Healing the Soul: Pluto, Uranus & the Lunar Nodes

It’s about time I did some astrology book reviews and since I recently finished reading Healing the Soul: Pluto, Uranus and the Lunar Nodes by Mark Jones that seems a good place to start. This is an inspiring book packed with useful examples to help you understand how Evolutionary Astrology works with the birth chart. Jones explores the karmic underpinnings of the chart and reveals the hidden forces that shape your soul. The book is written clearly and simply but with enough depth and insight for seasoned astrologers as well as newbies.

If you’ve read Jeff Green’s landmark book Pluto: the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul then some of the material in this book will be familiar. But Jones brings a clarity to the information that I found extremely helpful and I had many moments of epiphany that have made a huge difference to my understanding of astrology and my birth chart.

Healing the Soul explores the Evolutionary Axis of the birth chart which includes the Pluto placement and the nodes of the Moon. It then adds more detail on the role of Uranus and provides a step-by-step method for putting it all together into a coherent picture that shows how your soul desires to evolve.

In Evolutionary Astrology Pluto represents the deep self, an immutable aspect of your consciousness that is primarily unconscious. This deep self seeks to evolve on both an individual and collective level and this process expresses itself through the nodes of the Moon. The nodes represent the dynamics of your conscious ego development in the past (south node) and potential future (north node).

The starting point is to understand the Pluto Complex in the chart. This comprises the sign and house placement of Pluto, plus the aspects that Pluto forms to other natal planets. The Pluto placement reveals hidden riches that can be found in the soul, as well as your unconscious security needs and how your soul is trying to grow. Your deepest security needs are what you fall back on under stress and they’re often compulsive and not always helpful or adaptive.

Pluto shows where you tend to repeat these old patterns of karma driven by resistance to growth and change. This operates through attraction and repulsion as you’re pulled between the desires of the ego and the needs of the soul. The ego can get stuck in repeating these patterns while the soul wants to move on to new experiences. The polarity point of Pluto – the sign and house opposite – shows what the soul needs to develop in order to break the compulsions of the past and transform.

The unconscious and prior karma of Pluto plays out through the nodes which represent the evolutionary potential of the ego. The ego in Evolutionary Astrology is symbolised by the Moon which represents the conditioned self that grows out of the early home life and family relationships. The south node of the Moon shows the prior-life ego structures that tried to fulfil the purpose of the deeper self, while the north node shows the current life potential for change.

You can also look at the ruler of the south node – its placement and aspects – for more clues about how the soul has expressed itself in the past. The ruler of the north node provides more information about how you can now begin to move forward into the future. Aspects to the nodes themselves also influence how the conditioned self is expressed, with squares to the nodes being particularly tricky to deal with.

A square to the nodal axis shows a ‘skipped step’ in the soul’s development, an issue that remains unresolved. The planet squaring the nodes reveals issues that have interrupted development, pulling you back towards the south node instead of moving boldly towards the north node.

Jones provides useful guidance on how to interpret these squares and advises the use of quite a wide orb of 12 or even 15 degrees which is much wider than normal. This surprised me and it means I have two squares to my nodes making a lovely Grand Cross – lucky me! – and explains why I keep getting stuck, pinned between Saturn and Neptune.

The section on Uranus adds another dimension to the evolutionary process and I found it extremely helpful and enlightening. Uranus represents the potential for awakening and freedom from past conditioning, encouraging you to individuate and become more whole. But it also reveals patterns of trauma that arise from this process – the shock that can come from being exposed to the non-linear field of consciousness, or the Universal Mind.

Hard aspects of Uranus to natal planets are more likely to correlate with traumatic experiences and memories, as well as hard aspects to planets in Aquarius and/or the 11th house. It will be even more potent if Uranus forms aspects to any part of the Evolutionary Axis.

You don’t have to believe in reincarnation and previous lives to make use of Evolutionary Astrology or appreciate its insights. The past can just as easily be interpreted as early childhood or ancestral memory and family history and karma. We’re all here on a journey to discover our true selves and this method provides real support in that process.

“The idea that within this infinite field there is no such thing as an accident is an expression of the law of karma as it operates as a universal law: what happens to us, what we experience, think, feel and act upon is an expression of who we really are and have ever been. From our true nature reality aligns to our intention and provides a perfect opportunity for us to evolve through observing the experience of who we really are being mirrored back to us by reality.”

The perspective of Healing the Soul is psychological and spiritual and contains insights from various sources. However, I’m not a fan of David Hawkins or A Course in Miracles and their inclusion (in small parts, admittedly) rankled a bit. Hawkins’ method for measuring the ‘level of consciousness’ is entirely subjective and prone to hijacking by the subconscious and he’s clearly biased in his political affiliations. A Course in Miracles is misleading pseudo-spirituality for reasons expounded by Charles Upton in The System of Anti-Christ.

There are better sources of wisdom and spiritual guidance. But everyone has their favourite teachers and I was able to gloss over those incursions without too much trouble. I forgave Jones because I had no idea that he’s a psychosynthesis therapist as well as an astrologer and it was a pleasant surprise. Psychosynthesis was one of the things that saved my life many years ago when I needed to rebuild myself following a breakdown in my early 20s. You can read more about psychosynthesis here.

Healing the Soul provides many examples that will help you to develop greater understanding of the deeper patterns at work in your soul. The case studies go into a lot of detail and are particularly helpful for those with Pluto in Virgo, although still useful for everyone else.

Pluto is hard to work with because he’s so deep and unconscious but it makes sense to engage with this process on a conscious level even if the road to healing isn’t easy or straightforward. With that in mind, Jones also offers suggestions for the variety of ways you can engage with your subconscious in therapeutic work.

Astrology may be enough to deal with some of the basic issues involved but for the most stubborn and intense wounds of the soul, you will need something more. This book provides an excellent first step in the direction of understanding yourself better and taking the road towards healing.

I made so many notes while reading this book that I thought my hand would drop off! I had several aha! moments and was able to find clarity on issues that have been bugging me for a long time – probably for lifetimes. I had already read the Jeff Green book but for some reason that didn’t quite have the same effect.

Perhaps it’s simply a matter of timing. Neptune is currently transiting opposite my natal Pluto conjunct Mercury and so much material is coming up it’s a little overwhelming and Healing the Soul helped me to make sense of it. I’m still working on releasing these issues but the understanding comes first and for that I can thank Mark Jones.

Visit Mark Jones’ website here.