Mars Square Pluto: Who Does Your Dirty Work?

dirty_work.jpgMars is squaring Pluto today setting off the transit to my natal Moon and one thing with Pluto Moon, you can really see people’s motives. With an 8th house like mine I’ve got this gift/curse anyway but jeez louise the transit kicks it up big time and today is no exception.

My husband got an email meant to provoke him.  The person who sent it is acting as agent of the person who is really pulling the strings and either is or pretends to be an innocent.

“Boy is she getting set up,” I said, the action completely transparent to me.  ‘Why does someone let themselves be used like that anyway? If you told me, hey Elsa!  Send this person an email so I can jerk their chain, I’d tell you to go to hell!  Send it yourself, I’d say!”

I don’t consider this crafty. I consider it to demonstrate a lack of courage. Personally, if I am going to stab you, I’ll stab you in the front and I’ll do it with my own knife. This other method is akin to using a woman or a child as a shield, it is the ultimate cowardice.

Have you ever sent someone to do your dirty work? What were you thinking at the time?

Have you ever been sent to do someone’s dirty work? Were you aware when you took the mission? Why did you agree to it?

30 thoughts on “Mars Square Pluto: Who Does Your Dirty Work?”

  1. when my son was small we were at a softball game and my husband (at the time) saw another mother from my son’s preschool. she was heavily pregnant and he suggested I go on over and talk to her. I went blithely over and chatted her up. I went back and told the hub what had transpired. on the way home he laughingly told me that he used to date her.

    I yelled at him and at the next stop sign I jumped out of the open jeep and disappeared for a few hours.

    now if that happened I’d jump out, calmly walk around to the other side of the car, pull him out and throw him in the bushes. then I’d take the car and disappear forever.

  2. My mom has mars square pluto natally. She NEVER does her own dirty work. I suppose I’ve done her dirty work for her between her and my father. But, no I didn’t realize at the time.

    It’s a bad thing to learn through observation, because then you don’t know how to be direct. But there are plenty of other people to learn from in that regard, as an adult anyway.

    One thing I noticed about mars square pluto, at least with her, is that you can be furious and vehement while still completely obfuscating the real issue. So it never really gets resolved.

  3. No, not that I am aware of, but this is a very interesting topic because, in my opinion, it is about politics. Politics suck.

  4. My sister has a different approach, but it’s a similar phenomenon. What she wants is money (from my mother, me, whoever) but the way she asks for it is backwards. The request is always buried deeply in some lengthy e-mail otherwise designed to induce guilt, sympathy and the like.

    Once one sees the pattern, it is easy to zoom right into the heart of the request.

    She has 7th house Mercury RX conj NN in Taurus and Sun. Politics EW

  5. I haven’t done this that I’m aware of.

    “I always send them out un-hurt but spray-painted orange” < — hahahaha

  6. i can’t think of a situation i’ve personally been in where i’ve been someone else’s messenger or bait. people get intimidated by me and so i get a lot of those people’s messengers (that’s what i call people who do that), though. i think if i can’t get the balls together to do something myself, i don’t deserve the result.

  7. OMG. I’m going through a big Pluto transit to my progressed moon right now, and earlier this year I practically immolated myself over an old memory of dirty work. My mother (of course) sent me to California one morning (my brother was supposed to go) to see my father (who I didn’t care about seeing). This was totally incomprehensible to me until a day after I got there when I realised I had be set up as bait to get my father back to the midwest. My mother promised me I would never see my family again if I didn’t bring him back with me. I was 14, what was I gonna do? I believed her.

    That wasn’t the first time she pulled that kind of shit, but it was the most painful.

    Pluto squaring my Chiron now, and damn, that’s a wound.

  8. My mom sent me to get my dad to stop drinking and move back home. He just laughed at me. Nothing like an addict in “full bloom”. I don’t know which one was worse to live with.

  9. Okay, I’m a Pisces. Actually, I’m a double Pisces, with both sun and ascendant in Pisces. BUT, I have a Scorpio moon, which may be why I don’t ask as messenger in these kinds of situations. And I HATE manipulation, which is what this really is. Recently, I started a comment by saying, “To be perfectly blunt –” and a friend chimed in with, “Do you know any other way?”

    All of which is by way of saying not all Pisces are so gullible as to meekly bear bad messages for other people. I bear a lot of bad messages, don’t get me wrong. I’m an opinion columnist for my local newspaper so I’m pointing out public errors on a regular basis. But NOT as someone else’s errand girl.

  10. Kate – not to insult Pisces… this has just happened a few times and it was a Pisces friend of mine who commented once, “Oh, and they send the Pisces..” because that’s what they did that time and it stuck in my mind. Sent her in to be sacrificed, see?

  11. I have to ask- why come the fish do it? I have pisces friends and they are very good at gauging other’s motives, surely they know they are being used?

    As for my dirty work I’d like to say I do it myself, but I can’t be sure- I’m the youngest of four with a packed 7th house so I must manipulate to get my way sometimes?

  12. I don’t do others’ dirty work (can spot that crap a mile off), but I send superiors at work to do mine. You see, as an underling in academia, I don’t have a lot of power. But I do have practically workable ideas. What I do is put a bug in the ear of highers-up who can actually effect change. I state my case, and since it’s clearly in their best interests to implement positive changes, they go to their meetings, present my stuff as if they came up with it, and voila. It’s done as surely and swiftly as it would have been had I been the VP himself.

