Pluto’s Riches

by Shawn Nygaard

The dwarf planet Pluto in astrology is often met with tremendous trepidation and at least a bit of wide-eyed dread, whether by learning of an upcoming transit or by discovering that Pluto is strongly placed in one’s natal chart. Pluto’s difficult reputation is well earned, given that this Roman god is the ruler of the Underworld, the realm of the dead. Yet, it’s also curious to consider that the word itself, pluto, means “riches,” “the wealthy one,” or “the wealth-giving,” ¹ — referring to the rich mineral wealth within the earth, be it the silver and gold used to mint coins or the quality of soil able to produce abundant and healthy crops. Psychologically (rather than literally), we might say that, as ancient coins were minted from precious metals found under the ground, so can Pluto’s riches, gems, and other jewels be mined from the materials found in the depths of the psyche. This article explores Pluto from this perspective, to recognize the nature of potential riches found within.

The Facts of the Psyche

During one of his weekend workshops, the late depth psychologist James Hillman began one segment with a reading of “A Prayer to Saturn,” from the medieval text known as the Picatrix. Reads Hillman, “O Master Saturn: Thou, the Cold, the Sterile, the Mournful, the Pernicious,” before pausing and commenting, “See how lovely? A prayer to the pernicious. You honor all facts of the psyche.” ² I consider this simple statement — “You honor all facts of the psyche” — to be essential when working with Pluto. Why? What are “facts of the psyche”?

When depth psychology blossomed in the late 19th century and into the 20th century, Freud recognized the connection between imagination and the psyche, ³ but it was Jung who clarified it: “The psyche creates reality every day. The only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy … Fantasy as imaginative activity is the direct expression of psychic life.” ⁴ In short, the psyche (the soul) imagines. The soul expresses itself in images. Thus, if we explore our imagination and what it presents, we are exploring psychic life — soul life — and what the psyche presents first and foremost we can call “facts of the psyche.” Whether these facts match up precisely with the facts of our daily literal lives is irrelevant. The goal is simply to honor all facts presented by the psyche.

Here’s an example of why this might be useful when we are engaging with all-things-Pluto in astrology: On May 17, 2014, the Argentine film Wild Tales premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, with the tag line, “Six deadly stories of revenge.” Astrologically on that day, a wide cardinal grand cross aligned in the sky: a Capricorn Moon conjunct Pluto; Venus in Aries conjunct Uranus; Mars in Libra; and Jupiter in Cancer — a fitting alignment for some wild tales, if ever there was.

One of these tales, “El más fuerte (The Strongest),” begins with Diego, a well-dressed business man, driving in the fast lane of the highway, cruising through the desert in his new car. He attempts to pass a much older, slower car, but its driver, a stocky, burly man named Mario, will not let him pass. Diego eventually passes Mario; however, further along the highway a flat tire allows Mario to catch up and stop his car in front of Diego’s. The ensuing battle results in hurled insults, smashed windows, defecation and urination on windshields, one car flipped into a nearby ravine, the second car crashed into the ravine as well, frustration, fist-fighting, bashing with a fire extinguisher, arm-biting, strangling, and eventually a gas tank set on fire. One car explodes, sending a giant burst of flames high into the air. The police arrive and extinguish the fire, only to discover the two charred bodies of Diego and Mario holding onto each other, like lovers. A detective asks, “What’s your theory, sheriff? Crime of passion?”⁵

This tale of road rage in extremis exemplifies the significance of honoring all facts of the psyche. If we parcel out the Plutonic themes of the movie — vengeance, violence escalating to extremes, normally private actions (defecation and urination) made public, civil behavior breaking down into barbaric brutality, and everything ultimately tumbling toward a seemingly inescapable and disastrous fate — it could be quite easy to turn away from all of this unpleasantness! At the very least, it’s difficult to imagine honoring such dynamics. However, Wild Tales, with its five additional, similarly themed stories, has become the most-watched movie in Argentine history, while winning almost universal critical acclaim and numerous awards internationally.

Deeper, Richer, Fuller, Better

If we place the content of Wild Tales among other, broader psychological, Plutonic realities — destructive fears, horrors, crippling insecurities, devastating wrong turns, the dark and lonely corners of life, desperate longings, jealousies, bitter betrayals, angry partings, isolated torments, incendiary passions, rigid obsessions, or the cruelties of an undeserved fate (to name but a few), all to be honored in some form rather than denied, avoided, analyzed, judged, diagnosed, or censored — we can begin to actually work with Pluto to discover how we might possibly find “riches” within such difficult and dramatic experiences. To honor all facts of the psyche is to grant the psyche its full width, height, and depth — rather than turn away or attempt to transcend it — and, as astrologers, to put the “scope” into “horoscope.”

