Laurence Hillman - Pluto Eyewitness Reports

This section contains writings from those interested in submitting their personal experiences with Pluto. Please contact me if you would like to contribute! Go back to the Pluto Home Page.

Pluto's Realm by Suzan Still

There is a hot spring, on the east side of the Sierras. One must pass through several barbed wire and cedar post gates, and over a road more rut than not, to reach it, in a desert valley, ringed by snowcapped peaks, as if one were engulfed by the teeth of Cerberus, with the hot spring as his throat.
        The spring itself is perfectly round, and perhaps fifty feet across. A giant sinkhole, the calcined banks drop so abruptly into water that one must attach a rope to the bumper of one's truck, and throw it into the pool, to assure exit from this mystical cauldron.
         For an alchemical vessel is what it is. One only swims there naked. Upon slipping into the water, which is slightly more than body temperature, one realizes immediately the accuracy of local lore: the hole is, indeed, bottomless. Near the center, the current rising from the depths assaults one's lower extremities. Even the most courageous soul is momentarily humbled by the sensation of Mother heat - - the volcanic pulse of earth's core - - rhythmically bathing in sulfurous effervescence the helplessly dangling legs, the flaccid genitalia, the vulnerable buttocks. Many have reported, at that moment, the vision of sinking, un- restrained, into that depth, into ever greater heat and pressure and darkness. It is a glimpse of death, and the only foretaste of resurrection is in that hairy rope, toward which one flings oneself in haste. Paradoxically, once standing again on terra firma, with the persistent high desert wind chilling wet, goose pimpled flesh, and with its vast AUM sighing through the sage, the sense of having been magnified, of having knit back together some impossibly separated fragments, is what remains of the experience. Somerset Maugham once said: "The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable." One assumes the two are experiencing the same event. To me, this quote embodies the essential realization of Pluto, and contact with the inexpressible, mercurial and yet eternal quality of the unconscious.
         In the living, interactive energies of the unconscious, as in the hot spring, I bathe in Pluto's realm with humility and primal attentiveness, always aware of fathomless depths and magmatic fires beneath my determined dog paddle. In the essential heat rising from the depths, I know instinctively I have returned to the Source.
         My intuition rises, open and ready, like Arrector pili of the psyche. Fear stalks me: the awareness of a body both vast and intangible, which knows me fully, yet whose essence I can only glimpse, like a melting mist. Still, after each immersion, I find myself somehow enlarged, more fully aware of even the most mundane events, as if operating from some new, higher level of integration. My intellect may be scarcely the wiser, but my being smiles, and knows it has partaken of a most ancient and honorable psychological exploration for Truth and healing, as a sincere romancer of the beautiful yet invisible Soul.
         Each immersion honors that which cannot be understood rationally - - the Darkness, that which is obscure.   In the dark waters we glimpse moving fragments of Shadow, of all that is disenfranchised, dishonored and scapegoated. We are taken to the limits of human possibility - - there to recognize that, like the sink hole, the quest is bottomless.
         Exploration of Pluto's realm is facilitated by working with dreams, images, fantasies, depressions and fears - - all ways in which the unconscious reveals itself; by rituals which invoke the oracular, mythological and alchemical.
         With Plutonian eyes, we can see how cultural events are messages from the unconscious, and symptoms of deeper issues; how illness and accident speak for the unconscious of desires, and needed creative productions; how cultural expressions such as architecture, art or music are underlain by truths that long to be received, understood and acted upon.
         Pluto tends the integrity of the individuated Self, by countering a one-sided Apollonian view, and makes possible the effecting of change and transformation through contact with alternative, imaginative realms. This in turn facilitates cultural individuation which is both evolutionary and revolutionary. Most importantly, this process is not reductionistic and limiting, but ensouling and expansive.
         With Pluto, even the most finely-tuned, highly-educated intellect is but a psychopomp, who leads the seeker to the borderline of an uncharted world. Like the center of an alchemical cauldron, or of the hot spring, there is a bubbling-up, in this liminal place, of that-which-is-not-known. Here, the intellect must lie down with a whimper, or turn back, leaving us to attend that fearsome place without it.
          Here the psyche sheds its old skin; fingers shape a new form; the ear hears a new musical phrase. Here dread and elation meet. In tending Pluto as a great and arcane god, we nurture that liminal place where the oracle murmurs and bubbles in the alchemical stew, and visions form and shift like steam across the boundaries of the worlds.

