posted January 28, 2006 11:37 PM            

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PLUTO AND SATURN
Father Time, with his hour-glass and scythe — that's an eternal image of Saturn. Often, traditional astrological perspectives on the planet have borne that baleful tone. But Saturn does not represent old age; it represents maturity, and the virtues that help us arrive there.

SATURN ITSELF
Maturity — the very meaning of the word shifts according to who is using it. To the grammar school child, it might mean becoming one of those paragons of sophistication, style, and worldly wisdom: a teenager. To a person in college, it might suggest that far horizon: mid-life. To a man or woman of fifty, it begins to resemble Father Time a bit more: the Elder.
Always, maturity is the potential inherent in the next stage of the life-journey. Such potential is never realized automatically; only its physical reflection, getting older, is automatic.
To attain maturity, one must make an effort. At its heart, that effort is about altering one's nature in a highly Saturnian direction: an increase in one's acceptance of what is real and actual, greater integrity, wisdom, and a corresponding tolerance for life's defeats and compromises.
Saturn thrives on massive efforts and acts of will. It is the part of human consciousness that can make and keep commitments. Delayed gratification, persistence, sober assessments, and conservative judgments are central to it. Handled well and consciously, over the years Saturn breeds dignity and self-respect in us, as well as a quality of natural authority. These virtues are typically forged in Saturnian times, where mammoth do-or-die efforts are made: geographical moves, periods of strenuous education, marital commitments and recommitments.
Handled in an uninspired way, Saturn energy is that part of us that prefers defeat to making the efforts success entails. It is quick to say words like "no," "impossible," and "it won't work." In the short run, it is frustrating. In the middle run, it is depressing. And in the long run, a weak response to Saturn is nothing less than a resolution to be dead.

PLUTO-SATURN IN THE NATAL CHART
An aspect connecting Pluto and Saturn in the natal chart forges an indissoluble bond between the Plutonian ideal of a passionate, vision-driven life and the Saturnian ideal of hard work and commitment. It is not an easy association — but the word "easy" is too readily equated with "positive" or "good." Saturn is the part of the human psyche that in fact does not much enjoy anything "easy." It is the part of us that likes to make an effort, that appreciates real excellence and character.
Under such a linkage, powers of concentration are often very high, as is the capacity to sustain focused effort. An outlet for the energy is essential, and that outlet must appeal to the Saturnian predilection for skill, commitment, and self-discipline.
Think of a concert pianist. Years of training and practice come to a focus moment-to-moment on the night of the performance. An incredible, almost superhuman, feat of dexterity and memorization unfolds before our eyes. And yet, if the pianist is truly a virtuoso, he or she "makes it look easy," as though the expression of those glorious emotions through the keyboard was only marginally more difficult than simply feeling them.
That's the spirit of Saturn and Pluto together. They seek that same marriage of passion and hard-won excellence. The avenue of expression does not, of course, need to be artistic. It may unfold in a marriage, in a business, in the skillful practice of any craft — from dentistry to computer programming to stock-trading.
If such a planetary linkage goes sour, then the narrow focus and self-control of Saturn interact morbidly with the Plutonian affinity for the dark. Without a healthy outlet, the combination of these two planets can become very bleak. Despair can fill the consciousness like a candle flame in darkened room. Then the mind begins to obsess; worries and fretfulness blossom into fear and sullen fantasy, complicated eventually by a monomaniacal focus on some aspect of the taboo: the furtive, compulsive masturbator, for example.
These glum possibilities are real, but quite unnecessary. With Saturn linked to Pluto, ecstasy is available. Just look at the face of the virtuoso pianist.

