Life, Death and Transformation
August 2018
In Part I of this series of blogs, we looked at the times, which are a changin', and have been, astrologically, for the past two hundred years or so, and then it parts II and III we looked at the outer planets Neptune and Uranus, their discovery, and what they represent spiritually and psychologically according the body of knowledge known as kabbalah, and its modern version, qabalah. Here we're going to look at the third outer planet, Pluto, which, even though it has been demoted to another label by astronomers, it still holds great importance among astrologers and esoteric philosophers, as it is the third link in the holy trinity of Divine Love, Divine Mind and Divine Will.
When we think about the idea of judgement in a religious sense, we might think about the threatening admonitions of Catholicism, with its eternal afterlife of either heaven or hell. We might recognize this idea in the art of the great masters, like Michelangelos's depiction of it in the Sistine Chapel, which I was lucky enough to have seen as a youth while visiting my parents in Rome, where my father had a work assignment in the early 1970s. I was reading Irving Stone's biographical novel about Michelangelo The Agony and the Ecstasy at the time, and knowing that the artist was gay - and by that word, I mean that he was attracted to his own gender but might have been celibate, this great work of art really got me thinking about the link between sexuality and spirituality
In using art as a method of teaching the great religious concepts to everyone, especially those who could not read the Bible, the church was employing one of the main ideas in esoteric law and psychology, which is that visual images have tremendous power to influence people, whether we are aware of that influence or not. This is because our subconscious minds innately recognize certain archetypal images and symbols - they are part of our evolution. Negatively, this idea is used in modern advertising, so it's best to be very cautious what we allow ourselves to watch, or at least have a critical mind before going out and buying the goods we see so colorfully and ingeniously advertised on our TVs, in magazines and on the internet.
But even in Michelangelo's artistic depiction of the Last Judgement, we get a hint that might be some sense of redemption even for the damned. As the narrator describes, the picture of Christ's judgement seems to be circular, rather than static - with the whole picture seeming to rotate clockwise as the saved moved upward and the sinners move downward. This holistic idea of a circular motion would fit with the other great tenets of not only Christianity but the Eastern religions which see life and death a continuum, and people's psychology open to evolution, in which there is always room for transformation, change and forgiveness, without negating the idea of karma and justice which are built in to cosmic law.
This idea of a circular continuum is well represented by tarot's Wheel Of Fortune, which corresponds astrologically to Jupiter. And he's relevant here because Jupiter (the Greek Zeus) was the brother of Pluto (Hades)- and Neptune (Poseidon) - in Greek mythology. Here the Wheel Of Fortune seems to be turning anti-clockwise, with the serpent on the left descending into matter, and Anubis, the red mythological creature turning the wheel back into spiritual concepts, while on Michelangelo's depiction, Christ is sending the damned downward in a clockwise motion while the saved rise on His right.
The most important difference between the tarot's depiction of Judgement, and the Catholic one however - which I've heard has frightened many young children, is that in kabbalah, judgement is every day, not something that happens only when we die. The message here is that once we're dead we cannot consciously transmute any of our mistakes so the trumpet call is final for this lifetime. And even the Lord's Prayer - which is a word by word poetical analysis of the Tree Of Life - seems to confirm this when we say ...forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us". The idea here is that every day is a passion play, if we remember to recognize it, and that we actually have some power and responsibility in it all. This is the symbolism of Pluto, which when it was discovered in 1930, was assigned by astrologers as ruler of Scorpio, rather than Mars, which had ruled that sign for millennia. Where Mars rules our physical action, Pluto rules our inner psychological action, or seemingly separate will. Since we're all part of Oneness, our will is not separate, but because of the illusion of separateness, it just seems that way.
