The Geography of the Underworld: Part 2

You can find my first blog on the Underworld here.

I began this series with the idea that with astronomers naming Pluto’s Moons after different Underworld figures, maybe it is time to take a look at the structure of the Underworld, to understand its complexity.

It is easy to have a vague idea of the Underworld as a slightly dark place where we are dismembered and put back together under Pluto (and other) transits, and leave it at that. And it works. But maybe that’s not enough.

At the same time, the Greek Mythology is only of limited help. The planets are named after Greek/Roman gods, but when you look into the stories behind them, there is not necessarily a lot there to go on. There is virtually nothing in Greek mythology, for example, about the Moon, certainly not in our modern-day astrological understanding of her. Or Neptune – what there is about him bears very little resemblance to the astrological Neptune.

And philosophically, as I said earlier, our notion of Pluto is taking us away from a notion of progress in consciousness that involves a 'liberation' from the body.

So I’m not quite sure where that leaves us. But it does in a way free us from the past. It is important to know the past, but we are not bound by it. At the same time, we need myths – what else is astrology but the intersection between timeless stories and personal lives? – and I think we can feel free to draw on whatever myths, from any part of the world, that illuminate our astrological symbols. We can look, for example, to the Norse tradition in which Odin hung himself upside down from the world tree without food or water for 9 days in order to gain wisdom. That seems to have elements of both Pluto and Neptune transits.

I like to think of astrology as I like I think of all spiritual traditions, as a hodge-podge that has built up over the centuries, containing both gold and dross, even though we may sometimes feel tempted to search for some kind of pure origin or solid foundation.

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So while Greek Mythology may be a good starting point for our modern understanding of the Underworld, I don’t think we should assume it will be sufficient. At the same time, there is some quite good stuff there. The Underworld is structured, it has geography. There are 5 rivers associated with it, as well as Tartarus, the Fields of Punishment, the Asphodel Meadows, the Elysian Fields and the Isles of the Blessed.

And there are various figures associated with the Underworld: Pluto/Hades, of course, who is King; his wife Persephone; the Erinyes, Hermes, Minos, Charon and Kerberos. The Hydra guarded an undersea entrance to the Underworld and Nix (the other Moon) is not strictly Underworld either, but she is the mother of Charon, is the goddess of darkness and night and was there near the beginning of creation. So I think we have to give her honorary membership!

I’m not going to attempt an exhaustive correspondence between the Greek Underworld, and what we understand of Pluto/Scorpio astrologically. But we can draw quite a lot from a consideration of the figures and geography.

The Figures in the Underworld

First of all, there is the myth of the abduction of Persephone, which is one of the myths that every astrologer knows, along with the story of Chiron. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, a nature goddess, and Pluto abducted her into his Underworld, raped her (in some accounts) and married her. Demeter spent ages looking for her and in her despair the world turned to winter. Eventually she found her, but Pluto would only let her back for 6 months of the year, which is summer, while the 6 months of winter, when Demeter mourns, is when her daughter is back with her husband.

So there is a big theme here, almost like the Fall from primordial innocence of both Demeter and Persephone, that at the same time allows life to change, to progress. Persephone grows up, she becomes a wife, and it happens by force – life has to move on, and if we don’t want to, well it will happen anyway. It’s not really force, it is just natural progression – it is just experienced as such when we resist it. And through this Fall also comes the seasons – the continual death and renewal that is life, and you can’t have one without the other. Every stage of life, however well-balanced and stable and happy, eventually tips over into a new stage, and for that to happen the old has to go. And there may be a bleak winter stage that is more appearance than reality, for life is continuing in another form: it has withdrawn into the trunk and roots where it is being re-imagined, re-dreamed. And the astrologer’s job when someone is undergoing a major Pluto transit is often to point this out, to encourage them to tune in to the inner alchemy that is occurring outside of conscious control.

People with a strongly Plutonian/Scorpionic chart experience this Underworld continually, for them it is not a separate part of life like a hospital, it is an integral part of things: Plutonians are always tuned in to this more basic, survival, life-as-it-is aspect, they are not persuaded out of it by mere ideas and social norms.

Even then they may have to start off by learning this about themselves. For someone unused to it, a major Pluto transit can be a traumatic experience.

