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Pluto In Astrology: What Now?
I wanted to write about this earlier, but wasn’t quick enough on the draw - ie, real life intervened. In any case, you may have heard that Pluto has been stripped of its “planet” status by an international astronomical group who thinks they can just go around shuffling the deck of our universe whenever they feel like it. More interesting to me than the scientific implications of this situation though are the astronomical ones.
As you may know, Pluto was the Roman variant of Hades, god of the Underworld. As such, the planetary energy of Pluto in astrology often has rather dark connotations and its demotion of status could easily be read as a collective refusal of our world to accept and integrate the hard lessons the planet has to offer:
Pluto’s energy may be subtle, but its results will hit you like a ton of bricks. This Planet is about transformation, regeneration and rebirth. Things aren’t pretty with Pluto, but they do get done. Pluto says ‘out with the old and in with the new,’ and we’d better be ready for it. If we’re not, this Planet will simply have us wallow in our misery. Pluto asks us to transcend that which we know, redeem ourselves in the process, and come out stronger as a result.
For all that Pluto (re)creates (it also governs the reproductive system), it loves to destroy. This Planet rules destruction, death, obsession, kidnapping, coercion, viruses and waste. That’s definitely not pretty. Pluto also governs crime and the underworld, along with many forms of subversive activity (terrorism, dictatorships). This Planet is about all that is secret and undercover, that which is hidden from view. Is this the story of good vs. evil? Yes.
No one will deny Pluto’s power (it rules atomic power, too) and intensity. This Planet’s energy is often focused on the masses and what the collective will do. Pluto beseeches the masses to look inward (and to their subconscious) to see what’s there. It may be scary, but Pluto doesn’t care.
Or, as Wikipedia’s entry puts it: “Pluto is considered to represent the part of a person that destroys in order to renew.” And another astrology site warns of what happens if we screw up under Pluto’s watch:
If we resist Pluto here instead of surrendering to the necessary ego death and personal transformation, mental illness or even breakdown can occur. Pluto causes the disintegration of psychological blocks obstructing our evolutionary growth. Its energy comes from the core of all things, and is the most intense and potent there is: atomic, nuclear, sexual, kundalini. If we allow the fear of the death of some part of our self to block it’s process, the result can be catastrophic.
Some astrology sites are copping to the opinion that Pluto’s demotion in astronomical status is meaningless because “planet” means something different in astrology anyway. But other astrology bloggers offer differing viewpoints, such as Jeffrey Kirshner, who says:
…the collective has failed in integrating this archetypal power into our consciousness. Think about it — depth psychology is Plutonic, and Freud severely disrupted the Western world with his assertion that we are a seething cauldron of repressed emotions. Do we really want to get in touch with our dark, violent, sexual impulses? It’s scary! But we do give our unconscious more power by neglecting it, and the result is an unhealthy acting out of our basest instincts.
Lynne Hayes also transmits an alternate way of looking at this, courtesy of Rick Levine:
I can’t help but feel, though, that while astronomers may feel that they have demoted Pluto to “dwarf planet” status the fact that Ceres and Xena have been upgraded as partners to Pluto signifies a new way of integrating Pluto’s lessons of evolutionary personal growth rather than a limitation of Pluto.
Kind of a cool way of thinking about it: that the energy represented by Pluto was too big and difficult for us to integrate all at once, so it was chopped up and subdivided into specific sub-forms of that energy which we may then form relationships with and figure out on a hopefully more personal level.
In any case, here’s to simultaneously repressing our instincts and acting out our desires - a wonderful omen of things to come!
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- Next: Hoo Ma Ma Ma!
September 3rd, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Pluto is a ‘dwarf planet.’ Err, I mean a historical planet. Actually it’s any icy dwarf kuiper planet, er historical dwarf, uhh… Icy historical something spherical, oidish, uhh, You probably couldn’t order pizza from that planet, umm….But yeah, I love these types of stories, they just seem to have the effect of getting more people interested in space and astronomy (and perhaps even the occult, astrology).. Those zany astronomers.. Of course we can’t forget that Saturn’s largest moon Titan is about 200 miles larger in diameter than Mercury and an atmospheric pressure 50% greater than Earth. But hey Mercury can still be a planet, I guess it won that game of paper rock scissors.
Oh and I loved the news article that compared Pluto’s sacrilegious demotion to the Catholic Church’s distasteful demoting of the Saints — Saint Christopher, quasi-saints, something like that.
September 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Pluto must David Lynch’s favorite planet or maybe that planet in ErasureHead is.
I have heard on the street that Astrology is off a sign and
if you asked somebody walking down the street (who had a faerie on their shirt) they would probably say their favorite planet is Neptune.
The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need asks “Do you have an active fantasy life? Have you been told there is a hypnotic quality to your personality? Do you have compassion for the suffering of others?” Are you interested in occult and pyschic phenomena?”
September 4th, 2006 at 12:08 am
Would love to see that if you can reproduce it!
Yeah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiuchus
September 4th, 2006 at 12:28 am
Tim: except we’ve done this before with the asteroids. You could reasonably translate the word “asteroid” as dwarf planet. But we could certainly find support for this Levine astrological theory. Recall that Charon the boatman/moon also counts as a Pluto-oid, so already we have an explicit guide figure for helping us deal with Plutonian energies. And Ceres seems distantly associated with the Eleusianian Mysteries, which allegedly included knowledge of resurrection and the black god Osiris. And Xena — um, give me a minute here — okay, Xena represents sexuality in two aspects, the repressed side and the free but socially “wrong” side.
Since the Discordians try to adopt saints when the Catholics demote them, perhaps we should design our own model of the solar system with Pluto as a major force.
September 4th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Sometime in January 2007 (the month of Janus, the gatekeeper) Pluto will be aligned with the Earth, the Orion (warrior) constellation, and the center of our galaxy for the first time in over 250 years. This is basically Pluto’s version of the position Earth will reach on Dec. 21, 2012. The decision to ‘deplanetize’ it may be related, but I’m not sure how.
Astrotheology is quite fascinating.
September 4th, 2006 at 10:39 am
But we’ll still have a ninth planet, right? What about the mysterious earth II - the pythagorean counter-earth - off on a faraway orbit, hidden by the sun?
Also, I thought the questioned accuracy of the zodiac was a result of a one-sign shift of our solar system, in relation to the galaxy, over the course of the past 2000 years … not the insertion of a 13th sign(?)
Anyway, just admiring the restraint of your readers. So far not one Uranus joke!
September 4th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
whata: you mean Mondas, the planet of the Cybermen? In the Discordian model of the Universe, Mondas is of course directly opposite Pluto and Charon, in the Mercurial Belt. Oh, and I tend to pronounce that name Ouranos.
fuj, this seems like an obvious attempt to stop the incursion of the Old Ones and Yog-Sothoth, who is the gate and the keeper of the gate. The decision stems from rank anti-extra-dimensional-alien bigotry.
September 4th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Here’s the article Tim. I wasn’t sure what paper I saw it in at first, but here it is…(Oh yeah and he also throws in the 12 apostles, lol)