There is this childlike belief about ghosts, both literal and metaphorical, the things that haunt us, that if we don't look, they aren't real; if we don't see them, they don't see us.
"If I don't think about death, it won't happen to me."
Pluto urges us to accept these dark aspects of life.
Like this story I once heard: A man in a train is asked to show his ticket. He searches all pockets except one and says "I can't find it!" So the train conductor says "But you haven't looked into this one pocket yet!" And the man responds "Please! Don't talk about that pocket! It's my last chance! If I look there and the ticket is not in it, I am absolutely lost, then the ticket is nowhere to be found!"Just like that, we often avoid a part within us, make it a taboo, do not dare to look.
We fear that, deep inside, we are empty, ugly, shameful, worthless.
So we keep this one pocket inside that we never dare look at - our last resort.
It gives us a last sense of power and control - if we don't face this part of us, this memory, this fantasy, idea, thought, secret obsession, traumatic experience - we can go on pretending we're doing fine. If we don't look inside the pocket, we won't have to face its potential emptiness or shameful contents.
To honor Pluto, always look inside the darkness until your eyes adjust.
Don't be afraid to check every single pocket. Look a ghost in the face.
It's the same with horror movies, isn't it? They're a really good plutonian metaphor: Everybody is terrified of the ghost, they run from it, fight it, hide from it, try to ban it. But what would happen if somebody simply stood there, faced the ghost, talked to it?
I once read this quote "Maybe the devil doesn't know that he is the devil."
Pluto wants us to take a good look at everything and everybody that we demonize and taboo.
In the movie The Others, a family thinks they're haunted by ghosts. At the end, (SPOILER!!!), they realize they are dead and they were the ones haunting the new family that had moved into their house. Do ghosts know they're the ghosts? Or are they just defending what they think is their territory?
With Pluto, too, it's always "the others" - rejecting bad traits from us and projecting them onto others. Things only turn dark when they are forced into darkness. In the light of visibility and acceptance, they transform.
Isn't it really fitting that Pluto itself was banned? That the title "planet" was taken away from it, and it was pushed away, not accepted.
It also reminds me of the fairytale of sleeping beauty.
To celebrate the birth of his beautiful daughter, the king invites the wisest women in the kingdom to eat with them.
But there's only space for twelve guests at the table, so the thirteenth fairy is disinvited.
That is why,out of spite and vengeance for being outcasted, she lays a grudge on the princess and makes her fall into an eternal sleep by the time she turns fifteen.
In the Disney movie Maleficent, the fairy revokes the curse, because innocent Aurora sees the good in her, calls her fairy godmother instead of evil witch.
Demonizing others is often a projection of something within ourselves.
Because Aurora was so pure, she saw the purity within Maleficent.
Accepting darkness turns it into light.
(Darkness, by the way, doesn't actually exist - it's really just absence of light!)
Whenever you feel yourself judging somebody or something, you're probably fighting to not look at this part within yourself.
Don't reject anything from yourself, to keep them from developing into uglier, more evil forms.
Marina ✿
No comments:
Post a Comment