And part of this is the initial death, the loss of home or health or relatives or career – all these can be Pluto’s work. This can be the price we have to pay to enter his transforming world; this is the coin we give to the ferryman Charon. There is always a price.

And Hermes/Mercury may have brought us to the gates of the Underworld in the first place. He is the messenger of the gods: Pluto has called us, and Hermes persuades us to come. He may even trick us into coming. I had a dream in 1996 telling me what to do next with my life, so I did it, and quite quickly it all became successful yet very painful and conflicted and my whole life changed, I started over.

Cerberus or Kerberos is the 3-headed hell hound whose job is to let the dead into the Underworld, but not to let them out again. And it is indeed like this once you’re in your Pluto transit: you try and carry on as before, and it won’t work. In 1994, as Pluto was squaring my Sun, I kept trying to get up and do things, and everything turned to pain and poo. That was Kerberos. It was only when I gave up (to some extent) identifying myself with how much I did that things were able to come right, and then I had the 1996 dream!

The Places in the Underworld.

Tartarus “is described as being as far beneath Hades as the earth is beneath the sky. It is so dark that the "night is poured around it in three rows like a collar round the neck, while above it grow the roots of the earth and of the unharvested sea." (Wiki)

I think Tartarus represents deeply repressed aspects of ourselves. That repression is painful. The usual reaction, which is unconscious, is to find ways to avoid that pain. Alcohol and drugs, victimising others, health issues, keeping busy. A Pluto transit, if we’re prepared to be aware, brings us to the point where all those diverting strategies are gone, they are dead, taken away from us, and we are just left with the pain that we probably don’t understand.

There is no redemption in the Greek Underworld, once you are there that is it, and the other place of suffering, the Fields of Punishment, doesn’t seem any better than Tartarus. (Tartarus, however, with its sheer depth beneath Hades, best symbolises repression.)

So at this point, where we begin to emerge renewed from the Pluto transit, I think we need to leave the Greek mythology behind, though of course the story of Persephone tells us a certain amount, and in a kind of way, the Elysian Fields.

The Underworld is not just a place of suffering. The Elysian Fields are for those who have distinguished themselves. “Usually, those who had proximity to the gods were granted admission, rather than those who were especially righteous or had ethical merit.” (Wiki)

And a Pluto transit is by no means just about dismemberment and suffering (suffering which has often been there all along, but which we have been unconsciously avoiding.) You see some people going from strength to strength under these transits, it is not a deep internal journey. And some seem able to put up with the difficulty and suffering that comes along in the form of external events and then carry on as before.

And you also see that while on the one hand some people are feeling dismembered (Tartarus), they are also experiencing an accession of their gifts and talents (Elysian Fields). The gifts that are central to you, but which maybe you and the world haven’t sufficiently valued, classically come to the fore during a Pluto transit. In a way, that is what the transit is about: a purging of the old personality to make  way for a more authentic self, and the gifts that come with it, whose time has come.

The Elysian Fields are for those who have had proximity to the gods, rather than ‘good’ people. This says a lot about the process of life changing and moving on. It happens not by being a ‘good’ person and following the social and religious rules you were born into, though that may get you worldly rewards. It is about sensing what the gods want of you and having the courage to act on that. It is about doing what you ‘have’ to do.

It is about finding that level in yourself, that is often revealed by Pluto transits, that is a new type of identity: not the easy, unconscious one formed by aligning oneself with social norms and expectations, but something that is purely within you – the Self, the Dreambody, whatever you want to call it, perhaps it’s best not to call it anything.

That is what Pluto is really trying to do when he takes us to his Underworld, because that is what Life is trying to do. It is that something, that solid, alive, creative foundation within, that knows how to live, knows the answers, and in a way our only task is to be loyal to that, which is also being loyal to the gods and to Pluto.

This is where distinction and the Elysian Fields lie. For ordinary mortals we have the Asphodel Meadows, whose descriptions vary, but in the Odyssey its inhabitants “flit like shadows” and have lost the power of independent thought – but did they truly have it in life?