    It doesn’t matter that everyone knows I came up with it. My superiors know, and they know that I know; they look good in the end, they become more dependent on me, and that’s my job security right there. A little Machiavellian, but that never bothered a Scorpio Mars. 🙂

  13. I’ve never been sent out with someone else’s message, PLUS I can finally see the astrology behind why! *lol* Because I believe you need to take personal (Sun) responsibility (Saturn) for your words (Mercury, all conjunct)! And I’m not above saying so. 😉 “Eff no! Do it yourself, I don’t have a problem with this person.”
    I will tell someone if I think they’re doing another dirty and why, if there’s a good segue. Ditto if I think a person needs to confront someone instead of generally complaining. But I hate just starting a conversation that way, it tends to make things awkward.

  14. “I have to ask- why come the fish do it? I have pisces friends and they are very good at gauging other’s motives, surely they know they are being used?”

    I’d say the same reason they sacrifice themselves to other causes, like taking care of an addicted partner for example…

  15. In the many cases I have been asked to deliver someone else’s message, if I was not in a position to say no (if it was a parent or employer, for instance) I have said that I was sent, who I was sent by, and inserted my own opinion of the question at hand. This usually cured anyone of asking me twice. Of course, my mother, for instance, never stopped getting even with me.

  16. I remember, when I was around five, every time I wanted my parents to get me something or do something for me, I made my little brother go and ask for it because I thought that they didn’t like me all that much but they couldn’t seem to resist him, and I didn’t think of this as cowardice, I thought it was an intelligent way of getting what you want, regardless of weather they liked you or not, and I didn’t feel guilty at all. children are not that innocent, we learn these cheap trick early on.

  17. It’s ok S.

    Saturn has me by the ankles and old forgotten things are shaking out all over the place! LOL

    At least I will weigh less when this is over!

  18. “I didn’t feel guilty at all. children are not that innocent, we learn these cheap trick early on.”

    What kills me, ysmn (and welcome to the Elsa blog) is when people are 40 and they still act this way. I wonder if anyone teaches anyone to fight their own fights anymore.

  19. When I was 8 my family lived in the country and we bought milk off a farmer down the road. My Dad used to drive up and get it. I remember as clear as it was yesterday my Mum telling me I had to go with him, see how the farmer’s wife was with him and report back to her.
    ‘Tell me if you think there’s something happening.’

    At that point of my Mum’s life she was at the height of her mental breakdown (she started therapy for her abuse when I was 10) and was suffering from extreme paranoia. All of us kids were taught to be on high alert.

    I remember going with my Dad, watching a very nice man be very polite and friendly with an equally kind woman (this farmer’s wife). And reporting back ‘There’s nothing happening.’

    Yeah I was 8 but I knew exactly what was going on: my Mum thought things were happening, that weren’t. The emotions involved in being asked something like this were crystal clear and I’ve never forgotten. It made me very sad, but all these years later I’m happy to report people do not ask me to do their dirty work. Ever.
    And to my knowledge I’ve never been in the reverse situation.

    If someone asks me a backwards question, my instinct is to ask why. I have Mars opposed Pluto natally, so maybe this is why.

  20. Ysmn, excellent point! But Elsa also had a good point, what’s good enough at five is not always kosher at 40. I’d be willing to let someone younger, probably into early teens, slide on this. (I’d still call ’em out, but not as harshly and with more wiggle room.) But once you’re voting age, there’s no reason good enough to try and pull this stunt. At some point you’re going to need to clutch it up, yanno?
    Hell, I dunno, I have Libra! *lol*

    Kashmiri, what utter craptitude! People amaze me sometimes. . ..

  21. I am the one who gets sent in.In my spouse’s business I am always the one who gets to fire people.I am Pisces rising.I have Capricorn Moon so if you need to be fired and you are hurting my business I have no more time for you and I can unemotionally lower the boom. I do it “nicely” as my Pisces /Cancerian stuff would show– I never hurt their self esteem.But it’s “outta here” if you are not supporting the busines, or not pulling your weight. . Right now there’s someone who needs to go, and she is a friend of family–I can’t do it this time. NEVER hire a friend to work in our small business.

  22. I have Pisces Sun/Ascendant with Scorp Moon, just like Kate above. (Never met anyone else with this, either.) I can tell you no one asks me to do their dirty work twice because I can see through manipulation from 5 miles away and will bluntly call them on it.

    I also have 12th house Sun, so I’ve wondered about this before. Sometimes people can’t see me and think they can project dirt onto me, but then I turn around and (nicely) call them on their bullshit and they seem to be very bewildered by me.

  23. My father had Mars sq Pluto and used me like this all the time. I left home at 18 and he was still trying it on when I was 30. I’m Cap, but have Jup in Pisces in the 6th. His sun was conj mine out of sign so maybe that added in.

  24. Oh, to answer the questions, no, for a long time I didn’t realise I was being used because I had been raised to be a good girl and do what daddy said. And I have a very kind heart -Jup in Pisces.

    As I got older I started to really resent being made the third corner of his triangles and told him to approach the people (usually one of my siblings) directly. Whereupon he would pull a whole emotional blackmail number about all he had done for me all my life, blah blah. Jeez. Grow up man. Eventually, as a result of a particularly underhanded one he pulled with my brother I stopped talking to him for a year, and that was the end of it.

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