The cycle of Venus and Pluto

You can hang out here naked with me in the wilderness if you wish, but all I have left for food
at this time is the rest of these squirrels I captured and cooked up. I am not in a sharing mood. Find your own fucking animals if your hungry. Why the fuck are you projecting the responsibility onto me?? OK, look, lets just chill out, look at some stars and talk some astrology....anything else and I'm liable to get pissed off.

First, let us revisit the Venetian principle (that which makes our lives easier and more pleasurable, be it material or relationships) in which our wants and our values are projected and reflected.
As it touches Jupiter, it seeks to expand and scatter affections and receive love on grand scales. It loudly proclaims the value system joyously, appreciating and receiving appreciation for its merits. It is in a growth stage
It then touches Saturn, and has had to learn to make a choice as to what is important to value, for if anything is to be truly manifest in this life, one must set boundaries as to what and whom it is to build with. Affection is not so easily expressed or drawn, and the native must learn to truly love the self in order to find what it is that it truly loves, and then work for it...becoming fully grounded into the partnership and endure the journey with all its highs and lows. It is a grounded building stage.
It then touches Uranus, which we have not discussed in this blog in depth, but here we reach not necessarily a growth or a grounding stage, but what we will call an enlightening stage. Where we had to learn to endure and build through relationships with Saturn, now the values of soul yearn to shake free the shackles of restriction and be propelled into motion once again. At Uranus, we learn that the soul eventually moves out of any set of values as we all move in a constant state of evolution...for life itself IS expansion, contraction, and as a new pod of reality is built out of these two (Jupiter/ Saturn), continual motion. With Uranus, we are given insight of the soul.....the relationship needs beyond that of the egos that we experience on the level of Jupiter and Saturn.
We then reach Neptune, where we reach attunement to what we can become...and to the archetypes of what we are becoming with the karma that we create through our actions. Here, we shy away from the confrontations of relationship as we wish not to face the realities of what we are as mere singular beings, instead choosing to associate ourselves with archetypes and heroes of lore. It is at Neptune where we realize that all of these archetypes are reflections of ourselves...some ideal, and some not so....it gives us a vision as to what we have created and written on the walls of Akasha, and reminds us to attune to what we aspire to build as a species.

Now we come to Pluto, the topic of this blog! Pluto can in one way be said to combine the principle of expansion and contraction (Jupiter/ Saturn), however, it truly combines all of these planets by adding MOTION....expanding through Uranus and grounding into the realms of Neptune to REDEFINE and TRANSFORM values and thus relationship and karma.
The Karma of Venus/ Pluto itself represents a crisis point within this overall journey. The native has perhaps lived many lifetimes and has experienced the karma of Venus in cycle with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The native very much understands that the physical world is in some ways a great war of paradigm. It understands the manipulations and how the nature of pure Venus can be used to further and foster the values and needs of any ego. It also understands how much some of these values are on the Ego-level, and having touched Uranus and Neptune, feels a connection to the higher realm of freedom for the ego (Uranus) and attunement to idealism (Neptune). However, this is a crisis because we are dealing with the earth plane, and so initially the way to combat the above is through being the manipulator yourself, under the pretense that control dramas for resources and value sets are a given in any human exchange, so the native of the Venus/ Pluto aspects feels THEY might as well be the one with the upper hand. There is a great compassion for humanity, but also a under the surface feeling of superiority..initially.

Remember what a great teacher the Venus/ Jupiter person can be....couple that with the grounded sense of value and integrity that the Saturn person learns to have, and you have a great leader capable of creating social reform within the value set he/she chooses.

As we begin the cycle at the conjunction, the term OBSESSION comes to mind. We see natives possessed by the desire to experience the deepest of experiences in relationships. The native is driven by the desire for power through expression of sexuality, money, and control dramas in relationships. Because of the intensity of the needs of this native, they seek committed relationships that are prepared to go "All the way"...not only meaning "till death do us part", but also to break down all of the barriers and walls within the relationship and ultimately become ONE. However, the native has control issues of its own, and obsession and compulsion outside of this relationship likely will exist. Their is a double standard here of having another become "One' with the native, but the native becoming"one" with many others as well. Because of this, the native has the charm and ability to make others feel like they are the most important person in the world...yet they at the same time make their other relationships feel that way as well.
The best example I can give of the "double standard" would be using the mob as an example. The mob is a case study in the Venus/ Pluto motif. The members of the mob have an ethics and a code that they do not sway from within the relationships of the group itself. They expect the relationships they have within the core to be honest with each other, yet the very nature of organized crime is to take from others that are on the outside. So, you can see this justification of the double standard come out clearly in the structuring of this. Venus/ Pluto natives create this double standard in their own love lives, often justifying that moving outside the relationship is the only way that they can grow more deeply and intensely within their capacity to experience the ultimate fulfillment in love. However, to communicate that would risk losing and having to let go of the original relationship....of having to relinquish control, quite an issue for the Venus/ Pluto native.

