PLUTO
Principles Evolution, transformation, destruction and renewal. Obsession, ruthlessness, the dark side of the psyche.
Character and Themes
Evolution, transformation, regeneration, the forces of nature and history, sex and procreation. Consciousness-force, primal energy, intensity. The dying and renewal of what is outmoded, destruction of old forms and rebirth of new ones. Purging, burning ...away the past, what is unconscious being pushed up into consciousness, the “cosmic rototiller.”
Reinforcement, building up again after a crisis, titanic forces of renewal. The orgasm as “little death,” sexuality as “an overwhelming natural force of cosmic dimensions.” The intrusive cosmic force pressing the baby out of the birth canal.
Shadow Qualities
The Id, the dark side, kleshas: instinctual forces. Aggression, brutality, ruthlessness, obsession, compulsion, forcing change or changes forced on one. Heavy energy, power and domination, fear. Hell breaking loose, catharsis. The relationship between indulgence in and transcendence of the material world. Vulgarity, the fetid side of life, seediness, the connection between decay and new life.
Nature – The Arts
The cosmic force driving the processes of sexuality, aggression, destruction, death, decay, regeneration, and renewal. Fall, Halloween. – Expressionism, Fauvism.
Archetypes, Spirituality
Divine Will, Absolute Consciousness: the active form of the Divine, the force that compels all forms to rise out of and disappear back into Neptune’s Metacosmic Void, creative cosmic consciousness, the Prime Mover, the demiurge: creator of the material universe. The lingam. Shiva, Kali, Shakti: cosmic or universal energy, kundalini, Kama-Mara: “Desire-Death,” Dionysus, Pan, Hades, Demeter-Earth as swallower of her own daughter Persephone, the “phallic mother,” Zeus as rapist. Wild nature: Artemis, Poseidon, Charon, the Minotaur, the Hydra, the harpies, maenads, satyrs, the Clash of the Titans. Sauron, Mordor.
Old Testament tribal genocides, the Slaughter of the Innocents, the Inquisition. The archetypes of the Apocalypse, Armageddon, the lake of fire and brimstone. Sodom and Gomorrah, orgies and sacrifice to the golden calf while Moses is on Sinai, fallen angels. The Eucharist: symbolic eating of Christ’s body and drinking His blood (this ritual is a carry-over from eras when many human groups ritually killed and ate their king after a set interval of rule). Walking through the valley of the shadow of death. - Dreams of five people (including oneself) indicate there is an ego-humbling in progress, i.e., one’s own limiting selfhood stands in the way of the experience of the number four which symbolizes wholeness.
Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrix III (Tarnas). The death-rebirth struggle, purgatory, volcanic or Dionysian type of ecstasy. Confrontation with the inner themes of titanic aggression, sadomasochism, scatology, the demonic, and pyrocathartic (purification by fire). Identification with both victims and perpetrators. Active or exogenous depression, struggle to spiritually die and be reborn. Birth “down and through.” Fate = unresolved experiences of the deep unconscious (the perinatal). Fate as just another archetype, that can be consumed in a flow of perinatal experience.
Pluto compels whatever archetype it combines with into manifestation.
Pluto Quotes
“The moral constrictions of Saturn’s judgmental and defensive view of Nature, sexuality, and the elemental instincts is transformed into the full Plutonic awareness of all instincts and all of Nature being a sacramental expression of the Divine Shiva…. The Grim Reaper, the weight of the world, the Old Testament god Yahweh, is suddenly recognized at a more profound level as Shiva, pressing his foot relentlessly on the baby to bring liberation.”
Richard Tarnas
“Pluto as an image of the dark maternal roots of the psyche is forever pulling us out of life and back into the womb of the Mother, either for renewal or death.”
Liz Greene
“Only the man who goes through this darkness can hope to make any further progress.”
