- PLUTO-ASCENDANT/DESCENDANT:
- THE NATAL SQUARE ASPECTS
- In the natal chart, squares between Pluto and the Ascendant suggest a perilous skill: the ability to misrepresent oneself with style and panache, or at the very least to keep secrets effectively.
- Life is complex and situations arise in which one can make a moral case for obscuring the truth. I have this particular square in my own chart, for exacmple, and being a professional counselor involves honoring confidentiality – a noble enough notion, but in practice if often calls for a degree of verbal nimbleness reminiscent of con-artistry. Often, I must “pretend I don’t know” or distort my own biography…simply in order to honor the higher principle of client confidentiality.
- Those same skills can be abused. Weaving a web of lies is one Shadow aspect here: another lies in getting trapped in a web that is woven unintentionally often for the highest of reasons – the man or woman, for example, who smilingly abides a sham-marriage “for the sake of the kids”.
- Regarding the inevitable Pluto/Descendant square that accompanies any natal square of Pluto to the Ascendant, there is throughout the life a pattern of meeting soul mates whose task is to keep us psychologically real, often through rather shocking confrontations and interactions. There is always some sorting out to do here. On one hand, this configuration suggests that friends, lovers, and associates with real insight and psychological intensity will appear whenever we need them, often telling us what we don’t want to hear, helping us unmask. But the same configuration also promises a second possibility, and threatens a third: those soul mates, for all their love and confidence, may be incorrect in their “insights” sometimes! Worse, such a configuration suggests that there may be some “karma” with dark Plutonian corrupters, power-trippers, and faux-gurus who can prove stickily seductive and convincing.
