Jupiter-Pluto: Rising From The Underworld

Early yesterday morning, Spanish mountaineer Beatriz Flamini emerged from a dark cave in southern Spain where she has lived alone for the last 500 days, 70 meters underground. Her triumphant return to the surface has coincided with a Sun-Jupiter conjunction in a square aspect to a conjunction of Moon-Pluto. These powerful transits are vividly reflected in the nature of this event

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The dynamic alignments of Jupiter and Pluto are connected with journeys of ascent and descent. As the cosmic principle of elevation and grandeur, we can think of Jupiter as the archetypal mountaineer; the ascent vector, always seeking to climb higher and see beyond the distant horizon. Pluto, by contrast, pulls us downward, down into our innermost depths, and sometimes into the chasms of the Earth itself. Pluto demands that we undergo periodic descents in order that we may emerge renewed, and perhaps transformed by such experiences.

Between these archetypal polarities stands the Sun, whose daily rise and fall evokes both sides of the Jupiter-Pluto dynamic; like the archetypal hero who rises to meet the challenges of the day with its brilliant luminosity, whose inevitable fall once again plunges the world into darkness. The meeting of these three celestial bodies, in hard aspect alignment, has been heroically enacted by Flamini, the timing of her ascent in perfect harmony with the universal symphony.

Flamini is thought to have broken the record for the longest period of time that a person has spent alone in a cave. This titanic accomplishment suggests a Plutonic activation of the Jupiter archetype; it seems as though the powerful, driving forces that are connected with Pluto have, in Flamini’s case, intensified the Jupiterian impulse towards greatness and high achievement to an almost superhuman degree. At the same time, we might also interpret this in terms of Jupiter’s descent; it is as if the archetypal King has descended into the depths of the Earth and bestowed his glory on the Plutonic underworld.

The Moon’s presence in this alignment offers further insights into this remarkable feat, for the Moon is often interpreted as a symbol of the feminine principle, of the Great Mother Goddess, or of womanhood generally. As the Earth’s only natural satellite, I suggest that the Moon is an astrological proxy for the Earth, it shares the maternal connotations of our home planet and, like the mother-child relationship, a complete differentiation is not possible.

A Moon-Pluto conjunction can thus be interpreted as representing not only the descent of woman, but the descent into Mother Earth. During her time underground, Flamini was assailed by large swarms of flies and endured deprivations that most would find intolerable. She passed the time by drawing, knitting, reading and writing. While Moon-Pluto aspects can often signify emotional and domestic upheaval, they can also help us to feel deeply at home in the underworld, in Flamini’s words: “I was where I wanted to be, and so I dedicated myself to it.”