posted July 01, 2005 07:27 PM            

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PLUTO AND THE SUN
The brilliant light of day, the central star upon which our physical existences hinge, the Great God of almost every ancient culture ...what is the Sun and what can we expect when Pluto touches it?

THE SUN ITSELF
The astrological symbolism of the Sun rests on two physical observations:
1) The Sun is the gravitational center of the solar system. It thus harnesses the enormous momentums of the planets in their orbits, curving them into reliable orbits, giving order, form and stability to a system that would otherwise fly instantaneously into chaos.
2) The Sun is the ultimate driver of all biological processes, warming us out of the deathly deep-freeze of space, driving photosynthesis in the plants that feed us and all other creatures, and making the weather that allows life-giving rain to fall.
As above, so below. The astrological Sun is both the "gravitational center" of your psyche — your identity — and also the symbol of your basic vitality. Astrologically these two ideas are inseparable. Vitality and identity cannot exist without each other. There is something inside you to which you must be true if you are going to look forward to getting out of bed in the morning. That's the Sun. It symbolizes the path of authenticity and psychological truth in one's life — and anyone whose biography diverges too far from the spirit of his or her Sun shows symptoms of devitalization: the blues, the blahs, watching television forever.

PLUTO-SUN ASPECTS IN THE NATAL CHART
Any linking of Pluto with the Sun in the birth chart immediately suggests that one's identity (Sun) is inherently Plutonian. As always, we must recognize that the art in astrology lies in perceiving wholeness, and that the symbolism can often be misleading when we abstract a single feature out of a chart. Still, a person with Pluto-Sun contacts in his or her chart generally embodies much of the spirit of Pluto itself.
If such an individual lives consciously, the Sun-Pluto contacts suggest an intensity of character. Here is a person who finds superficiality uncomfortable, who tends to err in the direction of truth rather than gentleness, and who appreciates honesty and straightforwardness in others. He or she likely possesses considerable powers of concentration and a taste for delving deeply into all things hidden, mysterious, or taboo.
The Sun, as we have seen, points in the direction of our vitality, If we are true to the Sun-impulse in ourselves, we are full of life and verve; if not, we are dull, and more susceptible to our own "demons." Thus, the Sun-Pluto person derives energy from everything Plutonian. At the lofty end of the scale, we would observe a compelling psychological need for relationships and experiences in which strong emotions are welcome and unsettling subjects are aired. At the lower end of the scale, we see an energizing fascination with subjects that others might find disconcerting: occult interests, murder mysteries, horror genres, the affairs of the "low-life." I emphasize that we are still considering healthy, positive, life-affirming expressions of Sun-Pluto energy here; such people benefit from these kinds of explorations. They were not born to be "good" in any simpleminded, life-denying way.
For Sun-Pluto people vitality is optimized in situations in which one's actions are perceived as inherently meaningful... the simplest illustration being the notion of any kind of work that clearly contributes to some transcendent good in the world: feeding the hungry, guarding the environment, volunteering to help with a political campaign.
Meaningfulness and altruism are certainly related concepts, but they are not interchangeable. A Sun-Pluto individual might very well, for example, find the intense, virtually obsessive pursuit of excellence in chess to be meaningful — and for such an individual, chess is a sacrament in which he or she explores the highly Plutonian realms of "life and death" competition under extreme pressure, of strategy, of psychological calculation and the experience of recognizing treachery.
What if a Sun-Pluto person makes a less-than-optimal response? The basic Plutonian contract is simple to say: you go to the dark or the dark comes to you. Never does that idea signify that one must become "evil," only that one must face honestly the less comfortable aspects of human existence. A Sun-Pluto individual who attempts to achieve a sort of idiot-happy, Toyota-commercial "normalcy" in his life will attract the dark side of life like a bus station bathroom draws weirdos. Such a man or woman may seem to be a "nice" person who is the chronic victim of bad luck or catastrophe, or to have had more than a fair share of hard knocks, especially in the areas of love and friendship. He or she may become a sort of designated victim or scapegoat.
In situations of weak response to Sun-Pluto contacts where the person in question has a strong ego-structure, then we tend not so much to see the victim, but rather the victim's eternal partner: the tyrant, full of Machiavellian arrogance, paranoid suspicion, and destructiveness. There is also often a high susceptibility to fanaticism.
The bottom line is that Sun-Pluto men and women are intense people who thrive on experiences that would daunt and distress many of us. Their freedom — and responsibility — lies in directing that passionate energy into a conscious investigation of life's hidden dimensions.

