In astrology Moon conjunct or opposite Pluto (or sometimes quincunx Pluto) can reflect deep emotional traumatization in early childhood, often because of a possessive and manipulative mother or some other female figure who controlled the whole family with an iron hand. Or if not the whole family, then at least the child having Moon-Pluto in her or his astrological chart. Often the mother invaded the child’s life, controlled the child giving the child no space, no privacy and no place to hide. And no opportunity to be herself or himself.

Nobody can be so mean than a mother to her child when the mother wants to be mean; and nobody can be as crushingly contemptuous as a farther towards his child when the father happens to be in that mood. – Markku Lahtela (Moon conjunct Pluto in dwads)

Listening to Moon-Plutonians or reading descriptions in literature you soon notice the general atmosphere in their families: an either devouring or suffocating emotional climate, often deeply distressing and gloomy. Sometimes there was, especially if also Saturn and Uranus are aspecting family indicators, coldness or an almost complete lack of feeling. Usually the parents used emotions to control and to manipulate or to blackmail the child. And unfortunately sometimes taught the child to use the same means. In many cases the parents led an isolated life, which made children even more vulnerable because there was no outside support.

Often there was a strange mixture of passionate possessiveness and icy coldness, most of it very subtle and happening somewhere behind the surface, which just made it impossible to become aware of who was doing what. And what it all meant. Especially in such cases the dwad-chart often shows better than the radix the true family climate, all the covert manipulation and intrusion. Often the family life of a Moon-Plutonian felt like living in a quagmire, always in danger of sinking somewhere into the depths, yet never knowing where the danger was hiding.

In these families love was often used very skilfully as a way to manipulate and to greate guilt feelings. Accordingly many Moon-Plutonians live most of their lives without any awareness of the true nature of their family lives. They just feel guilty and blame themselves for everything that happened in their childhood homes – until the pressure finally almost breaks them down. And then many of them finally realize that they were victims, not perpetrators. If such Moon-Plutonians are asked to describe how they see hell, they usually cook up something resembling their families. After getting out of her own family hell, Irene (Moon conjunct Pluto), even saw a dream in which she decided that if she ever wrote a biography, it would be called: I was born into hell.

LIFE IN FAMILY HELLS

Let each child have as much neurosis as the child can bear.

– W.H. Auden (Moon conjunct Pluto)

Anais Nin (Moon-Pluto conjunction in dwads) wrote, how “the irrationality” of her mother, was the terror of her childhood. Henry Miller later observed, how Anais almost never spoke of her childhood experiences or friends, it was like a gap in her. Many Moon-Plutonians experience the same, their childhood homes were so crazy that they could never make any sense of it all. Or to speak about it. A Moon-Plutonian I know (Moon-Pluto conjunction) says that the hardest thing was, that she never could tell anybody anything about what happened in her home. It was so irrational that if she talked about it, people thought that she made it all up. Or they began to treat her like she were crazy.

“All my life I have had a mental patient in my family”,

said Aira Samulin (Moon opposite Pluto), a Finnish dance teacher, in TV interview. Even without any diagnosed mental illness cases the life in a Moon-Plutonian’s home can be so absurd that children have a hard time in trying to get a realistic view of life. All they learn about family life is so weird that they don’t know how to adapt themselves to life outside their strange homes. Having never been loved as themselves, without manipulation and control, they just feel lonely and different.

“Conditional love is a terrible weapon parents use to destroy the sanity of their children”,

wrote Jouni Apajalahti, a Finnish clergyman with Moon opposite Pluto.

Mental violence has often been an everyday experience in their homes, but physical violence hasn’t been rare either. And in Moon-Pluto homes violence is seldom overt, it is masked as education, or even love.

Alice Miller tells how, for instance, Luther’s (Moon-Pluto conjunction) mother beat Luther severely even before he was treated this way by his father and his teacher. And Luther, like many other Moon-Plutonians, thought that he had somehow earned the beating.

Even when the violence is not dressed up as education, a child can’t understand how her or his parents could beat him up without any reason. Thus the child blames herself or himself for everything that happens.

And yet, as George Bernard Shaw (Moon-Pluto opposition in dwads) astutely observed: The injury to the child would be far less if the voluptuary said frankly: ‘

I beat you because I like beating you; and I shall do it whenever I can contrive an excuse for it.’

A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants,

wrote Alexander Pope (Moon conjunct Pluto in Cancer).

And a Finnish writer, Markku Lahtela (Moon conjunct Pluto) describes this commonwealth of malignants very well:

“At home people are murdered and driven to insanity, at home people are tormented until they become mad and aggravated to powerful rage, at home it is possible to drive a man through all the hells and brutality of human soul, to steamroller a man through homely nasty cracks and sadism … until a man becomes inviable for life”.