Another example demonstrating this scope, alive and active, is the chart and work of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was born with a Neptune–Pluto conjunction in Gemini. Although his birth time is uncertain, the rectified chart for him (not shown) has Neptune at 6° Gemini and Pluto, the most elevated planet, at 7°, both in the 9th house and conjunct the Midheaven at 14° Gemini. The scope of The Lord of the Rings staggers the mind. The main characters journey toward the epic heights of Mount Doom, traversing across the treacherous landscapes of Middle Earth by way of swamps, snowy mountains, the glimmering elf kingdom of Rivendell (“deep valley of the cleft”), the dark and foreboding Fangorn Forest, descents into the Mines of Moria and the dwarf kingdom, with glimpses of still-deeper regions (from where did that Balrog creature emerge?) — all the while being watched over by the evil Eye of Sauron, peering from high atop a majestic tower, like Pluto resting high atop Tolkien’s chart. The stories have such a lasting impact on readers and viewers of the award-winning movie adaptations, perhaps because they are reminders of the grand latitudes and longitudes of the human soul. Let’s look at another example.

Beloved actress Tyne Daly excels at playing complicated, sometimes abrasive characters (often mothers), imbuing them with palpable humanity. Whether portraying working mother Mary Beth Lacey in Cagney & Lacey on television, the opera singer Maria Callas in Master Class and Mother Rose in Gypsy on stage, or the titular mother in Terrence McNally’s play Mothers and Sons (a conservative Republican grappling with the death of her gay son from AIDS), she brings these characters to vibrant — one might say “rich” — life.

Tyne was born with the Moon at 8° Scorpio sitting at the very bottom of her chart, in the 4th house (the Underworld) and conjunct the IC, squaring Pluto at 10° Leo in the 12th house. In an interview promoting Mothers and Sons, she tells the story of how her own mother (also an actress) years ago attended one of young Tyne’s performances, after which Tyne asked her if she had any advice. Her mother assured her that Tyne needed no advice because she knows exactly what she’s doing. However, she requested that Tyne be “deeper, richer, fuller, better.” ⁶ The very essence of a Scorpio Moon (reflecting the mother) square Pluto in Leo! “Deeper, richer, fuller, better” became Tyne’s mantra. She even had a T-shirt made displaying these key words, the essential themes that would guide her life and work.

In another interview, when asked about her experiences as an actress, Tyne commented, “I’m a miner. And if you put me in the diamond mines, I will mine diamonds for you. If you put me in the gold mines, I can mine gold. Put me in the coal mines, I will mine coal, a good grade of coal. But I cannot mine diamonds in a coal mine. I’m just a miner.” ⁷ Whether or not Tyne Daly knows any of her astrology chart, to live it with such accuracy is compelling. These “deeper, richer, fuller, better” dynamics characterize her life and live in the characters she portrays. She has won four Emmy Awards and a Tony Award.

On a side note, Pluto’s reclassification on September 13, 2006, as a “dwarf planet,” may not be entirely irredeemable. It is the dwarves of myth, legend, and story, after all, who excavate the mines and do the heavy Plutonic work of digging for and retrieving jewels in the mines. Consider Snow White’s seven dwarves singing “Heigh Ho” each day as they head into the mines, “where a million diamonds shine.” ⁸ Or the devastated dwarf kingdom Moria in the aforementioned The Lord of the Rings series. In Peter Jackson’s recent movie trilogy based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the quest is to reclaim the lost Kingdom Under the Mountain — the dwarf kingdom — and take possession once again of the Riches of the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug (a truly astonishing image of Pluto’s current transit through Capricorn). All in all, dwarves have an innate connection to the Underworld. Pluto’s reclassification might be seen as less a demotion and more an accurate archetypal move.

Now, in the spirit of mining, let’s explore the Underworld itself.