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
A consideration of the house that holds the two planets provides a solid foundation for interpreting the conjunction of Pluto and Saturn in the birth chart. Reading the earlier chapter of this book that describes Pluto alone in the relevant house might be a good start. The inner healing to be done and the outward fruit such work can bear are outlined there. Adding Saturn to the mix amplifies the centrality of the issue in the life, and also adds the uniquely Saturnian dimensions of self-sufficiency, discipline, and the need to accomplish some visible "great work" in the process of doing the Plutonian delving.
Psychologists have given us the term "depression," now very much a part of street language everywhere. Like most words, it can obscure as much as it reveals. Astrologically, it would be impossible to define a "planet of depression." One reason is that depression is pathological state and no planet is inherently pathological. Another is that depression arises when a truly basic need is chronically and inescapably thwarted. Since every planet represents a unique basic need, any of the planets can lie at the heart of a depressive episode.
Pluto and Saturn, however, tend to figure more prominently than the others in cases of depression. Why? Simply because they are the planets that most actively represent factors that thwart desire. Each represents a different kind of thwarting, though. Saturn's blockages tend to be based in circumstance — "I'm depressed because I can't seem to get over this damned cold!" Pluto's blockages, on the other hand, are harder to understand. "I'm just depressed, that's all." But why? If Pluto could talk, its answer might be, "You're depressed because your primary relationship is falling apart and you haven't admitted it to yourself yet!" If we're depressed for Plutonian reasons we haven't truly faced, we tend to concoct or inflate Saturnian "reasons" to explain our condition: "If only I had a little more money..."
The point is that, when Pluto and Saturn lie together in the birth chart, two potential drivers of depression are allied, and if they get off their track and start cross-emphasizing that quality, the result can be devastating.
Born under such an alignment, it is imperative that a person define mountains to climb in accord with the symbolism around the conjunction — and once again, the house position of the pairing is a productive place to begin framing the nature of the mountain. Such a life, lived in a healthy way, may have features in it which critics will decry as "obsessive" or "unbalanced," but that verdict reflects nothing more than the narrow masturbator. For the Pluto-Saturn person, a life lived without that kind of passionate focus is a depressing life. The brilliant pianist who practices many hours a day but hardly ever reads a newspaper: is she or is she not a "good citizen?" We might fault her for not keeping up with what the scoundrels are doing — that's arguably one of the duties of a citizen in a democracy. On the other hand, her concerts bring people together for a shared experience of the soul of their civilization.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
With Pluto and Saturn linked by a square or an opposition in the birth chart, issues of character and morality take center stage. Pluto is passionate, and Saturn is controlling, so there is natural tension between them in that regard. Such tensions are aggravated and emphasized by the inherently tense qualities of these hard aspects.
Earlier, we expressed the notion that Pluto was intimately connected to anything that gets an individual "hot." That means Pluto represents appetite and ardor at their most intense. Naturally, such highly motivated psychic states sometimes have primitive biological dimensions, although we must be quick to add that such "heat" can arise in a hobbyist on the way to the model train convention or the musician on the way to an exciting jam.
Human beings renew themselves through the experience of such heat from time to time. We all have a basic Plutonian need for ecstatic release. Sex may provide it. So may art, or religious ritual, or immersion in dance or parties or creating a business.
But Saturn can overcontrol that passionate need. This is an extremely delicate notion. To attain the "great works" characteristic of the highest expressions of these Pluto-Saturn aspects, some degree of sublimation and delay of one's hungers is necessary. But too much obstruction of them can create a morbid condition in the psyche, just as too much self-denying "goodness" can incline a traditionally religious person toward witch-hunting regarding other people's pleasures.
The moral challenge of hard aspects between Saturn and Pluto lies in finding a kind of personal morality or integrity which is psychologically sustainable, and then living it. In nutshell, such a person needs to learn pacing and balance. He or she will definitely need something into which to get his or her teeth; some manner of great work is always the natural expression of this potent planetary linkage. But such a man or woman also benefits from long meditation upon why God saw fit to create the weekend.