There is no redemption or transformation within the Greek Underworld, but there is a kind of parallel to the emergence from a Pluto transit, strengthened and renewed, in that those who enter the Elysian Fields have a choice to either stay there or be reborn. If a soul was re-born 3 times and achieved Elysium each time, then he/she could enter the Isles of the Blessed, and eternal paradise.

So emergence from a Pluto transit is a bit like being re-born from the Elysian Fields, which is for those who have lived close to the gods. You have been touched and changed by a god, and you come back to your life again, but renewed and on a different inner basis.

Prince George, the Royal Family and the British

‘Woman has Baby’ screamed the front page of Private Eye, England’s leading satirical magazine. We are all absolutely delighted, Americans included, that the 2^nd in line to the British throne has produced a 3^rd in line.

Prince George has Sun in Cancer opposite Moon in

Capricorn, both in an applying t-square to Saturn in Scorpio. And Scorpio Rising. A bit like his Mum, who has Sun in Capricorn opposite Moon in Cancer in a t-square with Saturn and Pluto, the ruler of Scorpio. What sort of guy will he be when he’s grown up? Certainly conservative (Saturn, Cancer, Capricorn), with a strong sense of family and tradition. And private. 

But that does not mean not public. You can feel comfortable in public while remaining a private person. And if he is anything like his mother, who has pole-vaulted herself to power (Sun in Cap square Saturn-Pluto), then he will be a force to be reckoned with.

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It’s hard to know how it will play out. Certainly with that square from the Sun and Moon to Saturn, he will feel the weight of expectation on him. And he will also feel that from within: a need to work hard and, most importantly, make his mark. But not in a rebellious, Uranian way.

We don’t know the strength of his personality. There seems to me to be a line within the royal family that doesn’t have much force. His great great grandfather George VI, his great Uncles Andrew and Edward, and even his father William. The chart does not necessarily tell you this (though they all have a strong Pisces/Neptune influence). William has Sun and Moon in Cancer in the 7^th. So he will live his life through his wife and family, nothing wrong with that, but Kate seems to be the one with the force of personality.

So we know that George will be naturally conservative and traditional, what we can’t yet know is whether he will be dampened by the expectations placed on him, or whether he will use them to come out fighting, to make something of himself, like his grandfather Charles has done. He does not, however, have the Neptune/Pisces influence that the more retiring members of the family have, suggesting he may be a fighter. But, with Venus in Virgo opposite Neptune in Pisces, women will 'see him coming', and he could end up idealising a woman who doesn't merit it.To start with, at any rate.

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Many Britons and Americans do not want Charles to be king, they want William. That is understandable in a celebrity sense. William has youth on his side, he is Diana’s son, and he doesn’t have Charles’ odd mannerisms.

But Charles has substance, he has struggled with his natal Sun in Scorpio square Pluto, and overcome what seems to be the old-fashioned bullying of his father, who has Sun conjunct Mars in Gemini square to Saturn. I don’t always agree with Charles, particularly over architecture, but he is his own man.

William may surprise us, you never know with people, but with his Sun and Moon also being opposite Neptune, he may be happy to swim along, being whoever people want him to be.

George has a pronounced Mars – conjunct Jupiter and Mercury, opposite Pluto and forming a t-square with Uranus. His father and uncle both joined the army (as you do) and have Sun square Mars. George's Mars suggests that while he will want to stand up for his country (Mars in Cancer), he may take an unusual route (Uranus). Mars in Cancer is perfect for an eco-warrior, for example. Charles also has Mars conjunct Jupiter in hard aspect to Uranus, and he has had to fight (Mars) for his unorthodox (Uranus) beliefs (Jupiter). Charles has Mars in Sag, which works well, but George's is in Cancer, where Mars is in its Fall, so it could be tougher for him.

So we may be seeing something similar to Charles here: a conservative, even old-fashioned personality, but at the same time with some quite individual beliefs that he is prepared to fight for. The opposition from Mars to Pluto suggests this will be a struggle and an important growing point for George. With Pluto ruling/dispositing his Scorpio Asc and Saturn, it may be this Mars struggle that is the making of him. Pluto may cause him to feel that his very psychological survival depends on it.

Another possibility with Uranus square Mars is that George will be gay. Now that would be a problem for the Royal Family! And for George. And with Mars-Jupiter, promiscuous. 