C. G. Jung
Basic Nature
Pluto represents the processes of evolution and transformation in the universe, the cosmic energies that continuously wear down old patterns in the psyche, in nature, and in society to bring forth regeneration and new life. It propels the revitalizing forces of birth, sex and death in the world—aging and decaying old structures and creating new ones in an eternal flow of changing forms. Ultimately, Pluto symbolizes the active form of Divine Consciousness, the restless creative principle that births all things out of the Void of Neptune and inevitably breaks them down again, to recycle their essential consciousness into new forms. Without Pluto, the universe would remain breathlessly serene and unchanging, with no mess and no movement.
In terms of recognizable deities, Pluto embodies itself through the Hindu gods Shiva, Shakti, and Kali, the Greek Dionysus and others. There is a dark side to Shiva’s action, at least from the ego’s point of view. In the continuously-flowing pulse of cosmic change, all things inexorably die and are reborn. This is only the Absolute Consciousness taking on new shapes and forms, but there is inherent suffering for the living beings that are temporarily conscious of themselves as mortal and finite. Looking back across the solar system from Pluto, our Sun (the symbol of individual selfhood) is just another twinkling star in the sky, and this suggests the seemingly impersonal attitude of Shiva’s actions toward individual life.
People unconsciously influenced by these energies can act in a similarly ruthless way toward other human beings and the earth’s living creatures in general: Pluto can evoke the brutal side of human nature or even the demonic. Individuals may feel that they themselves are the forces of Evolution in the universe, rather than the very person who needs deep inner transformation and healing. The many forms of power trip can be seen as attempts to get on top of Pluto’s emerging energies and avoid facing them internally. However, while Pluto irresistibly brings change and transformation, if we try to bend or selfishly benefit from its energies, Pluto ends up harming ourselves. The change will still happen whether we cooperate with it or not, but the process becomes much more brutal and prolonged if we resist what is trying to happen and act out Pluto’s intense energies in the external world.
Pluto’s action can be seen in the titanic forces unleashed in earthquakes, volcanoes, and nuclear explosions; in the body’s shudders and convulsions during orgasm and childbirth; in seizures, emesis, and the peristaltic action of the intestines; and in nature’s inexorable processes of dying, rotting, and the powerful bursts of new life in springtime. As Tarnas recognized, many of these Plutonic energies manifest through the dynamic stage of birth labor, especially through a cluster of themes: titanic fight, the sadomasochistic, scatological, demonic, and pyrocathartic or “purification by fire,” that Grof observed in his years of clinical research.
Pluto represents the purging forces that push our unconscious material up into consciousness where it can be processed and released. These energies must be faced on an emotional level to be resolved. When left unresolved, the ego must consume enormous amounts of energy to suppress the threatening unconscious emotions, squandering the body’s vitality and leaving a person chronically tired and worn out. People may also unconsciously attract Plutonic people or situations that literally force them to face the psyche’s deeper material.
At the same time, if Pluto’s energies are blindly acted-out rather than faced internally, they can manifest as aggressive behavior, dark sexual tendencies, fanatical ideals, or ruthless attitudes that the ends justify the means. These are the result of Pluto’s driving volcanic energies warping people’s natural equilibrium from the inside. Pluto forces us to participate in life’s intense processes of birth, puberty, sexuality, assertion, transformation, and eventually death, at the same time requiring that we do not act out its energies in aggressive or destructive ways. The entire range of Pluto’s energies can be experienced internally and safely in holotropic states of consciousness with no negative effects in the outer world. Facing these inner shadow themes, while neither repressing nor acting them out, is the “razor’s edge” described in the world’s spiritual traditions.
An integrated Pluto indicates a fundamental ability to adapt to long-term change. There will be a harmonious relationship with sexual and natural energies, including one’s own deep inner nature. People will actively cooperate with the powerful forces of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth and support others’ emotional process as well.
Planets aspecting Pluto reveal not only where shadow issues, but also the potential for great renewal and regeneration are likely to manifest.