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
Seriousness and depth of purpose characterize these sextiles and trines. Normally, in looking at soft aspects, we must be cautious about their inherent propensity for laziness. But neither Pluto nor Saturn are inherently lazy, so that trap is less of a threat here than with most other soft planetary combinations. Saturn especially relaxes by working, and Pluto can simply add a dash of passionate intensity to the stew.
Still, the key to keeping Pluto-Saturn energy healthy always lies in keeping both planets busy and challenged; the signs and houses in which they lie offer insights into the particular forces that must be brought together in that department.
Generally speaking, it is not easy for human beings to look steadily into the Plutonian dark. Almost by definition, it makes us nervous and uncomfortable, and inclines us toward denial or escape. Under these soft aspects, there is often an easy matter-of-factness regarding life's frightening threads: death, disease, catastrophe, grief. It is easier for such people than for most of us to accept the "facts" under such circumstances. At its best, this quality can make for an individual who is a real treasure in times of need — the steady Rock of Gibraltar who helps us through a bleak season. At worst, the same factors can come together to suggest someone whose insensitivity, bluntness, and apparent coldness can be destructive, hurtful and alienating.

PLUTO-SATURN EVENTS
Astrologer Grant Lewi, decades ago, began to speak of Saturn as "the cosmic paycheck." His implication was that under passing Saturn symbolism, we would all "get what we deserve."
That phrase — "get what we deserve" — is something of an inkblot test. Some of us may hear it ominously, others encouragingly. And both possibilities are on the radar screen when Pluto links to Saturn through transit or solar arc.
Either way, there is a D-day sense about these two planets coming together. It's a make it or break it time in which a certain confrontation, both with oneself and with circumstance, has taken on a quality of inevitability or "fate."
Pluto is our craziness, insofar as we are all made "crazy" by the unconscious material that influences our behavior and view of life — the compass-turning "beer cans" of which we spoke early in the book. And when Pluto forms a moving link with Saturn, we are ready to confront and defeat our craziness in a decisive battle, thereby creating an existential turning point for ourselves. That's the "cosmic paycheck;" if we've earned it, now we collect it.
But what if we've been overindulging in denial, projection, and laziness? What kind of paycheck can we expect then? Here, we see the dark side of Pluto-Saturn possibilities: the craziness we've carried inside us crystallizes in our biographical life. Our worst fear comes true. The "one thing we know we just couldn't handle" looms in our face.

THE MOVING CONJUNCTION
Say you're embroiled in one of these Pluto-Saturn turning points. Ask yourself, what would the wizard inside me do in a situation like this? Or ask it another way: imagine that you've grown old, much older than you are today. Imagine that you've matured wisely and gracefully, making nothing but smart choices at every level. Visualize that wizardly version of yourself, vastly more sagacious and experienced than you actually are in this moment. What would he or she say to you about the crossroads at which you are looking? From that perspective, in that higher consciousness, what would be your best move now? How about your dumbest move?
That kind of thinking is useful under the moving conjunction of Saturn and Pluto. You are poised on the brink of an evolutionary leap. At its center is the process of maturation, a considerable part of which is connected to our noble effort to become less crazy over the years — which is to say less controlled by unconscious factors you deny, distort, misunderstand, or simply know nothing about.
At the crossroads you face, there are two choices. One is old and familiar, the other is unprecedented in your life. The first choice is driven by worn-out patterns of woundedness in you, patterns which you are now ready to drop as naturally as you dropped your childhood. The second choice is more empowered, more confident, more akin to the road of the Elder...and you can prove that to yourself by squinting your eyes until you make out that gray-haired, caped figure in the distance, beckoning you...

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
When Pluto and Saturn form squares and oppositions, there is crisis in the air. Neither of these are "mellow" planets, and when they form a stormy aspect to each other there is often a spirit of trouble in one's life.
The trouble, though, is old and familiar: it is a crystallization of an old pattern of self-delusion or self-limitation that has been afflicting you for a long while. Lifetimes, maybe. And it has now come to a head. To say you have no choice would be misleading; we always have at least one choice, and that is whether to be conscious or not. A conscious response to passing hard aspects between Pluto and Saturn involves acting creatively and unexpectedly, throwing a novel element into the old logjam. That novel element is a new level of wisdom on your part, and some of the wizard's power. You may be called upon to use force in your own defense; you may be named "hurtful" for doing so. The pattern needs to be broken at whatever cost. The alternative is only to repeat it.
The inner work connected with healing oneself during a hard Pluto-Saturn event can be eased and accelerated dramatically by seeking out the counsel of another "wizard," ideally one older than yourself. Saturn epitomizes a nearly-lost archetype: the Elder. Throughout much of human history, no culture existed without an honored class of gray-haired guides and teachers. Merely aging did not automatically qualify a person as an Elder, either — experience had to be digested, not just endured, in that life-long initiation. While we've lost a lot of the rituals and institutions around our Elders, such beings still exist. And if ever you might benefit from a long talk with one of them, it is during a hard, moving aspect of Saturn and Pluto.