Passion and power are not the only P words symbolized by Pluto. There is also politics, persuasion, and poison, physical and mental, and of course psychology and psychiatry. Poison, because, like the scorpion, whose characteristics can sometimes describe the sign which Pluto rules, (and don't forget that we all have the sign Scorpio somewhere in our bithcharts, in one or two houses, even though we might not have planets in that sign), we can sting others with insightful words or sarcasm, which if unjustified, often comes directly back to sting ourselves. Also scorpions sometimes kill themselves with their poisonous tails rather than concede defeat in a fight with another predator. We might spot some of the more negative sides of Pluto in people with the planet in a difficult aspect to their personal planets - it tends to come out in manipulation tendencies and many of the most obvious attributes of narcissists, but please don't assume that someone with these difficult Pluto aspects is always a perpetrator; aspects can work both ways, so sometimes difficult Pluto carriers can be victims of terrible power struggles and abuse. Even countries can hold the imprint of Pluto: the former USSR had Pluto opposite its Sun, and Israel, formed by the United Nations in May 1948 has Pluto conjunct Saturn, both square its Sun. For more on the fascinating subject of country charts, or Mundane Astrology, I recommend the work of Liz Greene or Nick Campion.
Like the other two outer planets, Uranus and Neptune, Pluto takes many years to orbit our Sun, and therefore, by apparent motion, our birth charts. It spends about 14 years in each sign - varying between signs as it has an elliptical orbit, so that whole generations of people can be characterized by the sign Pluto was in when they were born. Please see my list of Pluto events in the 20th century to get an idea of its influence - and by that I don't mean that Pluto or any planet has spaghetti like tendrils which entangle people's actions on earth. As this astrologer, Pam Gregory, describes, the action of astrology is non-Newtonian; it works on the level of cycles which encompass a higher dimension than the 3-D reality in which we live, but which we can be glimpse with our imaginations and a little understanding of modern physics.
Scorpio, the 8th sign, rules sex, death, the occult, psychology, and all the deep and sometimes taboo subjects of life. It rules the deep probing of our subconscious minds for phobias and dark habits which keep us in self-inflicted misery until we probe our subconscious minds, reveal them and transmute them. It is the Goth sign of the Zodiac, ruling crime, creepy crawlies, skeletons and the underworld. In fact Pluto, in Roman mythology was king of the underworld and kidnapped Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, keeping her underground during the autumn and winter and only releasing her in the spring and summer, according to myth. So Pluto has also come to rule any activity, physical or mental, which digs deep. It rules psychiatry, detective work and x-rays, because they see into the body, down to the bones. If we apply this concept of insight to the actual structures and art we see in churches, we might realize that kabbalah was at the heart of much religious imagery. Take the four figures in the corners of the Wheel Of Fortune above, for example. They are the four fixed signs of the Zodiac which have come down to us in the Old Testament as the four letters of the name for God, yod, heh vav, heh, or Jehovah, and in the New Testament as the four gospels. Here they are in the altar tiles of the church of St. John in the wall, a medieval church built into the old city walls in Bristol, and once visited by Queen Elizabeth I.
If we see death with a holistic attitude as described above, as merely part of the great cycle of life, Scorpio and Pluto have much more positive symbolism. Remember that it is the falling leaves of autumn which become the mulch and fertilizer for nature's rebirth in the spring. This is also the planet of wealth - it is like Jupiter on steroids. Pluto in a flowing aspect in our birth charts usually denotes a propensity towards psychological insight combined with the planets it aspects, and with the hard aspects there is still that insight but maybe more difficult to express, or earned after some experience.
When Pluto was discovered by Percival Lowell and Clyde Tombaugh in Arizona in 1930, the American stock market had just crashed and the Great Depression was just beginning. Fascism was rising in Europe, psychoanalysis was beginning to be fashionable in Freud's Vienna studio and nuclear fission, or the splitting of the atom was achieved in the following years.
So, as far as trying to bring the concepts of religion into the New Age, (it's interesting that even in the Gospels, Jesus' birth is termed a "new age" - but that meant the new age of that time, which was Pisces, as opposed to the old Aries) Pluto would be the fire contribution to the air and water of the Holy Spirit, and its corresponding mother letter in the Hebrew alphabet is Shin, meaning "fang" - a rather obvious allusion to serpents and the sex energy, ruled by Scorpio, but also to speech, because a fang is a tongue and speech is also ruled by the Mars/Pluto energy. We see this is tarot key #16, The Tower, which we might recognize as the Biblical Tower Of Babel. This is why Pluto is associated with politics and preaching, because it is the use of speech which can influence people for better or worse.