Making Peace with the Darkness by Maureen Moss, PhD

Since the attacks on America last September 11th there has been a resurgence of the focus on light and love and peace. There has also been a resurgence of efforts to banish the darkness, reflecting the curious perspective that darkness can be done away with. Supposedly this can be done through focusing on love and light, and ignoring or denying darkness. Such thinking, while rather amusing in children, is simplistic and almost frightening to see in adults. It reflects a mind that has not yet integrated life experiences with theory, and has perhaps chosen to follow a particular theoretical or philosophical perspective without the benefit of reality testing. Ignoring one’s life experiences can be dangerous. Such an effort to ignore or banish darkness is self defeating.

To begin with, darkness is an inseparable part of light. Whether one follows the biblical, scientific, or any other myth of creation, most all creation stories tell us that life emerged out of the darkness. Stories of creation also teach us that darkness and light follow each other, as do night and day. Trying to separate light from darkness and darkness from light is futile. The two are inseparable; the one cannot exist without the other. All things in the world are made up of yin and yang, darkness and light. This premise is stated in diverse ways by religions throughout the world (Rietsma and Karcher, 1995).

The ancients understood this cyclical nature of all life and represented it with the ancient symbol of wholeness, the yin-yang. The symbol of the yin-yang, reproduced at the top of this page, shows the two aspects of the circle, which itself represents wholeness, as flowing into each other. Yin represents darkness, and yang represents light. It is important to note that each side of the symbol contains within it a part of the other, so that darkness contains light, and light contains darkness. In other words, both darkness and light contain within them the seed or essence of the other. The one flows into and becomes the other.

From this understanding one can see that the notion of ignoring or denying the darkness, or the light, is impossible without obliterating the whole. Also, when either darkness or light is ignored or denied, it actually becomes reinforced and stronger. This is often expressed in the statement “that which is denied comes back with a vengeance.” This statement is substantiated by the traditions of physics and metaphysics alike. Death follows birth in an apparently endless cycle of life and death. Even if we wish to disregard metaphysical and philosophical representations and interpretations, it is self apparent that Nature and Life itself are cyclical. Death follows life follows death follows life. The forms may change; the essence of the cyclical nature remains. The two are inseparable. Despite humanity’s greatest efforts to separate the two and to create immortality, immortality appears to be left to the realm of the divine.

So what are human beings to do? How can people avoid the darkness and the pain and suffering it brings? Another question frequently asked is “what is the value to be found in pain and suffering?” Much has been written about this, and religious scholars throughout history have pondered and put forth their answers to this question. But we still come back to the unavoidable fact of the inseparable nature of darkness and light.

What happens when we try to ignore the darkness, to sweep it under the carpet so to speak? When can act as if there is no darkness, or that darkness is not part of our lives, it is still there, waiting to trip us. And trip us it will, pulling us down into its depths. Anyone who has even experienced inflation (and who hasn’t?) has also been given the opportunity to experience deflation. Here, in the depths, we can learn much about life. It is from the darkness that we learn about the light.

The difficulties and challenges we face offer us opportunities to go deeper into life’s mysteries, to experience some of the depths of psyche, or soul. In doing so, we also learn more about how life functions, and more about our own inner strengths and weaknesses. Artists, scientists, philosophers, visionaries, alchemists, and others who delve into the mysteries of life all recognize and acknowledge that it is from the darkness that light emerges. And that it is from the challenges of the darkness that growth and understanding emerge.

So what of this darkness, this stuff that seems so threatening to our experience of happiness, our sense of self, and our desires for immortality? What can we do to not be victimized by darkness? How can we deal with darkness and not be obliterated by it? Perhaps the answer lies in accepting, even embracing, darkness. In so doing we can become familiar with it and learn to live with it. Perhaps we can even develop and use it as an ally.

One way we can become more familiar with darkness is by attending to our sorrows and suffering and learning from them. Trying to repress or deny what are often called “negative experiences” or “negative emotions” only serves to make them stronger and more present. And then, we have to expend even more energy to suppress or deny the darkness. A key to harnessing the power of the darkness is a willingness to become familiar with it, befriend it, and thus to tame it and contain it. The darkness can enrich and deepen life. Depression, when not out of control, can enrich human experience.

The realm of Pluto, deity of the underworld, is rich indeed. In fact, the name Pluto means “riches” and is thought to refer to the one of the three personages of the original trinity of Kore the Virgin, Pluto the mother, and Persephone the Destroyer (Walker, 1983, p.804). The transformation of Pluto, from a deity representing richness to a deity representing darkness, corresponds with advent of patriarchal dominance. Despite the negative associations with darkness, it is still into the darkness we must go to find the riches of the soul. We must descend into the depths of the underworld.