Principles Evolution, transformation, destruction and renewal. Obsession, ruthlessness, the dark side of the psyche.
Character and Themes
Evolution, transformation, regeneration, the forces of nature and history, sex and procreation. Consciousness-force, primal energy, intensity. The dying and renewal of what is outmoded, destruction of old forms and rebirth of new ones. Purging, burning ...away the past, what is unconscious being pushed up into consciousness, the “cosmic rototiller.”
Reinforcement, building up again after a crisis, titanic forces of renewal. The orgasm as “little death,” sexuality as “an overwhelming natural force of cosmic dimensions.” The intrusive cosmic force pressing the baby out of the birth canal.
Shadow Qualities
The Id, the dark side, kleshas: instinctual forces. Aggression, brutality, ruthlessness, obsession, compulsion, forcing change or changes forced on one. Heavy energy, power and domination, fear. Hell breaking loose, catharsis. The relationship between indulgence in and transcendence of the material world. Vulgarity, the fetid side of life, seediness, the connection between decay and new life.
Nature – The Arts
The cosmic force driving the processes of sexuality, aggression, destruction, death, decay, regeneration, and renewal. Fall, Halloween. – Expressionism, Fauvism.
Archetypes, Spirituality
Divine Will, Absolute Consciousness: the active form of the Divine, the force that compels all forms to rise out of and disappear back into Neptune’s Metacosmic Void, creative cosmic consciousness, the Prime Mover, the demiurge: creator of the material universe. The lingam. Shiva, Kali, Shakti: cosmic or universal energy, kundalini, Kama-Mara: “Desire-Death,” Dionysus, Pan, Hades, Demeter-Earth as swallower of her own daughter Persephone, the “phallic mother,” Zeus as rapist. Wild nature: Artemis, Poseidon, Charon, the Minotaur, the Hydra, the harpies, maenads, satyrs, the Clash of the Titans. Sauron, Mordor.
Old Testament tribal genocides, the Slaughter of the Innocents, the Inquisition. The archetypes of the Apocalypse, Armageddon, the lake of fire and brimstone. Sodom and Gomorrah, orgies and sacrifice to the golden calf while Moses is on Sinai, fallen angels. The Eucharist: symbolic eating of Christ’s body and drinking His blood (this ritual is a carry-over from eras when many human groups ritually killed and ate their king after a set interval of rule). Walking through the valley of the shadow of death. - Dreams of five people (including oneself) indicate there is an ego-humbling in progress, i.e., one’s own limiting selfhood stands in the way of the experience of the number four which symbolizes wholeness.
Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrix III (Tarnas). The death-rebirth struggle, purgatory, volcanic or Dionysian type of ecstasy. Confrontation with the inner themes of titanic aggression, sadomasochism, scatology, the demonic, and pyrocathartic (purification by fire). Identification with both victims and perpetrators. Active or exogenous depression, struggle to spiritually die and be reborn. Birth “down and through.” Fate = unresolved experiences of the deep unconscious (the perinatal). Fate as just another archetype, that can be consumed in a flow of perinatal experience.
Pluto compels whatever archetype it combines with into manifestation.
Pluto Quotes
“The moral constrictions of Saturn’s judgmental and defensive view of Nature, sexuality, and the elemental instincts is transformed into the full Plutonic awareness of all instincts and all of Nature being a sacramental expression of the Divine Shiva…. The Grim Reaper, the weight of the world, the Old Testament god Yahweh, is suddenly recognized at a more profound level as Shiva, pressing his foot relentlessly on the baby to bring liberation.”
Richard Tarnas
“Pluto as an image of the dark maternal roots of the psyche is forever pulling us out of life and back into the womb of the Mother, either for renewal or death.”
Liz Greene
“Only the man who goes through this darkness can hope to make any further progress.”