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
Maturing, moving toward wisdom, evolving and not just aging — these processes always require effort. But it would be unduly harsh and pessimistic to say they are invariably difficult. Sometimes, in fact, such maturation can be a joyful, natural development in which the needed efforts feel more like fun and celebration than an ordeal. Such is typically the case when Pluto and Saturn form moving sextiles and trines.
Under such configurations, it is beneficial to prime the pump by thinking of where you are in the life cycle. For starters, reflect on one fact: you are older today than you've ever been in your life.
This is one of those notions that is striking equally for its wake-you-up shock value and its patent silliness. But it's true: you are getting older by the minute. Yet we tend to maintain static, memorized images of ourselves... images that are invariably and inescapably rooted in what we used to be.
Society encourages us to be neurotic and insecure about the maturing process. Women often complain, with compelling arguments in their favor, that they are unfairly devalued as they age. As a sympathetic male, I have to agree: I see those magazines whenever I shop — here's the face of sixty-year-old man, here's the body of a seventeen-year-old girl/woman. All I would add is that men pay their dues to the cultural madness too, but on a different schedule: there's a balloon-payment that comes due around retirement age. It kills a lot of men, literally.
The point is that we have made aging a Plutonian reality in that we have made it taboo. And with Saturn's very direct link to the maturation process, moving events between these two planets very often have the realization and integration of one's place in the life cycle at their heart. They provide a classic signal that we are ready to "give up childish things," accepting with as much faith as we can muster the cyclic realities of the human journey. And under the sextile or trine, opportunities to do just that abound. Older role models are available, chances to be taken more seriously exist, along with the attendant increases in responsibility. Claim them now, and profiting from the harder aspects that will eventually form between Pluto and Saturn will be proportionately less exhausting.

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posted January 29, 2006 02:49 PM              

Got Saturn conj Pluto

posted January 29, 2006 03:14 PM              

For example, I hv 3 ppl that I can use as examples with this configuration. The first native(male) was married right out of college at around 22-23yrs old. He moved his family to a major Metropolis city in the South, through Fraternity connections attained a freelance job w/ a major record label, and continued to work for the company for the nxt several years. Once the faithful & loyal husband, tempted by the glamour of the industry he cheated on his wife w/ numerous groupies (even rumored to hv fathered an illegitimate child while still married) and by the time of his Saturn Return he was embroiled in a nasty, nasty divorce that lasted a couple of yrs. All that he had worked so hard to build was torn down, in this case by his own actions.

After his divorce he almost immediately married one of the artists on the roster at the record label, and being married not even 2 yrs to wife #2, he is already engaging in extra-marital affairs.

Another example, a man who does contract work as an IT tech. He bought a house previous to his Saturn Return, but nearly a yr later contracts were not being renewed, and work was becoming scarce. Knowing the nature of contract work (stop-go-stop-go) he failed to properly prepare for the possibility that he may be out of work for some time one day in the future. He didnt save, but instead, spent his $$$ as fast as it came. Big screen TV, restaurant dinners,entertainment expenses, and the day came whn one of his contracts ran out. Leaving him scrambling to pay bills. He lost the house, lost his car, and had to re-group and start his life again. He is now rebuilding his life from the ground up, living in a humble apartment community.

posted January 29, 2006 03:20 PM              

lol well I guess it’s a good thing I like change

Besides, I doubt that this is all due to their Saturn aspecting Pluto other factors ( including karma ) prolly play a big part.

*wonders if all that money spent yesterday was a good idea*

posted January 29, 2006 04:35 PM              

You completely missed the point. Its not about the little details, the hows, the whens...its about building (Saturn) and then destoying (Pluto). Usually the destroying is a result of smthing that is out the native's control (Pluto rules the hidden, that which is beneath the surface, the deep-seated).