Entering the Underworld

For most ancient cultures, great mystery has always surrounded what were considered to be entrances to the Underworld, literal places residing at the threshold between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Whether it’s the dark, smoky mouth of a volatile volcano; an opening in the sun-bleached, cracked desert; the crevice on the side of a cliff leading into a gloomy, musty cave; or the shadowy distance between trees leading further and further, deeper and deeper, into the black forest, entrances to the Underworld were usually found among harsh, inhospitable, perhaps even dangerous conditions. One such example, a volcano crater in Italy named Avernus, earned its name from birds flying above the crater and falling dead, perhaps from the toxic fumes emitting from the lake contained within. Avernus means “without birds.” ⁹

There was, and always has been, an all-access entrance to the Underworld: death itself. In Greco-Roman culture, when a person died, the body and the soul would separate. The skin and bones and tissues of the body (physical, literal, visible, time-bound, and mortal) remained on Earth to decay, while the soul (psychical, invisible, timeless, and immortal) descended into the Underworld, the realm of Pluto (or Hades, to the Greeks). The mortal body died, and the immortal soul lived on in the Underworld. When we speak of Pluto in astrology as the ruler of the Underworld, this vision of the Underworld is the realm over which Pluto rules: the realm of the soul, touching, as the soul does, Eternity — outside of the realm of time and space — and the source of wealth and abundance.

The modern Western world, however, in high contrast to the ancient world, looks back in the wake of 2,000 years of Christianity at an unambiguous and rather unflattering image of the Underworld as Hell, a fiery realm of eternal torment and endless trial, a place of punishment for the damned: those who sinned in life and must pay severely for those sins after death. Given all of the stories and imagery regarding this vision of Hell — Satan’s realm — one could be forgiven for being particularly terrified of the depths! Whether consciously or unconsciously, this vision of the Underworld has been mixed into our understanding of Pluto.

Many ancient and pre-Christian cultures bring a strikingly different, far more generous imagination of the Underworld, along with myths that can help us to view Pluto’s realm from a different angle. The Celtic Underworld is particularly intriguing. “In Celtic tradition, the darkness of the Underworld was holy, associated as it was with the regeneration of life.” ¹⁰ This sounds promising! Also, “The Irish-Celtic Underworld was the secret mother-source of all fertility.” ¹¹ Meanwhile, Hindu mythology presents Lakshmi, the elegant and beautiful goddess of wealth, fortune, prosperity, and riches. The catch? (At least to my Western mind, it’s a catch.) Lakshmi resides in cow dung. For a cow to drop a hot, steaming pile of dung onto the floors of your new home is considered a blessing in certain parts of India. ¹² These two disparate examples can tie some themes together, and open a possibility for imagining Pluto’s riches. But first, I’d like to take a few moments to step away from the facts of the psyche, and look briefly at the facts of the historical period surrounding Pluto’s discovery.

Entering the Psychological Era

First, if we look back, we can see that Uranus was discovered during the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, and the scientific revolutions of the 18th century, and this planet has become associated in astrology with the scientific mind and its electric brilliance, among other things. Neptune was discovered in the 19th century, during the Romantic Era, wherein the arts, poetry, painting, drama, literature, and theatre thrived, as they tend to do when a culture prizes beauty, ancient mythology, and imagination — the very heart of Romanticism.

The 20th century, in turn, can be seen as the Psychological Era, the time when depth psychology emerged and was developed into the culture through Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychoanalysis and developmental psychology), Carl Jung (student of Freud and founder of analytical psychology), and James Hillman (student of Jung and, if not the founder of, then the fierce and radical foremost advocate of, archetypal psychology). Curiously, as ancient Greek mythology returned to Western culture during the Romantic Era (particularly in the paintings and poetry of the time), and the focus on the arts and imagination fostered a general move toward more internal, individual reflection, the foundation for depth psychology was laid. It was Freud who began exploring this internal realm of his individual patients — albeit through a more scientific lens than a Romantic one — and it was Freud who recognized the Oedipus myth as a primary pattern of the psyche. In a few short decades, the mythology and reflection of the Romantic Era jumped from the canvases, stages, and pages of the arts into the armchair of analysis.

Within the scope of this more scientific lens of the time, Pluto was discovered in 1930. The same scientific lens then brought on the advent of nuclear energy, atomic and nuclear bombs, and the potential epic destruction wrought by such weaponry. This toxic, destructive dynamic, paired with the legacy of the Christian Hell, seems to have colored our perspectives of Pluto from the get-go. The goal in this article is not to “transform” Pluto into something altogether positive, but rather to add to Pluto a level more akin to the genuine “riches” referenced in the meaning of his name.

