Density relates to what? Gravity, pull relates to mass.
Is Pluto less important because it’s a little ice ball? Is Jupiter’s influence more important because it’s a giant wad of gas? Anyone who has ever been hit with the cold hard ice balls of final truth Pluto dredges up will attest otherwise. Pluto does not represent the fires of what we usually think of as hell (though it’s easy to see how this can be misinterpreted). Pluto represents the cold finality of the underworld, the realm of the dead. And, although we associate a great deal of suffering with Pluto, it is mostly the suffering of a final tearing away—a final ripping apart (usually involuntarily) from some aspect of life itself. In all things Plutonian, there is a little death, cold, hard and sometimes brutal. And after the death, there is a gradual rebirth in its wake.
But it is the coldness of the Plutonian energy that is its primary characteristic. When Pluto is prominent by transit or progression, a frequent characteristic is a general feeling of deadness, of an inability to engage, a cutting off from usual participation and interests. This stage usually occurs when Pluto is well into exactitude, but can come earlier or later in the cycle. It isn’t the heaviness and sadness of Saturn, nor the emptiness and longing of Neptune, nor the abject detachment of Uranus. At its worst, the ‘living death’ phase of Pluto can cause complete withdrawal from life. We are, in fact, in the land of the dead. Pluto is usually at its worst when in aspect to the two ‘lights’—the Sun and the Moon. In aspect to the Sun, it deadens the life force itself, banking it down to the smallest embers of survival, and threatening our reasons to survive in the world. With the Moon, Pluto can cause loss of all feelings that connect us tomaterial existence, including all of our attachments to family, friends, and anything we call ‘home’, including the ‘home’ deep inside ourselves.
But how do we get here? How do we arrive at this frigid plane?
There is news this week that Pluto’s moon, Charon, has been elevated to the status of planet. While this may seem initially confusing, (how can a moon be a planet?) it is the one astronomical decision made this week by the (whatever) that I can unequivocally applaud.
While Charon may be a moon in that it circles Pluto in orbit, it is unlike our own Moon in a primary characteristic. Our Moon’s gravitational pull is centered in the earth itself. Our Moon is a satellite Moon, dependent on the Earth to anchor it in its journey. Charon
The river of which many know its name, without knowing its origin or what it really stood for. A river that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. Styx it is said winds around Hades (hell or the underworld are other names) nine times. Its name comes from the Greek word stugein which means hate, Styx, the river of hate. This river was so respected by the gods of Greek mythology that they would take life binding oaths just by mentioning its name, as referenced in the story of Bacchus-Ariadne, where Jove “confirms it with the irrevocable oath, attesting the river Styx.”
There are five rivers that separate Hades from the world of the living, they are:
1. Acheron – the river of woe;
2. Cocytus – the river of lamentation;
3. Phlegethon – the river of fire;
4. Lethe – the river of forgetfulness;
5. Styx – the river of hate.
It is thought that Charon, the old ferry man who ferries the dead onto the underworld, crosses the river Styx where the dragon tailed dog Cerberus guards, allowing all souls to enter but none to leave. This is a misconception, Charon crosses the river Acheron where also Cerebus stands his eternal guard. Also while on this subject, Charon only takes the souls across that are buried properly with a coin (called an obol) that was placed in their mouths upon burial.
If a god gave his oath upon the river Styx and failed to keep his word, Zeus forced that god to drink from the river itself. The water is said to be so foul that the god would lose his/her voice for nine years. The river is not the subject of any story itself but is mentioned in several. These little pieces give a wonderful view of not only the river but the ancient Greeks view of the underworld. From its Adamantine gates to its separate levels of Tartarus and Erebus onto the Elysian fields.
DSB
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