moonpluto asks on the Mars Pluto opposition blog:
“Does Mars Pluto do what it does and then leave… something fresh in its place? Or does it just leave the dead bleeding on the ground?”
Doreen Gordon has a good answer:
“Well I’m not Elsa, but I will offer my own experience which is that whatever Pluto seems to take away is always ultimately transmuted into something else, fresh, new, and sparkling. Pluto rules both death and re-birth, i.e., not so much death as transformation and transmutation, like the phoenix that goes up in flames and then is hatched anew. However…it isn’t instantaneous, think of new growth after a forest fire or a volcano. The land is usually barren for many months, sometimes years, and then when you least expect it, there are beautiful green seedlings dotting the landscape. Plutonian loss is usually accompanied by profound grief. Think of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of dying. If one is willing to make the descent with Pluto, what one encounters upon the ascent is well worth it although it will not have been easy. I say this having a Scorpio Moon squared by Pluto, i.e., what author/astrologer Judy Hall calls a Hades Moon
.”
I agree with Doreen but think that some are in fact left “dead and bleeding on the ground” but this is only because they refuse to process and progress. Don’t you know people who are stuck and have been for 30 years? I do. They probably still wind up as Doreen outlines but it may take another lifetime or two or three.
Others process very quickly like I do. I can see the new growth within a week for sure, if not within 24 hours. I am so adept (practiced) at processing trauma I can grieve and celebrate the birth almost simultaneously by flowing back and forth.
When it comes to trauma, are you a slow or fast processor? How does this show in your chart?
I’m a medium(?) processor. I don’t necessarily process and recuperate super-quickly, but I don’t hang on to it for too long either. I do have a knack for learning lessons and seeing the “light” in every traumatic situation. Anything bad that has ever happened to me has made me more creative, compassionate, motivated, deep, etc. I try my hardest to make a positive out of a negative always. Moon quintile Pluto.
I process trauma as a matter of course – Moon/Neptune sextile Pluto/Saturn and lots of Scorpio. In fact, over the years I’ve told others about something that has happened to me and have gotten the oddest looks – like “How can you say that so calmly?!”.
But I know the way I grew up was very different from most of my peers and WAAAAAAAYYYYY different from the norm now.
Slow, I think. I may get through the actual problem at the ‘normal’ pace, but I process and hold onto shit for years. It’s not healthy, but I’ve never been able to do it differently. I’ve got to pick it apart and understand each little element, and just when I think I ‘get it’ I think of something else and have to start all over again.
I’m not sure which part of my chart indicates this, but I’ve got Pluto in 2nd house Libra opposite 8th house Sun in Aries. Also, 4th house Neptune in Sag sextile Pluto. It’s a headscratcher, so I think I’d better go look it up!
When the time comes, I take the required action quickly (Aries Sun in the 1st), but it takes me a while to process things after the fact. I can second-guess myself and ruminate and analyze things to death (Moon in Libra, 8th). I’ve trained myself not to hold a grudge (Retro Mars in Scorpio, 8th) or make things worse just because I can.
Healing, for me, is ongoing and hard work. Fast or slow? I don’t know.
I can process it all but I dig in. And I never forget. My body never forgets. And then issues get triggered and come up for review… and hopefully healing.
Chiron in Aries/8th house…
As well, I have been told by some astrologers that my Moon Pluto conjunction in Virgo in the 1st IS a trauma marker. Well, in my case it is true…
What a good question, Miss Elsa!
I think that in order to answer this question with any modicum of precision, one must clearly define “processing.” If pushed to define it myself, I would define processing as 1)the integration of essences that are hidden in form, and 2) the experiencing and eventual releasing of feelings connected to an event.
Natally, my Moon is sandwiched between Saturn and Pluto; also conjuncting Jupiter more widely. While it is tempting to say that I am a fast processor just because my emotions have the capacity to change so quickly, the actual change that occurs is the movement into another cycle of the same process, if that makes any sense, much like Pluto’s own neverending cycle of death, rebirth, eternity and the like. One might say that processing for me is both fast and eternal, as layers of the experience that is to be processed continue to unfold. Even though I am currently experiencing great horror at the experience of break-up between my partner and I, it has been an opportunity to process not the break-up, but facets of the unhealed relationship between my parents and I, especially mother. I can see clearly how my dearest love has and continues to act out both sides of the relationship between my mother and I. Odd, aye?
