Venus-Pluto

Venus-Pluto draws together the beauty, love, art and pleasure of Venus with the depths, instinctual power, obsessive drive, and hidden mystery of Pluto.

Ways in which this combination may show up include, but are not limited to, love (Venus) as drama and obsession (Pluto), the ability to love (Venus) through shadows and ugliness (Pluto), and the deep hidden mysteries (Pluto) of love (Venus) that can transform (Pluto) one and deepen (Pluto) one’s heart (Venus), allowing for unconditional love.

 

Below are examples of famous people born with this combination in their natal charts (natal chart is another word for astrological birth chart, or pictographic representation of the sky when they were born). When we witness how this combination shows up in the lives of others, we can become more self-aware of how this combination shows up in our own lives. The more we are conscious of the ways astrological alignments (otherwise known as “aspects”) show up in our lives, the more the archetypal tensions involved can become integrated in our lives, thus revealing inherent strengths to us.

Please note that the tension of this archetypal combination, as illustrated in the lives and creations of the famous people in the examples below, may be demonstrated in ways that are more integrated or less integrated.

  • The combining of Venusian themes of love and money with Plutonic themes of taboos, drama, and transformation is witnessed in the chart and career of actress Julia Roberts, whose movies include titles such as Sleeping With the Enemy, I Love Trouble, Runaway Bride, and Money Monster. In the film Pretty Woman Roberts reflects this combination by portraying a prostitute who falls in love. Perhaps the most salient example lies in the movie Eat, Pray, Love in which Roberts plays an author who finds personal transformation (Pluto) through a path of pleasure and love (Venus).

 

“Hey, little girl, is your daddy home?
Did he go and leave you all alone?
I got a bad desire
Oh-oh-oh, I'm on fire

Tell me now, baby, is he good to you?
And can he do to you the things that I do? Oh, no
I can take you higher
Oh-oh-oh, I'm on fire

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull
And cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
Oh-oh-oh, I'm on fire
Oh-oh-oh, I'm on fire
Oh-oh-oh, I'm on fire”

-Bruce Springsteen (born with Venus/Pluto), “I’m On Fire”

  • The Venus-Pluto combination often reflects a need for love (Venus) to be the avenue through which we experience the true profound depths of life (Pluto). This combination wants to move toward deep (Pluto) love (Venus) that is unconditional. Though it must often pass through drama (Pluto) and power struggles (Pluto) in love (Venus) in order to reach such depth. The mixture of love (Venus) with drama (Pluto), and love (Venus) with depth and darkness (Pluto), in the Venus-Pluto combination in the chart of the musician Kimbra, can be seen in her song “Cameo Lover,” with lyrics such as:

“You stay inside that bubble with all of your trouble

In your black hole

You turn from the skies,

you dance with your demise”

and:

“I've got high hopes baby,

but all you do is take me

Down to depths that I never knew

You've got two arms baby,

they're all tangled in ladies

As the black sky’s posing blue”

  • The passion and intensity of the Venus-Pluto combination in the chart of singer/song writer Beth Gibbons of the band Portishead can be seen in the following lyrics of the song, “All Mine,” which move from the following lyrics:

“All the stars may shine bright
All the clouds may be white
But when you smile
Oh, how I feel so good
That I can hardly wait
To hold you
Enfold you…”

To progress to the following:

“…Never enough
Render your heart to me

All mine
You have to be

From that cloud number nine
Danger starts the sharp incline
And such sad regrets
Oh, as those starry skies
As they swiftly fall

Make no mistake
You shan't escape
Tethered and tied
There's nowhere to hide from me.”

The music video of “All Mine” can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egzrbZspoCY

  • The challenging side of the Venus-Pluto combination, as seen in the natal chart of actor Bella Thorne, and the natal chart of singer Carly Simon, is reflected in the following examples. In the movie “You Get Me,” Bella Thorne portrays a character who becomes obsessed (Pluto) with a love interest (Venus): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1B8WvlHWXc. In Carly Simon’s song, “You’re So Vain,” she highlights the sexual (Venus) intrigue (Pluto) associated with this combination, with the lyrics:

“Well you're where you should be all the time

And when you're not, you're with some underworld spy

Or the wife of a close friend, wife of a close friend”

  • We can see the Venus-Pluto combination in the natal chart of author T.H. White reflected as animals (Pluto) channeling power (Pluto) and love (Venus) in the following passage from White’s famous novel, The Once and Future King, in which “Wart” (soon to be known as “King Arthur”) pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone:

“There was a kind of rushing noise, and a long chord played along with it. All round the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall and all together, like the Punch and Judy ghosts of remembered days, and there were badgers and nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes and dogs and dainty unicorns and solitary wasps and corkin-drills and hedgehogs and griffins and the thousand other animals he had met. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky and the fields about—but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.” -p. 204

  • The Venus-Pluto combination in the birth chart of musician P.J. Harvey can be seen in her song Meet Ze Monster, in which she sings about her lover (Venus) as being elemental forces of nature (Pluto) such as a big black monsoon. This theme of love (Venus) as a powerful force of nature (Pluto) appears in other songs of hers, such as “Fountain,” which contains the following lyrics:

“Along comes the wind, a big bone shaker
Blows off my clothes, completely naked
What to do when everything's left you?”