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Author Topic:   Pluto-Mars Aspects -- Natal, Transiting/Progressed
Azalaksh
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Posts: 982
From: New Brighton, MN, USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 29, 2006 01:10 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Azalaksh     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
From Steven Forrest's "The Book of Pluto":
quote:
PLUTO AND MARS

MARS ITSELF
Mars: the hunter in us all. And the prey.
At its best and most conscious level, this is the energy that defends us on our journey — and defends our right to navigate through life our own way. Mars, in other words, is our assertiveness and our ability to be dangerous if that becomes necessary to our survival. But there's another, darker side to Mars: it is also our capacity to be a victim, to set ourselves up as targets — and then, in the anger such painful, humiliating events leave in their wake, to seek to create pain in others.

PLUTO-MARS ASPECTS IN THE NATAL CHART
Planets bear the names of mythological gods who often functioned in very human ways. Through an accident of history, modern Western astrology has inherited names for these gods that happened to develop in Roman civilization, but every culture generated similar tales and characters. Always, in hearing these myths, we recognize ourselves and people we know; these "gods" were not so much divine in some transcendent metaphysical sense as simply very clear, very pure, and in many ways, very simple, expressions of characterological qualities and biographical patterns we see every day.
Not everyone speaks astrological language, but we can all recognize various "Mars types." Such people tend to be blunt and direct. They're generally robust, and inclined to enjoy experiences involving calculated risk. They thrive on fervor, and are fiercely loyal friends and do well under the pressures of crisis or extremity. They enjoy the clash of strong viewpoints. When such people go sour, they tend to become mean or hurtful, and are generally embroiled in interpersonal dramas which they take with passionate seriousness regardless of how forgettable the "slight" might be from every other perspective.
Were we to compare such "Mars types" with a similar array of "Plutonian types," we'd recognize a lot of parallels. Pluto has its edgy intensity, its affinity for penetration, its passion... and a rather Mars-like impatience with indirectness, weakness, or too much frilly politeness. The two planets, in other words, get along quite well.
When Pluto and Mars form an aspect in the natal chart, each enhances the fire in the other's spirit. They push each other, exaggerate each other. Good news or bad? That's never an astrological question; it's an existential one. People with such a combination are full of pisss and vinegar, as the saying goes. How they use it is up to them. Here we can find penetrating wisdom and extraordinary strength of character; we can also observe simple viciousness. Mars-Pluto force is not inherently a balanced energy; the spirit of the two planets is too similar for that. They're on the same side of the see-saw, so the combination tends toward extremes and thus moves a person into a kind of "win big, lose big" style of living.

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
Mars is connected to our desires at every level — which is another parallel with Pluto. Pluto is always associated, at least early in life, with scary psychological areas that must be faced squarely and bravely, lest they operate indirectly from our unconscious minds and manipulate our lives in hurtful directions: those "beer cans" about which we spoke early in the book. Putting the two planets together —which is to say, into conjunction — we observe that the challenge here is that at least initially one's own true desires hide behind a Plutonian veil.
This does not suggest that a person with the natal Pluto-Mars conjunction would experience no desires or strong passions; only that the true natures of those desires might be elusive. In such a situation, the gnawing emotion of desire will not diminish in intensity even slightly. All that happens is that it is misunderstood. Hungers arise in consciousness with great conviction, but in satisfying them, nothing happens: there is no satisfaction.
The real desires, whatever their natures, may emerge misrepresented in awareness as an exaggerated need for money, for food, for wide sexual experience. They may even express themselves as an extreme compulsion toward propriety, cleanliness, or status.
Given the sheer life-force associated with this conjunction, the person possessing it is generally willful and determined. Thus, for example, if a true desire is confused with the desire for food, we'll see somebody who weighs enough to be a sumo wrestler — unless they also develop a simultaneous passion for weight-loss. Then we observe food-addiction and exercise-addiction balancing each other, as a lifestyle. But do we observe happiness? No: only a terrible, unending tension.
What are these "true desires" upon whose discovery so much sanity rides? The birth chart offers hints. First, one must consider carefully the symbolism of the house where the conjunction lies (read the relevant earlier chapter.) To a lesser extent, the sign of the conjunction may suggest possibilities.
Due to the natures of the two planets, it is often helpful to probe for ways in which one's natural courage, assertiveness, and capacity for self-defense (Mars energies) may have been misunderstood, thwarted, or violated (Plutonian mishaps) in one's earlier life, or in previous lifetimes.
When the real desires are revealed, and if the individual has the courage to live them out, Pluto-Mars conjunctions suggest a life lived passionately and to the full. Failing that, anger tends to fill the personality, corrupting it, and complicating the life with endless warfare.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
A square or an opposition between the natal Pluto and natal Mars is a tense, explosive energy. As always with these two planets, knowing precisely what one wants is the key to navigating it gracefully.
Certainly any person with a claim to sanity and maturity recognizes that we must all eventually develop an ability to control, direct, and sometimes delay the satisfaction of our impulses and desires. Without such restraint, civilization would unravel. But there is a delicate balance here. If we imagine someone whose desires are utterly tamed and defeated, most of us are more likely to visualize a walking prune than an enlightened being.
The metaphysical notion of “transcending one’s desires” is another matter. There, desires “fall away” as a side-effect of certain particular kinds of inner work. This process is utterly distinct from what happens when desires are beaten up, shamed, and driven into the unconscious mind.
Desires, passions, the heat of life – they may drive us crazy sometimes, but without them we have only a dull limbo of boring ghosts. It’s much like trying to imagine a world without sex. It would sure solve a lot of problems, but how many people are going to vote for the ban?
When Pluto and Mars form a square or an opposition in the birth chart, desires are thwarted. Reclaiming them is part of the work that particular soul is doing in this lifetime. It is hallowed, evolutionary work, and deserves to be honored. Something – or someone – stomped on that person’s fire, driving it down underground where it seethes like a telluric force.
Commonly, with these aspects, there is a biographical pattern of roadblocks involving fierce figures of power or dread in the life: tyrannical parents or bosses, fire-breathing mates, children from hell. They stand in the way, saying in effect “you cannot have what you want.” These are battles that must be recognized in squarely honest terms and fought without hesitation or remorse. Neither Pluto or Mars are “nice” planets; they are necessary energies, sacred in their own way. But the realities they represent are not well-addressed by the simple philosophies of love, patience and forgiveness that typically accompany wall-hangings of kittens, cherubic white-bread angels, and tots with improbably large eyes.

