Pluto Squares, Pain & Dreams

TarotAstro

Mar 31

Written By BB Soto

I've been out of touch for the past couple of weeks and recent events sent me on an introspective journey weaving together a tapestry of astrology, mythology, and the enduring tales of folklore with themes of dreams and the underworld.

Unexpected Turn of Events

On March 31, around 2:15 PM, I experienced a sudden, excruciating electric jolt in the middle of my back as I bent down to wipe the sink at work. Somehow, I managed to crawl into my car, and with my mother's help, I made it home and to bed, fully aware that once I lay down, getting up again would not be an option for quite some time.

This isn't my first rodeo with debilitating back pain, but it is the first time my lack of mobility frightened me enough to brave the ER. The pain was so intense that even the slightest movement triggered surges of electricity more powerful than the initial shock, shooting through my entire body. I couldn't stand up from a sitting position or sit back down without screaming, as if I was being lit on fire. For the first few days, moving anywhere required borrowing my mom's walker, and merely being touched would bring me to tears. What truly terrified me was my inability to lift my right foot off the ground. Although I didn’t lose sensation in the leg, I lost the ability to move it independently.

As with most challenging situations, I found the only possible respite in sleep—my lifelong coping mechanism. Sleep has always been a refuge for me from stress, pain, illness, and even boredom. In sleep, I am free from the grips of chronic pain, my mind liberated to wander—unencumbered by the continual weight of anxiety, perfectionism, self-doubt, and overthinking.

As Above, So Below

Around the fourth day of sleeping 15-16 hours a day, I woke up considering the possible cosmic influences on this latest life disruption. The fog of living half awake and half in a dream state felt very Piscean and Plutonian—Pisces, with its dual fish swimming in reality and dreams, and Pluto, the god of the underworld, ruling over our subconscious and dreams.

I woke up remembering that Pluto had recently shifted signs, and since everything else was hanging out in Pisces last month I went to remind myself if that was where this disruptor was indeed residing now. I was wrong, though. Pluto recently moved into Aquarius, but, when I checked the transit, it turns out that Pluto on March 31, 2025 at 2:15 was creating an almost perfect square with my natal Pluto. Leading to a significant, albeit painful, personal impact. So I wasn't all wrong. Pluto was absolutely involved in creating the upheaval and disruption that led me to spend another span of time in his domain of the dreamworld.

According to AstroGold—the software I use for running charts—a Pluto square Pluto transit is:

One of life's challenging transits during which you are forced to reassess your past and discard any outmoded patterns which have been standing in your way...Pluto's energy can sometimes be ruthless and so you may feel some pain in the process of letting go and stepping out of your comfort zone. However, the process is regenerating and you will feel better able to tackle the rest of your life with the renewed vigor that comes from a lighter load.

There were a few other fun (and by fun I mean also painful) transits in there, but I think the Pluto one is enough to look at for now.

To check your transits, you'll need to create a bi-wheel chart. While I use AstroGold for this, there are also free options available. My top recommendation is astro-seek.com, although many people also use astro.com.

By examining the chart, you'll see how the planets relate to one another. For instance, if you look at the chart above I've highlighted where Pluto is squaring my natal Pluto.

You can generate your own transit chart to observe which planetary movements in the sky are interacting with your natal placements. This might provide valuable insights into your current situation. The websites I mentioned typically offer basic interpretations of transit aspects. If you need further assistance, feel free to reach out to me to schedule a reading where we can explore your chart in greater detail together.

The Folkloric Lens: Dreaming with Sleeping Beauty

This introspection about recent life events that had me sleeping a lot again + Pluto's role as ruler of dreams and the underworld + so much Pisces activity recently aligned with my ongoing exploration of folklore, particularly tales with Sleeping Maidens. These stories—the literary and folkloric versions, not the animated Disney versions—contain themes of enchanted sleep that either mimic death or are supposed to be death—a motif I find relatable as someone who spends a significant amount of time asleep.

In folklore studies, there are two types of stories that involve Sleeping Maidens—the tales that we know today as relating to Sleeping Beauty and the ones that are Snow White tales. Both involve enchanted sleep, but there's a difference in who administers the sleep:

In Snow White tales the sleep comes after several murder attempts by the girl's step-mother (or mother in earlier versions)

In Sleeping Beauty the curse was originally her death prophesized by astrologers and involved a splinter of flax, not a spindle.

It isn't until the Grimm's and Perrault versions of the tales we get a scorned fairy who delivers a curse of death that is then softened by another fairy who makes it so the princess will go to sleep rather than die.

