Pluto/Sun – How I Deal with Stress

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There’s a man outside my house using a chainsaw to trim a hedge. This has been going on intermittently for a couple of hours.

My property is part of a bigger property, neither of which are mine so I don’t really get a say in what happens around here. My landlord is a very good landlord… that’s one of the reasons I like living here.

He wants this place to look neat and tidy, because he’s trying to sell the place and therefore is concerned with how others perceive things.

Others who are not me. I like this place as it is. No need to dress it up for me.

I like that hedge the way it is, yes, it’s overgrown… that’s why I like it. It hides my house from the road, yes, that makes it difficult for people to find this place, to spot the turn off onto the lane… that’s why I like it. Sure it looks messy… I don’t care if it looks messy, that is just a surface appearance, and if you judge things by their surface appearance then you’re missing what lies beneath.

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Judge me by my appearance… and you’ll miss what is inside.

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On the surface, astrologically, I have Virgo rising… so you might assume that I am a neat freak. That not only do I have to look immaculate, but everything around me has to seem as though it is still in its original packaging. Pristine, untouched by human hands or nature or time or dust. Virginal. Sterile and perfect.

If that is your take on Virgo… then your interest in a subject such as astrology is a passing cursory glance, driving by a property and judging it by its hedge.

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Sometimes the surface is all you need to see. It tells you everything you need to know. It gives you a sense of safety and order, things are exactly as they appear to you to be.

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Surface appearances can also be distressing, and prompt us to jump to a conclusion in which we get stuck because we trust the surface to inform us even when what it is telling us is a sight we don’t want to see.

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Everything has a flip side. A good and a bad side. It usually has many shades in between those two, where good and bad overlap and are hard to tell apart.

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That’s why I like astrology. When you delve into it, it shows you both the good and the bad and everything in between. I particularly love the places where things overlap.

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When I was researching the overlap of Pluto and the Sun, I came across an intriguing interpretation of how the two entities interact – Pluto Aspects – Who are you kidding? – the very first words of it – “According to astrologer, Liz Greene, the pretense that Sun-Pluto women will adopt to cover up another, more powerful personality is rather fascinating.” – caught my attention and sucked me in to read the rest of it.

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In my natal chart Pluto in Virgo in the 1st house, trines my Sun in Capricorn in the 5th house. And by transit, Pluto in Capricorn is close to a conjunction with my Sun.

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When I first heard the chainsaw outside my house, I experienced a surge of stress… not dissimilar to the surge of power which is required to turn a chainsaw on. I went to the window, looked out to see what was happening, who was invading my territory, my boundaries of peace and quiet, damaging my calm.

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My reaction to the stress was primal. In a flash of an image in my mind’s eye, I saw myself going outside, ripping the chainsaw out of the gardener’s hands and trimming his head off with it.

That’s that. Problem solved. My world would be neat and tidy again.

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The man caught me looking at him.

People always know when you’re looking at them… the sense of being stared at.

He smiled and said ‘Hello!’.

I smiled back.

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Was I  adopting a pretense, covering up a more powerful personality under the facade of a smile?

Is this being deceptive?

Should I have let him know that I had just decapitated him and that the smile on my face was perhaps not me returning his greeting but… something else?

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Well…

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For all I know he had a similar reaction when he caught me staring at him. Maybe he likes to work unobserved. My eyes intruded and maybe he imagined gouging them out with one of the other tools he had in his gardener’s arsenal… and that was what was behind his smile and his ‘Hello!’

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You just never know… others.

You can however get to know yourself beneath the surface.

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Sometimes the surface appearance is the place where we keep our feet firmly on the ground. It is neat and tidy because it needs to be.

What lies beneath is chaotic… and needs its flip side to balance it out.

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I would never decapitate him. Or anyone else. As far as I know… up to date.

I knew I was just experiencing my usual reaction to stress. It would pass. And pass quickly. Or pass slowly… either way.

I know myself… well… well enough.

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