Psyche in the Underworld: Asteroid Psyche Conjunct Pluto
When we tell mythological stories, we always speak in the past tense, as if the story is something that already happened. We know that myths aren’t true. They aren’t describing events from the past, but we’re used to hearing stories about things that happened before, so when we tell mythological stories, we place them in before, too.
There is a sense in which this is necessary. If you’ve ever read a story written in the present tense, you know how wrong it feels. We seem to be equipped with a visceral sense that it’s impossible to live an event and tell the tale about it at the same time.
But the comfort we feel with the past tense telling of myths hides an uncomfortable truth: Myths are not stories from before. They exist outside of time in the “always now,” or the Timeless Country, as I call it in my book The Gods of Time Are Dead.
We are creatures of time. We can understand the concept of no-time, but we can’t experience a timeless way of being any more than a 2D doodle creature is capable of experiencing a sphere. The closest we can get to understanding timelessness is a cycle, events that play over and over like an endlessly repeating playlist. Play the cycle fast enough, and the events kind of blur together, but everything still happens in a sequence, so we never really escape chronological time.
That endless playlist of mythological stories is one of the things that astrology models through the movements of the planets. As Venus, the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna goes to the underworld and returns endlessly. The sun of the Egyptians is born and dies and reborn again. The Greek goddess Persephone cycles between her lives as the Maiden Goddess of Flowers and the Queen of the Dead.
Psyche’s Descent Into the Underworld
One of the cyclical stories you can watch unfolding in the sky is the myth of Cupid and Psyche. There are asteroids for both of the lead characters, and we can watch them dance. Separating and returning. Bonding, betrayal, redemption. Repeat. I talk in depth about the astrology of Cupid and Psyche in my course on their asteroids.
As I am writing this, asteroid Psyche is about to (re)enact one of the pivotal moments of her story. In astrological terms, she is meeting with Pluto the Lord of the Underworld, and she is beginning the infamous descent into the land of the dead.
She has been separated from her lover Cupid, and she is doing all of these dangerous and seemingly pointless tasks for his mother Venus, trying to win him back. She’s been given a task that has to be the last because there can’t be anything more impossible: She has been ordered to go to the underworld to retrieve beauty ointment from the Queen of the Underworld herself. No one goes to the underworld and returns (except all the gods and heroes who break the rules “just this once”), so this will definitely be the end of Psyche.
Going to the underworld and returning successfully requires following a particular set of rules. Psyche’s task requires her to have a single-minded focus on her mission. She encounters a bunch of people along the way who need her help, and she cannot help them. She needs to be ruthlessly selfish, or she will fail.
Pluto as the Face of Evil
One of Pluto’s functions is to represent the face of evil for a particular time. As Pluto cycles through the signs, it shows us different ways the human soul can become corrupted. As I write this, Psyche is beginning her descent to the underworld just as Pluto is moving into Aquarius, showing us a new face of evil.
Asteroid Psyche Conjunct Pluto Dates
March 19, 2024 - 1 Aquarius 39’
April 17, 2029 - 10 Aquarius 19’
September 5, 2029 - 8 Aquarius 29’ (Retrograde)
October 6, 2029 - 8 Aquarius 05’
May 29, 2034 - 18 Aquarius 08’
July 24, 2034 - 17 Aquarius 28’ (Retrograde)
November 13, 2034 - 16 Aquarius 00’
December 5, 2039 - 23 Aquarius 34’
December 22, 2044 - 00 Pisces 46’
Since Pluto went into Capricorn in 2008, we have been getting a crash course in the evils of individual ambition at the expense of society. We have experienced the mortgage crisis and financial crash of 2008, the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, the childish temper tantrums of billionaires and a defeated American president, and strongman-driven invasions with sickening civilian casualty counts.
By this time, we should know that greed is not good, and individuals who put their own desires before the needs of others create (and usually become) monsters.
And yet, there is evil at the other end of the spectrum, too. The masses can swallow the rights and needs of the individual in reigns of terror, red scares, and Kafka-esque nightmares. Each sign is a reaction to the excesses of the previous sign. This face of the evil of the masses is what we are beginning to see with Pluto in Aquarius. This is the territory we will be traveling through for the next 20 years, and this is the underworld that Psyche will be traveling to whenever she meets with Pluto.
It feels significant to me that it is in the first few moments of this new Pluto in Aquarius chapter that “just a girl” Psyche goes down to the underworld on her selfish quest, deaf to the cries of the masses. Psyche descends on the very last day of winter in the northern hemisphere, and she will begin her return from the underworld accompanied by Persephone, the two of them bringing spring along with them.
Pluto Conjunct Psyche: Hero or Villain?
In an article for The Living Hearth, I talked about Aries season as the season of the hero. The hero’s quest is fundamentally selfish, but their selfishness is redeemed by the gift they bring back from the underworld for the community.
Heroes and villains are shadows of each other. Both act selfishly, usually because they feel they must. The only difference between them is that the hero ultimately brings life, and the villain brings death.
We cannot live life and tell the story of it at the same time. We live in the present and only understand the role we play in our life stories when those stories are past, when we reach the unknowable future, and it is revealed what our descent to the underworld has done.
This is the real (hidden) reason why it takes so much courage to be a hero: You have to face your shadow, confront the truth of your motives, and descend to the underworld without knowing what you will find there or if you will be able to look yourself in the mirror when you return.
It’s so much easier to stay home and never risk anything at all.
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