By David Jaher. Someone asked me the other day whether or not planetary activity expressed in one’s birth chart (transits as they are called in astrology) indicates fated events. This person was worried about what the planets might indicate about her future. Her concern brings up an essential question almost every client has who sees me for the first time: Is predictive astrology deterministic? The answer is no. What it represents is an energetic blueprint for our future. But perhaps this sounds overly technical; astrology is a wonderful mixture of myth and science. Our own personal evolutionary path can be seen as a kind of mythic quest which the planets, stars and asteroids can illuminate. There is no such thing as good and bad planets yet certainly when forming afflictions by transit certain planets can be associated with trauma. This is more likely to be the case when that energy has no expression in our life. We haven’t ‘owned’ or channeled it in any kind of constructive manner. Examining the myth behind a planet goes far towards understanding how we can use its energy to actively build and shape our future.

The astrologer, Robert Hand, makes the point that ‘you can alter the impact of a transit—by consciously putting the symbolism into your life in a benign way.’ Astrological alchemy, he calls it, and he goes on to give the example of the Pluto transit his own client experienced—indicating, he feared, a period of substance abuse for her or other trauma. Instead she had great success performing on Broadway as Judy Garland—who of course embodied one Plutonian symbol: the drug-addict.

Pluto was in the news recently when it was in effect demoted from full planetary status. Clients have asked me if this has any bearing on its astrological interpretation. The answer is again no. Pluto represents some of the most powerful energy in the zodiac. Some who study astrology are even a little afraid of this ice ball at the fringe of the solar system. Pluto is a planet which can sometimes represent some sort of profoundly transformative experience. By fearing its energy we may sacrifice the opportunity to actively use it.

Pluto can symbolize many things: a descent into the underworld, a period on the front-lines, a confrontation with our most primal fear. It can bring those things which are hidden or taboo into our consciousness, and often indicates a period where we can become obsessed with a particular person or idea. It also relates to birth and death, procreation and human sexuality. In Greek myth, Pluto, the Lord of the Underworld, is obsessed with Persephone whom he can never have, and so he kidnaps her from Demeter and steals her away to Hades. Pluto, as we shall, can represent the sexual taboo.

When Pluto is operating in our life, it is a time when we do often need some sort of ‘magnificent obsession:’ a passionate yet healthy expression for the energy that we might normally shy away from at other times. Mark Chamberlain, a friend and client, was experiencing Pluto’s opposition of his Sun—a transit which again can be interpreted in terms of trauma. But in his case we have another example of someone who actively used the energy and was able to express it in a benign and empowering way. Mark, who is gay, was turned on by Batman as a child, and he was born with Pluto, a transpersonal energy on his Sun—meaning there was a collective urge he could tap: in this case a secret excitement felt by other boys reading the comic strip. And when he had grown up, and Pluto came around to touch his Sun again—he created Queer Batman. ‘When I was a child,’ one of his patrons tells him, ‘I would draw Batman and Robin erotica and then crumple it up and hide it. You had the balls not to crumple yours.’ And Mark who had been struggling to make it as an artist for years, finally found a market for his work with these Queer Batman watercolors. Provocative work it got press. But Pluto can also relate to power struggles and Marvel Comics found out what he was doing, A suit was threatened. The newspapers reported this too, and then his work really started to take off. The point of this story is that the year when Pluto was forming this opposition may have been interpreted by ‘fortune tellers’ as a challenging year for Mark. Instead it was, in his words, the best of his life. This example for me represents the essence of what predictive astrology is meant to be about. The symbol of the sexual taboo would not be the right expression of Pluto for most people. We all have our own path to navigate and our own myth to explore.

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