Since Pluto defies rational conception and contorts logical analysis, astrologers and astrological researchers have presumably laughed at the prospect of placing Pluto into the standard "cookbook" format dictated by the "metaphysics-to-go" marketing of astrology. Navigating the Pluto landscape through the written word is like taking a standard compass into an M.C. Escher painting. However, the pain of an astrological researcher to clearly explicate this archetype pales in comparison to the often painful experience of a difficult Pluto transit. The one common denominator is that there is a degree of powerlessness that forces one to surrender to something greater than one's self.

To begin to illuminate the paradoxical nature of Pluto, a good starting point is to delineate the events that correlate with Pluto's discovery in 1930. Astrologers have noted that the discovery of a planet correlates with events and phenomena that are indicative of the quality of the associated archetype. Pluto is no exception. Around 1930, there were a number of events that broke down and deconstructed firmly entrenched paradigms, structures, and institutions that hitherto gave a certain degree of security and exaltation to human life-by and large the results of the inflation and hubris of enlightenment, rational thinking.

In 1931, the mathematician Kurt Gödel released his famous theorem. Gödel demonstrated that there can always be the creation of statements produced in a logical or mathematical system that cannot be proven true or false, thus a system will always be incomplete in its explanatory and deductive power. Gödel's theorem undermined the hope and assumption that some final system of "everything" could be achieved. More importantly, it can be deduced from Gödel that rational thinking can never penetrate to a final, ultimate truth.