Given that non-Christian cultures often imagined the Underworld as fecund and fertile territory, it’s fitting that dung — recognized by modern science as inherently noxious and toxic (full of disgusting and downright dangerous germs), and by Hindu culture as the source of wealth and riches and blessings, no less — also happens to be recognized by science as the greatest fertilizer known to man. Guano, the dung of bats, is considered the most potent of all fertilizers. Thus, here we can merge the facts of science with the facts of the psyche, and recognize that the most toxic, Plutonic terrain in our lives also happens to be the most fertile terrain simultaneously. Modern science even grasps the essentially fecund nature of “the dead”: “[D]ead trees can continue to play a role in a forest’s ecology for decades, providing nutrition and shelter for animals even as nitrogen leaches from their dead branches into the ground, fertilizing new generations of plants.” ¹³ The dead — the very realm over which Pluto resides — turns out to be a profound source of enriching nourishment.

The Spirit and the Soul

Before moving on to further chart examples, I’d like to consider one more vital piece of the backdrop for situating Pluto’s riches: the soul. The legacy of Christianity, with its underworld of Hell and upper world of Heaven, has brought a great deal of confusion to the often-overlooked ancient distinction between the spirit and the soul. It’s a simple distinction in which the spirit tends to fly high skyward, to look forward and ahead, aiming optimistically up and out, looking to transcend the world below, rise above it all, and escape the events of the past. The soul, meanwhile, tends toward descent, moving downward into the depths to what’s buried underneath or left behind, reflecting on history and loss, welcoming shadow and darkness as rich and necessary terrain for soul-making. The spirit is, naturally, spiritual; the soul is more psychological (psyche means “soul”). The spirit seeks clarity, vision, and answers — the spirit can be quite the puffed-up know-it-all! — while the soul lingers, humbled, in the mysteries and unanswered questions of life and death. The spirit is excited and fast, spontaneous and jubilant, while the soul tends to be slower, more depressed, moody, and downtrodden — les misérables.

The distinction can further be seen in the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water. From the archetypal perspective, fire and air have spiritual connotations and move upward, while earth and water, pulled downward by gravity (e.g., rain and waterfalls) connect more naturally with the soul. And, finally, we can find this distinction in our modern language. The mind, body, and spirit are often spoken of as connected, and heart and soul tend to be paired together. Interestingly, in ancient Greece, the heart was considered the center of imagination.

Our experiences of “breakdown,” “falling apart,” “going south,” or feeling “down in the dumps” tend to lead us into therapy and analysis, the arena of psychology. And it is here that we can pick up the threads from Freud, Jung, and Hillman. Freud’s model offers a developmental perspective often rooted in childhood, and Jung’s perspective opened up the psyche to all myths and fairy tales and stories with an aim toward integration and wholeness. It is Hillman, however, who seems most generous toward the soul, by honoring all of its facts as they present themselves, with no agenda per se and toward no specific goal other than keeping the soul free to imagine — its primary activity. (Remember, the psyche creates reality every day by imagining.) In Hillman’s understanding of archetypes, we can connect all of these pieces and glimpse the glow emitting from Pluto’s riches: “Let us then imagine archetypes as the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the roots of the soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves and the world.” ¹⁴

As we descend into the mines of the psyche, our analytic engagement becomes more and more archetypal. As we excavate the darkness, we encounter archetypes, the jewels and gems of the psyche. In Pluto’s realm, stripped of mortality and all the limiting confines of time and space, with the facts of our lives left behind to decay above ground (transformed now into memories, feelings, presences, and images — the facts of the psyche), archetypes become the fecund and foundational structures upon which our lives are built. Our lives become archetypal, rich and full of depth, able to connect with the kind of wisdom passed down over generations through the carriers of archetypal reality, the creative structures that transcend time: the legends, lore, mythologies, stories, songs, ballads, operas, plays, and paintings that thrive in and inhabit wisdom cultures.

How might this look in astrology?

“Putting It Together”

Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, with a powerful t-square in his birth chart, comprised of Saturn at 11° Capricorn conjunct the Moon at 12° Capricorn in the 3rd house, opposite Pluto at 17° Cancer in the 9th house, and with both sides of the opposition squaring Uranus at 10° Aries conjunct Venus at 12° Aries in the 5th house. How does this alignment show up and operate in his life? Let’s set the Plutonic stage.

Given that the Moon is involved with this t-square, we might begin with Sondheim and his mother, Janet Fox Sondheim — or “Foxy,” as she was known. Unquestionably, theirs was a relationship fraught with turmoil. Mother and son never got along. Described as “beyond pretentious,” ¹⁵ Foxy was a fashion designer and socialite, madly in love with her husband but more interested in celebrity and her own ambitions than in being a mother. Her son was an inconvenience to her. She was known to be “the kind of person who came crashing into your life and left some kind of mark — usually a scar — before she crashed out again.” Additionally, “one never got a real feeling of warmth” from her. This is the kind of environment in which Sondheim grew up.

