In the practice of Evolutionary Astrology an analysis of the Pluto placement of any given chart provides the baseline understanding – the context – for the entire birth chart. From its Greek association to Hades and the underworld, Pluto represents the idea of hidden riches and treasure (Hades being the brother of Zeus and ruler of the depths as his brother ruled the sky). With Evolutionary Astrology, we can identify the source of these riches in each chart, as Pluto relates to each soul’s unconscious security needs and the issues held within.
By deepening our understanding of this complex in each person’s chart, we can not only see the chart as a whole from a rich foundation, we can become aware of the specific content of the subterranean wealth guarded by the Lord of the underworld. Pluto adds the capacity for depth and compulsion to the range of expression signified by its sign and house placement. To identify the Pluto complex is to establish a foundation from which we can understand the entire birth chart. Through Pluto, we become aware of the central evolutionary concerns stemming from deep within the soul. When we register these potentials and underlying motivations, we can experience the rest of the chart in its naturally profound complexity.
Pluto relates to our deepest unconscious security needs and as a result, those behaviors that we (primarily unconsciously) default to under stress. We build a feeling of security on the foundation of what is most familiar, those experiences which have occurred before. Our deepest unconscious security needs are linked with repeating clusters of prior life and early childhood feelings and experiences. For instance, if a person is raised by cold and distant parents, their adult relationships might take on that same (familiar) form. If this pattern repeats, the unconscious gets used to the pattern and will require great energy to change. Pluto symbolizes the gravitational pull of the past. Green writes:
From a purely psychological point of view, Pluto correlates to the deepest emotional security patterns in all of us. These security patterns are unconscious. Most of us automatically gravitate to the path of least resistance. The patterns in identity association that are carried over from the evolutionary past are directly linked to the path of least resistance and, therefore to our security needs at an unconscious level.
It is this deep source of unconscious security that forms the essence of what I call the “Pluto complex.” To the extent that we form our deepest security on what we already know or have been, we rest on the past. To the extent that we feel comfortable evolving into new forms, we leave the past behind and grow towards the future. From this paradox arises the Plutonian problem of attraction and repulsion. We are attracted to people, places, and ideas that symbolize our evolutionary intentions just as we are repulsed by them if they threaten our pre-existing security, which is formed through identification with the past and what we already are. This conflict, or process, is symbolically portrayed in the birth chart by the natal position of Pluto and the point opposite to that (whether a planet is there or not). The polarity point of Pluto (the point opposite) represents the promise of the Pluto level of identification to evolve towards the future.
Pluto represents the core psychological realizations of what occurred in the past: the events of highest intensity that have marked the development of the self. Pluto represents the behaviors and orientations in consciousness that allowed the self to manage or cope with what occurred before. If a person is too attached to a prior orientation because it provided a feeling of security, then compulsion or obsession can arise as one possible expression of the Pluto complex. In this way, the compulsion to repeat old patterns is born out of resistance to the evolutionary impetus to grow or transform. Such resistance can become a source of major stress, illness or dysfunction. The way this might manifest can be explored through the birth chart.
The Pluto complex also relates to the deepest level of attraction within the soul. To the extent that the needs symbolized by the Pluto complex are understood and approached by the individual, there are consequent attractions to people, places and ideas that symbolize the soul’s desires. However a conflict can arise between ego and soul as the awareness of the Pluto complex comes into consciousness, because the ego can become afraid of its own non-existence in the face of the awareness of the greater depth of the deeper self. If this conflict arises, there is subsequent resistance, and a person may experience a corresponding repulsion towards the very thing that they had been drawn or attracted to. This attraction/repulsion dynamic is a core part of how the Pluto complex expresses itself in an individual’s life.
The Pluto complex revolves around the tension between ego and soul. The nature of the soul is freedom, infinite love and gratitude to the divine. The nature of the ego (an aspect of soul unaware of its origins) is that it is in love with its own bondage. In The Republic, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” provides an excellent image of the ego’s self-imposed imprisonment, symbolized by shadows on a cave wall. In the allegory, which is an imagined conversation between Plato’s brother and his teacher Socrates, Socrates tells the story of a group of people who have lived all of their lives chained to the wall of a cave, in which their only view is the blank wall before them. The people watch the shadows that are projected on the wall by the changing light and begin to ascribe forms to the shadows. The shadows account for the entirety of the prisoners’ limited experience of reality. Socrates then likens the philosopher’s experience to that of one of these prisoners suddenly freed from the cave and coming to understand that the shadows on the wall do not comprise the complete picture of reality at all.
Our entranced ego ascribes meaning to the shadows of life, engaging in the drama as if it were the most gripping soap opera, and yet ignorant of the source that creates the shadows before it – the light of the spiritual Sun. Whereas the soul sees change as an adventure, the ego sees the same change only in terms of what might go wrong, what might be lost. This fear of the loss of the known compels the ego, even paradoxically, if the known experience is actually a burden. The burden is at least familiar, and less frightening than the unknown represented by freedom. But in that freedom lies the essence of the true identity – the more complete picture of who we are, including the source of the light within us.
The Course in Miracles teaches that all decisions can be essentially boiled down to the choice between Love and Fear. Similarly we can think of each life choice as one between ego and soul.
The Pluto complex is a paradox of dualism between the ego and the self which can only be ultimately transcended through the realization of the non-dual nature of reality.3 From the vantage point of the ego which sees before it a linear world of cause and effect, the polarities of astrology (Aries-Libra for example) appear to be real. The apparent dualism of ego and self (or Samsara and Nirvana) also appears to be real. But as the Buddhist Heart Sutra beautifully teaches, Samsara is Nirvana and Nirvana is Samsara: they are both the same. This is the radicalism of non-duality, which we will explore throughout this text. In non-duality, the kingdom of heaven is already here. There is no need to strive after it, and like the prodigal child we can return whenever we chose.
While it is important to contextualize this work within the field of non-dual truth as the highest expression of enlightened insight, it is equally important to remain grounded in material reality. Within the relative world, the astrological polarities are relevant to our divided experience and they are explored in this section as the critical indicator of the fundamental starting position of the individual coming into this life. The aim of astrological counseling is to help generate the energy required by the individual to resist the gravitational pull of the compelling but destructive material Pluto points to in the birth chart.
With that, let’s take our first steps toward understanding the Pluto complex by taking a closer look at Pluto’s expression through each archetype.
Pluto in astrology (1)
Pluto in astrology (2) Pluto complex
Pluto in the 1st House/Aries (3)
Pluto in the 2nd House/ Taurus (4)
Pluto in the 3rd House/Gemini (5)
Pluto in the 4th House/ Cancer (6)
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