The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with us in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalised into harmlessness. (Carl Jung)

I remember my first art history class at Uni and my professor opening with

The beauty of an artwork is never in its subject but in the (re)presentation of that subject

Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the differences between the art depicting uplifting, pleasant and pretty images and the art with ”ugly”, dark, even difficult to look at images. I even gave them names – art of lightness and art of darkness, respectively – based on my own responses to them.

There is an innocent and expansive quality to my appreciation of the art of lightness – it literally makes me feel lighter, my energy moving upward. I feel it awakens my Spirit.

But when I stand in front of an artwork of darkness I experience something far more powerful.

A deepening of an inner fullness, a downward awakening of something not mundainly accessible to me – my own capacity to hold a safe space for darkness.

This kind of art, I feel, awakens my Soul. In that moment it feels like the artwork is in communion with my Soul, their shared language – a dark mother tongue. And most remarkably, because it is art (a synonym for beauty to me) that awakened my Soul, I feel compassion and love for her far more easily.

I also often wondered about the different artistic values of the two. For a long time I thought I was a snob for rating art of darkness higher. Not realising this was never about Art but my preference for Soul over Spirit.

Years ago, a dear mentor said:

Everyone’s talking about Growth – but what about Depth?

My own preference was always for Depth which is where the Soul lives. And I always felt this resistance towards too much upward growth. I’d just topple! I thought. I was also weary (still am!) of becoming too light, too high-vibrational. Too insubstantial. And all from fear of losing my own Soul, my substance. To me this fear is real, it’s a knowing that the moment I meet with Spirit, the moment I become it, my Soul will be no more.

So what is it about the Soul that eclipses the Spirit for me? And how do Art and Astrology explain it?

My Soul’s promise is to keep me connected to the Earthly realm, our beautiful planet and my own beautiful body, an extension of Earth. Her mission is to keep me in the most enchanting experiences of all – the experience of being human.

But this beauty I speak of, isn’t pretty. Soul, isn’t pretty. She is Pluto, after all. Terrifying to meet. She is darkness incarnate. The darkness of (any) depth. Neither good nor bad, just darkness. She is a blend of archetypes unique to every individual. She is the life principle: the anima in my bones & desire in my veins.

Desires are separating by nature. Desire is the reason we keep incarnating i.e. keep separating from Spirit. And we do this to experience ourselves in the wholeness of our separateness, our Soul. Where there’s no desire there’s no Soul. When we exhaust all desires we return to Spirit (Source). Our Soul fully satiated ceases to exist – as separate from Spirit.

Sure, she is blissed out in this disappeared, disembodied merged state with Spirit. But I am not. You can say, I am too attached to her. Too identified with her. But of course I would be! The very concept of the personal identity is the concept of separation a.k.a. Soul. So, as attachments go, I say this one is healthy.

Our Soul is literally why we are who we are in (any) here and (any) now. The Spirit though is who we are after we die to our beautiful Earth bound Self. Or to put it more bluntly, Soul is Life, Spirit is Death.

And yet I also have a desire to live an inspired life. Which is another way of saying I want to live in Spirit (the Higher/Upward/Growth version of me). My only caveat? My Soul in all its wholesome darkness and separateness needs to be with me at all times.

Because for me, there is no finding Spirit without doing my Soul’s bidding.

And I found any art of the darker flavour to be the most dignified and refined method of awakening my Soul. Whether as a consumer or creator, this awakening is always available (to all of us). 

I studied History Of Art and as much as I loved it I found its value judgement model too dry. Soulless, you can say. But astrology helped me retell a more soulful story of art: Art as an esoteric story of Pisces and Pluto (Pluto is the esoteric ruler of Pisces).

I always felt resonance with Esoteric rulerships – they seem to ADD a significant component to the sign, complementing it in a meaningful way, instead of just being its extension, its synonym (as it’s the way of eXoteric astrology most of us work with).  

Pluto complements Pisces so beautifully. Between the two they hold the genesis of Human Story like bookends: we keep incarnating (Pluto) to live ALL of our desires (Pluto) getting closer to Source/Spirit (Pisces) with each incarnation and fewer desires. But also the beauty of this pairing is that Pisces – and all things Piscean e.g. ART – help us face, accept and love our Soul’s darkness (Pluto). 

And to me that is the ultimate power of Art: awakening ourselves to the beauty of our Soul in all its darkness.

To appreciate and make art is to beautify the art subject. And to beautify something is to enter into a loving relationship with it. When we paint, write, sing, play, dance, compose and act our Soul out we claim her Beauty and cannot but love her.