George has the Sun sign of his father’s Sun and the Moon sign of his mother’s Sun, so there may be a fairly textbook sort of inheritance here. The Sun is more visible, and what we may see is William’s gentle, family based character. But within he will feel the inadequacy of the Moon in Capricorn, that has strong expectations from his mother.

It’s a sort of double-whammy. There are the expectations of the male line (Sun square Saturn) which are institutional, deeply embedded, they don’t come from William’s personality.

And then there are the expectations of the female line (Moon square Saturn), and they are more personal. Kate comes from a very ambitious family, and she is very ambitious herself. Her Dad owns a mail order business, he is an ordinary small businessman, but that is not enough for him. He has created a family coat of arms, and Kate’s sister was dating a Duke’s son before Kate was with William. Kate just happened to go to this obscure Scottish university that no English person ever goes to, at the same time that William did, and when William’s previous relationship finished, so, magically, did hers. Now that is hard and calculating, but by the same token I think she will make a good queen, a good public figure. But I wouldn’t want to live with her.

Louis, the King of the Swingers

So poor old George has all that to contend with in his Moon in Capricorn square to Saturn, and the trouble with being a royal is that you are already top of the tree, there is nowhere for Saturn to go! Unless you do what Charles has done. And he, to his credit, is ‘notorious’ for pestering government ministers with suggestions and ‘What are you going to do about that?’ sort of thing.

Now conservative as Cancer and Capricorn may be, they are also Cardinal signs, they like to take action, they like to initiate (unless, like William, they are in the 7^th House opposite Neptune: he will live that side of himself through his wife.) They bring about change, but not in a revolutionary Aquarian way. In the case of Cancer and Capricorn, they work within the tradition and develop it.

And with William and George, we see both Sun and Moon in Cardinal signs, whereas Charles (Scorpio-Leo) and Elizabeth II (Taurus-Leo) both have Sun and Moon in fixed signs.

So this is a sea change from Fixed to Cardinal that we are seeing, as well as a move away from the classic royal sign of Leo (which is also Philip’s Moon.) This change, I think, was initiated by Cancerian Diana.

More than most, members of the royal family have a collective rather than an individual existence: the latter is discouraged. So we should expect to see currents in the collective more than usually strongly represented in their charts. And look at the UK Chart: Sun in Capricorn and Moon in Cancer. Same as Kate, other way round to George. That is the close involvement with the collective.

And Cardinal Signs have to take action, like Diana did, rather than just endure, like the fixed Queen and Charles do (Charles has created a niche, but still within an overall traditional status quo).

So William and George will be continuing the process of change begun by Diana, bringing the Royal Family into the modern age. William is doing this already by virtue of marrying a ‘commoner’, and it may continue to be through his wife, rather than off his own bat, that the change continues.

I’m not, incidentally, saying that all this is a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just what is happening, in the same way that I am not saying that the Royal Family itself is a good or a bad thing. It’s not really to my taste, but it seems basic to the human collective that they need someone on a pedestal, whether it is Stalin or Angelina Jolie or Prince William, and we could do worse than the rather dull British Royal Family. The British deal with it by putting them up there and then giving them no power, and the Americans have emulated this by doing the same, or nearly the same, with their Presidents.

Prince William was born on an eclipse, and Bernadette Brady has said that this eclipse was part of a series that arguably began about the time the English monarchy began, back in the Dark Ages. And this eclipse series is due to end around 2030, when William will probably be king.

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So the end of this eclipse series suggests some sort of ending for the British Monarchy. I don’t think society is moving in an egalitarian direction, I’m not sure societies ever have, it is natural to people to look up and to look down and to want to move up the scale. The Monarchy is very popular. So I think it will be some sort of reinvention of itself, a new treetop that suits the society we will have become, and George with his Cardinal Sun and Moon will, along with William, be taking the steps necessary for this to happen. And that may be the ‘achievement’ that his Saturn requires.

The re-invention could lie somewhere along the Cancer-Capricorn axis, because that is fundamental to the UK Chart and, now, to the Royal Family: astrologically, they are becoming closer to the country and its population. And this is a move begun by Diana. The initial refusal by the Queen to fly a flag at half-mast at Diana's death says it all.The Queen represented the distance from ordinary people, the inhumanity even, and Cancerian Diana, who had family at the centre of who she was, drew an unprecedented response from the British people.