Again, as I am forced to always say everytime I post on this board (????), these are not my personal opinions nor things that I am making up off the top of my head. Im just here discussing Astrology, I dont find the need to challenge ppl everytime they post smthing I dont necessarily agree with.

posted January 29, 2006 05:26 PM              

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by the time of his Saturn Return he was embroiled in a nasty, nasty divorce that lasted a couple of yrs. All that he had worked so hard to build was torn down, in this case by his own actions.

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He bought a house previous to his Saturn Return, but nearly a yr later contracts were not being renewed, and work was becoming scarce. Knowing the nature of contract work (stop-go-stop-go) he failed to properly prepare for the possibility that he may be out of work for some time one day in the future. He didnt save, but instead, spent his $$$ as fast as it came. Big screen TV, restaurant dinners,entertainment expenses, and the day came whn one of his contracts ran out. Leaving him scrambling to pay bills. He lost the house, lost his car, and had to re-group and start his life again. He is now rebuilding his life from the ground up, living in a humble apartment community.

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these are not my personal opinions nor things that I am making up off the top of my head.

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Im just here discussing Astrology, I dont find the need to challenge ppl everytime they post smthing I dont necessarily agree with.

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The only thing I can think of is when I said

“Besides, I doubt that this is all due to their Saturn aspecting Pluto”

You don’t agree with this? You’re confusing me didn’t you say…

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these are not my personal opinions nor things that I am making up off the top of my head.

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posted January 29, 2006 06:20 PM              

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Saturn
Your Successes and Failures - Limitations and Ambition

Saturn conjunct Pluto

Ambition is hardly the word for you! You’ve got a very definite end in sight, and you’re determined to reach your goals, come what may. In your search for success, you pull out all the stops, work yourself to the bone and use all the experience and expertise you’ve got at your disposal and there’s a lot of it!

You’re terrified at ending your days thinking “If only…”, looking back at your life and thinking of all the opportunities you wasted and all the chances you ignored. What’s more, you’re very fearful of folk exerting a strong power or definite control over you, in any way.

As a result, you’re capable of tackling Herculean tasks that would leave lesser mortals completely defeated, confide that your sticking power will get you the results you crave so much. Because you’re very wary of change, and what it could do to your life, you tend to stick to the tried and tested.

When you’re confronted by something new, you act in one of two ways. You either dig your heels in and resist the changes at all costs and probably miss out on all sorts of chances as a result or you allow yourself to be swept along by what’s happening and turn it into a personal success.

Your organisational abilities make you a born manager, and any job that calls for executive ability could appeal to you. When it comes to your future ambitions and ideas, you play your cards very close to your chest! Instead of broadcasting your thoughts to the nation, you tuck yourself away behind the scenes and earn enough loot to keep you comfy in your old age. Bet you’ve got a nice little nest egg!

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posted January 29, 2006 06:58 PM              

I didnt say I disagreed w/ anything. LOL You apparently did since you took the time to respond to my very general post about Saturn-Pluto.

Quote from the first post:

"Pluto and Saturn, however, tend to figure more prominently than the others in cases of depression"

posted January 29, 2006 07:21 PM              

Mystic????? You think I’m Mystics Gemini? I don’t recall using curse words, nor am I from the US

You contradicted yourself, I felt I should point that out

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Quote from the first post:

"Pluto and Saturn, however, tend to figure more prominently than the others in cases

of depression"
Hhhhmmmm…

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posted January 29, 2006 08:11 PM              

No chart is perfect and no one if perfect.

Soljourne, so far I can tell you barely read posts, so I’ll stop trying to communicate with you. I hope you do the same with me.

posted January 29, 2006 08:26 PM            

I’m glad my post engendered some discussion, and it’s interesting when people feel ‘forced’ to respond

Perhaps I’m way off base, but your conjunction is also out-of-sign, with Pluto in Libra and Saturn in Scorpio. I’ve already posted your Saturn in the 8th, can’t remember if I did Pluto in the houses, so I’ll post it below.

