Pluto and the Underworld

Well, I warned you I would write about Pluto, and here it be.

Each planet is a teacher. Deep in our psyche, archetypes of the planets work in mysterious ways, illuminating patterns and life lessons, and these are coded in stories and myths that reach back for generations. What science took from astrology was merely the physical surface, like strip miners gouging the earth for immediate profit, but it has never found "meaning" in the physical; to find meaning you have to know the stories. And some of our stories have greater meanings and insights into life than any single individual can assemble through haphazard experience or singular introspection.

Pluto's stories aren't for the faint of heart, however. It's the planet of death, rebirth, transformation. The alchemy of desire. When Pluto teaches it does so by taking away whatever we think we need the most, whatever we feel defines us. We tumble into the Underworld like Inanna of Sumeria, who was stripped of an attribute of self at each of seven gates to hell. Our certainty shatters and confusion reigns.

But then, when we thought we have suffered our greatest loss, that nothing is now worth living for, Pluto reveals something deeper. Something we wouldn't have known or understood while clinging to our previous self. And we re-emerge from the darkness with a light of vision that never sees things the same way we once did. Pluto is the loss of childhood, the loss of illusion, the loss of what we hold most dear to make room for a greater understanding, a deeper truth.

The lessons of Pluto vary from the most intense and severe to milder forms of the same pattern. Not one of my favorite teachers, but perhaps one of our most valuable lessons. When we aren't living to our highest calling, we can usually expect Pluto to come knocking. And he doesn't just knock, he blows our door down.