Pluto and the Creative Arts

by Anthea Head

Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.

from O Beautiful End by Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet and mystic.
Tagore had Pluto on the Sun/Mercury midpoint in Taurus.

The arts have the power to raise the spirit of their audience, they move us, transform us, excite our passions and our feelings. They make us laugh or weep, lift us to great heights or fill us with compassion. They provide a vehicle through which we can gaze upon both the best and the worst in human nature and in some mysterious way they make us more than we are. 

Pluto is the planet of transformation and of regeneration. Where there is transformation through suffering, loss or psychological breakdown, the efficacy of the therapeutic use of the arts is now recognised. Therapists and those who work in mental health increasingly use painting, music and drama as effective therapies for deep-rooted trauma which cannot be expressed in any rational or verbal way. As for regeneration, stories, colours and sounds have the power to touch something deep, reminding us of our true purpose or opening our hearts to the commonality of human experience. They have been an essential part of civilisation since the earliest of times.

Hades/Pluto was the god of the underworld. The earliest known examples of art of any kind were discovered in caves and tombs. Archaeological finds show that dance, theatre, music, literature, poetry, painting and sculpture have their origins in ritual. Evidence suggests that the arts were an intrinsic part of symbolic and spiritual life of the community; midwife to the human-cosmic relationship. From the very earliest known examples, dating back some 40,000 years or more, skilled workers have created musical instruments, effigies and images whose purposes we can only surmise as being of a transpersonal nature. The time, skills and investment needed to produce these marvellous objects and paintings suggest that they were considered essential to the well-being of the community, this at a time when simple survival itself required huge efforts of energy and courage. The artist, the creator of form, colour or sound would have been regarded with respect. He/she was something of a shaman, maintaining the psychic health of the community. Creative expression was then, and remains always, essential to civilisation.

A tiny planet (and yes, I still call it a planet), Pluto is a little smaller than our Moon, yet symbolically it is a powerful point of focus, a mediator between ourselves as human beings and the overwhelming and impersonal vastness of the Universe, the Divine Cosmos. It is dangerous ground to draw parallels between the physical attributes of the planets and astrological symbolism. Nonetheless, as Pluto inhabits the farthest edges of our solar system, ‘facing’ outwards to dark and mysterious regions, so also does its astrological parallel draw us inward to those hidden places within the soul. Just as there is no absolute scientific theory of the nature of the Universe, so also are the realms of Pluto (within the human psyche) anathema to reason or materiality. Mythologically, Pluto is god of the underworld, of elimination and regeneration. Psychologically, it signifies passion, obsession, the instinct for survival (or lack of it) and those raw, gut feelings that put us in touch with our true values. 

Pluto exposes us directly to transpersonal forces which may overwhelm us personally, but which nonetheless connect us inextricably with all humanity and the human condition. It illumines the darkest side of our natures while simultaneously offering the possibility of transcending base desires and rising on the wings of the Phoenix to the highest good. Pluto represents not only the darkness of human nature but the potential for the greatest healing once the confines of self-centredness have been broken. Pluto’s nature is to transform; and transformation is a creative act: it is the creation of a new state of being out of the ashes of the past.

Creative work produced under the influence of Pluto is powerful, unforgettable and deeply moving and speaks directly to the core of ourselves.

Pluto has dominion over all creation myths in which light, order and a meaningful existence come forth from conditions of darkness and chaos. Most of our contemporary blockbuster films and the novels on bestseller lists evoke the hero's journey to the underworld and their subsequent redemption and gaining of wisdom. Popular culture succeeds not just because of the beautiful people it portrays (the glamour of Neptune) but also because it holds out the promise that we too might be transformed into something greater than we are.

That no matter how difficult our circumstances are, there remains the possibility of redemption.

The theme of transformation is epitomised in the Greek myth of Persephone. Her abduction to the underworld domain of Hades (Pluto) speaks of the transition from innocence to experience, symbolised by the change of name from Kore to Persephone. The story of her conditional release from Hades is said to have initiated the pattern of the seasons. As she descended for one-third of each year to the underworld, winter came to Earth, bringing cold and sadness. After her sojourn, her return to the meadowlands above ground brought spring and the coming of joy. An element of this story is concerned with the creation of the cycles of the seasons: the new growth that bursts into life with the spring and the autumnal dying back of the plants as the life force once more returns below ground. As Earth has its seasons, so do our own lives. Our own rites of passage and initiations into adulthood, maturity and wisdom are transformative times of life. Often painful and involving great depths of emotion, these are the recurring themes in drama and literature.