This descent to the underworld is the theme of many ancient and modern myths of initiation. The ancient myth of Inanna, as presented in Perera’s book Descent to the Goddess (1981), is one such story. The goddess can be conceptualized to be female energy, or the soul, since soul is considered to be feminine or yin in nature (Reitsma and Karcher, 1995). Another work, by Jung (1969), cites the Gnostic hymn to the soul. In this myth, “the son is sent forth by his parents to seek a pearl that fell from the King’s crown” (CW 9,1, para. 37). The son has to plunge into the depths of the water, where he finds the pearl on the very bottom.

Let’s pause for a moment in our discussion of plutonian energies and darkness to look at the symbols in this particular hymn, since they lend themselves rather well to our discussion of the mutual embodiment of darkness and light. First we will consider the pearl. The pearl is an ancient symbol of lunar power and the power of the waters, since the moon controlled the tides (Cooper, 1978; Walker, 1983). The pearl also represents the life-giving power of the Great Goddess. According to Walker “the ancients gave all pearls feminine connotation, saying they were made of two female powers, the moon and water” (1983, p. 780).

Next we consider that both the pearl and water are embodiments of yin energy. Cooper writes that “all waters are symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with birth, the feminine principle, the universal womb, the prima materia, the waters of fertility and refreshment and the fountain of life” (1978, p. 188). Jung (1969) states that “water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious” (CW 9,1, para. 40). The pearl, which throughout human history has been prized and sought after for it luminous qualities, is found in the depths, in the dark, watery world of the unconscious. And here in the depths is where soul can be found.

These two myths, rich in symbolism, reveal one of the central premises to be found in the yin-yang symbol, namely, that the light, or the luminous, is to be found in the darkness. In seeking to live rich, full, and balanced lives, we are called upon to incorporate the yin and the yang, the dark and the light, aspects of life. For one does not exist without the other.

References

Cooper, J.C. (1978) An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd..

Jung, C.G. (1969). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Collected Works, vol. 9, 1. New York: Princeton University Press.

Perera, S. (1981). Descent to the Goddess: A way of initiation for women. Toronto: Inner City Books.

Ritsema, R. and Tarcher, S., trans. (1995). I Ching: The classic Chinese oracle of change. New York: Barnes and Noble Books.

Walker, D. (1987). The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Dancing With Pluto by Anonymous

When you dance with Pluto you had better know all the steps. But that is what’s insidious. There is no way to really know, until you get on the dance floor, what the steps are. That’s when you find yourself, as the title of a book says, Dancing as Fast as You Can.

Learning how to live with Pluto is the biggest challenge anyone faces in his or her life. A matter of Life and Death. The thought of suicide is understandable. You see why people choose that escape. The challenge is to know how to come out the other end – how to know what you’re supposed to learn.

Those brave enough to face the fight and find the stamina to find their way through the intense drama and darkness, know there is no going back to pre-Pluto days. Everything changes in a profound way. It feels like being sucked down, an undertow, the only glimmer of hope is when you gasp for air you know that if you can get out of this there is something deeper to discover in yourself. The depth of that self-discovery is as powerful as the undertow. However, it is not easy because Pluto is demanding – and can be unrelenting.

Personally I think Pluto exists and enters the orbit of people who are capable but at the same time paralyzed to realize their full potential. Pluto can be conniving and manipulative. If you succumb to the life changes all on Pluto’s terms, you loose your power. That’s what Pluto is all about, power. And you will always get seduced and pulled back when you weaken.

There is no dance Pluto does not know…and no dance you can’t learn yourself if you do the work. Only you can reveal what remains untapped.

That’s the assignment. Not only learn the dance but also dazzle Pluto and yourself by inventing new steps. The only way to forge ahead with your life is to stay productive, creative and honest. Pluto will remain in your orbit but only as a catalyst for change.

It’s a frightening journey because you can only rely on yourself and it comes down to a choice. The choice is to let Pluto be destructive or make it work for you as you transform your life. It’s about transitioning to another level in your life and knowing that each step is more powerful than the last.

You end up dancing the Tango, the Jitterbug, the two-step and the twist. Your dance partner never tires. But if you’re aware of that, just when you think you’re too exhausted to go on and you have to leave the dance floor, you discover, sometimes in the nick of time, that you’re waltzing and you can breathe again.

