Pluto: The Wise God of the Underworld

Francis Bacon, in Essays Civil and Moral, writes of "the helmet of Pluto, which maketh the politic man go invisible," suggesting that secrecy in counsel and swiftness in execution are the modern equivalents of this god's ancient powers. This image of invisibility, of power operating unseen, perfectly captures something essential about today’s video-essay. For Pluto has always been about what lies beneath. Beneath the earth. Beneath consciousness. Beneath appearances.

Pluto. Hades. Plouton. Ploutos. Dis Pater. The names themselves tell a story of transformation. From feared ruler of the dead to economic force, from chthonic deity to celestial body, from mythological figure to psychological principle. Pluto shape-shifts through history, resisting any single definition. Even now, the entity bears multiple identities: a dwarf planet at the edge of our known solar system, the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object directly orbiting the Sun, a body made of ice and rock that break our categories of what constitutes a planet.

This multiplicity of identity is fitting, for Pluto has always been about transformation. Consider how Christian theology wrestled with this figure. As Carl Jung notes in his analysis of the Liber de arte chymica, it required nothing less than "Christ Jesus," with "the Virgin Mary, and the Holy Ghost, in an unutterable mystery and most profound sacrament" to free souls from Pluto's realm. The very magnitude of the divine power required suggests Pluto's fundamental significance. Not just as an underworld deity but as a representation of the depths that both terrify and transform us.

Welcome to your initiation to Pluto! But before we begin, I want to thank you for being here. Your engagement, whether through likes, shares, or simply watching these videos through to completion, helps ensure this type of in-depth video essay, as bad as they are, reaches others who seek deeper understanding. Who love wisdom. Who would sacrifice themselves for truth and freedom. Who bear the price of Lucifer and Prometheus if that’s what we need to move forward and realize that we are descendants of Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, Thales, Nietzsche, Jung, Da Vinci, Tesla, Newton, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, and even deities or other alien form of life either way. There’s a reason why you are here. See it. Seize it. Conquer it.

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