Sondheim’s parents divorced when he was ten years old. His father left his mother to be with a younger woman, an upheaval that wreaked havoc in young Stephen’s life, as his mother was granted custody. His parents also decided to send him to military school. Reflecting the Moon–Saturn conjunction in Capricorn in the 3rd house of early education, he says: “The surprise is that I loved military school. I just adored it … I needed structure and it gave me that, and made me feel the world was not in chaos.”

Home life after the divorce, however, became increasingly difficult, as Sondheim’s outraged and vindictive mother took all of her feelings about the divorce out on her young son. “When my father left her, she substituted me for him. And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on. What she did for five years was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time.”

Meanwhile, Sondheim made friends with Jamie Hammerstein, one year younger than Sondheim and the son of Broadway lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. Stephen and Jamie became great friends, and Stephen found himself spending more and more time with the Hammersteins. Astrologically, transiting Saturn in Cancer was activating his t-square: opposing his Moon–Saturn conjunction and squaring his Venus–Uranus conjunction (all in June 1945), and eventually transiting across natal Pluto in Cancer. By the time the transit finished in July 1945, Sondheim had a surrogate family, a new home. And in Oscar Hammerstein he found not only an admirable father figure, but a mentor as well. His interest in composing was sparked!

One more vital anecdote about Sondheim’s mother: While he was in his 40s, she underwent open heart surgery. The night before surgery, she wrote her son a letter that was hand-delivered to him. She wrote, “Before I undergo open heart surgery, I just wanted to tell you that I have only one regret in my life, which is giving you birth.” ¹⁶ Is such toxic territory also grounds for mining Pluto’s riches? Let’s see.

Sondheim is often considered a genius lyricist and composer, whether he’s writing musicals about the difficulties of committing to a relationship and the complexities of marriage (Company), aging showgirls gathering at a timeworn Broadway theatre about to be demolished (Follies), romantic intrigues on a summer’s evening (A Little Night Music), a barber who slices the throats of his customers while shaving them (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), or what happens when the characters from several fairy tales collide in a deep, dark forest (Into the Woods) — to name a few of his wide-ranging subjects. The difficulties and struggles inherent to the human condition that challenge many a writer, thinker, and artist, Sondheim is able to set to music and rhyme in brilliant, dazzling, and often humorous ways. Who else could write a lyric such as “We’ve no time to sit and dither, while her withers wither with her”? ¹⁷

While it would be fun to quote Sondheim lyrics for the rest of this article, the real focus is where Pluto comes into all of this. We’ve seen how the t-square expresses through Sondheim’s monster of a mother. However, as an archetypal dynamic in its own right, an aspect we can look at independently from his mother — with the facts of the psyche, rather than the facts of life — it’s most curious that many of Sondheim’s musicals include an appropriately complex, sophisticated, older female character who very much carries similar qualities as Sondheim’s mother. It’s as if, stripping away all of the facts of “mother” yet still holding to the similar archetypal image, the same figure is turned and turned again, as though being transformed and looked at from different angles, all the while adhering to a likeness of “mother,” without ever actually being “mother.” Notice:

• The cynical and caustic Joanne in Company, portrayed with biting grit and scathing judgment by Elaine Stritch, sings “The Ladies Who Lunch,” about wealthy, bored, self-satisfied women who accomplished very little in their lives: “Here’s to the girls who play wife / Aren’t they too much? / Keeping house, but clutching a copy of Life / Just to keep in touch.”
• In Follies, aging star Carlotta Campion, played by Yvonne De Carlo, sings “I’m Still Here,” a song of triumph and survival through thick and thin, with edges of cynicism: “I’ve stood in bread lines / With the best, / Watched while the headlines / Did the rest. / In the depression was I depressed? / Nowhere near. / I met a big financier / And I’m here.”
• The glamorous Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, portrayed by Glynis Johns, sings “Send in the Clowns,” about an older woman coming to realize — far too late, as loneliness and bitterness set in — that she will never be with the man she loves: “Isn’t it rich? / Are we a pair? / Me here at last on the ground / You in mid-air. / Send in the clowns.”
• Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, played with delicious wit by Angela Lansbury, is the industrious sidekick to the demented barber. She sings “A Little Priest,” persuading Todd to kill his clients so that she can turn them into meat pies and turn a profit. Together they sing, “It’s man devouring man, my dear / And who are we to deny it in here?” In a song loaded with mind-bogglingly complex triple rhymes, Mrs. Lovett catalogues all of the types of customers who might pass through the barber shop, and what different qualities each might bring to the pies (e.g., “Shepherd’s pie peppered with actual shepherd on top”).
• The vain Witch in Into the Woods, portrayed by Bernadette Peters, is cursed with age and ugliness for stealing her neighbor’s garden greens. She traps her own daughter, Rapunzel, in a tower. As Rapunzel begs and pleads to be released from the tower, to see the world, the Witch sings, with desperate honesty and creepy clinginess: “Don’t you know what’s out there in the world? / Someone has to shield you from the world. / Stay with me. / Princes wait there in the world, it’s true. / Princes, yes, but wolves and humans, too. / Stay at home. / I am home.”

