Cosmic Piñata #3: A Plutonian Potpourri

©3-1-2010 by Donna Cunningham, MSW

The Cosmic Piñata is a series featuring choice bits of information taken from the comment section, questions from my correspondence students, and readers’ emails. Today I’m featuring a selection of questions and answers about Pluto that don’t fit elsewhere, but are too helpful to lose.

To a woman in her 30s who was upset, thinking that a Pluto transit to her Moon meant her mother was going to die:

One possible expression of a transit of Pluto to the Moon is indeed some sort of crisis involving the mother, grandmother, or mother in law. However, without knowing more about your mother’s emotional and physical state, I’d certainly not conclude she was going to die. We all have Pluto transits to the Moon at least once every 11 years, and Mom only dies once.

Our relationship with her, however, goes through many evolutions throughout life, as our own lunar nature matures and changes. So, at any rate, you MAY be right in your apprehensions, but you may also just be feeling the sort of anxiety that often arises when you approach another threshold that changes your status and functioning as a woman.

To a young woman who had read the scant description of Pluto in the 5^th in my book Healing Pluto Problems and was afraid she’d be a bad mother, I wrote:

 Like other professionals, we astrologers learn much of what we know through clinical experience, and so we’re only as varied in our knowledge as our clientele is varied in its concerns. We all tend to attract people into our practice who are pretty much like ourselves. Thus, I think that the reason I didn’t write more about Pluto in the 5^th in reference to parenting is because at the time it was written, back in the early 1980s, I lived in New York City and neither I nor many of my clients had actual children. It’s a very singles city!

More often, since so many of them were creative people in the arts and entertainment fields, they were using their 5^th house energy in their work, so Pluto in the 5^th didn’t appear to be much of a problem position, more of an asset, really, for it gave them the passion for their work and the capacity for focus that is needed to succeed.

Of course, since the 5^th house is also the house of romance, there was a strong tendency for those folks to get into stormy, passionate, possessive and obsessive relationships with lovers who wanted to merge with them and control their every move. Given the bounteous hormones of people in that age range, they didn’t view that as a problem either.

It wasn’t until I left New York some 15 years ago that I actually began to have clients who were parents. In light of what I’ve learned through working with them, my concern about that placement might be one of becoming too wrapped up in a child, somewhat obsessively, in order to make up for a need for love and attention for oneself, so that the parent might tend to live through the child more than is healthy for the child, the parent, and the relationship.

There would also be the tendency to be fairly controlling of the child, not allowing him or her to grow up and move out of the parent’s sphere of influence. You are wise to be concerned and to be working on healing yourself. It would help to learn to nourish yourself, and to work on any control issues. The major essence for control issues would be Vine, by Bach. I was coeditor of Vibration, a free online educational journal and blog about these tools, and you can look through our archives of over 400 articles and a search engine at http://www.essences.com/vibration/backindex.html .  (Parents will find our Virtual Booklet of articles about children and essences especially helpful.)

To someone who read Pluto and Bullying: How to Recognize and Deal with It and wrote that, even though she had Moon trine Pluto, her mom was a bully, giving details:

All that from a Moon-Pluto trine, huh? We astrologers look so hard for something upbeat to tell clients that we seize upon the trines. You always hope an outer planet trine will be better than the hard aspects, but maybe it just means the person is better able to come back from the problem and to learn and grow from it. Perhaps the emotional distance between the two of you made it easier for you to move away from home to where you needed to be to actualize your gifts. The thing that I come back to time and time again about aspects is that the angle the planets form is far less important than the planets that are forming them.

More about bullying:  I wrote to a woman with in Mars and Jupiter in Scorpio in the 3^rd square Pluto in the 12^th whose brothers were bullies:

Those 3rd house Pluto or Mars positions really can leave some damage in their wake. Shining in mental/academic pursuits does seem to trigger siblings into heavy-handed attempts to squelch you. I can hear that you’ve tried to mend those relationships in adulthood, but it’s hard to effect change because when they’re not hurting, they’re so not motivated. (See another article about bullying here: Battling the Bully – Standing Up For Yourself with Confidence and Assertiveness.)

To a reader who commented on her 11^th house Pluto:

One manifestation of Pluto in the 11^th is a tendency to form very strong, exclusive relationships with just one or two people and to hold them so tight against the isolation that they become too important. In order to minimize the chances of abandonment, many of them become a friend to the friendless, picking intense Plutonians of the terribly impaired sort who tell you, “It’s you and me against the world, no one else understands me.

You become their healer, but eventually they get better and venture out on their own, and you feel forsaken and vow never to get close again. Ever hear Willie Nelson’s song, “Angel with a Broken Wing?” or maybe it’s “Angel flying too close to the ground.” Or people betray you because you’re holding them too tightly and you decide not to have friends. For more of the dynamics typical of Plutonians, see my book, Healing Pluto Problems, still in print after 30 years. Plutonians are nothing if not persistent!

What about you, Readers?  Are there things about your Pluto you always wanted to ask?  Leave your questions in the comment section.  I won’t promise to answer all of them in the obsessive detail you might like, but you may  stimulate new articles about Pluto on this blog on the order of the ones below.

Other Editions of the Cosmic Piñata Column:

• The Cosmic Piñata, Part 1 — Saturn Transits and Insights into the Houses
• The Cosmic Piñata #2: Treats from other Astrology Blogs
• Cosmic Piñata #4: Astrological Oddities—or Not?
• Cosmic Piñata #5—Mercurial Morsels

More Posts about Pluto on this Blog:

•  6 Things You May Not Know about Pluto
• How Strong is your Pluto? Here’s the Score!
• Pluto in the Career Houses–The Power to Manifest or Fail for Spite
• Career Challenges for the Pluto-Uranus in Virgo Generation
•  Pluto in Capricorn: A Laugh and a Half, by John Marchesella
• The Steamy Side of Venus-Pluto Aspects—A Photo Gallery
• High Maintenance–a Venus-Pluto Vignette
• Mars-Pluto Aspects? Use your Manifestation Mojo!
• Healing Tools For Plutonians: Transforming The Self And Others
• Purge Yourself of Pluto’s Negativity—Get Free of Bitterness

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