The Way Society Makes Us Perform Pluto

While Scorpio energy is synonymous with healing and purification, it is also associated with the enemy.

Call them narcissists, racists, and abusers. Call out your pains, past hurts and shadows. We tend to demonize BOTH, the external abuse and the sensations and memories of experienced abuses.

The Enemy

The enemy is what defies our safety and sanctity.

The enemy is the cause of suffering. The enemy is the oppressor and the unholy.

The enemy is filthy and disgusting.

The enemy is to blame. The enemy is to be punished.

The enemy narrative is ingrained within society, especially with cultures where the government framework is primarily influenced by Christianity.

Here in lies our indoctrination with the concept of good and evil. While the existence of good and evil may be a mere fact of life - Our media, politics, relationship etiquette and social behaviors are framed through a punishment paradigm. From the mythos of Santa Clause to the industrial prison complex, punishment is instilled within our psyche.

Pluto as the Demon

How can we not find the bad guys to be putrid, disgusting and demonic? In exchange, we are greatly rewarded with an upturned nose for our perfection, our ability to do ‘good’, to not be the one to blame. Horrendous acts of violence are easy to label as bad and often times require some form of punishment. While it may be simple to point out the perpetrator of violence, we are often playing the ‘hot potato’ blame game with ourselves.

What’s wrong with just being a good person?

This cultural and personal obsession with bad / good / stank / don’t stank are the psychological underpinnings of Scorpio & Pluto. What’s wrong with just being a good person? What is so inherently wrong about wanting to be good for the sake of being good?

It is moreso about how ‘good’ can be used as a way to justify violence.

The US government and it’s propaganda are very good at labeling demons. The war on drugs, the continuous perpetuation of the white agenda and the war on communism have all been tools to justify dropping bombs, countless international war crimes, incarcerating black and brown peoples, and indigenous genocide.    

Is it evil or outcast?

Because the enemy is associated with violence/death/evil, then being associated with the enemy is violent/deadly/evil. As social creatures, ostracization is also a factor that would affect survival. Therefore being associated with the enemy is to be avoided at all costs. It’s a physiological trait  that is directly linked with our survival. Political and social grooming influence our innate urgency to be good for the same reason. In both cases of the physiological and political/social, not fitting in is equal to death.

I would say that most consistent and most continuous abuse is perpetuated is in our minds. 🙃 The mind can be quite the mechanism for violence, especially with the ways that we are often shown to be violent and abusive from youth. (Thank you capitalism, the standard of white heteronormativity, and consumerism aka rape culture - Which all of these btw are different systems of survival ).

Pluto is a tall order (that you never asked for lol)

When we dive into the nuances of how we as a society are obsessed with pointing out monsters, it can bring up some existential questions about virtue and being a good person.

Since it is engrained in us to point out THE MONSTER, we are highly attuned to orienting ourselves with this frame of reference - for everything. And even if we are not actively pointing fingers, the subconscious mind has already labeled everything for you.

This Scorpio eclipse season, it will bring up pains and insecurities for us to sort out. But what I would like you to entertain is the capacity to explore blame. Inquire further than past hurts and reframe the simplistic method of labeling ‘good and bad’.

Neutrality as a tool for insight

This does not mean that we are less present to the urgency of the world and the drama happening politically. It does mean that when we identify abuse, we can engage with it from a state that is not triggered, leading to a more skillful approach. Removing disgust and demonization allows us to remain heart centered in challenging situations.

It is the ATTACHMENT to doing good and the desire to be RECOGNIZED as good that perpetuates the idea of the enemy. The non-attachment to doing good is a divorce from the paradigm of punishment and it requires the individual to not act in ways that are conditional or manipulative. This is hard work because it deeply defies our own instincts for survival. When we disengage from this childlike fear of being bad, it allows us to not identify with being worthless, it allows us to own our humanity without proving our humanity. This is probably called ego death 🙃

But what about the bad guys who are actually evil and violent?

This is a fact of life, there are people who commit horrific and immoral acts. Are we able to see the action as a result of a systemic failure? This is not a piece of writing about neutrality to heinous acts, it is about the attitude in which we relate to disgust and the rejected parts of society that to be ‘banished’. Trash does not simply disappear just because the garbage man takes it out, in the same way that the environment that created a criminal act does not go away by locking up the perpetrator.

To speak about Pluto is to acknowledge that we all have an inherent meter about our idea of good and bad. Although, the extent of how much we desire to punish others often is a display of how deep the internal meter for blame (and SELF-BLAME) goes for the individual.

When we talk about Pluto / Scorpio here are some keywords that you’ll come across:

• Addiction

• Obsession

• Sex

• Power struggles

• Manipulation

• Control

• Invulnerability

• Shadow

• Shame / Humiliation

Why do we Project?

Projection is synonymous with Pluto.

Since we have established that our brains are wired to quickly label based upon survival, it makes sense that the brain also compartmentalizes the bad and good. This is the nature of projection - The adherence to the good thing & the equal and opposite reaction to the bad thing. Projection will look either covert or overt, but still it is operating within a binary that wants to maintain the pleasurable and wishes to outsource/delete the unwanted.

Our projections of addiction, obsession, sex, power, manipulation, shadow and shame are based within how much we fear and reject these same qualities.

Have a wonderful Scorpio Eclipse season lol