Astrologically speaking I found a correlation between the artists famous for the darkness of their art AND Pluto-Mars aspects in their chart. This is by no means the only astrological signature that lends itself well to making art of darkness but it stands out in the charts of some of my favourite artists AND in my own chart 🙂. You will find brief descriptions of some of these artists and their art at the end of this text.

When Mars is triggered by Pluto one is compelled to channel one’s own darkness, one’s Soul. It can do it destructively (e.g. crime, power abuses, etc) or constructively, art being one such avenue, especially if Pluto is in the 5th house of (obsessive) creative self-expression, like mine is. As I also have the Pluto-Mars aspect (square) I can vouch for this compulsion to channel inner darkness through art – in my case this is mainly through writing, visual art and dance. Much of it remains private as its purpose is personal catharsis. But whether it remains private or I share it publicly the consequence of this catharsis is always a deeper integration of my Soul into my current identity.

This integration however is made easier because of the role Pisces plays in the creative process – diffusing the terror of facing our Soul, softening any repulsion we have towards her, and ultimately catalysing us into deep enchantment with our Soul, our darkness and our shared humanness.

Because Pisces is the sum total of all archetypes within our shared i.e. collective unconscious. And so through art we get to feel connected to other Souls in the collective and not so alone anymore. This is another important function of art (and Pisces as the two are the same) – soothing an unshakable sense of innate aloneness of our incarnation.

Although Pluto & Pisces are the bloodline, the trajectory of our engagement with Art making, or Art loving, all other archetypes play an important role in our relationship with Art.

I could read your musings about the archetypes of your own Art practice (or Art Love) all day long so please knock yourself out and tell me all about it in the comments here or on my Instagram

EDVARD MUNCH: MARS OPPOSITE PLUTO

The Scream, 1893

The Scream is autobiographical, an expressionistic construction based on Munch’s actual experience of a scream piercing through nature while on a walk, after his two companions, seen in the background, had left him. Fitting the fact that the sound must have been heard at a time when his mind was in an abnormal state, Munch renders it in a style which if pushed to extremes can destroy human integrity. (source: edvardmunch.org)

Munch’s Pluto is in Taurus and conjunct his South Node while his Mars is in Scorpio conjunct his North Node. When we have Pluto on our South Node we have known the darkest expressions of (in)humanity, both as a victim and perpetrator in many past lives. The most meaningful and truest trajectory of every human is to integrate the darkness within. To love it. Because it is essential part of being human. Extremely tall order, particularly during our Piscean Age, but something Carl Jung and I wholeheartedly agree on – worth pursuing. In fact it’s the only thing worth living for.

It’s better to be whole, than good. (Carl Jung)

And then Munch’s Mars, the conscious expression of our Soul (Pluto), being perfectly aligned with his Pluto meant he had no choice but follow its dark trail. This trajectory was pointing at his North Star – to let his Mars express the darkness of his Pluto was the most aligned oath for Munch. He chose art instead of some less savoury outlets – maybe because his Capricorn Moon ruled and squared by an exalted Saturn in Libra needed the sanctuary of Art & Beauty to rest his heart on.

FRANCIS BACON: MARS SQUARE PLUTO (like me)

Second Version of Painting 1946

Bacon concentrated his energies on portraiture, often depicting habitues of the bars and clubs of London’s Soho neighborhood. His subjects were always portrayed as violently distorted, almost slabs of raw meat, that are isolated souls imprisoned and tormented by existential dilemmas. Among his signature motifs were screaming and disfigured heads, grappling homosexual lovers, and flanks of meat. “I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail leaving its trail of the human presence… as a snail leaves its slime,” he once said. (sources: artsy.net and theartstory.org)

Bacon had Mars in Pisces (one of the signatures of an artist) and Pluto in Gemini in a tight square. His images are disturbing – literally (blurred, disfigured, displaced body parts = Pisces Mars) and metaphorically (grotesque, confusing, disorienting = Gemini Pluto).

Also, Bacon was the poster boy for a Tortured Artist archetype and Mars Pluto square can be one of the reasons for it. Squares are like bumper cars – just as we think we got control over the steering wheel and have straightened it to get out of the jam a car bumps into us and our course is diverted. With the square there is always a sense that something will interrupt our flow, interfere with our plan, ran us off the road. In other words, we never quite feel that we are in control, that we have agency and power to affect our fate. Which can torture us.

With Pluto and Mars the tension is between our deepest (subconscious) desires and our conscious will – we think we know what we want (Mars) but once we try to get it we are pulled into something much darker (because it’s deeper) that we struggle to accept is our truer desire (because it’s too dark) and so we battle with it. And in Bacon’s case make breathtaking, if “ugly”, art from it.