The different actresses playing these complex female characters each debuted their roles at surprisingly mature ages: Stritch was 45, De Carlo and Johns were both 50, and Lansbury was 54, making Peters the youngest one of the lot at age 38, though Meryl Streep at age 65 portrayed the Witch in the movie adaption of Into the Woods. While brief descriptions and lyric snippets cannot do justice to the emotional performances from each actress who brings these characters to life, suffice it to say that their impact on audiences was profound. Stritch, Johns, and Lansbury each won the Tony award for the roles they played. Their songs became showstoppers and have moved into the catalogue of vocal standards.

Astrologically, transiting Pluto in Libra opposed Sondheim’s natal Sun in Aries from late 1971 to June 1973, the period during which Sondheim composed what would become his most popular song, “Send in the Clowns,” which premiered in A Little Night Music on February 25, 1973. Propelled by the power of Pluto, hundreds of singers and musicians have recorded the song over the years.

Later in his life, Sondheim came to realize the profound impact of his parents’ divorce on his life, and how that major upset created a compelling psychological need for structure and order in life. Military school set a template, perhaps, while musical composition provided the structure and the challenge. Notes his biographer, Meryle Secrest, “Music became charged with meaning only when it could make order out of chaos.” For honoring these facts of his life and, in turn, exploring the facts of his own psyche, Sondheim has received eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“The Woman Deep Inside”

Singer Amy Grant, the Queen of Christian Pop, was born on November 25, 1960, with the Sun at 3° Sagittarius, squaring Pluto at 8° Virgo. In the chart of someone as deeply religious as Grant, this Sun–Pluto square involving Sagittarius suggests that Pluto’s riches might reside within an intense struggle of faith. For the purposes of exploring Pluto, she was also born with Neptune at 9° Scorpio conjunct Mercury at 13° Scorpio, which will become important by transit.

Grant’s career in Christian music began early. At age 16, in 1976, she wrote her first song, recorded it as a demo, and immediately landed a record deal. Over the ten-year course of releasing her first six albums, she became the most popular singer on contemporary Christian radio. Grant’s seventh album, however, marked a substantial change. Released on June 28, 1988, Lead Me On came into the world while transiting Pluto retrograde in Scorpio was activating Grant’s Mercury–Neptune conjunction. Having already crossed her Neptune throughout 1987, Pluto would conjoin her Mercury exactly in late 1988 and spend the majority of 1989 there. Thus, the process of writing songs for the album, picking additional songs, and recording the album — a process, she says, entirely “rooted in organic honesty” — and then releasing it, promoting it, and performing it on tour, all fell under the visage of Pluto. “Everything about life changed for me in 1987,” Grant remembers in an interview 20 years later. “There were a lot of things that forced me to have a different pattern than I’d had in years before.” ¹⁸

For one thing, Grant was pregnant with and gave birth to her first child while recording songs for the album. She spent a few weeks in the hospital with pre-term labor, which meant that she spent a lot of time alone. Additionally, she admits that the year leading up to the album had been her “first adult cycle of really hard times, emotionally and spiritually,” and it was from that troubled time that the songs for Lead Me On emerged. Rarely overtly Christian, the songs covered a wide range of themes not typically found on pop radio, let alone Christian radio, and did so with unusual depth, even sparking some controversy.

