Hi Deanna,
And hello to Everyone here; nice to meet you. Though I've monitored this forum occasionally this is my first post...
...and being such a Plutonian soul, of course, no surprise this is the thread that would finally pull me in... *grin* For anyone interested, my birth data is as follows: 11/16/1956, 10:47 PM, South Haven, Michigan USA...
Revenge, eh? Here's my thoughts.
The way I understand Pluto, Scorpio's ruler, is that it governs the entire realm of anything we would describe as "power" vis-a-vis the realm of "control" and the whole process of discovering the difference between the two within our experience. While we all have our own unique definitions for those words, I think we would all agree they are bantered about fairly casually and are often seen as interchangeable. Thus the need for Pluto's
notably nongentle tutoring. LOL.
And yes, I'll preface all this by noting that I'm coming from what could be called an *organically spiritual* orientation; one that believes and acknowledges that we are all here to *grow* soul-wise, and to, in our own perfect timing and style of doing so, come around to engaging the type of self-awareness lessons defined by such differentiations as those between power and control.
To take a feeling of hurt or humiliation or of being dissed, and shape that feeling into a *bullet* of sorts, to then be flung back to the person that hurt came from...my loose definition of "revenge"...will never, ever accomplish anything *but* ensuring that that same bullet will return to the one flinging it. The illusion that by managing some sort of "retaliation" for being hurt, we are somehow affirming our Control of the situation...of our pain at being treated so...is wholly understandable, in human-emotional terms, but in Bigger-Picture (what we might call wholistic or spiritual) terms, no matter how rationalized or justified or self-righteous we might *feel* in offering "retaliation or revenge," of its very nature that can never, EVER actually comprise a stance of *true Power*. The realm of True Power lives entirely outside the scope of "polarities," of the unconscious-human reflex of trying to "gain control" via the eternal boomerang of one-up-manship. That cause/effect chain that never, ever goes anywhere but into a downward spiral of unconscious violence. Buddhists define that True Power realm in one way; other angles of spirituality define it in their own respective ways; but the core as I've discerned it could be simply called "The Only Way to Win is Not to Play."
So in brief...although I have enormous empathy (and a great deal of experiential mileage under my belt) for the whole predicament we're speaking of...like, oh, what to DO with all that intensity of feeling, if we're not gonna reactively fling it back at someone in hurt or anger; those gnarly little details...LOL...I do not believe that, ultimately, revenge or retailiation is *ever* "justified," except within the lessermost aspects of our nature; again, ultimately, it will only serve to Return and smack us upside our own heads... Just FWIW...
Love, S.