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
When Pluto is conjunct the Sun in the natal chart — within say seven degrees — then the fusion of Plutonian energy with the identity is complete. Here is an individual who is "majoring in Pluto" in this lifetime, and to whom the above paragraphs apply without much modification.
Where will the Plutonian intensity be best expressed and what kind of journey will lead to its full, healthy expression? Much depends on the nature of the rest of the chart, a subject that is beyond the relatively narrow scope of this book. Still, a good place to start unraveling the mystery would be with a rereading of the chapter about the specific house position in which the natal Pluto lies. And since with Sun-Pluto conjunctions we are dealing with highly Plutonian people, the chapter about the sign in which Pluto lies will likely have considerable personal relevance as well.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
Squares and oppositions used to be called "bad" aspects or even "afflictions" — a truly poisonous idea. Nothing astrological is ever "bad;" all configurations are expressions of some high potential in the scope of life. "Badness" may very well be a reality in the world, but it is one that humans create, not planets. And as we will soon see, even the so-called "good" aspects contain ample room for dark expressions.
The hard aspects tend to force circumstances on a person, and with Pluto, initially the experience is often unpleasant. The good news is that laziness dissipates under that kind of pressure. Little will so fill us with the desire to move our foot as the discovery that it is in the fire.
People born under hard Sun-Pluto aspects may seem less Plutonian by nature in youth than those born under the conjunction, but their lives tend to collide with Plutonian realities which gradually move them in that direction. It would be inaccurate to
Underestimate the vulnerability here to shocking biographical developments which tend to "Plutonify" a person: disorienting deaths, betrayals, grievous losses. Such events do seem to occur with elevated frequency in such individuals. I hasten to add that others with the same hard Sun-Pluto configurations may not show such traumatic paths through life, but rather display an early attraction to Plutonian subjects — an attraction which comes at some cost socially or existentially.
The point with squares and oppositions is always that there is a shock and a price involved. But to keep perspective we must recognize that such challenges temper the steel in a human character, and the results are treasured.

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
Trines and sextiles between the Sun and Pluto in the natal chart jar the system less than squares and oppositions do. Typically, they are related to opportunities.....in this case, opportunities to make peace with life's fearsome side and to heal our own frights and wounds. We might for example find the existence in early life of a wise spiritual teacher, "official" or otherwise, who helps the developing child to come to terms with life's enormity: an inestimable gift. Similarly, we may find early experiences of death or disease or breakdown among people near enough to be visible, distant enough to be safe. In either case, the opportunity to lay down a solid, Plutonian foundation arises in the most painless way possible.
When a soft-aspect Sun-Pluto person feels the need to explore deeper or darker dimensions of life, help arrives. Dear friends show the way. Skilled counselors are available. Books fall off shelves into the hands, open to critical pages.
But: the horror of the soft aspects is our tendency to sleep through them, not benefiting from them in any way. Such an individual can miss a profound opportunity, cashing it in for sleepiness and a modicum of mere "luck" in the face life's inevitable losses: deaths, for example, may come at "convenient" times.....but we missed the chance to become the sort of person who can make a real difference at such mortal junctures. We stand mutely beside the bereaved person, unable to utter the words we sense somehow were in the script for us.

PLUTO-SUN EVENTS
When Pluto and the Sun interact through transits or progressions, your identity (Sun) is challenged to find new sources of elemental vitality, meaning, and spark in life. To accomplish that aim, you must typically wrestle with facts and truths that will rattle you.
No one experiences a great number of serious Plutonian transits or progressions to the Sun in the course of a lifetime. The decisive players here are the progressed Sun itself, the solar arc Pluto, and the transiting Pluto. None of them move very fast. If it weren't for the network of aspectual trigger points that the natal Sun and natal Pluto spread throughout the chart, it would be easy for a life to go by without any interaction between these energies. As it is, they'll certainly make a few contacts, at least through aspects.
A minor player in this category of astrological event is any contact of the transiting Sun with the natal Pluto. In the course of any year, the Sun will buzz through every possible aspect to everything in the chart. While the basic issues remain the same, they are here robbed of much of their significance by the brevity of the event. In practice, I'd encourage you only to pay serious attention the transiting Sun when there are other, more pithy Plutonian energies afoot. Then it may function as a useful timer, triggering events that epitomize the larger issues or bring them to a head.
Those larger Sun-Pluto issues revolve around the sheer pagan desire for heat in one's life. What fear stands between you and a fuller, more vital existence? Are you scared to admit hard truths about your marriage, your job, your religion, your family, your children, your sexuality, your health? How much are you paying for your attachment to your social standing? Your money? Your illusions?
Questions such as those are not for the fainthearted, but when Pluto and the Sun make contact, those are the kinds of fundamental self-scrutinies that must be accepted. If they are faced, there will be gnashing of teeth... and liberation, perhaps after a "descent into hell."
If one does not possess the moral courage to observe one's own life with that kind of shattering penetration, then we collapse into the classic dark-Plutonian scenario: the reenactment of whatever drama wounded us in the first place. We explored this notion thoroughly in the earliest chapters of this book. Here we find the abused child growing up and hitting his or her own kid — or arranging to get abused again by taking a job working for a gentleman who spent his last incarnation as an S.S. officer. Or the abandoned child betraying her own friend or lover. Or the person whose mother smoked a pack a day throughout her pregnancy who goes to work for the environmentally-crooked mining company, helping with the cover-ups. It's the dark law of the unconscious Pluto: the deadening repetition of the horror, further spreading the virus.