Writers: Greene, Salinger, Golding

The creative arts have always had a role to play at such times. Who does not remember some music or novel which accompanied a major transition in their lives and made sense in a way nothing else could? For me, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock both had a profound influence when I was a teenager. Unable to externalise my feelings at the time, these authors confirmed the validity of my emotional life. Salinger, born on 1 January 1919, had the Sun in opposition to Pluto; Greene, born on 2 October 1904, had an exact square between Mercury and Pluto. These Pluto aspects signify a quality within their own lives which enabled them to touch the depths of the loneliness and confusion of adolescence. As a result, they were able to write stories which became touchstones for several generations of young people.  

The work an artist produces under Pluto’s influence cannot be cosmetic or superficial; it will touch on something essential and is an active, dynamic response to life. For them, the necessity to create is a compelling force and, at its most overwhelming, this creative energy represents the awakening of the divine fire of life, kundalini.  

These primal forces with which Pluto is associated can manifest on any level of human experience. Its lowest expression is an animalistic energy, devoid of reason, pure instinctual power. In literature this irrational and shocking impulse within human nature is powerfully portrayed in William Golding's Lord of the Flies – a story of shipwrecked children. Left to their own devices in the absence of adults and seeking to find a means of survival and order, these hitherto well-behaved schoolboys become increasingly terrified and feral, dividing into tribes and reverting to violent and cruel power struggles. Golding’s Sun in Virgo was squared by Pluto in Gemini suggesting that he was aware on some level of the potential for order being overturned by chaos and darkness. The Scorpio South Node and Jupiter in Scorpio in a t-square with Saturn and the Moon also point to an understanding of the psychology of the breakdown of relationships and the painful consequences.

In the story, the children gradually become alienated from civilised behaviour and their primitive, tribal instincts take over. The relinquishment of self-control and personal responsibility, and their abandonment to the powerfully irrational forces of barbarity, is signalled when one boy, Jack, decorates his face with red and white clay and charcoal.

He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger. …Beside the mere, his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them. He began to dance, and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling.1

This face paint is strongly symbolic of primal energy. The mask gives them permission to take on new, more fearsome identities and forms a barrier between their inner childish vulnerability and the ruthless warriors they are play-acting as being. Play-acting or truth, it is a matter for analysis. 

Golding (birth time unknown) himself seems to have been a gentle man, a poet and a teacher of music and English. During WWII he saw active service with the Royal Navy, involved in D-Day and in the sinking of the Bismarck. The writing of Lord of the Flies, and other novels, provided the outlet for his Virgo Sun/Gemini Pluto square. It was written as tr. Pluto was semi-square Sun, and solar arc Pluto was semi-square natal Mercury (and possibly conjunct natal Moon). This story is a disturbing evocation of what lies beneath the veneer of civility. The boys survived shipwreck and drowning, but with no moral compass or adult support, they find themselves overwhelmed by plutonic forces. The novel has made a huge impact and is a standard text on school and university courses.

Masks invoke spirits

To return, briefly, to the subject of masks, our face is what we show to the world. In the Greek myth, when Hades/Pluto roamed above ground, he wore a mask of invisibility. People with Pluto on or near the Ascendant often shy away from revealing too much of themselves. Our face reflects our feelings, our compassion; and through lines of ageing, it says something of our experience of life and our humanity. To paint the face or wear a mask, de-humanises; it sets the actions apart from the personality, suggests a transpersonal force taking over and abnegates personal responsibility. This was the theme of the film, The Mask (1994), in which the lurid green mask has a compelling life force of its own, fixing itself on the face of the unwitting hero (a shy and awkward man played by Jim Carrey) who is transformed into a mad daredevil, a foolhardy and romantic figure. (Carrey has natal Sun in Capricorn with Scorpio rising; radical Pluto is conjunct draco Sun.)

In primitive societies, the mask (which often included a covering for the body) took on the vital energy of an ancestor or bush spirit and concentrated the power upon itself. Masks were considered so powerfully magical that someone was employed to follow the masked figure to collect any pieces of fallen garment in order that these not be used by others for magical purposes. In tribal societies, only a select few dignitaries would be permitted to wear masks. Even when not in use, they were regarded with great respect and locked away and kept in secrecy. The Etruscans and Romans, who used wax masks of faces for the purpose of ancestor worship and family cults, were also known to have kept them in special shrines in their houses.

Masks not only invoke spirits through imitation but at the same time protect the wearer from the direct force of Pluto's influence; they de-personalise the energy, focusing it on the purpose desired. In many cultures, the ritual wearing of masks signifies the laying aside of reason and enables the wearer to access the universal cosmic forces of creation. Music and masked dance may accompany ceremonies at turning points of the year, propitiating the spirits for the purpose of good harvest, good health and victory over adversaries.  

Artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani (all with strong Scorpio/Pluto contacts in their charts) were inspired by the African mask. Through use of pure and vibrant lines, they produced memorable and intensely beautiful drawings and sculptures. Artists working under the influence of Pluto often use line sparingly, making pure and strong statements. Pluto pares away the inessentials, in art as well as in life. Picasso's well-known sculpture of the head of a bull (1942) was a simple but effective mask formed from one bicycle seat (the face) topped by a pair of handlebars (the horns). Pluto as god of resourcefulness and recycling!

And what of the artists themselves? To pursue a creative life often demands much personal hardship; it can be a lonely and difficult path, of continual striving for expression of the inexpressible. It is a well-known phenomenon that many creative people tend to suffer from mental health problems, notably manic depression. Considering the vital role artists and craftsmen had in early societies and the forces they were manipulating through their skills, it is no wonder that today, endowed with this creative and imaginative gift, the artist may carry something of this ancient experience within them and it is a heavy burden. For such people a ‘normal’ life is difficult; the road they travel can indeed be lonely and one of obsession – if there is an affliction to a sensitive point in the chart from Pluto.

However, when the Pluto/Scorpio energy is strongly marked in the lives of artists their work has frequently left a meaningful legacy which has resonated through the years to give us symbols, metaphors or images to describe the heights and abysses of experience. Their work is powerful, memorable and often iconic. Their work is fierce, painfully truthful and a cri de coeur for love and compassion.  

The psychologist Carl Jung described the artist as being filled with “the divine gift of Creative Fire” for which they must pay dearly. According to him, the desire for expression is often of such urgent need that unless he can bring his consciousness fully into the light (we are reminded of Persephone escaping from Hades) he may otherwise suffer from great distress.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with freewill who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realise its purpose through him.  …He is a collective man – one who carries and shapes the unconscious psychic life of Mankind.2

Astrologically, one may expect such an artist to have an aspect between Pluto and the Sun, Moon or Mercury, or Pluto ruling the 3rd house. Scorpio on the cusp of the 3rd house often corresponds to a Virgo Ascendant with Gemini on the Midheaven. Virgo (the craftsman) and Gemini (the communicator) are essential tools for the writer/artist. I have been surprised by how many examples I have come across (in some cases Scorpio is intercepted in the 3rd house, depending on the house system). To name just a few: Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls), Albert Camus (The Plague), Oscar Wilde (De Profundis), John Cage (4’33”), Mozart (Piano Sonata No. 8 in A Minor), Igor Stravinsky (Rite of Spring), Olivier Messiaen (Quartet for the End of Time), Amedeo Modigliani (numerous paintings and sculptures inspired by masks). The combination of Virgo rising/Gemini MC/Scorpio 3rd house does not (of itself) make one an artist but will enable those who are creative souls to work in a particular way.

The influence of Pluto in the charts of all these souls deeply affected the path of their lives yet also endowed them with the ability to tap into something within the human psyche, evident in their paintings, music or writing but also inevitably reflected by some personal suffering or vulnerability in their private lives. Nonetheless, this sensitivity, this ability to be open to the voice of the unconscious, is vital. Jung believed that all creative work arises from the depths of the unconscious, the conscious ego being “swept along on a subterranean current”.3

For writers, Pluto’s influence can be signified by deep psychological insight, clarity of vision and directness of expression. The philosopher Nietzsche (Sun in Libra in close opposition to Pluto, with Pluto on the Moon/Venus midpoint; possibly Scorpio rising) recorded his own experience of this. Speaking of his Thus Spoke Zarathustra he wrote:

If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely the mouthpiece, merely the medium of overwhelming forces.4 

Another author, George Eliot (author of The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch) (Scorpio rising, Scorpio Sun trine Pluto/Saturn conjunction in Pisces, 5th house) wrote that she “felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit was acting”.5

Why is it that some works of art, literature or music strike a resounding chord with us?  Jung believed that art must touch on some fundamental truth of human experience. In his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul he describes the poet as someone who assimilates the deepest feelings engendered at moments of destiny and who can, through his skill, “raise it from the commonplace to a level of poetic expression”.6

For such a person the need to allow the creative spirit to find outward expression is a necessity. Often, they cannot live by the accepted standards of society; their choices make little sense to others. That which is buried deep within the soul must come out into the light of consciousness in a creative manner. It is Neptune which elevates the imagination to visionary levels. Pluto, however, is the passion and obsession of the artist which demands a voice, and which sees clearly into the depths of the pool of the human psyche. Such artists express universal truths which have a message not only for their contemporaries but for future generations.   

An example of just such an overwhelming outpouring of feeling is expressed by Dylan Thomas in his poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Goodnight:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light… 7

The poet's passion is indicated astrologically by Scorpio Sun trine Pluto/Saturn conjunction in Cancer and a Mercury/Mars conjunction in Scorpio. T.S. Eliot, author of The Waste Land, also had a close trine from Pluto (conjunction Neptune and in the 8th) to his Libran Sun.