Life in the homes of Moon-Plutonians can be just as horrible as Markku Lahtela describes, yet surprisingly many Moon-Plutonians, often against all odds, survive. Even the early pain gradually loses its poignancy, although it may never be forgotten, for instance, Pirandello (Moon conjunct Pluto in Taurus) wrote as an adult how he still felt inside him the tears that poisoned his childhood. But Moon-Pluto also gives a lot of inner strength, admist all monstrosities in their lives Moon-Plutonians often manage to keep their inner core intact – and after getting out of their family hells they build a new and better balanced life for themselves. And thereafter many of them refuse to have anything to do with their families.

For instance, Will Durant writes how Arthur Schopenhauer (Moon quincunx Pluto) and his mother arranged to live apart, Schopenhauer visited his mother only as one guest among others, that way they could be as polite to each other as strangers, instead of hating each other like relatives. Then in some culminating quarrel, the mother pushed Schopenhauer down the stairs. Soon afterward Schopenhauer quitted Weimar; and though the mother lived twenty-four years more, Schopenhauer never saw her again. According to Durant Schopenhauer was “almost by this circumstance doomed to pessimism; a man who has not known a mother’s love – and worse, has known a mother’s hatred – has no cause to be infatuated with the world.”

Like Schopenhauer many Moon-Plutonians end up living most of their lives without any contact with their childhood families.

Seppo (Moon-Saturn opposite Pluto) sees sometimes his mother on the street, but “we never say ‘hello’ to each other”, he just says. And that’s all he usually says about his family. Many Moon-Plutonians, even after having lived for years apart from their families, still experience their parents’ death as a relief.

For instance, George Moore (Moon conjunct Pluto in Aries) in Confessions of a Young Man blatantly proclaims his sense of liberation and relief when his father died.

And Pentti Saarikoski (a Finnish writer with Moon-Pluto conjunction) writes about his father:

“Now that he is dead I may say, for the very last time, that he was a cruel man.”

Often Moon-Plutonians feel that the death of their parents was a kind of a turning-point giving them the full use of their own creative powers.

AFTER THE HELL

The daughter of a crazy man sees all the colors in the rainbow. – an unknown writer in a writing contest for family members of psychiatric patients

Even after getting out of their family hells some Moon-Plutonians can not live near their families, not even in the same city, they need more distance to feel safe and to live a meaningful life.

“Do you know that all my life I have kept away from my own parents, from my whole family, because I cannot remain in a state of half-baked understanding”, wrote Henri Ibsen (Moon conjunct Pluto).

In other words, an inner need for self-protection and distance still remains. Often they are forced to become outsiders going their own way, sometimes even hermits, simply because other people usually know very little about all those Plutonian depths they have gone through.

“Being an outsider is not a choice, it’s a fate”,

wrote Helena Anhava (a Finnish writer with Moon in Capricorn, probably opposite Pluto).

This long journey towards light and out of darkness teaches Moon-Plutonians a lot about life and human beings, some even grow up to be true seers. To live in peace with themselves they just have to understand why their family did what it did, why they themselves were unable to protect themselves, why going through all those depths was necessary. From their early years on many Moon-Plutonians have had an instinctive feeling that they have a special creative vocation waiting for them, perhaps something that necessitates a solitary life so that they can concentrate all their powers on their work.

“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life”, wrote Bette Davis (Moon conjunct Pluto.)

Even as loners most Moon-Plutonians find their own special ways of living emotionally full lives, some become true lovers and protectors of nature and animals, others use their intense emotional energies in passionate creative work, some become empathetic social workers or psychologists, others do parapsychological research work; they have many options. The main thing is having something they can devote their whole lives to. Then they, although perhaps still being outsiders in a social sense, know what life truly is and are also deeply connected with life.

“Hermits experience life more than others”, wrote Erno Paasilinna, a Finnish writer with Moon conjunct Pluto.

These ‘hermits’ have deep insights and a lot to give – and often a talent of describing their experiences artistically or using them, for instance, as psychologists or psychiatrists in order to help others who are still struggling in their own private hells. In so doing Moon-Plutonians are happy in knowing that they have turned their sufferings into a deeply meaningful and creative way of living. They may be solitary but not lonely, they have found their true tasks, which might never had happened without their family hells. Thus, could you call it a hell after all, if it taught you to understand life and human frailties, to see all the colors in the rainbow. And after forgiving your family and yourself to live in peace with yourself and with your past.

Perhaps we all have to grow up a little to forgive our parents for the rotten job they did of raising us. – Lois Rodden (Moon conjunct Pluto in Cancer) in Data News

NEPTUNIA

See also: Moon Pluto Aspects

Last updated on November 20, 2016 at 10:37 pm. Word Count: 1939