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
Natal trines and sextiles linking Mars and Pluto tend to exist in the charts of productive, high-energy people. Once consciously integrated, such an aspect is a terrible support in that it tends to correlate with single-mindedness and focus, a pronounced capacity to determine priorities, and excellent instincts for cutting to the essential points.
Trouble is, the aspect may not be “consciously integrated.” There may instead be a glib, unreflective assumption of externally defined desires and directions that have little to do with one’s true individuality. And then hard work and plain luck work together until those phony goals are achieved. We’re left feeling as though we just won ten million bucks…in Confederate money.
There are lots of “standard desires” we are “supposed to have” because “everybody has them.” There is a simple truth in all that: basically, everybody does want love, fun, safety, health. But there’s a slide covered with Vaseline here that leads us right into the world envisioned for us by the people who write those ads that plague you on TV. Not all men need be obsessed with accumulating money and power. Not all women need to be slender. Not all kids need to be “cool.” These desires are often trained into a person and would not arise without that training.
With a Mars-Pluto trine or sextile, one needs to be cautious about avoiding these cookie-cutter dreams. Such an alignment may support the attainment of desires, but for that truly to be a blessing, one must first do the profound ionner seeking that leads to knowing the vision that puts heat in the soul, not just in the ego. The house position of the natal Pluto provides a good jumping-off point for such investigations, as does a consideration of any other planetary aspects Pluto makes in the birth chart.

PLUTO-MARS EVENTS
Transits or progressions that temporarily link Pluto and Mars provide real crossroads in life. We can use them to enter new existential superhighways, full of blazing emotional engagement – or as exit ramps from highways that have grown dull and featureless. One purpose such events do not serve: they’re not likely to help you win any popularity contests.
These are "me" seasons, quite naturally and legitimately. Desires are inherently ego-centered energies; they're always framed in terms of "I want..." It may be "I want a grand piano and I am going to get one, period." Or it may be "I want to join the Peace Corps and to try to help starving children in Ecuador." The second desire is more certifiably "noble," but read the fine print: The person who has determined to join the Peace Corps is going to leave her dog with mom and dad, her roommate looking for a Single White Female, her boyfriend wondering if it was his breath...
Even the loftiest of intentions, once enacted, rocks a lot of boats. And that's inevitably a side-effect of Pluto-Mars times in one's life. Careers are changed, relationships are made or broken, addresses cross state lines, irrevocable commitments are made. And the pieces fall into place as best they can.
When handled in a conscious way, the desires that underlie such a period are genuine ones, rooted in a person's spiritual journey. That alone justifies a lot of broken eggs. But when a person responds poorly to such Mars-Pluto interactions, the passions released are awry. We fervently imagine we want something that, in fact, we do not want at all. The desire is for a symbol, and what it symbolizes is some forgotten thing we needed long ago but were prevented from attaining.
Fast transits of Mars through aspects to the natal Pluto carry the spirit of what we've just explored, but in a diluted way. They are too brief to develop much meaning unless there are other, slower Mars-Pluto developments occurring simultaneously. What we are mainly concerned with here are the transits or solar arcs of Pluto itself through aspects to the natal Mars, or progressions of Mars to aspects of the natal Pluto.