There is no doubt that the influence of all three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) may raise the consciousness of an individual above and beyond the purely personal. The creative soul under the influence of Uranus will be in some way rebellious and non-conformist but also humanitarian and often intellectual (Anton Chekhov, Boris Pasternak). The influence of Neptune is transcendental, visionary and subtle (Neptune/Venus aspects are a signature for music). Where there is a raw compulsion, the direct expression of emotion pervading the work the influence of Pluto is undeniable. Pluto is not a theorist or a philosopher: he reflects the human condition, without condemnation (except notably, of hypocrisy). The darkest conditions of Man's soul can be portrayed with the greatest empathy and understanding. The penetrating insight into human nature of which Pluto is capable shocks us because we can so easily identify with the breadth of human emotions displayed. 

Painters: Picasso, Matisse, Goya, Hogarth

This is evident in the early work of Pablo Picasso (Sun and Mercury in Scorpio, Mercury opposition Pluto). As a young man seeking to study art, he found himself in Paris. With little money, he frequented the poorest areas of the city. And the paintings of his now famous Blue Period were inspired by the lives of the prostitutes and down-and-outs he came to know well. These works have a poignant honesty about them and radiate a profound compassion for humanity without resorting to sentimentality. They invoke a sense of the suffering passion of Mankind and the images hover between despair and redemption.

Picasso was a skilled craftsman and his work challenges with its power and vigour. Born at the time of a Jupiter/Pluto conjunction in Taurus (the Bull) opposing his natal Mercury, Picasso's bold and daring images frequently focus on his fascination with bullfighting and with the figure of the Minotaur. The powerful sexuality of the god-like figure of the male/Minotaur was a theme to which he returned throughout his life in his brilliant, semi-pornographic drawings. One wonders what sort of man he would have been had he not had this outlet for his imagination!  

Picasso produced one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings of our era. The huge, monochrome Guernica (1937), created when his progressed Sun was exactly (to the minute) quincunx natal Pluto, was his immediate response to the terrible bombing by General Franco's forces of the Basque capital on a market day. It is an image depicting the horror of war and its effect on innocent victims. Chaos and fear fill the picture as mothers scream for their children and people die. A huge, raging bull towers over the image symbolising the forces of brutality and darkness while a screaming horse cries out in terror. Images seem strongly to relate to Picasso's chart; the Scorpio Sun in the 4th house of homeland, the Jupiter/Pluto conjunction in Taurus (the bull) in the 10th, Moon in Sagittarius (the horse) in the 5th quincunx a 10th-house Saturn in Taurus. Guernica was recognised as such a powerful image that, for political reasons, it was kept in America until after the death of Franco, at which time it was returned to Spain. It remains to this day a seminal work and in the UK has been chosen as one of the ubiquitous Masterpieces of the Millennium.8 A tapestry copy hangs in the United Nations building in New York. Significantly, a blue cloth covered the tapestry when Colin Powell stood in front of it to announce war with Iraq, so that the brutal images of war and suffering were hidden from view.

Henri Matisse, Picasso's friend, had a gentler aspect, a trine, between Pluto on the Midheaven and a Capricorn Sun in the 5th house. Matisse’s cool Capricorn Sun was less vehement than Picasso’s Scorpio, but he was just as focused and dedicated to a clarity of expression. Born twelve years apart, they both had Jupiter/Pluto conjunctions in Taurus. For Matisse this conjunction manifests through the exuberance of his colours, the sheer abundant sensuality of his patterns and his religious faith. He created vibrant images from simple lines and clear colours. Picasso fought the image of God (Jupiter), Matisse praised it. Restricted by illness towards the end of his life, Matisse worked in reduced circumstances simply with coloured paper (the resourcefulness of Pluto), creating his famous, huge, beautiful collages. His drawings became sparse, pure and deeply expressive. Pluto desires to get to the root of the matter – whether it be the root of emotion or the pure essence of light and colour. 

The work of an earlier Spanish artist, Francisco de Goya, born on 30 March 1746 (time unknown), is also notable for the power of its imagery. His Sun/Mercury conjunction in Aries is sesquiquadrate Pluto in Scorpio, giving a potent Mars/Pluto mix with Saturn in Libra opposing Sun/Mercury, and semi-square Pluto. As we saw with Picasso, Pluto afflictions in the charts of creative people can be expressed in deeply disturbing works. Goya was no exception. His work is full of plutonic imagery. The masked carnival dancers in his Los Caprichos etchings are both demonic and satirical, and his portraits of the Spanish royal family are filled with deep psychological insight (which apparently his sponsors failed to see because the paintings were heralded as masterpieces of royal portraiture but are devastatingly incisive in their portrayal).