I personally think you have a huge potential to be an extraordinary woman, and build things in your life that will not be 'torn down'! And I also think that in the examples listed above, these were people who are living unconsciously and acting-out in immature and negative ways (extramarital affairs, blowing money blithely with no thought for the morrow).

On the other hand, YOU are an astro student – this gives you an enormous advantage when it comes to anticipating and reacting to the planetary energies as they touch your life.

Hang in there, sweetie! And, oh yeah, you probably shouldn’t have spent all that money yesterday

posted January 29, 2006 08:31 PM            

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PLUTO IN THE EIGHTH HOUSE
THE EIGHTH HOUSE ARENA: Sexual bonding; Healing; Dealing with the Dark
[/b]THE EIGHTH HOUSE PITS:[/b] Brooding; Despair; Isolation

IN THE TRADITION...
...the eighth house had a rather ominous title: "The House of Death." Astrologers of long ago would use it along with a host of other factors to determine the timing and nature of a person's departure from this world. Both ethically and practically, this is a touchy area. Predicting someone's death can be upsetting business. On top of it, the techniques are not very reliable in my experience.
Still, thinking about death is a good trigger for eighth house insights. Death makes us nervous; so does everything else about this part of the birth chart. The emotions released around an intimate death are strong ones: both mystical ecstasy and wailing desolation may arise. It is the same with all the other eighth house terrains: sex, our woundedness, primal fears and phobias. Here, we deal with everything vigorous, passionate, and unsettling about human life.
Going to your edges emotionally is the heart of the matter: death and love may push you there. So may a long, hard talk with yourself. Or friendship so deep that it goes beyond politeness and an exaggerated "respect for boundaries" — the kind of relationship that must of necessity exist between long-time lovers. Anytime we are dealing in an honest and straightforward manner with the hurt or scared places inside us, we are in this domain.
As you might imagine from the foregoing language, Pluto has a special affinity with the eighth house. The Lord of the Underworld is attuned to these kinds of overwhelming energies. In the old hierarchical language of the astrological tradition, we say "Pluto rules the eighth house." What that means is that when Pluto is here, it is very strong. Simply having the planet in this house qualifies you as a Plutonian type: deep, intense, and inclined toward psychological thought.

YOUR HIGH DESTINY
A million years ago, we circled the campfire gazing into the comforting flames, our backs to the night. Stories were told, food shared. And behind us, in the vast dark, twigs cracked. A glance over the shoulder might reveal a pair of feral, yellow eyes. We took solace in community, and hoped for the best. Every now and then, something would lunge out of the dark, grab an unfortunate aunt or uncle, and rush back into the encircling night. And we would shiver, and sing more loudly.
The scenario is mythic, not to be taken literally. Like any myth, it invents facts to point at truths. And one truth is that being alive is a precarious, terrifying business. Things do lunge out of the dark and grab us. Terrible disease strikes without clear warning. Drive-by shooters strike without any warning at all. Lovers depart. Kids find the needle or the gun.
These are unpleasant subjects. Like our mythical forebears, we tend to gaze at the comforting fire with our backs to them. Let me hasten to say that love is real, joy is real, tenderness, beauty, and peace are real. But so are these darker elements.
You know that. You've always known it. To say that you are "comfortable" with life's terrifying side would be silly; who could be? But you are more at ease with it than most of us. You were born with a rare kind of emotional fortitude, an ability to sit with strong emotion in yourself or others, and override the common tendency to deny the dark. When life pushes us to the edge, as it does for everyone sooner or later, we need wisdom and a steadying hand. We need someone with whom to talk it out, someone who'll listen, someone who won't be too quick to box all our feelings up in a neat philosophical or "spiritual" package. We need someone who can sit with life's ambiguity, mystery, and enormity, and not take refuge in "answers" that simply drive the feelings back down into the dark. We need a "priest" or "priestess" in the true, archetypal sense. Your High Destiny lies in claiming the full expression of that power.

