understanding Pluto
Nothing about the density of our earth or about living in a physical body is “pure,” “light,” “eternal.” It is all in a constant state of decay, dying, budding, and birth. The essence of plutonic power is within the impersonal prolific creative heartbeat of life which is extinguished as quickly as it is born. It’s the truth we all understand and keep a varying degree of attention turned toward or meaningfully away from, this thin blade between life and death.
Pluto placements and transits bring us to power by holding us on the blade. How we die and choose to live imprinted upon and within us until we go again. There are ways to live through this energy and not really be alive anymore. There are ways to surrender yourself to death so many times that aliveness permeates every inch of your being.
Pluto is special in its earthly qualities. It expresses as untamed wilderness and connects to primal embodiment. I am thinking of how we still do not understand the depths of the ocean yet, just as we know so little about the cosmos. Pluto may be the farthest planet from us but its essence exists in the molten core of our earth, in the deepest darkest unexplored parts of our ocean, in the memory pressed into bone and prayed away.
The reason Pluto stirs issues of control, obsession, and abuse of power is us. I mean this in the kindest way because to be conditioned through shame, guilt, fear of abandonment, etc, will make anyone creative in how they attempt to connect and to share their truth. Manipulation is just a coping skill. Anyone who grows up with their self concept being tied to shame will probably get creative and find their way to manipulative behaviors and that just makes sense. There is a reason why “toxic” behaviors become the safe, familiar, or patterned ways to relate. We get nowhere until we go deeper, and that is Pluto’s terrain. Standing in the fire of our own patterns with the courage to hold compassion and be transformed is the plutonic work.
Pluto is not here to punish us. It may demand death but that’s just because it is what is most natural and what ultimately drives evolution. To fully go through Pluto’s gates is to surrender to transfiguration, allowing our wholly self to be re-alchemized beyond recognition in service of our own evolutionary momentum. The length and slowness with which Pluto transits happen reflect the intensity and permanency of the experience. This is not an event or a linear moment but an entire process of repressing to uncovering to reintegration.
How does this translate into our lived experience?
Pluto transiting a planet or angle in the birth chart can take anywhere from 5-8 years. On a soul level it is an initiation into the evolution of whatever Pluto is activating. Because Pluto takes 248 years to travel through the zodiac, transits will only ever happen once, if ever, in our lives, lending a further sense of gravity to the experience. If you hold the belief that your soul incarnated for a specific experience or path to expansion, it is safe to say that the Pluto transits you experience have something to do with this. Pluto transiting a planet is an excavation process. There are layers upon layers to be breached that have become stagnant and unexplored over the life thus far. It is a calling to be fearless about what you find and a journey of metabolizing all of it from the muck to the gold. If you are born with prominent Pluto aspects in your birth chart, especially to personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars), this will be a life long journey and Pluto will be a special teacher throughout your life. As you come to certain transits over life that activate this part of your birth chart you will probably find supportive momentum and a catalyzing of this energy in new ways.
There is a simplicity to Pluto beneath the complex systems that we all create in order to deal with its energy. How we respond to the pain of being made powerless truly displays the overwhelming ingenuity of human intelligence. The many winding paths, games, barriers, and spells a person needs to unwind in order to reach that experience within the psyche once again can be staggering. The archetypes of the therapist and detective align so well to the sign of Scorpio, which has Pluto as its modern ruler, because of this familiarity and fascination with the process of knotting and unraveling.
Returning to the simplicity here, Pluto is not personal. It is akin to the earth recalibrating itself through volcanic eruptions, floods, and earthquakes. There is an earthly logic and wisdom in its call, matter can neither be destroyed nor created only transformed. If we truly desire life then we must befriend death. How we each are called to do this throughout our lives is our own unique offering on the altar of our greater collective evolutionary story.
At this time Pluto in the world transits is square to the nodes and Jupiter. Mars has just finished sweeping through the first degrees of Leo, opposing Pluto and creating a grand cross configuration. Venus is currently following suit and will be within this opposition and grand cross configuration from now until mid June.
A square to the nodes places us directly in the present, between worlds. Not in the past and not in the future, in some other place which is actually right now and completely timeless. Many of us struggle to be in the present or to experience forms of time that are non-linear. With Pluto and Venus opposing one another while in this space of timelessness it has the effect of a snow globe being shaken up in relation to the themes/qualities of Pluto and Venus. Maybe we suddenly find ourselves revisiting relational behaviors that we thought were changed and maybe we find something important there—a lost piece of our own power—that we left behind. Maybe an old creation resurfaces or values we discarded appear out of nowhere and make us rethink or understand more deeply where we are now. This all feels like preparation for the retrograde cycle of Venus which will be happening in this sign of Leo later this summer. Venus will not be directly speaking to Pluto or the nodes through the retrograde but this entry into Leo might offer a powerful influence by opening our senses of perception and time wider than what we are used to or comfortable with.
This homage to Pluto wouldn’t feel right without this passage from one of my favorite books, Michael Ende’s, The Neverending Story. Pluto shows us the power of time and the power within by asking us to walk it all the way through. Wherever you are in this dance is simply where you are.
xo,
Evan
“My realm is the desert, and it is also my work. Wherever I go, everything around me turns to desert. I carry it with me. Since I am made of deadly fire, must I not be doomed to everlasting solitude?”
Bastion fell into a dismayed silence.
“Master,” said the lion, looking at the boy with glowing eyes.
“You who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress, can you tell me this: Why must I always die at nightfall?”
“So that Perilin, the Night Forest, can grow in the Desert of Colors,” said Bastian.
“Perilin?” said the lion. “What’s that?”
Then Bastian told him about the miraculous jungle that consisted of living light. While Grograman listened in fascinated amazement, Bastian described the diversity and beauty of the glimmering phosphorescent plants, their silent, irresistible growth, their dreamlike beauty and incredible size. His enthusiasm grew as he spoke and Grograman’s eyes glowed more and more brightly.
“All that,” Bastian concluded, “can happen only when you are turned to stone. But Perilin would swallow up everything else and stifle itself if it didn’t have to die and crumble into dust when you wake up. You and Perilin need each other.”
For a long while Grograman was silent.
“Master,” he said then. “Now I see that my dying gives life and my living death, and both are good. Now I understand the meaning of my existence. I thank you.”
co-creative astrology 