What’s the point of Pluto Retrograde?
Pluto turns retrograde this weekend, the first outer planet to do so this year. If you’re feeling weighted down, frustrated by your lack of control over a situation, if you’re fearful or obsessing over something, or facing a stark existential truth, then you’re having a Plutonian moment.
Throughout life we take a Pluto journey that helps us to understand and gain wisdom over the big existential stuff - life, death and regeneration. Each year as we encounter hardships and tribulations, we should be growing, becoming ‘older and wiser’. More experienced, more humble and more centred and stronger in our souls. Pluto is very much a soul level planet that reminds us of our existential isolation. You know the phrase, ‘we enter this life alone and we leave this life alone’.
If you’re not sure what I’m on about, cast your mind to Gina Chick - Alone Australia winner and the best darn example of Pluto that you can find. To win that show, she was literally alone, with hunger, obsession, endurance, pain and death. Within the suffering and challenge, she was able to stay centred and comfortable in solitude. She had to kill to survive and she approached death with both a ruthlessness and deep compassion that demonstrated her expansive self awareness of the truths of life.
And where did this wisdom come from? Her previous life experiences of all of these issues when her daughter contracted cancer and died. Her descriptions of sitting in grief and suffering, before emerging empowered are compelling. She has danced with all the darkness that life contains and can still find joy. Gina has managed to master the Pluto journey. She is self contained, Pluto personified.
For most of us, it’s a life long journey of varying success. Each year is like a chapter in the story. For 7 months of the year Pluto moves forward and we assert power outwards. Then for five months of the year it turns retrograde and we’re forced to integrate lessons we’ve learned around power, control, death, solitude, suffering and regeneration. And this weekend we find ourselves at the turning point - Pluto stations, ready for her retrograde journey. So the weight or lack of control you’re feeling is serving a purpose. It’s unearthing and revealing parts of yourself that you can work on to further your Plutonic journey. Think of Gina Chick learning bushcraft, crying for her child or learning how to skin a possum. Each time we get more skilled and confident in our ability to tackle the dirtier, darker parts of being human, we step closer to finding our own inner strength. Each retrograde gets us a step closer to being ready to apply to be a contestant on ‘Alone’.
Don’t shy away from Pluto and its lessons in coming months. Lean in. Be brave and bring self assessment to how you handle all of these more difficult parts of life. Without them we are less. With them, we are more.
The retrograde is an annual checkpoint shining light on how your larger Pluto life journey is going.
Pluto reminds us that we’re on a soul journey that we like to cover with trinkets and petty dramas and cruise ship holidays. For some reason many of us are uncomfortable with the existential truths and questions that Pluto raises. Who are you? Why are you here? What ugliness lies within? How comfortable are you with sitting alone and exposed.