The Great Mother meets the lord of Death

Ceres (Great Mother asteroid/planetoid) is currently conjunct sun, as well as Pluto, Saturn and Mercury. Along with the Cancer/Capricorn nodal axis, this brings needed "great mother" energy to the transformations (Pluto) and building of new structures (Saturn). Could this conjunction of Ceres and Pluto also help in reconciling masculine and feminine energies, thru understanding/compassion for the wounds that each has suffered in recent and remote history...leading to final forgiveness?; such deep reconciliation seems critical for the 2 energies to work cooperatively, as well as for full heiro gamos union.

Symbolically, Ceres carries the "wounded mother" energy: Her daughter Persephone was kidnapped by...eh...Pluto/Hades. Autumn/winter mythologically represent her mourning period (the half year during which Persephone agreed to be in the underworld with Pluto, then returning to the surface for spring/summer. Symbolically, she was the devoted Mother who lost her child (part time) thru no fault of her own. 

However, like real mothers who lose children to illness/accidents, she most likely still suffered guilt - What did I do wrong?; what is fundamentally wrong with me to deserve such a loss (loss as karmic retribution). She feels abandoned, victimized by Pluto AND by her daughter; by the Masculine and by her own offspring (her creations). Love and devotion has been repaid with abandonment, the ultimate betrayal. She is Great-Mother-as-Victim; victimized “benevolent mother” becomes victimizer Dark Mother, who withdraws her fertilizing powers from the earth as an act of revenge against the Dark Masculine and against herself.....against that which grows from her, against her own powers of fertility and nurturing.

If we step into the shoes of the mythic Pluto character, we see more wound-based action ....He was Lord of the Underworld, thus held power. But he lived in the dark (underworld) realm of the dead - so also a lonely, bleak existence. Humans and demigods wanted to be with all the other gods, but who wanted to be with the god of Death? So, profound alienation and rejection, a feeling that his loneliness would last forever.....which led to desperation/despair and the drastic action of kidnapping Persephone. 

Historically, the masculine has been severely wounded in the emotional body - not “allowed” to show emotions (except anger); it’s easier to “not show emotions” if one doesn’t feel those emotions....ie., if they’ve been repressed. Instead of acknowledging, processing and healing emotions as they occur, the emotions are stuffed “underground”. They fester in an Underworld (the existence of which most prefer to deny), creating a toxic atmosphere and growing into full-sized demons of the dark. Pluto dwells full-time in this dark toxic miasma, with these demons; the toxic energy of all those festering underworld emotions clings to him like a bad smell, a darkness in his aura that repels dwellers of the surface realm, because it reminds them of what they’d rather not see. 

Pluto is masculine (is a male god) - so perhaps also suffers guilt and self doubt (“Am I good enough, man enough?”) because he must live surrounded by emotions, because he couldn’t successfully compartmentalize those emotions and hide them away in distant dungeons as a male “should” do.  

So what could it mean, with Ceres in this planetary cluster? 

The sun illuminates....so maybe, a further bringing to the surface and illumination of Mother-wounds (for healing). And, conjunct Pluto (the "perpetrator" in the myth)......maybe a reconciliation of the wounded (and thus wounding) masculine with the wounded (and wounding) feminine, perhaps a new ability to deeply understand the "why"s (wounds) underlying behaviors. A greater understanding of core wounds of both the masculine and feminine, simultaneously. Could such mutual deep understanding of the other lead to a compassion and forgiveness that heals, that de-fangs the Dark Masculine and the Dark Feminine?