THE MOVING CONJUNCTION
For pure commanding force, there is no Sun-Pluto event to match the conjunction. Still, depending on the geometry of the birth chart, it is quite possible that a person could live to a ripe old age and never experience a conjunction of the solar arc or transiting Pluto with the Sun, or the alignment of the progressed Sun with Pluto. If it does occur, the preceding paragraphs convey the essence of the event. It represents a period of a couple of years from which the individual emerges either tired and bitter, or utterly transformed — wiser, deeper, more authoritative, and probably filled with an irresistible hunger for new life.

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
Transiting or progressing squares and oppositions between the Sun and Pluto tend to press the Plutonian issues to the forefront. They are impossible to ignore, although it is always possible to deal with them in a false, unconscious way. Here we often find forced contact with life's darker side: a child is discovered with a drug problem, crime occurs, disease makes itself felt, an intimate death may take place.
While I prefer to take a positive, encouraging attitude toward life and astrology, it would simply be dishonest of me not to report these realities. They often transpire under this kind of Plutonian stimulus.
Perhaps more commonly, at least among people working consciously on themselves, there develops an urgent sense that some inner work needs to be done; something dark and threatening is rising up out of the psychic depths and the wisest among us seek to meet that creature on their own terms rather than cringing before it like frightened children.
Among those who are less spiritually gifted, there is a fearsome tendency to lash out viciously under hard Sun-Pluto stimulus. The opposition aspect is especially prone to the psychological phenomenon called "projection," whereby the psyche imagines some external person or group to embody the very qualities in itself which it fears — and then does to them what it is in fact doing to itself: smashing, killing, maiming, shattering, torturing, taunting.
As Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." And sometimes in life we do, sadly, find ourselves at war with someone and the concept of projection alone cannot account completely for what is occurring. Having "enemies," in other words, may be a reality from time to time, and it might need to be faced squarely. But if you are experiencing hard aspects between the Sun and Pluto and simultaneously you find yourself faced with "adversaries," look penetratingly at the situation. Are those enemies real? Have they really done you any harm? Or are you falling into the seductive, profoundly convincing illusions that projection creates?

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
Transiting or progressing trines and sextiles between the Sun and Pluto offer exciting, empowering possibilities — if we can conjure up the motivation to seize them.
A young, working-class man finds himself out of high school, hammering nails when he can get the work. Abstractly, he'd like to attend college, but he sees little possibility of it, mostly for financial reasons. His grades don't warrant a scholarship, and he feels existence closing in around him — a classic Plutonian emotion. Then he sees an ad in a magazine: join the army, and they'll help you go to college when you've completed your tour of duty.
Such a course might not suit everyone, but it does in fact suit this young man's spirit and nature quite well. He's free to join. He is not encumbered by any countervailing responsibilities. The idea even appeals to him. What's to stop him from talking to a recruiter? Nothing — except inertia. He doesn't really have to join the army.….That is the way of the Sun-Pluto trines and sextiles here. A chance to re-orient and revivify one's entire perspective on life arises. But will we claim it?
What if our young man lets the chance go by? The cost is obvious in terms of the loss.....but there's more. Transits and progressions always appear actively somehow. If they don't operate in a healthy way, they'll operate darkly. Our hero is faced with a chance to go down the sweet road of decay, easily and cheaply at first. He falls in love with a glib young woman who's making a lot of money selling cocaine...
You know the rest of the story.

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Feedback?

{{hugs}}
'Zala

posted July 02, 2005 01:19 AM              

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When a soft-aspect Sun-Pluto person feels the need to explore deeper or darker dimensions of life, help arrives. Dear friends show the way. Skilled counselors are available. Books fall off shelves into the hands, open to critical pages.
But: the horror of the soft aspects is our tendency to sleep through them, not benefiting from them in any way. Such an individual can miss a profound opportunity, cashing it in for sleepiness and a modicum of mere "luck" in the face life's inevitable losses

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Hmmm with soft aspects one can sleep through opportunities? I don't know about that? Anyone else experience this?