The song “1974” reflects on the year Grant and her friends discovered their faith (when she was 14, while transiting Pluto in Libra squared her natal Jupiter in Capricorn). She sings of the profound change accompanying the discovery and her desire for that newfound faith to withstand the test of time. The title track, “Lead Me On,” touches on slavery, the Holocaust, and ultimately the human condition, culminating in her plea: “Man hurts man / Time and time, time again / And we drown in the wake of our power / Somebody tell me why.” In “Shadows,” Grant ponders her own dual nature and how the vivid drives and desires of the human shadow can “pull us away” from higher aspirations.

Unbeknownst to most of the listening public, a significant piece of Grant’s struggles throughout her life and career have involved her husband of 17 years, fellow Christian-music singer and songwriter Gary Chapman. The couple married in 1982, and, as Grant confesses in an interview years later, “Gary and I had a rocky road from day one.” ¹⁹ This rocky road became the invisible backdrop for one of the most gripping and intense songs on Lead Me On, and perhaps the most moving song in Grant’s entire career: “Faithless Heart.” Sings Grant, “At times the woman deep inside me / Wanders far from home / And in my mind I live a life / That chills me to the bone / A heart, longing for arms out of reach.”

Co-written with fellow Christian-music singer Michael W. Smith (though she was married to Chapman at the time), the beautiful ballad struck a deep and controversial chord on Christian radio with its theme of potential adultery, giving in to temptation, and betraying the covenant of marriage. Grant sings with searing honesty: “God, you know the feelings here / Could wipe my world away / Ravaging the promises / A stronger heart once made.” Many Christian radio stations banned the song (and, in turn, all of Grant’s music), and many stores stopped selling her albums because of this song.

This is transiting Pluto in Scorpio, stirring Neptune’s longings, shading and intensifying the potentially destructive desires already inherent to Neptune in Scorpio. Pluto transits to Mercury can also be uniquely powerful, given that Mercury in Roman myth was the only god able to enter and exit the depths of the Underworld. Every thought and every perspective of Grant’s is touched and intensified by Pluto, and — perhaps most importantly — she is willing to be honest about it. That “Faithless Heart” is largely considered to be a pop masterpiece speaks to the significance of honoring all facts of the psyche.

Lead Me On also includes a gorgeous version of Jimmy Webb’s “If These Walls Could Speak,” which imagines the life of a family over the course of years — the warmth, the love, and the challenges — from the perspective of the house in which they live. In light of her marriage struggles, certain verses take on new meaning and context: “If these halls could speak / They would tell you that I’m sorry / For being cold and blind and weak.” The song reveals another element of Pluto’s riches:

If these walls could speak
They would tell you that I owe you
More than I could ever pay
Here’s someone who really loves you
Don’t ever go away
That’s what these walls would say

Jupiter may be the go-to god for gratitude, but there’s something about Pluto … found in the extremes to which it drives us, the gut-wrenching trials and tribulations it presents, and the difficult questions with even more difficult answers (if there are answers at all) it poses. These Plutonic experiences seem to generate a quality that can speak to a deep gratitude in the sense of unpayable debts (“I owe you more than I could ever pay”), debts incurred by the mere fact that life in Pluto’s realm can take us well beyond the confines and limits that our fears convince us are comfortable. Life stretches us like we’ve been laid on the rack of a medieval prison, and when we survive — to breathe fresh air and live another day — the entire experience seems to shift our souls. When we have a person, perhaps, or a hope, a poem, a book, a movie, a memory, or even a song — something to hold on to through it all — it’s as though our appreciation gets an intimate depth charge. The soul is moved, a pattern shifts forever. It is this quality that seems to saturate the entire Lead Me On album, right down to one of its closing sentiments: “My life will always be richer for the time I’ve spent here with you.”

The depth and soul-substance of Lead Me On made way for the upbeat and spirited feel of Grant’s next album, Heart in Motion, her most successful pop-crossover album, which was recorded and released in 1991 during a time free of Pluto’s transiting influence. However, rumors of Grant’s marriage troubles, which she never addressed directly, continued to follow her. Pluto would return in 1997, in Sagittarius, to conjoin Grant’s Sun. That year she released the album Behind the Eyes. Shadowed by Pluto, many of the songs returned to the theme of troubled relationships, though not in quite as profound a manner as with Lead Me On, perhaps because the latter explored larger themes as well. Grant would eventually file for divorce from Chapman in March 1999, revealing much of what was going on behind her eyes.

Over the course of her career, Grant has won six Grammy Awards and 22 Dove Awards. On its Saturn return in 2017, 29 years after its initial release, Lead Me On is still considered the greatest Christian crossover album of all time.