A Plutonic Affair - An Evening with Pluto by Jessica Pointon

I find the best way to understand archetypes is to experience them and although I thought I knew what was meant by Pluto energy I decided to give myself as physical an experience as possible. I spent all day thinking about my evening, preparing myself, just acknowledging that I would be welcoming Pluto into my house and what I could do to make him feel welcome. On the way home I bought a bottle of Noble wine (made from grapes already fermenting on the vine) and some blue cheese.

Once home I just focused on the ritual aspects of having a bath, getting the towel ready, running the water etc. But this time I closed the blinds and didn’t turn on the light. My eyes did get accustomed to the gloom fairly quickly but still it was dark. The water in the tub was only cold. All the while I sipped the wine and nibbled the cheese. Then, deep breath and into the cold water. It was fabulous, in a strange way reassuring and welcoming. There was nothing scary or unnatural, it was right. I stayed in the bath for about 10 minutes, pondering away, trying not to control my thoughts but gently following behind.

Very consciously I got out and dried off. Moving into the other room, I turned on the CD player to listen to Let me fall. I thought: “I’ll just round this off, by listening to the song once and then I’ll close the ceremony and get on with the rest of the evening.” However, by the time I sat down everything had got much slower, I just sat still, feeling calm, cool and slow for three rounds of the music. I just couldn’t move. It was a beautiful sensation.

The rest of the evening was slow and sedate. A part of me was feeling acknowledged. This gave me the strength a couple of days later to burn some bridges and let the phoenix rise.

I heartily recommend letting Pluto into your life and finding out what makes him comfortable and happy. He is beautiful once one stops being frightened of him!

Blazing Spirit by Kathleen Rauch

I used to have a cozy little retreat cabin nestled into the forest on our hillside. The Spirit House overlooked the garden and the goat and chicken pens. My husband, Joe, built the little cabin for me so that I could retreat from family life periodically without having to go too far. We have two young daughters, a cacophonous little homestead farm and a tiny croft of a house. Sometimes life in the house can be a bit close. Mostly I retreated to the Spirit House during my moon time, honoring a woman’s tradition of retreating from family life during the potent time of bleeding. Sometimes the Spirit House was used as a guest house.

On this particular night, Joe had planned to take our daughters, Malika aged 8 and Lhasa aged 5 out to the Spirit House. He would get them to bed and then come back to our house to watch a movie with me.

I finished the dishes while he went out to light a fire in the Spirit House. Time dragged by and he had not retrieved our daughters. They took it upon themselves to carry out an array of stuffed animals and bedding. Malika managed her armload. Lhasa decided she needed the better portion of her room to go with her. Although I was tired and wanted Joe to manage the event, my heart broke open a bit to see Lhasa’s expectant face and her choice of necessities. I transcended the desire to be irritated and instead dried my hands and gathered up Lhasa’s stuffed animals and helped her up the trail to the Spirit House.

I opened the door and Joe was sitting quite comfortably in front of the fire. My ire raised a notch. I nagged a bit, wondering why he had not been more forthcoming in helping the kids. He was in a subdued state. I was getting ready for a fight. In my natal chart reading with Laurence, earlier in the year, I learned that my Mars is unaspected and that it falls in the house of my home. I had spent a few months witnessing my anger in my home life.

I noticed that the wall by the wood stove was incredibly hot. We had just installed new stove. I wondered if we had the right insulation. I asked Joe about it. I told him it didn’t feel right. He was in a stupor. He had worked physically hard during the frozen day. The heat had melted him. He told me the stove was fine and that the Spirit House wouldn’t burn down. He explained how the plaster held heat and so forth. I started to feel unheard, which is a trigger for my anger. I noticed the anger. I wanted everybody to come back into the house. The angry part of my Self was so angry with Joe that I nearly told him that if he wasn’t worried, he could sleep out there for all I cared. I chose to go into my heart and bring the barriers down. The anger vented through my body. I could feel the waves of intensity as my physical and emotional bodies went through the experience. It was unfamiliar territory to choose something other than anger.

We went to bed. The girls were disappointed. My anger subsided and Joe and I curled up together. At midnight, Malika climbed the ladder to our loft bedroom to tell us that the Spirit House was burning down.

We went out. The building was ablaze in the dark of the night. Flames leapt out the door and the skylight. In Malika's subsequent drawings of the Spirit House on fire, it looks likes like a little house with wings of fire returning to the etheric realms.

