iVillage

Thus far, each planet beyond Saturn brings home the point to us that looking outside or down linear time will never work. Uranus and Neptune point out that we must look within to find what we are looking for. Therefore, speculation about finding more and more planets beyond Pluto, whether they be large or small should be tempered with the fact that we cannot hope to get any different message from them, even when they are found.

They will all tell the same story to us, and that is: Look no farther out there. Turn around and begin to look within, embrace what you already have. It is precious. That is the key. Of course philosophers and poets have been telling us this for centuries. Regardless of how many more bodies will be found out there at the edge of the solar system, their meaning will all be the same: look within.

Pluto represents that message more clearly than the insights of Uranus and the embracement of Neptune. If Uranus is breaking out, and Neptune is turning back and embracing all that is, then Pluto is the knowledge that this whole process will repeat itself, endlessly. It is one thing to discover our inner or spiritual life (Uranus), another to embrace it fully (Neptune), but yet a very different thing again to grasp that we will do all this again, and that we don’t only go around once, as the beer commercial would have it, but we go around again and again.

Pluto is the planet of reincarnation and that experience, not as an abstract idea on the pages of a book, but as a vital realization of the nature of life. Pluto is the experience that all life, all people, and all sentient beings are us, and that when we look into a young person’s eyes, we are seeing ourselves, not as an abstract thought, but seeing ourselves in the (and through the) eyes of a child. That is Pluto, daring to see that the “them” out there in the world is you. The light in the child’s eye is you looking at yourself.

Pluto has only recently been discovered (relatively speaking), and its message is still being sorted out. I associate Pluto with the rise of modern psychology and everything that this entails. This planet I still somewhat hard to put into words.

Uranus is pretty clear by now, as to its meaning in astrology. When our Saturn construct (physical body) begins to self-destruct and to fall apart (and it does for each one of us), Uranus has to do with the holes or chinks in time’s armor through which we peer and glimpse a larger reality, something beyond time.

Neptune has to do with the state when the peep holes in Saturn’s grip are larger than what remains of our linear sense of time. When there is more light than shadow, the dawn comes and that has to do with Neptune, and the cherishing or embracing of all that is. In Neptune, we are outside and able to embrace our inner life, to savor each moment and fact.

Pluto carries us beyond the experience of cherishing, the experience of Neptune where we are the subject and the world and other people are the object of our care.

With Pluto, the distinction between subject and object is lost forever and the experience of our own inner light is identical with the light looking out at us from eyes of a child. Perhaps the best keyword for Pluto is “identification,” to identify yourself with another, without the dualism of subject and object.

All these words are very abstract and fail to communicate the very direct experience that Pluto provides us, the in-your-face presence of complete identification of “I am you” and “You are me.” As you can see, words fail.

Let’s just say by way of Pluto that identification is circulation, the lifeblood of the cosmos knowing itself through us, through our eyes. Identification is nothing more than the circulation of cosmic knowledge, and the Pluto experience is as close as we come to realizing this fact. It is through identification that the universe we live in communicates with itself and continues to cohere or exist.

There you have a brief introduction to the outer planets, from more of a shamanic point of view.