On Healing Pluto Problems

This is an interesting, fairly short book on “Pluto problems.” In astrology, Pluto is closely tied to death, transformation, and rebirth; in modern systems it rules the eighth house — the house of death and intimacy — and Scorpio. The best way to describe Pluto is probably through Scorpio: heavily self-defensive, a little secretive, aloof, independent, and at times intimidating, one of the most intense signs there is. Cunningham is interested in how Pluto shows up in a chart, especially when it makes hard aspects — squares, oppositions, sometimes conjunctions — to other placements.

My own chart has a very powerful Scorpio. It’s ruled by Venus, but Pluto ties Venus for the most significant planet, makes aspects to nearly all the others, and I see it surface in my life often. I have a tendency to destroy whatever project I’m working on the moment it feels close to complete, and I always have; I have some self-destructive streaks, even though my circumstances are, on balance, better than many people’s. I picked the book up to understand myself a little better.

For the most part it’s decent, though I’m not sure it goes far enough. Cunningham dwells on very serious, very dark material. Many people with dominant Pluto placements were victims of abuse — physical, sexual, otherwise — and many go on to abuse others; hurt people hurt people. In the middle of the book she gives an extended reading of the chart of a child being severely abused by both parents, along with the parents’ charts. I believe the case hadn’t been resolved at the time of publication, and I hope the boy is okay; it was illuminating to watch Cunningham approach it through astrology, though I’m uneasy about the ethics of including an ongoing case.

I keep telling myself, oh God, I’m so thankful I don’t have it as bad as that. And it’s true, I don’t — but what Freud called Thanatos keeps surfacing in my life, and I wanted to understand it better. I keep reading around it, and, this is no comment on the book, I don’t think the reading is making it any better. Because I already know my impulses and my drive to collapse, I just feel powerless to stop them. That sentence is a profoundly Plutonian one, exactly what Cunningham is trying to get at, and it can’t quite land precisely because of that powerlessness — or maybe I’m just enacting in this review the same self-defeating behavior she describes. It feels like a ruminative circle, a loop that keeps repeating. Freud suggests the repetition is unconscious and comes from a desire for mastery, and I think he’s right.

To her credit, Cunningham offers strategies. The most insightful were the guided meditations, especially on coming to terms with the past and letting go. The cycle, I suppose, is about an inability to find closure, and it has to be broken by inventing the closure you so badly want. She offers affirmations too, which I found interesting but far less helpful, and finally Bach Flower Remedies, which strike me as total woo — a bit hypocritical of me, I know, reviewing an astrology book, but some woo seems truer than other woo. The last chapter, on talking with the person being analyzed during a consultation, was especially interesting, because it let me picture how I must look to my own therapist when we touch on things that are tender for me. I’d never seen myself that way before, and it’s fascinating; I don’t know whether it’ll help, but it let me see something new.

The book is genuinely good for astrologers trying to make sense of Pluto, and it could help Plutonians who either thought they were entirely alone or haven’t yet developed much self-awareness. Plutonians who have already put their lives under the microscope won’t learn much new about themselves, and may feel, as I do, powerless to change. To them I’d say: take the guided meditations seriously. It’s easy to be cynical in our era, but come at them with full sincerity, and — while they won’t solve everything — they will help.