The burning of the Spirit House felt like a karmic debt. Something had to burn. The extent of the loss and suffering seemed negotiable. With the awareness afforded me through my spiritual commitments, contemplative practices and the clarity from the astrological reading, I was able to recognize a limitation within my patterning in relationship to anger. The insights allowed me to make a choice. The choice brought me into my heart.

The Spirit House burned to the ground. Only fragments remained. Our insurance company settled quite generously with us. We had a big clean-up party with many of our friends. The clean up was quick. Mostly we sat around the house eating posole stew with the pork from one of our pigs, celebrating life and the wealth of love and friendship with which are blessed.

West Point by Gary Newsom, MD

Iris Gaines: “You know, I believe we have two lives.”

Roy Hobbs: “How? What do you mean?”

Iris Gaines: “The life we learn with and the life we live after that.”

The Natural, 1984

I am nearing sixty. When I reflect back on where I was at twenty, I cannot fathom that I was a soldier in training at West Point. I am astounded mostly because of the longing that developed much later. That longing was for peace in my life, and as an extension, into the lives of others. How can I reconcile what I believe now with what I thought I was before? This has been a struggle; in the vernacular, it has been an existential angst. Through it all the study of astrology has helped a great deal. It has given me a bigger, neutral context to my life. My inner drama continues to unfold according to a larger order where both plot and characters evolve. I can see the faces and feel the passion, despair, sensuousness, anger, and hubris of the characters I have lived in my life. I am epic in process and only now do I begin to understand the essence of my entire natal chart’s story. I have tethered certain life experiences and associated feelings to the concept of each planet. I am only now able to understand where those old experiences lead me. I now feel and grasp exactly what a planet, or planetary alignment, meant in a particular period in my history and in this way, I am seeking to reanimate my life. And so, it is without regret, nor any desire to change what is, that I can see my natal chart as metaphor, as the matrix of the ever-changing drama that is me.

May I show you my Pluto?

“In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur

I graduated from West Point in 1973. In the twists and convulsions of my life since, there has always been a feeling of intense devotion to the institution. It is not the kind of vocal or monetary support that one typically associates with an institution of higher learning. It is not the hubris that is fostered by winning athletic contests. It is not even the nostalgia that one might feel toward a place of transformation. It is deeper.

I am now a million miles and scores of years from the innocence of that naive man-child who arrived one bright July morning to answer a calling. Through the grit and grime of years as a paratrooper, the horror and bliss of long tenure as a physician, the steamy and intense mystery of husband, father and seeker, there is a part of my soul that feels betrothed to some essence still emanating from West Point itself. Like an amputee awakening from sleep years later to the unfathomable pain of a limb long removed, or the longing of the aged that is refreshed by a smell or sound that reminds of something from childhood that is long dead, there is always, always, this unspeakable knowing. Whether soldier or civilian, father or son, husband or friend, within all these roles, there is a sense of ongoing promise, of bondage.

I have searched for some analogy to better define this vital part of my journey. In Dune, Frank Herbert’s masterwork, I have found a world that well approaches my understanding of my experiences with West Point. In Dune we find the order of the Bene Gesserit, described in Wikipedia as “a secretive sisterhood whose members train their bodies and minds through years of physical and mental conditioning to obtain powers and abilities that can easily seem magical to outsiders.” This utter devotion to the corpus of the Order resonates with my own experience. However, unlike the Bene Gesserit, where novice’s had an early knowledge of what one was in service to, the ubiquitous, but chthonic presence that was and is West Point has for me, remained, until lately, a veiled, forever undefined “It,” present, but unknown. There is a shadowy, malleable, yet ever-sentient suchness at the center of my experience in those four years on the banks of the Hudson River. Like all archetypal forces that I have experienced, it can never be approached intellectually, only lived. The longer I am alive, the deeper the unfathomable nature of this “Presence” becomes. Perhaps some examples can shine some light on what I speak of.

First, from earliest moment at West Point, I felt embraced by the “Force.” It is no accident that beginning with my long trek up the twisting drive from the Hotel Thayer to my stepping off that bus as a new cadet, everything that first day was choreographed to culminate in the dramatic swearing in ceremony. Those family and friends that ate a farewell breakfast with someone loved, watched in awe eight hours later: Marching en mass before them was a sparkling, white shrouded, well shaven group of virile would-be soldiers who, just that morning, had appeared so young. Two meals removed from a former life, these men-boys were led, en corps, to the amazing vista of the river and a setting sun. I raised my hand and declared devotion. As it reveals itself now, thirty-five years later, that was the great wedding. With heart throbbing, I was forever betrothed and forever committed to service. Little did I know what consort was, nor could I even imagine the complexity of the “Force” that I had been given to. And, looking back, I suspect that the military officers who were responsible for this ritual were themselves blinded by the power of the attendant “Mystery.” But, that the period of the next eight weeks was named “Beast” at least acknowledges that something large was afoot. It had to be felt and not seen.