YOUR DISTORTING WOUND
A woman corners you at a party. Earnestly, dead seriously, and without stinting on any details, she outlines a surgical procedure she is contemplating. All the while, a spider is crawling slowly up her lapel.
You try to appear interested in her soliloquy. You do your best not to succumb to the spider's fascination. Perhaps after a bemused minute, you mention the bug. A year later, what do you remember? Her story? Her name? Probably not. You remember the spider.
The mind is like that. We notice the unexpected. We have a fascination with the macabre, the inappropriate, the taboo. When we see a truth clearly, especially one that others are ignoring or denying, we tend to centralize it in our awarenesses. It looms large, like the spider.
With your eighth house Pluto, you have always possessed a highly developed nose for the darker, more psychological under-currents in any situation. Since those undercurrents are often denied, you tended to focus on them all the more intently. This enchantment with the ragged edges of human emotion and the nightside of human experience is both your great strength and your distorting wound.
A plain reality in most human affairs is that these unspoken atmospheres of hunger, anger, or fear have a sexual component. For most people between the ages of twelve and ninety, sexuality is in practice the heart of the eighth house. We all have repressed desires, jealousies, guilty memories, "naughty" thoughts and fantasies: highly charged eighth house material that hangs like a hungry ghost just behind our party eyes.
Even when you were small and had no words or concepts for what you were feeling, you sensed these undercurrents in the world around you. Hungers and fears everywhere. This fact in itself is part of your distorting wound: because others generally did not acknowledge these problematic realities, you balanced that by focusing on them. This created an overemphasis in that area: an overemphasis on truths denied, on unspoken energies and drives. You see the dark clearly, but it may loom larger in your perceptions than is warranted. And the dark is scary.
Merely seeing the frightening side of life could be called a wounding experience, but the point here is more precise: it is that seeing the dark alone, without help and support, is the wound.….the more so if others actively denied the reality of what you were perceiving, or were simply incapable of enduring the sight of it.
To all this we must add a synchronistic principle. This inward focus on the more problematic and unsettling truths of life often coincides with a heightened density of painful biographical experiences: early experiences with intimate deaths or diseases, encounters with violence or outright evil, sexual secrets or chronic frustrations tainting the air of the family home. And these experiences themselves wounded you further.

YOUR NAVIGATIONAL ERROR
...can take a lot of different forms, depending in part upon the nature of the rest of your birth chart. We can unravel them all with a single meditation: what are the uses of Innocence? Because if there are any uses for it, you are potentially in some difficulty. Your innocence disappeared early, if you ever had it. You are simply not by nature an "innocent" type.
(This notion, by the way, should not be construed as a declaration of your guilt! Here we use the word innocence to signify something closer to the "innocence" of children — naivete, inexperience, a guilelessly trusting quality.)
Innocence allows us to rush headlong into life's experiences. It allows us to board the roller coaster without a second thought. A first marriage, for example, is typically undertaken in a spirit of considerable innocence: who can understand the enormity of that challenge without having tasted it? Children often come into our lives when we're not far out of childhood ourselves: again, we typically possess only the vaguest of notions of what we are getting ourselves into.
Is all that really so bad? Maybe not. Perhaps, from the evolutionary perspective, there is something positive to be said for leaping headlong into life, naively trusting that everything will work out. Maybe without that inborn innocence we would be paralyzed, afraid to move. Certainly anyone whose eyes are wide open and who still trusts life without misgivings enjoys a more than normal portion of sheer faith.
Your navigational error is, of course, optional. But if you succumb to it, you'll become guarded and hesitant, and gradually evolve into a moody, brooding person. Your attitudes may be governed by fear and worry, or crippled by extreme caution. You may find yourself emotionally isolated, with no one in your life with whom you can talk on a natural, open level. This syndrome can manifest in a variety of areas, but the single one that looms above the rest is the potential twisting of your capacity for sexual bonding.
In "innocent" sexual bonding, we reveal extraordinarily intimate details about our lives and thoughts without hesitation…..long before we have been faced with the darker dimensions of our lover's character. The Universe seemed to arrange our minds that way, and maybe for good purpose: we find ourselves deeply connected with a lover before we have much chance really to consider what we are doing. And then we are in it, and must deal with the relationship, and maybe grow a lot more than a person who saw the dangers more clearly at the early stages.....and wisely ran away.
You might fall into the trap of being that paradoxical creature: the natural relationship counselor who cannot make his or her own intimate life work. (And by "relationship counselor" I don't necessarily mean somebody getting paid for it. You have skills in that area, and they'll be recognized and employed even if you're the dispatcher for a trucking company.) You might accomplish that dubious aim by systematically choosing partners who are "safe" — which is to say, people whom you can easily outsmart or out-analyze, or who don't have enough intensity to match you, or who are weakened by their own woundedness. And then you may suffer the frustrations inherent in those kinds of limited relationships.
Why would you do such a thing to yourself? Out of fear. Out of a lack of innocence. And those two ideas are the same: it is the height of innocence not to fear human love.
As I write those words, I am aware of an urge to modify or delete them. But I won't. As negative as they sound, saying that human love is to be feared conveys a truth about life. Love uplifts us and gives meaning to our existences, but it also hurts us very badly sometimes. Everyone has a dark, dangerous side — a wounded side — and in deep intimacy, that edgy, caustic energy will certainly make itself felt. Saying we have no fear of that eventuality is as "innocent" as saying we don't fear the rabid dog or the wild-eyed terrorist.
In a nutshell, what you have instinctively perceived regarding life's scary side can potentially put a wall around your soul. Nothing can get in to hurt you — but nothing can get out either.