C. G. Jung
Basic Nature
Pluto represents the processes of evolution and transformation in the universe, the cosmic energies that continuously wear down old patterns in the psyche, in nature, and in society to bring forth regeneration and new life. It propels the revitalizing forces of birth, sex and death in the world—aging and decaying old structures and creating new ones in an eternal flow of changing forms. Ultimately, Pluto symbolizes the active form of Divine Consciousness, the restless creative principle that births all things out of the Void of Neptune and inevitably breaks them down again, to recycle their essential consciousness into new forms. Without Pluto, the universe would remain breathlessly serene and unchanging, with no mess and no movement.
In terms of recognizable deities, Pluto embodies itself through the Hindu gods Shiva, Shakti, and Kali, the Greek Dionysus and others. There is a dark side to Shiva’s action, at least from the ego’s point of view. In the continuously-flowing pulse of cosmic change, all things inexorably die and are reborn. This is only the Absolute Consciousness taking on new shapes and forms, but there is inherent suffering for the living beings that are temporarily conscious of themselves as mortal and finite. Looking back across the solar system from Pluto, our Sun (the symbol of individual selfhood) is just another twinkling star in the sky, and this suggests the seemingly impersonal attitude of Shiva’s actions toward individual life.
People unconsciously influenced by these energies can act in a similarly ruthless way toward other human beings and the earth’s living creatures in general: Pluto can evoke the brutal side of human nature or even the demonic. Individuals may feel that they themselves are the forces of Evolution in the universe, rather than the very person who needs deep inner transformation and healing. The many forms of power trip can be seen as attempts to get on top of Pluto’s emerging energies and avoid facing them internally. However, while Pluto irresistibly brings change and transformation, if we try to bend or selfishly benefit from its energies, Pluto ends up harming ourselves. The change will still happen whether we cooperate with it or not, but the process becomes much more brutal and prolonged if we resist what is trying to happen and act out Pluto’s intense energies in the external world.
Pluto’s action can be seen in the titanic forces unleashed in earthquakes, volcanoes, and nuclear explosions; in the body’s shudders and convulsions during orgasm and childbirth; in seizures, emesis, and the peristaltic action of the intestines; and in nature’s inexorable processes of dying, rotting, and the powerful bursts of new life in springtime. As Tarnas recognized, many of these Plutonic energies manifest through the dynamic stage of birth labor, especially through a cluster of themes: titanic fight, the sadomasochistic, scatological, demonic, and pyrocathartic or “purification by fire,” that Grof observed in his years of clinical research.
Pluto represents the purging forces that push our unconscious material up into consciousness where it can be processed and released. These energies must be faced on an emotional level to be resolved. When left unresolved, the ego must consume enormous amounts of energy to suppress the threatening unconscious emotions, squandering the body’s vitality and leaving a person chronically tired and worn out. People may also unconsciously attract Plutonic people or situations that literally force them to face the psyche’s deeper material.
At the same time, if Pluto’s energies are blindly acted-out rather than faced internally, they can manifest as aggressive behavior, dark sexual tendencies, fanatical ideals, or ruthless attitudes that the ends justify the means. These are the result of Pluto’s driving volcanic energies warping people’s natural equilibrium from the inside. Pluto forces us to participate in life’s intense processes of birth, puberty, sexuality, assertion, transformation, and eventually death, at the same time requiring that we do not act out its energies in aggressive or destructive ways. The entire range of Pluto’s energies can be experienced internally and safely in holotropic states of consciousness with no negative effects in the outer world. Facing these inner shadow themes, while neither repressing nor acting them out, is the “razor’s edge” described in the world’s spiritual traditions.
An integrated Pluto indicates a fundamental ability to adapt to long-term change. There will be a harmonious relationship with sexual and natural energies, including one’s own deep inner nature. People will actively cooperate with the powerful forces of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth and support others’ emotional process as well.
Planets aspecting Pluto reveal not only where shadow issues, but also the potential for great renewal and regeneration are likely to manifest.
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