Second, it was when I took my oldest daughter to see this place where I had come from that I sensed that I was returning to an “Essence.” On the drive up from the city that crystal clear morning, with the leaves a hundred shades of fall, I knew that for me this was a homecoming. I now know that the “Essence” wanted to see my daughter. But why? The answer is simple: cadet or not, the precious being that was mine carried the life blood which would course on a new wave in the infinity of those resonant to the “Power.” That “Power” wanted a first-hand view. Returning once more to the metaphors from Dune and quoting once more from Wikipedia, Bene Gesserit in Latin and by itself means “(s)he shall have behaved well.” Gesserit is a form of the Latin verb gerere, whose meanings include to carry, to wear, to manage, to bear (as in a child), to behave, or simply to do. Thus the translation of Bene Gesserit is open to wide interpretation. Among the possibilities are, it will have done well, she will have borne well (a child) and he will have behaved well. So now I see, that in service to, I returned for a complete inspection by, and with hopes for a blessing from the “Mystery.”

Third, it was when I took my father up the river on a cold December day just 7 years ago, that I knew that this was being orchestrated by the “Mystery,” perhaps to comfort us both. In my studies of his astrological chart had seen an upcoming movement of Chiron over his Immum Coeli, the bottom and most profound place in his chart, and also the movement of Pluto into his 12th house of endings. I took these as signs that we may not have long together. In fact, that is the reason I came to the city that Christmas. There was nothing logical about it. But, some aspect of this “Mystery” wanted my father and I to walk the snow covered path from the Hotel Thayer to the Area, up the stairs to the Cadet Chapel, and meander back to the lower plain alongside Michie Reservoir. During that walk we said the things that father and son bear to one another only in times of unction. Driving back in the car that late and cold winter day, I saw my father sleep in peace. We had tended to each other in the presence of the “Mystery,” and it was a good thing. When he died from a gunshot wound to the head several months later, I could only be grateful for the gift that had been given… at West Point.

Carl Jung said that, “Wisdom is knowing in depth the great metaphor of meaning.” The shaping that my astrological studies have done with me are vital to knowing the meaning of my life. Astrology provides a matrix from which I can see and be seen. The tensions and fugues are the ephemeral seeking form in my here and now. The infinite possibilities collect, express, and dissipate. Systole, and diastole…forever.

Recently, it was Laurence Hillman’s description of the archetypes operant within this eternal cauldron that allowed me to see the outline of the sacred expressions that suffuse my life. I cannot look upon the faces of the gods, for I am mortal, but the images that he brings through, allow me to approach in humility. And, late one night, with Laurence as the conductor, I took a ride to the destination that archetypal astrology can lead to. At the station, I was met by myself. I came home. With this homecoming, there is a new understanding of what the West Point drama is all about for me. At the center, of all that was and is of this psychological journey up the Hudson, lies the dark, shadowy, seething, ever-creating and -destroying feminine aspect of Pluto: elemental, powerful and intense.

The astrologer Richard Tarnas has said this about Pluto: “It empowers whatever it touches, sometimes to overwhelming and catastrophic extremes; with the primordial instincts, libidinal and aggressive, destructive, and regenerative, volcanic and cathartic, eliminative, transformative, ever-evolving; with the biological processes of birth, sex, and death. It is the dark, mysterious, taboo, and often terrifying reality that lurks beneath the surface of things. It is associated with all myths of descent and transformation.”

I have been given vision. I can now see, and I can now begin to reconcile what I have been bonded in service to. Much later I begin to understand why, while I was at West Point, there was an odd and predictable daily occurrence. For four long years, each and every day, at exactly 4:00 PM, a long line of dark cars drifted up the same road that had brought me here that first day. This was always a vanguard, a family, carrying a son or husband to the cemetery . Framed by a river and the setting sun, hauntingly similar to that scene at my swearing in so long ago, a lifeless, warrior body was slipped into the bowels of the earth. And, taps, that whaling, precious signet of the Mistress Pluto, was played... as epitaph.