As with Picasso, Goya was compelled to reflect the human condition as he perceived it, notably through his series of etchings Disasters of War which present a profound anti-war sentiment and are deeply discomforting to look at. Another well-known image, the etching entitled Reason Asleep, shows a sleeping man slumped at a table while around his head fly bats and other frightful creatures of the dark: it is a striking evocation of the dark side of Pluto. As progressed Sun came to exact quincunx natal Pluto, Goya painted Saturn Devouring his Son. A shocking image executed when Goya was aged 73 and made to hang on the wall in his home. Like many artists working under this influence, he was skilled in etching, creating powerful black and white images through the manipulation of light and dark.

Goya and Picasso are just two examples of painters whose work graphically depicts the powerful influence of Pluto. Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani, with beneficent Pluto aspects, were also masters of line and expression, able to catch the dynamics of form using the minimum of strokes but their work is less tormented, more transcendent. Piet Mondrian, who reduced the Manhattan road plan to a series of beautifully abstracted and colourful grids, was born with very close aspects between the luminaries and Pluto (sextile Sun in Pisces, square Moon in Aquarius).

Examples of other painters who employed their skills to make social criticism include the French artist Honoré Daumier, born with a New Moon conjunct Pluto in Pisces in the 8th house, whose work exhibits the clear, transparent morality of a great satirist. The English painter, William Hogarth, born 10 November 1697 (time unknown), with Sun in Scorpio and a Mercury/Jupiter conjunction in Scorpio square to Pluto, is also notable for his humorous but biting depictions of English society. Of his etchings, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode are his most renowned. Pluto no doubt would also figure prominently in the charts of contemporary political satirists and cartoonists.

Having studied the charts of many writers, composers and artists and using an orb of 2 degrees to Sun, Moon or Mercury, there seems to be a remarkable predominance of close Pluto aspects in the charts of writers and these far exceed those in the other two categories.

Pluto’s insight: Thackeray, Zola, Hugo, Miller

Why is this? Pluto (and planets in Scorpio) seeks to expose what lies behind things, to get to the root of things. It can be wonderfully helpful for research, seeking hidden motives or undiscovered facts. Researchers with a strong Pluto will go back to source material, to original documents and not be content with second-hand opinion. Most importantly for dramatists and novelists, there is the ability to create suspense and stir emotion. Of course, Pluto’s influence bestows the ability to draw compelling psychological portraits of people.

It is not unusual to hear a novelist speak of their characters as though they were real people.  However, for some, this seems to be a phenomenon akin to mediumship; the characters they create seem to take on their own life force. The English writer William Thackeray (born in 1811), with Mercury in Cancer in an exact trine to Pluto, wrote: “I have been surprised at the observations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an occult power was moving the pen. The personage does or says something, and I ask, how the dickens did he come to think of that?”.9 Thackeray was, of course, the creator of that wonderfully scorpionic anti-heroine, Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair.  

The 19th century French writer Emile Zola was publicly criticised for the immorality of his novels.  In his defence he claimed that he could not be held responsible for the morality of his characters!

Zola’s novels explore the underworld of human life and emotion. Born on a New Moon in Aries, with a tight stellium of five planets (Sun, Moon, Pluto, Mars and Mercury all within eight degrees) in Aries in the 4th house, he was passionate about his subject and both obsessive and fastidious in his research. His huge series of twenty novels about life under the Second Empire in France deals with the darkest and most fateful aspects of human nature. His thesis, that Man is a victim of his heredity, is explored through the lives of several generations of the same family. His stories deal with fate, power, sexuality and the will to survive. The thirteenth novel, Germinal, begun on his 44th birthday with the precessed solar return Ascendant conjunct the natal Mars/Pluto conjunction, and tr. Pluto semi-square his Sun: it is the story of a mining village in Flanders. The action takes place underground – truly in the realm of Hades. The final showdown, full of Pluto symbolism, takes place in the bowels of the earth in a black-dark mine which is rapidly being swamped with flood water. This is where the hero faces his dark rival.  

Germinal is a powerful novel revealing the terrible conditions men and women lived under. Since childhood, Zola had had a terror of being underground and was plagued by recurring dreams of being buried alive. Nonetheless, in the course of his research, he went to the mines in Flanders and wrote that he felt he had crossed the “Stygian divide to live briefly among the damned”.10 The tiny glimmer of light at the end of the novel, the sign of redemption, has to be searched for but it is there in the form of a handshake. A barely visible sign of the hero's progress. 