As Ian Hislop (editor of Private Eye) has pointed out, England is losing its stiff upper lip (a consequence of the needs of Empire and fear of the mob emotions of the French Revolution) and is returning to original over-emotional character (for which it was known abroad).

And the Royal Family is being carried along in this current. It is ironic that they are known as the Royal Family, for in a way that is exactly what they are not. The Cancer-Capricorn axis sets the needs for nurture and privacy and family against the needs of the world, and from the moment they are born, the senior royals have a strong and overwhelming place in the world: they are Capricorn from the word go, and this inhibits the development of Cancer, which is the main function of early life.

And this is also part of our national character, in that the ruling classes are sent off to boarding schools aged 8, away from their families, in order to prepare them for the world. It's a tribal thing. This is premature, and interrupts their emotional development and ability to bond with other people.

The boarding school system is thriving, and there seems to be a lot more pressure on the kids to perform than there was in my day. At the same time, you look at old Etonian David Cameron, the guy is clearly into his wife and family, and plans to send his kids to state schools. So I think that also says quite a lot about how we are changing.

Cancer-Capricorn is the basic axis of Prince George's chart, showing a need for him to balance the needs of family with the needs of the world, and the square to Saturn showing that this will be a struggle, a growing point if you life, for both principles need to be honoured.

So we see this shift in the astrology of the Royal Family, beginning with Diana and running through William, Kate and George, that constitutes a re-balancing of Cancer-Capricorn, that will allow them to be much more like an ordinary family (Kate is a 'commoner'). This shift, you could say, began with Princess Anne, who is of the Uranus in Cancer generation (progressive ideas about family), and whose children do not have titles: who ever hears of Peter Phillips, her son?

Britain is still dealing with its legacy of Empire and what that did to us. That is why we still don't know quite what our place in the world is, and why to some extent we still idealise, through the boarding school system, the breaking of young children in order to produce tough guys to run the country. In many (though not all) ways that seems to be softening, we are becoming more feelingful, along with the Royal Family. I think that is why Margaret Thatcher was so loved and hated, because she was so Capricorn (Saturn Rising in Scorpio) at the expense of Cancer. The fact that she was so hated says a lot about the strength of the Cancer element within the nation. 

Prince George, with his Capricorn-Cancer axis, and the struggles he will have to go through because of the squares to Saturn, will mirror the kind of change that is slowly occurring in the country as a whole.

The Geography of the Underworld Part 1

In 2006 Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet. I wrote then that it said something about our relation to the Underworld that we would do such a thing. I am, however, now feeling more forgiving of the astronomers, because in the last few weeks they have named 2 more Moons of Pluto on the principle that the names, like the previous 3, had to be mythologically related to Pluto. So now there are 5 known Moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx.

So while on the one hand we seem to have given the Underworld less significance, on the other hand we are now giving it more complexity, deliberately so. It feels like it is being honoured.

There was an online poll for the new names called Pluto Rocks!, and the winning submission was Vulcan, sponsored by William Shattner (Star Trek). It was, however, rejected by the committee on the grounds of not being related to the mythology of Pluto. And, of course, a Vulcan in Star Trek mythology is a purely logical being, and the whole point about Pluto is that he disrupts our idealisation of reason, which can make us think we are masters of the universe; he insists that our loyalty should be to life itself rather than to our theories about it. So the astronomers, whether they knew it or not, made a powerful archetypal statement.

Shortly after Pluto was demoted we experienced the biggest economic crash any of us remember – by some measures, like over-borrowing by banks and the time taken for the economy to start to recover, it has been bigger than the thirties. Pluto as a god of riches is associated with the economy. (Uranus in hard aspect to Pluto usually creates recessions.) After 5 years of this deep recession we now seem to be honouring the underworld again, that place that brings us down to earth by destroying hubris, and the western economy seems at last to be starting to recover. 

This connection of the demotion of Pluto to the Great Recession may seem whimsical, stretching it, but I’d say as an astrologer that it is a matter of how seriously we take these powers. For a Greek Tragedian, it might seem a simple matter of cause and effect.