As we move to the square of these planets, we come to a great relationship crisis. Love has guided the native to choose relationships that will be permanent, but in each one the issues that may keep the relationship from reaching the ultimate heights as seen by the native become a breaking point. Here we see a situation similar to a cross between the Venus/ Saturn and Venus/ Neptune square. The native perhaps has drawn a relationship in permanence that they can fully control, yet in being fully in control, they do not have the appropriate mirror perhaps...they are not being challenged on their level. The challenge comes when and if their is a break of having to LET GO of the relationship, watching the partner walk away. Ultimately, there is a TRANSFORMATION of VALUES. Having to let go forces the native to develop within aspects of their consciousness outside of the obsession. Values may be forced to move from the material to the physical, from the physical to the spiritual, and even from the spiritual to the material if the crisis leads to the perception that "God" has wronged the native. The aspiration of the natives of this square is that relationship can be just as intense and powerful without one side having full control over the other. The power is through the exchange of love itself. It is also common for the native to die for the relationship and be the one that has given full control (that in and of itself can be control.....saying "look what I have done and given up for you, now I need you to do this...."). Ultimately, the native has to learn that taking and giving up full control....that dying for another or having them die for you (when I say die, I mean surrendering the ego for the good of the relationship) is not the path necessary to fulfilling relationships. The truth is that BOTH parties need to make the necessary adjustments and sacrifices for each other.

At the opposition, the natives usually transfer that intensive desire for the fullest of relationship into another obsession, or project that love onto someone that they cannot have for some reason, such as a long distance relationship or a person that is unattainable due to sexual orientation (becoming a fantasy). These are excuses of the inability to ultimately have a singular fulfilling relationship. The native has not fully taken the responsibility to do so, maintaining the obsession or the desire without fully reigning it into reality. These natives have intense desires and high standards in their tastes in both relationships and possessions. Even those they have been forced to let go of, they want to hold onto the possibility that they can have that if they ultimately wanted to take responsibility for it, clinging to these people or making sure that there is a link maintained between them and past partners....a link based on needing each other. For those that they decide to let go they do not take these steps, because their ego has justified that those particular relationships are not what their soul needs to have any fulfillment and ultimately any transformation. The value system of those you wish to be committed to must be examined carefully in order to insure that it can endure. Your nature to be intensely attracted to someone can bite you when that person doesn't live up to the idealism ultimately, or cannot practically match your intensity in other areas that are important to you (as experienced in the crisis of the square). If in the above case, fulfilling relationships are not actualized, it is not because they are not intensely desired. The native has put them at arms length to learn about control and desire, and to control the desire. The experiences of the past have caused great sensitivity and FEAR. Ultimately, the objective of the Venus/ Pluto opposition is to absorb or be absorbed by that in which it values, starting at the level of personal relationships and ultimately reaching the "group or collective" level. It is to feel and perceive the deepest value by truly belonging....of ultimately becoming ONE..of transforming the reluctant ego within the individual and becoming greater than what you are by combining energy. This can begin on the level of sex and power, and ends on the highest of spiritual planes.
At the opposition, the crisis of the square has led to a middle ground of fear of the commitment necessary to truly make this happen. The native still wants and seeks out the most real and intense of experiences possible, but is not fully ready to complete the process of AT-ONENESS.

At the highest form of expression with the opposition, the native is a great leader of cause, dying for their paradigm and having fully immersed themselves into the collective consciousness of their particular group, is ready to intensely bear witness and gather those that fit the energetic mold, carrying them forward to the greatest heights that their collective expression will allow.

Natives of the strain-free aspects of Venus and Pluto, such as the sextile and trine,have an inborn understanding of the adjustments that must be made in order to make a successful loving relationship work. With Pluto, the title of the Pat Benetar song"Love is a Battlefield" comes to mind. The strenuous aspects must do the battling before they come to terms with the death and eventual rebirth of the ego through relationships. The strain free aspects have the ability to make the compromises which open themselves to the most fulfilling of relationships.

The inconjunction of these planets, as with all inconjunctions, means a need to make an adjustment in order to facilitate the flow of energies. The native tends to be TOO giving or "killing themselves" and their own ego for the sake of relationship, allowing themselves to be taken advantage of, or they are not yielding enough and expect the other party to do the work first before they do out of fear.

I remember a movie that depicts a good example of the principles of Venus and Pluto at work called "Bridges of Madison County". Initially I found this incredibly ironic because once again, I site a Clint Eastwood movie as an example. So, you can only guess what my next step was......yes, you guessed it...I had to find the astrological chart for Mr. Eastwood, and lo' and behold, he was born with the planet Venus under absolute siege....Venus conjunct Pluto, opposition to Saturn, and square to Uranus (forming what is called a T-square). I cannot remember the details of the storyline since it has been awhile since I have seen the movie, but following a life that gives you the freedom of loving deeply and intensely...ultimately not finding complete fulfillment beforehand is the key here. Meryl Strept called him out on his lifestyle ultimately, and what made the relationship Plutonic in nature was the level of intensity and its potential to bring the two to an At-Oneness. Their was a line a seem to remember along the lines of moving from love to love or reality to reality, as if it was all a journey to the heart of Meryl Strept's character. This gives us the image of the snake shedding its skin through experiences over and over again as it moves and transforms itself through relationships (THIS IS THE PERFECT SYMBOL FOR VENUS/ PLUTO)....ultimately, as we brought out in the square aspect above, the two were transformed but also had to "let go" due to circumstances. (This hard reality really demonstrates the Saturn dimension of Pluto's experience as well).


Through the cycle of Venus and Pluto, we are placed on the battle ground of egos, having lived many lives and experienced many relationships. We realize that the battle is really the expression of our ego consciousness and its desire for true love...its desire to be truly valued and to be a part of something greater than what we are as singular beings. It is here where we experience the most complete spectrum of relationship experiences. Letting go of powerful relationships that we merge with is a part of this experience, because ultimately one of the key lessons is that once we are one, we are always connected....the concept of "ownership" or having power over another is merely an illusion and comes about out of fear.

Through the complete dance of relationship...love, war, acceptance, rejection, trial and error, we merge with our fellow brothers and sisters. We become one life, one body, one mind.