He obviously was the »proper« choice under the then, and (globally) current energy-set up. Coming to 2017, we had weather calamities, sex scandals, the USA/North Korea crisis (which I predicted in my blog[xxx] several days before the first Trump’s threat in the beginning of August 2017 and already in July of that year, in an interview given to a South African film maker) and atomic war threat, and crypto/blockchain entering the frenzy phase, to name just the most outstanding and decidedly Plutonian issues.

I’m not saying that all the major events and processes that took place during the last 8 years, were »caused« by the Pluto proximity to the ecliptic. Far from that! All of them can be traced to the accompanying eclipses which are, as I pointed out in the beginning of this article, the major mundane predictive techniques. The extremely long solar eclipse of 15 January 2010 was one of those milestone eclipses with tremenduously strong and longlasting consequences – the Honshu Earthquake being just one of them. But what I’m saying is that the current »atmosphere« in practically all fields of human and non-human existence, is just getting increasingly »Plutonian« – dark, extreme, cruel and generally adverse to people and humanity. On the other hand, it is exactly this threat that is driving people towards revolts, on politial as well as other levels. Veganism, another trend in society which has been sharply increasing in the recent years, is another protest against inhumanity.

So, obviously, 2018 is not going to be a »better« and »lighter« year than 2017. To the contrary – it will be a year of decisive changes in society and will in many ways set the course for the consequent decade. We will see more breakthroughs in science, medicine, genetics, finance and technology. But Pluto is continuing its devastating march and there are bound to be ashes. Let us see what we can expect, on the grounds of this research, in 2018.

Global weather

Extremely hot, dry, severe droughts and long-lasting, devastating wildfires in summer, but on the other hand, extreme cold in winter (already happening – see USA and Canada at the close of 2017). Europe will most probably be faced with extreme cold in the second part of January but the central plains of USA could get more tempestuous weather with lots of snowfall. The early part of January brings quite extreme cold and snowfall in some regions due to Mars paralleling Saturn (in latitude).

With the addition of Mars getting beyond 6 degrees of the southern latitude in the middle of the year, the tendency towards extremes in summer is doubled. Mars’ infulence will already be felt in March 2018 when it crosses the ecliptic – a sudden outburst of unusually warm weather is likely to cause floods, at least in the northern hemisphere.

Weather depends on the individual regions’ climate conditions, but there are bound to be extremes of all kinds. The total lunar eclipse of 27 July 2018, conjunct Mars and square Uranus, will not make things lighter – on the contrary. Mars is hot and Uranus brings thunder and lightning. Powerful earthquakes are also a real possibility, and Japan (Tokai region) is its likeliest target. Not necessarily at the time of the eclipse; the summer and autumn are the two seasons to be watched, especially October. The period around the 24 October Full Moon which will conjunct Uranus is especially dangerous – besides the Uranian lunation, the Pluto transit of the ecliptic will be exact in the same month.

Society and politics

Ecliptic is the path of the Sun and the Sun synchronizes with authority figures. Presidents of all kinds will undergo severe tests and will be faced with the necessity to comply with the increasing demands of public revolt. The first of the two total lunar eclipses, occuring on January 31, focuses on the Middle East, especially Pakistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iran region (political unrest) where the eclipsed Moon is rising at the northern node, symbolizing the people’s active will to become more noticed and appreciated. Because the July lunar eclipse focuses ont the same region – Iran especially – this becomes one of the central 2018 hotspots. The USA/North Korean crisis could escalate again towards the end of January but the region of North Korea and Japan are highlihted in the summer months, possibly reigniting the tensions between both countries.

January (especially the last week), March, July, August and October seem to be the toughest months generally, possibly bringing more large-scale accidents and terrorism-related incidents.

Finance

With Pluto crossing of the ecliptic which mirrors the 1929 stock market disaster, how could things go smoothly? Another crash could hit world markets, possibly in May or October, although there’s another, even more volatile period in 2020 when Jupiter crosses the ecliptic from N to S and the added parallel (in latitude) of Pluto and Neptune is expected to cause trouble on many levels.

With Uranus entering Taurus in mid May, there are bound to be surprises. Finances are certainly highlighted by this transit, as Taurus is the sign of money and commodities, but it’s much more difficult to predict how exactly would this turn out.

On 30 March 1935, just a couple of days into the previous Uranus/Taurus transit, the Belgian Chamber of Deputies voted to suspend the gold standard and devalue the country’s currency by 25 percent. Shortly before that, between March 13 and 16, gold withdrawals from the National Bank of Belgium totaled close to 900 million francs. On March 29, Premier Van Zeeland called for devaluation of the belga, reorganization of the banking system, controls on stock exchange operations, guaranty of bank deposits and a public works program for the relief of the unemployed. Between March 25 and April 1, Belgian stock exchange was suspended[xxxi]

While this seems to be a local and isolated – although a typical »Uranian« event – it sheds light on the possible trends in May 2018 and beyond. Political, economical and social conditions of today differ significantly from those in 1930s. Monetary schemes have become more complicated since 2009 when cryptocurrencies were first introduced. Whereas cryptocurrencies are still being viewed upon as a threat to the system by many of the financial institutions and brokerage firms, the number of these is getting smaller each day as it’s getting evident that cryptotrading is becoming the new norm. With the »electronic« Uranus entering the »monetary« Taurus, what else could we expect?!

I will stop here, stating again that the aim of this article was not a comprehnesive forecast of 2018, but an attempt to evaluate the Pluto power – from another perspective. 

I kindly invite you to follow me on this site for monthly insights into the future trends.

And – did you know that I teach astrology in English? My online courses are laid out at my international school’s site We’re starting with Subject 4 shortly, so if you want to learn with me, don’t waste time 🙂

 

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Austrian_Succession

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987

[v] https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Drought

[vi] http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/worst-decade-be-alive-europe-was-1430s-1594393

[vii] ibid

[viii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants%27_War

[ix] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730237/

[x] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Turkish_War

[xi] https://www.booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1650_1699.htm

[xii] https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/climate-catastrophe-in-the-17thc-geoffrey-parker-in-review/

[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

[xiv] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aa9661/pdf

[xv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1770%E2%80%931772_Russian_plague

[xvi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bengal_famine_of_1770

[xvii] https://yourstory.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide

[xviii] ibid

[xix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

[xx] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333

[xxi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_wildfire_season

[xxii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_California_wildfires

[xxiii] https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/wildfires-were-much-worse-in-the-past/

[xxiv] https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/08/13/worldwide-droughts-storms-floods-in-1929/

[xxv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession

[xxvi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

[xxvii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War

[xxviii] https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism/

[xxix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis

[xxx] http://www.emakurent.com/en/2017/08/04/trump-eclipse-and-north-korea/

[xxxi] http://www.schudak.de/timelines/belgiumBetweentheWorldWars.html