Another 19th century French writer, Victor Hugo, had Scorpio rising in his chart with a stellium (Venus/Pluto/Sun within four degrees) in Pisces in the 4th house. Hugo, of course, was the author of Les Miserables, a vast novel subsequently made into a film and, surprisingly, a hit musical nicknamed ‘Les Mis’. In his foreword to the book, Hugo wrote a passionate condemnation of the social policies of his day which allows “the child to atrophy in darkness” and “create a human hell within civilisation and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine”11. In his horoscope, Uranus (disposited by Venus) is exactly quincunx Pluto and both planets closely aspect the Ascendant. Hugo was politically active and humanitarian; and his skills as a writer and storyteller (Mercury in Pisces in the 5th) brought the suffering of the poor to the attention of the world and continues to do so. Like Zola, he was exiled for political reasons for a while.

American playwright Arthur Miller, born with Pluto in Cancer trine a Mercury/Venus conjunction in Scorpio, is also remembered for his empathetic portrayal of human beings who come face-to- face with the forces of destiny. His plays are a vehicle for a profound reflection on the nature of the individual pitched against transpersonal forces. They rail against powerlessness and promote the dignity of the human spirit. Miller wrote Death of a Salesman and The Crucible and his work continues to stir up strong emotion, inspiring us through his sense of justice and compassion.  

Other writers whose charts show a significant plutonic influence include Maya Angelou, Lewis Carroll, Arthur Conan Doyle, Herman Hesse, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Lewis Sinclair, Jules Verne, W. B. Yeats and others. Obviously, this is only the very briefest of surveys and there is much more interesting research to be done for a thorough insight into Pluto’s workings. Nonetheless, the works of all these writers encompass an aspect of the Pluto energy, some through mystery and myth, others through wonderful character portraits. The significance of such books, written with the profound understanding of life which Pluto unveils for us, is that they have the power to change our perception of life.

Pluto’s influence never ceases to put us at the core of human existence. It rips away the veneer of status, etiquette, material comfort to expose the underlying motives and presents us with what is left. It is only then that there can be a realisation of what is truly essential to life – love.  

Pluto, comedy and taboo: Monty Python

Fortunately, amidst the shambles of life and the horrors that could render it unbearable, we have the capacity for humour. As the comedian Eric Idle has astutely commented, humour offers a healthy response to ghastly problems: “If comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord to our licensed jesters”.12 Here is Pluto manifesting through black humour.

Eric Idle (Pluto rising in Leo trine an Aries Sun on the Midheaven) was one of the ‘Pythons’, the group of five writers/performers who devised the extraordinary Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was a British ground-breaking TV series described by Eve Jackson in Transit in November 1983 as a “wonderful vehicle for a Pluto looking for expression, revelling as it does in such taboo areas as sex, violence, death and the generally disgusting”.13 It is no surprise that Pluto is emphasised in all the Pythons’ charts. 

The most renowned Python was John Cleese, with his Scorpio Sun and Mercury in the 3rd house. The Sun is exactly square Pluto while Mercury squares Mars. Cleese has confessed to a personal problem with suppressed rage. The roles he has written for himself, notably Basil Fawlty in the British television series Fawlty Towers, have given him a means of exorcising his anger in the healthiest of ways. He not only provides himself with some sort of emotional release but also gives his audience the chance to laugh at the ludicrous and embarrassing situations which arise through his repressed fury. For Cleese, the influence of Pluto is also apparent in his desire for self- understanding. He has a deep interest in psychotherapy and has undergone therapy for many years. He co-wrote (with his therapist Robyn Skinner) Families and How to Survive Them.14 

As for music, examples of composers with significant Pluto aspects are less common than writers or painters. Puccini had Pluto in the 7th house, which is interesting when one considers the heroines of his operas: Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Turandot. Olivier Messiaen, who wrote the Quartet for the End of Time while incarcerated in a German POW camp, had Sun opposed to Pluto and a Venus/Mars conjunction in Scorpio in the 3rd. Mick Jagger has a stellium in Leo conjunct IC which includes Sun, Jupiter, Pluto and Mercury – which makes sense both in his private and professional lives! John Cage, the American composer who wrote a piece of music entitled Silence 4’33”,had a conjunction between the Moon and Pluto in Gemini square a Venus/Mars conjunction. 

Mozart and Schubert…

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, perhaps the most famous composer of all, had a very close Moon/Pluto conjunction in Sagittarius in the 4th house. This had tremendous significance during his early years as a child prodigy when, under the direction of his father, he was escorted throughout Europe to perform in front of kings and courtiers. He forfeited his childhood to music. He had a great sense of humour (which bordered on the obscene: possibly he had Tourette’s syndrome, although this is unconfirmed). He also admitted to having a preoccupation with death. His friend, Da Ponte, wrote that: “Mozart's real existence remained hidden like a precious stone buried in the bowels of the earth”.15 Mozart was a member of the Masons, and while much of his work was written on commission as entertainment, his operas Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute have definite occult subtexts.