So what is this Underworld that Pluto rules? For the ancient Greeks, it was the place you went to after you died. For us astrologers, it is a psychological place or state. 

Hades is the Greek for Pluto, as well as the name for the Underworld itself, Pluto’s realm: so I shall be using the terms Hades, Pluto and the Underworld somewhat interchangeably.

For the ancient Greeks, the Underworld was literally out there, invisible to us living humans, and located at the ends of the oceans or beneath the depths of the earth. I suspect it wasn’t a belief held as rigidly, say, as the medieval Christian heaven and hell. Or as rigidly, say, as a modern who might say it is ‘only’ a psychological state and of course the underworld doesn’t exist ‘out there’.

I think the sense of ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ is a construct of the brain, and therefore not to be treated as a rigid distinction. When I die, I want a coin put in my mouth to pay the ferryman (Charon) to carry me across the Styx – or is it the Acheron - into Hades. As an astrologer, it makes perfect sense for me to feel like that, given that the Greek Lord of the Underworld is a major part of my cosmology.

For me, the Underworld is both within and without, in the same way that the gods/planets are both. I think that an ancient Greek would have experienced the gods with their demands as ‘out there’, while not at the same time experiencing any loss of personal freedom and choice. (Unlike the Christian experience at its worst with its rigid god.) It is like Jung said, that free will is the freedom to do what I have to do. That sums it up nicely for a modern.

When the planet known as Pluto was discovered and named after the Greek Lord of the Underworld – or, strictly speaking, the Roman god - I think that legitimised for astrologers the internalisation of the Underworld. It meant we could use the Underworld to describe that place we go to when we undergo a psychological death. And that would include anything that threatens the security of the personality we have built up, such as taboo areas. Things we feel we are not ‘allowed’ to be.

In the same way that the Underworld is deep below the earth, so is our personal Underworld deep within – and it is not just personal, it is collective. The Underworld is what we encounter when it is time to change, and it is life itself that brings that about. It is fundamental to life that it keeps changing, unfolding, moving on to the next stage. We see that in the natural world, and it is the same for human consciousness. When we resist it, illness often results.

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So another word for the Underworld, in a way, is life. The life force deep within that is beyond our personal planning and control, and that does not belong to us, we belong to it, and it is in this sense that the Underworld is collective.

I think that the discovery of Pluto has changed the metaphysics of astrology, which is itself a part of the Western Esoteric Tradition that can be traced back to the Hellenistic culture of late antiquity, with its mixture of Greek philosophy and indigenous religious traditions. Here we find Platonism, which “focused on the attainment of a salvational gnosis (‘knowledge’) by which the human soul could be liberated from its material entanglement and regain its unity with the divine Mind.” (Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Actually, what's starting to look like a better read is The Elixir and the Stone by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. It's a history of the western magical tradition, learned yet readable.)

There you have it: ‘liberation from material entanglement.’ The worldview implied by Pluto is the opposite of this. Pluto takes us deep within to a place where the body and all aspects of the psyche are sacred. Where the psyche and the body are both the expression of the same life-force, which is the same force that powers the universe.

Our task is not to free ourselves from material entanglement – with all the renunciation and suppression of desire that go with that – but to honour the life that flows through us and to experience the beauty and the sweetness of life. The Underworld is not just a dark place: it contains, for example, the Elysian fields, but more on that later.

Pluto and his Underworld are there to return us, after 1000 years of a relegation, even demonization, of the body and materiality, whether through mainstream or esoteric religion, to a more balanced, natural humanity.

Indigenous spirituality doesn’t have this renunciative flavour at all, wherever you look. And that says to me that this deeper experience of life through the body and nature is what is natural to people, and that the ideal of freedom from material entanglement is a corruption.

And this is exactly where Pluto takes us. The Underworld is a place of authenticity, of wholeness, where we are asked to acknowledge and honour the whole of ourselves. Maybe collectively as astrologers we have not asked ourselves rigorously enough what our philosophy is. Are we fully a part of the western esoteric tradition, or do we need to reject a central plank of that tradition? In a way Pluto makes astrology ‘shamanic’: a religion of ‘this world’ inhabited by spirits, by gods such as Pluto and Mercury for whom we are the mediators.