THE MOVING CONJUNCTION
When Pluto and Mars form a conjunction through transit or progression, the tone of the period strongly resembles the picture painted in the previous few paragraphs. You have come to a crossroads. The questions there are stark. Do you know what you want? Are you brave enough first to admit it and second to claim it?
As we have seen, it is very difficult for one person vigorously to claim anything of consequence without creating repercussions in other lives. When one's response to the moving conjunction of Mars and Pluto is conscious and healthy, that disruption remains as a likely part of the picture. Still, such a person will strive to minimize the pain or awkwardness he or she is creating in others.
At one level, the ideal of minimizing hurt to others is a valid, but rather obvious point of ethics. In healthy, conscious scenarios it will arise intuitively, more as an "of course" theme than as a divine revelation. Where the idea becomes more actively relevant is when we move into the gray areas — not exactly dark, unconscious responses to the conjunction, but rather that place where most of us really live: the middle-ground, between the angels and the monkeys. There, if elements of unprocessed Plutonian damage are distorting our behavior, the surest symptom of the problem is that we will feel a compelling desire to do harm to someone "who damn well deserves it."
Such anger likely has complex origins. The "deserving" individual may be less than a paragon of kindness and integrity. But he or she is also almost undoubtedly a symbol of someone else, long ago, who is still down there in the unconscious mind, holding a critical piece of your freedom and passion, and laughing like one of Dante's demons.

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
Squares and oppositions developing between Pluto and Mars suggest crisis. Something is boiling over. Is it inside you? In someone close to you? In your more general circumstances? Two answers: the first is that we can gain some insight into the probable location of the outburst through knowing the houses and signs involved. The second answer, far more fundamental, is that the laws of synchronicity bind inner and outer events together in patterns. Your psyche and your world mirror each other.
Meditate with me for moment on the distinctions between bombs and rockets. Functionally, they are quite different, but in essence they are much the same. In each, highly volatile material is contained in a metal casing. When flame touches it, an irresistible, unstoppable, and precipitous sequence of events unfolds. The rocket releases the energy more slowly and uses it to go somewhere. The bomb releases it all at once. It has no direction, and the result is the destruction of everything around it, itself included.
With a hard aspect unfolding between Mars and Pluto, that's your choice: be a rocket or be a bomb. In principle, it's an easy choice. In practice, a lot of bombs go off in this world. You need a direction now; this energy must be used, must applied to something.
To what? To getting what you really want! Here, we cycle back into territory we've explored in the previous paragraphs. Knowing exactly what you want involves separating your real desires from the phony ones with which you have been trained by your community, your family, friends, and mate. Once you know them, there are questions — extremely pressing questions, under squares and oppositions — about your level of existential courage and about your real commitment to your own life and its authentic journey.
The low road under these configurations very typically involves designating some "enemy," and then creating wasteful scenarios of warring interdependence. Furies may rule, literal murders may even happen, but beneath the tragedy there is a species of dark comedy: "...oops, sorry, wrong target. You look like someone I knew years ago..."
One more point: the phony "enemy" we may put so much energy into harming under hard Mars-Pluto aspects, might be ourselves. Self-sabotage, accidents, even suicide, correlate with unconscious responses to such transits or progressions.

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
Life's a joy. Life's a bear. Each attitude suits our experience at different times. The more frustrating, draining parts of life take their toll on us. We accumulate tensions. If we don't release them, they eat away at our vitality, our attitude, and our physical health. Soft, moving aspects between Pluto and Mars suggest times in which such tension-release is available and appropriate. In the process, we are likely almost by accident to bump into unaccustomed desires and aspirations. It is as if by opening ourselves to passions in a simpler, more immediate way, we simultaneously "prime the pump" and welcome into consciousness previously buried layers of fire and engagement. So how might we open ourselves up to passion and thereby release tension? If you, gentle readers, were an eighth grade class in a public school, there would be a predictable wave of sniggers. Needless-to-say, sex comes to mind. And if sexual release in a reasonably healthy context is available to you under such a transit or progression, don't be shy! Mars and Pluto both have an affinity with sexual heat. In opening to it, we open to them. And in working out anything that blocks the full pagan expression of one's sexuality, we also work out other, more elusive Plutonian blockages.
Beyond sexuality there are certainly other forms of passionate release that promote health and higher consciousness under soft Pluto-Mars events. Vigorous dancing, making music with a lot of emotion, simply yelling at the top of one's lungs —you get the idea. Anything that engages us at such a bodily, primordial level fits the bill.
I am inclined always to think of sextiles and trines as preparations for squares and oppositions. First, we are given a chance to "get it" the easy way. If that fails, then the issue seems to go away for a while, but we fall eventually into a far more coercive environment, both inwardly and externally. These "yogas of passion" that are hungry to arise under soft Pluto-Mars contacts aim at getting one in touch with needs, hungers, and dreams in a timely way, while there is still enough flexibility in one's environment to make the appropriate changes without the trauma that tends to accompany the squares and oppositions in the life of a lazy or fearful person. If we've done well under the aspects of opportunity, then when the squares or oppositions arise, we are free to express those energies in an untrammeled, creative way.


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