Snow White's tale involves themes of the threat coming from an external source, that could technically be avoided if Snow White would stop answering the door for her step-mother who keeps coming in disguise with ruses to kill her. Whereas Sleeping Beauty's, especially before the fairies get involved, is a fore-determined destiny that her enchanted sleep prevents her from dying, though it does cause a major disruption to her life.

There are various theories for the symbolism and metaphorical interpretations around Sleeping Beauty and one of these intersects with myths like Persephone's, both involving maidens taken into an underworld—Persephone against her will into Hades, the actual underworld, and Sleeping Beauty spends near 100 years (in at least one version of the tale) in Pluto's domain of dreams.

These narratives resonate with me, mirroring my own cycles of sleep and awakening in life—sleep being both a savior and disruption in my life.

Tarot Insights: The 9 of Swords

The tarot card that I believe embodies themes of sleep, the underworld, terror, anguish, and pain is the 9 of Swords. I’ve always viewed it as the "nightmare card," revealing the moments when we are plagued and haunted by our deepest fears and anxieties. The ones that keep us up at night.

However, this time, I perceived it differently.

Consider Sleeping Beauty: we don't know if she was dreaming, and if so, whether it was a happy dream or a nightmare. Was her enchanted sleep a form of salvation or a curse that ruined her life? Similarly, with this person depicted in the 9 of Swords, we don’t know if they're trapped in a nightmare or on the verge of waking up. Are they tormented by their thoughts, or are they awakening to the realization that their fears are just that—fears—and ready to be relinquished?

One notable aspect of this card is that all nine swords interlock, with their ends cut off. Representing the air element and the realm of the mind, the swords as thoughts can be interpreted as a woven tapestry of the fears, and the tips cut off at the end indicate to me that there is that they are unfinished, or un integrated. They're also pointing to the right indicating a forward, future-oriented movement, meaning this isn't where the journey with these thoughts ends. These swords are situated in a space that is black and dark—which puts us somewhere deep in the subconscious with them.

The bed resembles a tomb-like effigy, akin to what we see in the Four of Swords:

Which signifies a metaphorical death after a battle as a reminder to lay down your swords (or mental activity), and take a rest.

This card also looks a great deal like an illustration by Pamela Colman Smith (the artist of the tarot) for "The Lady of the Scarlet Shoes" by Alix Egerton published in The Broad Sheet in 1902 (seven years before the tarot deck was published). The poem tells of a woman marrying a king while wearing red shoes stained by her lover's blood, whom the king killed to win her. The visual of the woman's "marble form is white as snow, her shoes are poppy red" evokes the imagery used to describe Snow White, and the effigy evokes her glass coffin she was placed in when thought dead by the dwarves.

The woman in this poem found her respite from being married to the man who killed her lover, only in death. And she took the slippers stained with her lover's blood with her to the grave.

The tomb-like "bed" in the 9 of Swords symbolizes a dream or death state, and what intrigues me most about this card is the quilt. It serves as the sole splash of color amidst the otherwise muted tones, adorned with the same red roses on yellow squares that are seen in the Magician and Strength cards, along with zodiac signs in blue.

Being beneath the roses places this figure "sub rosa," indicating they are in the know, privy to secrets. Meanwhile, being under the zodiac symbols connects them to the constellations of the night sky, aligning them with the stars and the gods and goddesses who inspire the stories of these constellations, placing them in an otherworldly realm rather than an underworldly one.

In sequence, if you arrange the cards from 8 to 10, you'll see a figure "bound and imprisoned" by the swords of their own thoughts—a prison easily escaped with a simple shake of the head and body to shed these loose binds and by stepping outside the circle of swords. Is this the person in the dream state, feeling as if they're trapped in the underworld?

Perhaps the figure in the 9 of Swords has awoken from this self-imposed prison. Although they remain under threat from terrifying thoughts, fears, traumas, memories, and dreams, they shield their face as the swords transition into the 10 of Swords. Here, the swords finally land, leaving the figure beaten and battered, yet not dead. This is indicated by the gesture of peace they make with their hand—the same gesture seen in the Hierophant card and many medieval representations of Jesus Christ.

The Woven Tapestry

Through this ordeal, the cosmos, mythology, folklore, and tarot weave a story of symbolism to illuminate a journey through pain and dreams. These elements remind us that the stories of the past are not relics but active conversations across time. As we navigate life's challenges, we are not alone; we are part of a continuum that ties us to our ancestors and their tales of transformation and resilience.

And when reading your own astrology chart or tarot readings, your life experiences and what you see in the cards is as important as what was intended by the artist to be their meanings. Your intuitive interpretation is your inner mystic speaking to you from the depths of your connection to the collective unconscious.

Thank you for journeying with me through these reflections. Let us continue to explore the depths of our dreams and the wisdom they bring, as we chart our paths under the stars.

Until next time...