THE HEALING METHOD
The pain-driven, fear-driven, powers of destruction in this world can chill the stoutest hearts. If you doubt it even for an instant, think of the latest atrocities in whatever war is unfolding as you read these words. The human capacity for generating horror seems unlimited and insatiable.
But there are other forces. In every shadow, we see evidence of light. Human beings continue to love, to hope, to dream. We continue to care for each other. Simple-minded folk create an image of "good people" undoing the evil wrought by "bad people." The wise are quicker to see the two in one flesh. Most of us make our contributions to the sum of pain in the world — and to the sum of forgiveness, healing, and love. Both are formidable powers, and it is blindness to ignore either one.
A child is raised in an abusive, crack-ridden ghetto. Finally he is removed, and placed in a foster home. Getting through his shell won't be an easy task. It's going to take more than a good attitude. It's going to require something more akin to magic.....a quality of eye-contact, a shell-bashing intensity of love. There are not many effective words for these particular human potentials, there is a quality of insistence, of "000mph," that we can put into our love, a quality that magnifies the healing power of that love. Not everyone could understand what I am talking about here, but with your Pluto in the eighth house, I believe that you do understand.
Your Healing Method is twofold. First, you must open yourself up and receive that kind of searing, loving intensity from someone. Secondly, you must offer it back. It is in that unguarded, wide-open sharing of sheer life-force that your truth-seeing, penetrating nature is affirmed and validated. The heart of the matter is that you must experience not merely your ability to love, but your angel-powered, witch-powered, ability to see into another's soul. And the paradox is that you can't open that window without the other person looking right back into you.
This transaction might occur in a profound therapeutic context. It could happen in an extraordinary friendship. But it most easily and naturally occurs in an eighth house framework: in sacred sexuality, or in the face of death or terrible loss, or in any other human situation where the emotional energy runs so high you can't help but shake.

THE ENERGIZING VISION
Tibetans name their teachers "Rimpoche," which means "Precious One." The term has specific implications among Buddhists, and it definitely goes beyond suggesting that someone is simply kind and insightful. Still, you were born with the capacity to be one of the "Precious Ones" in your community, one of the people who is there with the right words, right touch, right silence, in times of dire need.
You have profound instincts in the face of crisis and loss. You may well have healing gifts, or divinatory powers that emerge when they are needed. You thrive when life becomes intensely real, and can help others thrive then too. You carry in you the archetype of the shaman, the healer, the magus, the good witch, the priest, priestess, minister.….pick your title. They are all different ways of referring to people who have the ability to be "there" when the chips are down, when life is extreme and we are pushed toward our limits — or beyond them.
Down that road lies a vast reservoir of sheer life-force. There lies your heat, your hunger for life, your eagerness for existence. In that intense realm, you find the energizing vision that ennobles you and gives meaning and direction to your worldly story.

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