My father has Pluto exactly conjunct his Sun right now. And I think Pidaua does too.

posted July 02, 2005 02:41 AM              

I think this can be true of trines more than sextiles.
When I think of the word trine, I think of the rhyming word recl-INE because this aspect can be so easy-going as to be lazy, and that can lead to TR-ouble. I picture someone snoozing comfortably in a recliner, in front of the TV with a bag of chips. Easy isn't always better!

Just the other day I spent some time searching for a "solution" to one of the trines in my natal chart.

posted July 02, 2005 09:11 AM            

Thanks for your kind words, but I must defer both your compliments:
Thankfully I don't have to type from books into teeny little LL-text-boxes anymore -- I scan the pages I want to quote from books and run them through text-recognition software which saves them to Word. I read/edit the results, and copy and paste into reply-box.
As for the pics, Happy Dragon did the butterfly-lady, and I found the seahorses on the web. If you ever want to know where a pic posted here comes from, right-click on the pic, go to Properties in the pop-up menu, and it will display the address (URL) of where it came from.

I feel the same as you about going back to school -- the aspects I've been copying in here for others have to be proofread, and I'm getting a lot out of it too! Are there any interps that you would like to see posted? I've been working a lot with the outer planets lately since I just don't feel I have a good understanding of their natures/effects. If you would like any interps posted for Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, just let me know!

posted July 04, 2005 09:25 AM            

I will try to get to it today -- have quite a few friends with that placement, including myself.....

posted July 05, 2005 03:56 PM            

I am under a conjunction right now (Both my Sun and IC are in Sagittarius and Pluto just moved off my natal Venus in Sag).

I also have a natal Sun-Pluto square and can identify with Plutonian events thrusting themselves into my life. Sink or Swim comes to mind. Age helps soften the blow and I can see Pluto's influence over my life more and more (especially about the person becoming more Plutonian in age). With that square along with Pluto conjunct Ascendant in my 1st house...I guess you could say that Plutos' energy is very familiar in my life...and somewhat comforting.

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For Sun-Pluto people vitality is optimized in situations in which one's actions are perceived as inherently meaningful... the simplest illustration being the notion of any kind of work that clearly contributes to some transcendent good in the world: feeding the hungry, guarding the environment, volunteering to help with a political campaign.
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posted January 05, 2016 07:51 AM            

I am surprised there are not so much testimonies about sun-pluto experiences

I've got the conjunction tightly, a cazimi - my sun is eleven minutes BEFORE my Pluto in Scorpio 3rd house
I can tell that the stuff about attracting unlucky events like hell rings true to me
I have experienced a difficult birth, passed away and been revived by three times
Been involved many times in car accidents miraculously escaping death, been seriously burnt 3 times - 2 times with water and 1 time with hot oil - born and raised in a country at war till fifteen, seen death everywhere, from war casualities or the AIDS
Been sickly with unknown and incurable deaseases that eventually just... disapeared ! (Jupiter in 6th square Sun/Pluto) It's still happening sometimes...
Been the scapegoat in family, bitten, same scenario at school, blackmailed, betrayed too many times, been robbed by family, friends or lovers.... even by my boss ! SMH
Nice people always turn out to be nasty and spiteful as far as I am involved !

But that was the time when I struggled hard to be "nice" and referred to "good and bad" in a "normal-belief-way"

After a near death experience in a car accident in 2010, a major transformation occurred, raising what I discovered to be the "Kundalini", an amazing and terrifying spiritual experience. From that time, I delved willingly into the spiritual, then the occult....which I've been studying superficially in my younger years

I've been into astrology for almost fifteen years but I only discovered my real birthtime recently... as my birth had been... epic, they hadn't registered the right time !
Like I had to go through a lot in order to get to know the truth about my natal chart.
I intuitevely knew my birth time could be wrong so I've spent years investigating it.
My sun-pluto opposite my moon and conjunct my south node and opposites corrected Lilith... True and Mean Lilith conjunct my North Node in Taurus 9th House.
So I was born the day of a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse...

There would be a lot to tell so feel free to ask specific questions.

I am 30 years old, just out of my first saturn return which has been... a period of major transformation
I am always discovering who I am, I "die" and "resuscitate" with the seasons, never the same woman from one month to another
I've learned to accept that, that's the way it is for me - so I never hold on to anything, I let it flow and let myself be, let things be.
With the passing years I've understood I just need to manage to stay TRUE to myself all the time, otherwise I attract failure and misery ^^

Greetings from France ^^