This is where this esoteric symbolism can become a bit confusing, because Scorpio is actually a water sign; it is the Fixed water sign of the Zodiac. The other fixed signs are Taurus - Fixed Earth, Leo, Fixed Fire, and Aquarius, Fixed Air. These four fixed signs are the ones we see in Catholic, and later some Protestant churches, if the images have not been destroyed, and they are the four evangelists of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Out of the Gospels, scholars usually agree that John is the most mysterious, as the author talks about "the word" - speech, sound, the Mars energy, will of God, repeating the first lines of Genesis. This is the sign of death, transformation and resurrection, and whether we take the gospels literally or psychologically, these concepts are the cornerstone of Christianity. The idea is represented by Eagle, sometimes carrying a snake in its beak to represent the overcoming of the baser forms of Scorpio energy, and sometimes as a phoenix rising from the ashes. If there's one story in the Bible which describes this process, other than Jesus's crucifixion, it would be Johah and the whale. Jonah does something against cosmic law, is swallowed by a whale, in which he changes his idea about his will being separate from the universal will, and is spat out onto dry land. The whole process is one of transformation and forgiveness, and "fish" in Hebrew is the letter Nun, which is associated with the Zodiac sign Scorpio
So just as Uranus and Neptune have their lessons for everyone, Pluto does too. It's definitely about purifying our sex energy, which is really difficult for young people today because there is so much acceptance and expression of this life energy in gross, perverted and materialistic ways. At least Michelangelo had a long time to think about it all while lying on his back painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It's also about not judging others, because we're all working on our own transformation and none of us are perfect. When I was in the Bristol Church-in-the-wall, the docents had set up little novelties for children to help them explore the church, like Queen Elizabeth selfie masks and stereoscopic viewfinders. I'm not sure whether these will have any effect on these children's concept of morality, whatever their family ancestral religion, but maybe the structure of the church, the tiles, the cross will all have a sort of subliminal influence. On the train back to London I also overheard some teenagers talking about astrology, and it wasn't just the usual Sun-sign newspaper stuff. They were on an American internet site which sets up birth charts. These teenagers are our future leaders and I had the feeling they were starting on that new age journey of knowing oneself and transformation.
1880s: A little before 1900 was the Neptune-Pluto conjunction, exact 1888. People with the conjunction in their birth charts had enormous potential for good or evil. The combination of spiritual sensitivity and power gave these people charisma and influence. People born then: Paramansa Yogananda, Cole Porter, Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, Mao Tse Tung
1930: Discovery of Pluto
1939-1956 Pluto in Tropical Leo: the rock music generation
1946-8: Saturn-Pluto conjunction; birth of Prince Charles, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mahatma Gandi assassinated, India gains independence from the British Empire. Founding of the state of Israel.
1957-1970: Pluto in Tropical Virgo: the computer generation
1970-1984: Pluto in Libra: the transformation of marriage which started with Uranus in Libra now adds a psychological element.
1984-1996: Pluto in Scorpio: the tattoo, piercing and recycling generation. These are the people who will hopefully clean up the mess on earth made by their parents and grandparents.
2001: Saturn opposite Pluto: on September 11, 2001, Saturn in Gemini and Pluto in Sagittarius were respectively straddling the descendant and ascendant of the United States chart (according to astrologers who think they know the exact time when the Declaration of Independence was signed)
2008: Pluto enters Capricorn (until 2024) start of the transformation of governments, banking and physical infrastructure of the world.
2011-2015:Uranus square Pluto: enforced Political Correctness in much of Western Culture
2020: Saturn conjunct Pluto: completion of a cycle of transformation in governments and start of new ones. Practical transformations in the infrastructure of the world. Covid pandemic.
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