Pluto and Jupiter Conjunction
If you’ve ever been in therapy or have attended self-development workshops you may have come across the following story by Jalaluddin Rumi, a teacher who spent most of his life in thirteenth-century, Anatolia.
Chickpea to Cook
Rumi – Translated by Coleman Barks
A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it’s being boiled.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
‘Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you.
I’m giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.
Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this.’
Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.
Eventually, the chickpea will say to the cook,
‘Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can’t do this by myself.
I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention
to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love your cooking.’
The cook says,
‘I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.
My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.’
The first time I was given a copy of this story and told to meditate on it, I couldn’t get past the kitchen imagery but eventually - and with a little help from Pluto - I came to realize the deeper meaning of this marvelous story.
Considering the times we’re living in, most of us are feeling like the cook is knocking us back down into the pot. In astrology, the cook is Pluto (planet of destruction, elimination, and transformation).
Caroline W. Casey writes that Pluto works in phases. Phase one is disruption of the outer world. Phase two is the not-knowing state and phase three “is the surge of authenticity that occurs as the soul rededicates itself to its remembered mission”.
Let’s break it down:
The world has been irrevocably changed by an invisible enemy (very Plutonian) that was carried by bats (Pluto rules caves and hidden places) and we’re all living with uncertainty (another Plutonian theme). Now we’re in phase three: An opening. An invitation to find deeper meaning and to be reborn like the phoenix.
In the last week, I have had many conversations with friends who feel ready to pursue their “soul’s mission”. I have also had conversations around the issue of “letting go”- not of people but of ideas around resources and beliefs.
Pluto is asking you to question everything:
Do you actually need all those things you think you’ve lost?
Do you need all those clothes/cosmetics/props for example?
The world has changed. Holding onto props like career and clothes and soon-to-be-redundant ideas of power and wealth will not serve you in the emerging New World. Plutonian energy is both efficient and extreme.
We are the chickpeas. We are all being cooked.
Rumi again: “As the hard shell of the walnut has to be broken in order to free the sweet kernel which in turn will be crushed to release the fragrant oil which is the innermost heart of the nut, so the human has to be stripped of the hard shell of his lower or conditioned qualities in order to develop the deeper and nobler ones.”
Ask yourself: What does the best version of myself look like? What am I doing? And, how am I doing it?
The brothers, Pluto and Jupiter are in conjunction all through 2020 (the aspect perfected on 4th April and will do so twice more on June 29th and November 12th). Together they invite a deeper understanding of self and true wealth.
What have you discovered about yourself?
What can you live without?
What are you prepared to sacrifice?
How is your life more abundant now?
Remember abundance invokes abundance. Gratitude invokes gratitude.
xo
Yolanda