Nourishment for the Soul

Throughout this article, I have mentioned the numerous prestigious awards won by the people, movies, albums, and musicals detailed in the examples. The point is not that Pluto’s riches bring literal rewards or acclaim. It’s more that the tremendous honors we bestow upon certain individuals or their creative works reflect an appreciation and recognition of their ability to enter into dark terrain in the face of the rather inhospitable conditions that usually accompany entrances to the Underworld, granting us a tantalizing glimpse of the potentials of the human soul.

In our literal culture, however, it is literal riches and awards that are often given in exchange for mining the depths, and modern culture’s obsession with literalism can shift our seeking away from the darker terrain in which Pluto’s riches are buried, and draw us toward artificial light. Literalism can be the wrought-iron gate barring entrance to the Underworld, forcing us to remain on the surface of life, unfulfilled, unsatisfied, archetypally malnourished. See, Pluto’s riches, mined well, contain minerals, sustenance for life. Just as literal vitamins and minerals are necessary to sustain the physical body, it is the archetypal nutrients found in Pluto’s riches that nourish the soul, making the whole experience of life deeper, richer, fuller, and wholeheartedly better.

References and notes:
(All URLs, here and in the chart data above, were accessed in December 2017.)
¹ C. Kerényi, The Gods of the Greeks, Thames & Hudson, 1951, p. 231.
² James Hillman seminar, Senex & Puer, Depth Video, 2010.
³ Anthony Storr, Freud: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 27. Quoting Freud: “… neurotic symptoms were not related directly to actual events but to wishful phantasies, and that as far as the neurosis is concerned psychical reality was of more importance than material reality.”
⁴ C. G. Jung, Psychological Types: Volume 6, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Complete Digital Edition), Princeton University Press, pp. 51–52 (paragraph 78), and p. 432 (paragraph 722).
⁵ Agustín Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar, Esther García, Matías Mosteirín, Felipe Photiades, Gerardo Rozín, Hugo Sigman (producers), Damián Szifron (director), Wild Tales (motion picture), Argentina: Kramer & Sigman Films, El Deseo, Telefe Productions, Corner Contenidos, 2014.
⁶ Theater Talk channel on YouTube, “’Mothers and Sons’Tyne Daly and Terrence McNally,” April 17, 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpd1cpo11nY
⁷ Charlie Rose interview, “Master Class,” August 22, 2011: https://charlierose.com/videos/15592
⁸ Walt Disney (producer), David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen (directors), Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Walt Disney Productions, 1937.
⁹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avernus
¹⁰ Sharynne MacLeod NicMhacha, Queen of the Night: Rediscovering the Celtic Moon Goddess, Weiser Books, 2005, p. 114.
¹¹. John O’Donohue, The Divine Imagination, Sounds True audiobook, 1997.
¹² All About Dung, Icon Films For History, A&E Television Networks, 2008.
¹³ Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable, Little, Brown and Company, 2009, p. 179.
¹⁴ James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, Harper, 1975, p. xix.
¹⁵ 15. Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life, Vintage Books, 1998, 2011. (All quotes in this section are from the same book, unless otherwise noted.)
¹⁶ James Lapine (director), Six By Sondheim, HBO Documentary Films, 2013.
¹⁷ All lyrics in this section are from the two-book set, Finishing the Hat: Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, pp. 190–193 (“The Ladies Who Lunch”), pp. 221–224 (“I’m Still Here”), pp. 277–278 (“Send In the Clowns”), pp. 356–361 (“A Little Priest”). Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes, and Miscellany, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, pp. 59–65 (“Into the Woods”), pp. 77–79 (“Stay With Me”).
¹⁸ All lyrics and interview quotes in this section are from Amy Grant, Lead Me On, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2008, unless otherwise noted.
¹⁹ Gregory Rumburg, “Judging Amy,” CCM (Contemporary Christian Music), November 1999.

Images:
Fire Image by Eberhard Grossgasteiger on Unsplash

First published in: The Mountain Astrologer, April/ May 2018.

Author:
Shawn Nygaard is an archetypal astrologer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a Tutor at MISPA (Mercury Internet School for Psychological Astrology), and has spoken at the 2015 conference of the Astrological Association of Great Britain. He has also presented for the London School of Astrology, Nightlight Astrology, MISPA, SFAS (San Francisco Astrological Society), and the Minnesota Jung Association. He is a graduate of the CMED Institute, where he studied archetypes with Caroline Myss. Contact Shawn at shawnbsb@gmail.com; website: http://www.imagineastrology.com

© 2018 - Shawn Nygaard

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