Pluto the planet symbolizes many things. Here is a sampling of evocative descriptions of Pluto.
Donna Cunningham’s book, Healing Pluto Problems, starts “The topics we will discuss—guilt, resentment, child abuse, and death—are difficult to confront.” Cunningham calls Pluto’s house placement “the fail for spite house.” Meaning that to win, the person will deliberately lose.
One of the most powerful stories about Pluto is his abduction of Persephone, depicted above. Persephone is the innocent maiden, daughter of Ceres, who Pluto fixated upon and kidnapped. However the story is about more than sexual obsession. It is also a story about becoming an adult and taking up the role of an adult, which Persephone does when she becomes Pluto's consort and Queen of the Underworld.
Pluto is a transpersonal planet, like Neptune and Uranus; as such Pluto represents forces beyond our control—the economy, wars, famines, racism, and so forth. Things we are not individually responsible for, but become a victim of.
Pluto is a water planet, like the Moon and Neptune, ruling emotions, which again are beyond our control. Pluto is the emotions associated with violence and sex.
Pluto usually is what we disown of ourselves, but until we acknowledge our ownership we are not healed of the Pluto problem.
Pluto’s natal position is always worthy of study. Pluto’s transits bring irrevocable changes to us—the beginning and end of various life phases, including childbearing, deaths, marriages, jobs and careers, living in one nation or state…
By secondary progression, Pluto essentially does not move. Instead you need to look to see which planets and personal points move to aspect Pluto!
Pluto symbolizes the following:
- Abuse
- Basements (actual & in dreams)
- Big Business
- Billionaires
- Biological parents
- Catastrophes
- Chaos
- Cleansing
- Colon, rectum and their ailments
- Completion
- Compulsive Behaviors
- Concealment
- Contamination
- Corruption
- Death
- Degenerative diseases
- Destruction
- Dictators
- Divorce
- DNA
- Dominance
- Fanaticism
- Financial mergers
- Financial Power
- Funerals
- Genetic diseases
- Genetics
- Inheritances
- Invisibility
- Lethal force
- Lethal weapons
- Murder
- Obsessions
- Our past
- Our secrets
- Poisoning (also ruled by Neptune)
- Political Power
- Power struggles
- Prosecution
- Psychological depth & complexity
- Punishment
- Rape
- Rebirth
- Recycling
- Renewal
- Renovations
- Restitution
- Revenge
- Ruthlessness
- Secret agencies and agents
- Secrets kept from us
- Sex
- Sexual extremes
- Starting over from the ashes
- Surgery
- Terminal disease
- Toxicity
- Tyranny
- Unacknowledged psychological issues
- Urban Renewal
- Vampires
- Venereal diseases (STDs)
- Violent crime
- Waste products
- Weapons of mass destruction
- Werewolves
How can we deal with Pluto? When we enter a Plutonian time of our life we will end up giving up something, and hopefully gaining new maturity as a result. Joan Negus in her book Astro-Alchemy suggests that we consciously begin deleting things from our life. Clean closets. Declutter. Organize and discard. Prune. Take out the garbage. Handle any issues of waste disposal and sewage related to your home, job or city. Pluto is also surgery. This is a time we can deal with problems that require surgery, instead of waiting for the emergency surgical fix.
Pluto's lessons are always profound. Plutonic people are those who acknowledge their depths and do the hard and necessary work to make peace with themselves.
I wish you well in your encounters with Pluto.
Lalia