In his early twenties Mozart visited Paris, escorted by his mother, to make money. Life was hard. Because of their poverty, his mother died (Moon/Pluto in 4th). The A Minor Piano Sonata was written in 1778 and a deep sorrow invades the work. There is a profundity about it which is not present in other pieces and it has an underlying pattern which one reviewer equated with the recurring rhythms of the cycle of birth and death.

Interestingly, as Pluto transited Mozart's natal Sun in Aquarius, he married and changed his first name to Adam. Adam, the first born in the Bible, of course had no biological father; he was created directly by God. Mozart sought to liberate himself from his past, to be “reborn” – a wonderful signature for a Pluto transit of the Sun.

The Austrian composer Franz Schubert, well known for his song cycles inspired by the poems of Goethe, was born with Mercury/Pluto conjunct in Aquarius in the 9th house close to the Midheaven. The conjunction is within orb of the Sun/Moon midpoint. He was a lonely, rather melancholic man who detested the superficiality of Viennese society yet depended on commissions to earn his living. With a complex personality he could at times be a simple, honest and straightforward man while at others he seemed to be plunged into darkness, driven to excess by mood swings. He could not write during the summer months, but each autumn felt compelled to return to composing, perhaps prompted by the Sun in Scorpio (transiting his 5th and 6th houses) at this time of year. There are two pieces, a piano sonata entitled The Wanderer Fantasy and the song cycle The Winter Journey which stand out as evocations of the Mercury/Pluto conjunction in the 9th house.

I first heard The Wonderer Fantasy about forty years ago. I was only just married, and we unexpectedly found ourselves in London in rather dire circumstances, sleeping on a friend’s floor and jobless. The friend had a piano. My husband, a pianist with strong Pluto aspects by transit and progression to his natal chart at the time, taught himself the first movement of this work and its thunderous notes became an intrinsic part of our lives during those months. It was composed by Schubert as progressed Mars was sextile natal Pluto, and tr. Pluto was semi-sextile its natal position; and it stands as a musical outpouring of the disturbed moods and aggressiveness which he was prey to. It is a virtuoso piece, wildly energetic and full of turbulent rhythms, devastatingly difficult to perform. The psychologist Anthony Storr has described as “manic defence” a tendency to respond to depression with a fierce and ambitious outpouring of energy.16 Schubert could never master the piece himself and furiously abandoned his only public performance with the words, “Let the devil play the stuff”.17 The Wanderer Fantasy, with its explosive passion, is a very clear example of the necessity of the creative process in the soul struggling against a dire inner distress.    

Five years later, in 1827, with progressed Sun quincunx natal Mercury/Pluto, Schubert wrote his song cycle entitled Winterreise (Winter Journey) as a means of expressing his own sense of isolation. Its lyrics are the poems of Wilhelm Müller which are rooted in despair: the traveller journeys through a frozen wilderness, shunning other people and taking hidden paths. His journey leads him to a graveyard. He seeks refuge in an inn but is turned away and later has a vision of three suns in the sky. He hears a hurdy-gurdy man playing in a village but “no one wants to hear him, no one looks at him and the dogs snarl about the old man”.18 It is enormously sad. Schubert's final illness dates from this time. He died in November 1828 suffering from both typhoid fever and syphilis. 

Oscar Wilde and De Profundis

To conclude, there is one document in literature which cannot go unmentioned in any study of Pluto and the arts. It stands as an astounding testament to the power and significance of a Pluto transit and in my opinion should be on the reading list of all advanced students of astrology. This is De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, written in response to his imprisonment for homosexual practices.

Wilde is best known as an author and playwright. His witty and astutely observed plays, such as The Importance of Being Ernest and An Ideal Husband, are incisive commentaries on Victorian society. He is said to be the most quoted playwright after Shakespeare. With his Virgo rising and Sun in Libra, he had Mercury in Scorpio in the 3rd house. Pluto in Taurus in the 8th is on the Sun/Mercury midpoint.

Wilde was a refined and cultured man, an aesthete who took pleasure in beauty and sensuality and who mixed in the most fashionable society of his day. Bisexual, he flaunted his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence. In 1895 he was put on trial and, with tr. Pluto within one degree of his Midheaven on 25 May, he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour: this meant the treadmill, literally powered by men. They trod endlessly, their bare feet turning the massive wheel. It is hard to imagine how someone with Wilde’s background could physically survive the rigours of prison life.

De Profundis was written in prison and is a deep reflection on his life. He had lost everything: his reputation, his wife and sons, his home, all his worldly goods and most of his friends. He was effectively plunged into an abyss of despair. The theme concerns sorrow and loss and reveals the values that he discovered to be at the core of existence. “Suffering”, he wrote “is one very long moment...the very Sun and Moon seem taken from us”. He talks of his shame and guilt: “I had disgraced my (family) name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire”.  He speaks of a realisation: “Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Someday people will realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do”.19 As he comes to understand the true meaning of forgiveness, he discovers what he calls a “Vita Nuova” (a new life) which would have been impossible before his imprisonment. In this essay he explores the meaning and the gifts of suffering. It is an extraordinary chronicle of the redemptive qualities of Pluto.