TRACEY EMIN: MARS CONJUNCT PLUTO

My Bed, 1998

Emin’s My Bed (image No 8), first made—or rather, unmade—at a dingy South London flat in 1998, the iconic installation offers an uncompromising glimpse into the life of the then 35-year-old after a traumatic relationship breakdown. The confessional self-portrait of objects—complete with used condoms, cigarette butts, and empty vodka bottles—shocked the art world when it was featured in Tate Britain’s 1999 Turner Prize exhibition (but didn’t win). (source: artnet news)

Emin has Pluto and Mars conjunct in Virgo and the artwork that made her famous – ehm, infamous – is her messy bed (the artwork was the actual bed she and her many lovers of hers slept in) with used condoms, cigarette buts and soiled underwear scattered on and around it. This is such a Pluto in Virgo theme – alchemising shame a.k.a. washing one’s dirty laundry in public.

When Pluto and Mars are conjunct (in any sign or house) there is a certain fearlessness in expressing one’s desires, however taboo they are. This is the most formidable of aspects – the two forces fuel each other, are fused together and become one. This is an unstoppable combo. And it’s why Emin was considered l’enfant terrible of the art world in the 90s. She was loved though for her endearing innocence (Mars, Virgo) and a naivette in that she didn’t seem even aware of her power, her influence and her importance in breaking the rules – such is the energy of a conjunction, it’s a new phase in the relationship of two archetypes and as such still quite self-unaware. Her work was also purging so much generational and collective shame (Pluto, Virgo) around female (Virgo) sexuality (Pluto, Mars) – weather a woman was a victim of a r^pe or just openly desiring s£x.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC: MARS TRINE PLUTO

Rhythm 10, 1973

In her 40-odd years as a performance artist, Abramovic has dealt in what she calls “true reality”, often at great physical and psychological cost. She has stabbed her hand with knives and sliced her skin with razor blades. She has lain naked on a cross of ice for hours. She has allowed the public to prod, probe and abuse her prone body.

In ‘Rhythm 10’ Abramović placed her left hand with fingers spread on a large scroll of white paper. She then took one of ten knives positioned in front of her and began to rhythmically stab the spaces between her fingers. Each time the artist accidently cut her skin she took a new knife. Abramović continued the performance until she had been wounded 20 times. Having made an audio recording of this process, she then played back the recording and repeated her actions, trying to match new cuts with the original ones. (source: Irish Museum of Modern Art, and The Guardian)

Marina is a brilliant example of a Pluto Mars trine. Trines are ease-full aspects. Meaning, the two energies are compatible, they are at ease with each other, they speak the same language and understand each other’s needs. In Marina’s case Pluto is in Leo and Mars in Sagittarius. For as long as I’ve known Marina’s work I have never seen her (she is the work) rattled, perturbed or troubled by what she does (often puts herself in harms way). There is always this sense of ease, naturalness, mater-of-factualness as if she (her art) is saying “well, of course, I am going to put my own body on the line, it’s what you do as an artist”. She is the kind of artist who’d say “I’d die for my art” and mean it.

MY OWN ART: MARS SQUARE PLUTO

My art practice is about framing artfully anything about me that I find ugly, unacceptable or feel shame about. For example, I would write poetry about my own otherwise unspeakable urges and desires. By sculpting my feelings into a poem so the language of my feelings changes from shameful to poetic I have not only reframed my original feelings but my relationship to them – it is now one of loving admiration.

Similarly, when I create visual art using my own body the process itself is an act of love. Because I am making art, I beautify parts of me I consider “ugly” or “unseemly” and then I go back to these artworks as a way of strengthening my love for those parts of me – this step is an important part of my shadow integration practice.

Art making for me is a form of shadow work.

My Pluto (Rx) is conjunct Jupiter (Rx) and South Node in Virgo in 5th house so I have experienced (in other life times) the darkest human desires and evils (both as a victim and perpetrator) and I still have strong cellular memory of those experiences. But in this life time I am an ordinary and harmless human and those memories that I experience as feelings if not processed can turn on me in a form of physical disease (Virgo). (In fact, all that is wrong with my body’s health is down to unprocessed feelings of shame.) My whole life I’ve been driven to find ways to accept all of me – the good, the bad and the ugly – and art making is one of the most effective. Unlike talk therapy the creative process allows for the unconscious materials to surface AND be processed without the mind getting in the way.

Making dark art is a way of purifying, detoxing and purging (Pluto) all that shame has turned toxic. And making art from the darkest corner of my psyche is an act of loving all of me.

My Pluto (Rx) is in 5th house and it’s squared by 8th house Mars (Rx) in Sagittarius. So the themes you’ll find in my art are the darker shades of desire, power, sexuality but also my art makes light of taboos. You can find more on my Identity Artist Instagram page.