So this says of me that I process many, many things very quickly, but they are all facets of a singular experience; that is, the psychic inheritance of a perception of a devouring and frightening world. To some extent, I experience the same feelings which require the same processing when I see domesticated yet stray animals, media monopoly, environmental pollution, third-world famines, abandoned children, drug-addicted friends, and other experiences which superficially seem to have no connection whatsoever. They are all faces of the mother who both devours and destroys, and who shrinks in terror at being devoured or destroyed herself. That is, the mother inside me, who is both the consumer and the consumed. Saturn(15 Libra)-Pluto(24 Libra)-Moon(21 Libra) in a nutshell! With these being located in the ninth house, the best I can do many times is to extract, or perhaps assign a meaning to the events that happened, and extricate vital information about myself.
I process many, many things rapidly, which are facets of one thing which will probably never be processed entirely, if processing entails the getting-rid-of a thing.
I live in a world scattered with corpses. Some are mine and some belong to others. Getting on with the business of living for me personally doesn’t mean tidying the ground after the corpses are removed, so much as it means practising acceptance of the temporality of all that is, and feeling the depression, grief, and whatever-else, instead of covering it with an everything-is-going-to-be-fine smile. Although a little dark humour is to be expected from me.
My gratitude to Elsa, Avery, and Conny for your kindness and encouragement in the other Mars-Pluto thread.
Fast, whoa man fast.
Mars opposed Pluto. Sun opposed Uranus. Grand fire Trine. Moon Square Pluto…Moon square Mars.
When I came back to school after the break there were a few people who were very concerned about my well-being, and to be honest, I was like, “Huh?” Oh yeah, I had surgery! LOL. Onwards and upwards. Not to say I don’t know how to process, because I do. I’m what I like to call ’emotionally efficient.’ It serves me better than being bulimic and suicidal ever did.
“I can see clearly how my dearest love has and continues to act out both sides of the relationship between my mother and I. Odd, aye?”
Nope, not odd at all. I just got that Judy Hall book, and you may find it worth picking up too, David 🙂
I process much quicker than I used to. I call it my well 🙂 I have to take the grief (pain/situation/what have you) down into my well and stay down there with it & feel it (repeatedly) until its done (which is kind of like being run over by a truck, having it back up over you & run over you again and again and again until…well just until) When its done, its done. I can then think logically (Im guessing its the Libra in my chart) about the situation without nearly as much pain. People dont see my well time though, and I think I come off as cold because of it.
When something happens that requires well time.. at the moment it happens I stay unbelievably calm. Oh I feel it alright.. my heart kind of flutters and drops into my stomach.. I get a cold wash from my head to my toes which feels like it takes all of the color in my face with it (I dont think it does though, no one has ever commented on it) but I almost never react – in the moment. This is a defense mechanism I know – yk the old “Dont show any fear” thing.
And I forgot my point.. LOL My point was that I have learned, over time, that I must have the well time. MUST. Ive learned that if I process things very soon after they happen, Im so much better off than if I try to pretend its not there, put it off etc. So Ive gotten very good at processing. Typically, its a day. One day of well time can usually allow me to process whatever it is. Things that really really hurt me can and do take longer… but still not usually longer than 3 days. And lemme tell you, 3 days is a hell of a long time to be in hell.
Im not quite sure really. I guess would say that I process a tramatic event quite quickly and deal with it swiftly and fairly well. I know from the get go that the event is going to be the worst and best thing in my life because such events build you in ways you could never believe were possible until it actually occurs. But I truly believe in having that moment or moments and taking my time because no matter how prepared or trancendant you are to such events, you are still in the end human and to not take your time to feel that pain and be a little angry no matter how much you know this is making your a stronger better person, to not take your time would be to cheat yourself out of an experince more rewarding than your could ever know. Thats the power of pluto
I think with all pluto things its not how fast you process them or deal them because with such things its about doing it when the time is right for you and your ready to face the beast. And the after effects of such tramatic events continually hit you long after and I dont know if I would ever want to rush that, you have to fully grieve and have that moment before you move on and pluto is no neptune and wont let you pretend yourself into thinking you’ve moved on and ready to transform before you are. It just doesnt work that way.
Sun conjunct pluto, saturn, venus (in the 8th)trine Mars/Neptune conjunction.
I’m still going through my Pluto Moon transit. Just now Pluto is starting to do some good (by trine-ing my Mars)rather than all difficult (by conjuncting my Moon) in my life. I’m just hanging on and trying to go with the flow. I figure if I stay reasonably humble Pluto might cut me a break. Pluto, you wouldn’t hit a woman in glasses, would you?
i’m accelerating. picked up better and better toolsets as the years have gone by, which helps.
mostly it’s perspective, though.
I’m with Kashmiri, I process quick-quick!
Ouch, I hurt! Why? Oh, that’s over. Whew! What do you mean am I alright?
But I’m also with Rox – I do my processing in private. Don’t let ’em see you sweat. 😉