Pluto afflictions in a chart can signify distress arising from profound trauma which results in a silent conspiracy engendering guilt, loss of power or fear of victimisation. The arts stand alone in providing a non-intellectual medium through which one can access these otherwise inexpressible emotions. The growing acceptance of art, music and drama therapy as wonderfully effective tools for healing deep-rooted problems are examples of the way in which the creative arts can be used to unblock deeply rooted problems. When Pluto is activated by transit or progression, such feelings long buried in the unconscious may come out into the light. It is at such times that the healing power of the arts can provide a vital channel for the expression of these irrational and overwhelming forces. Many healers also work with the vibrations of colour and sound to rebalance the energies within their patients, disciplines that we are only just beginning to really understand.

This essay is intended, partly, to demonstrate the significance of the arts in our lives, as an essential component of a psychically healthy society. My intention has also been to show that the works artists create under the influence of Pluto may not only reflect the imbalances, injustices or brutality that exist in the world but shine a light on the possibilities within humanity to demonstrate love and compassion, and thus play a healing role in our lives. They can act as abiding reference points, for example, politically (Guernica), socially (Les Miserables), emotionally (Madame Butterfly). For me, those works produced under Pluto are immediately recognisable.  They are also eternal images and ones that can be related to decades, or centuries, after their creation.

From our viewpoint in the 21st century, art is very far removed from its original magical purpose.  With the secularisation of life, few meaningful rituals remain to honour the crises experienced when we are touched by the transformative powers of Pluto. Once a midwife to the great initiations of life, the artist today should still have a central role in the community. 

Notes and References:
Author’s note: This essay considers the role of Pluto in the charts of artists, writers and composers. Pluto aspects alone do not signify that a person will be an artist.
This text is based on a talk given at the White Eagle School of Astrology Annual Conference November 1999.
All data has been taken from Astro-Databank or Solar Fire.  Where birth time is unknown, birth dates have been gleaned from the internet.

1.  William Golding, Lord of the Flies, London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1958, p. 69.
2.  C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976, p. 195.
3.  Ibid, p. 197.
4.  Anthony Storr, Solitude, London: HarperCollins 1997, p. 199 quoting Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, translated by R. J. Hollingdate (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 48.
5. Anthony Storr, Solitude, London: HarperCollins 1997, p. 198, quoting George Eliot’s Life as Related in her Letters and Journals, Edinburgh & London, 1885, pp. 421-5. 
6.  C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976, p.179.
7.  W. Davies & R. Maud (ed), Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems 1934-1953, London: J.M. Dent & Son Ltd., 1988.
8.  A. S. Huffington, Picasso: Creator & Destroyer, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1988.
9.  Anthony Storr, Solitude, London: HarperCollins 1997, p. 198 quoting W. M. Thackeray in Some Roundabout Papers. See also The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray with Biographical Introductions by his daughter, Anne Ritchie; (London 1903), XII, pp 374-5.
10.  F. Brown, Zola: A Life, London: Macmillan 1996, p. 119.
11.  Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, London: Penguin Books 1982, p. 17.
12.  Eve Jackson ‘Monty Python, Pluto and the Fool’, Transit,issue No 43, November 1983. Astrological Association. p. 13.
13.  Ibid.
14.  R. Skynner & J. Cleese, Families and How to Survive Them, London: Mandarin 1993.
15.  M. Solomon, Mozart: A Life, London: Hutchinson 1995, p. 93.
16.  E.N. McKay, Franz Schubert, A Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, p.148, quoting Anthony Storr’s The Dynamics of Creation, London 1976 p. 112.
17.  E.N. McKay, Franz Schubert, A Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, p.148, quoting O E Deutsch, Schubert: Memoirs by his Friends, trans. R Ley and J. Nowell, London 1958.
18.  S. S. Prawer (editor and translator), The Penguin Book of Lieder, London: Penguin 1964, p. 61.
19.  Dr T. Gaynor (ed.), The Works of Oscar Wilde, London: Senate 1997, pp. 748-798.

Image sources:
Charts and images: provided by the author and Astrological Journal, all Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Published by: The Astrological Journal, Jul/Aug 2019

Author:
Anthea Head, Dipl. WESA, has been involved with astrology since the 1980s, gaining her diploma from the White Eagle School. As one of their astrologers, she went on to teach their advanced course and became a long-standing member of the School Council. Her main interest is in the profound energies symbolised by astrology and what they may mean within an individual’s life. She lives with her family in north Oxfordshire where she teaches and consults. She may be contacted at: antheahead@phonecoop.coop.

© Anthea Head 1999/2019

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