Transits of Pluto

Transits to Mercury

Pluto, by contrast, is associated with slow, inevitable transformation. A Plutonian process tends to unfold unnoticed and becomes problematic only when it is blocked. A sudden flash of insight is not Plutonian; a long-term overhaul of one’s entire way of thinking is. A useful key phrase for Pluto transits to Mercury is change of mind. Although Mercury is fundamentally concerned with transmitting knowledge and information, it is not always involved with content; its priority is accurate conveyance. Yet content often enters the picture, because poorly organized ideas are hard to transmit. Mercury also has qualities that do not stem directly from its messenger role. For instance, it rules young people, typically adolescents through about age thirty. When Pluto transits Mercury, a transformative encounter with a younger person may play a pivotal role in one’s life.

Transits to Venus

Pluto’s transformative force can easily overwhelm Venus’s simple desire for affection and companionship. The everyday way we handle Venusian matters is bound up with ego and personality – limited subsets of our whole being. When this first mode of Venusian energy mixes with Pluto, ego issues intrude. Throughout this material the reader is reminded that Pluto does not readily submit to ego demands. One manifestation is that love and sexuality, together or separately, become entangled with a craving for power and control: jealousy, possessiveness or emotional blackmail arise. A less common but more uplifting manifestation is a love so intense that it utterly transforms the people involved. Such relationships, however, often burn out; the intensity is hard to sustain, and lasting partnerships rarely maintain that level of power.

In the arts Pluto can blend more gracefully with Venus. Creative work allows the artist to channel Pluto’s transcendental force through Venus rather than through personal ego. Creation transforms the creator, and in turn transforms everyone who encounters the work. This is as true of popular music with a driving beat as it is of classical forms: the means are Venusian, the impact Plutonian.

Transits to the Sun

Difficult Pluto transits to the Sun often arise when solar energy has been hijacked by the ego and mistaken for will. True will is free; ego-driven will is compelled by unconscious desires the person cannot explain. This damages both the Sun’s expression and Pluto’s, inviting power struggles and ruthless attempts to dominate. While such extremes are rare, history provides ample examples.

At other times the combination is hard because it may coincide with serious physical breakdown, especially when the body cannot eliminate waste products – a Plutonian function.

Transits to Mars

At its best this combination supplies the force needed to enact necessary change when resistance has become deadly. Destruction then serves a greater good, however harsh it seems – the Second World War is often cited. The problem is knowing when such drastic action is truly required. A medical analogy helps: when a leg is gangrenous, amputation is the only way to save the person. That illustrates Pluto – Mars energy.

Fortunately, most people experience this transit not as catastrophe but as the capacity for heroic effort to overcome an unavoidable obstacle. The key word is heroic; if the situation does not warrant that word, the energy is probably being misapplied.

All too often, however, it shows up in ruthless ambition: individuals determined to destroy anyone in their path, provoking similar responses and, figuratively, starting a war.

Transits to Jupiter

More than any other planet, Jupiter manifests in the broad social order: law, higher education, medicine, religion – indeed, culture itself, in the sense of the whole system of ideas, beliefs and practices that define a people.

Pluto is change and transformation, often originating beyond the culture or the individual state – in the natural world and the earth itself. It also rules long-range forces that reshape society. Current mass migrations and revived cultural schisms are examples.

Together, these energies strive to bring sweeping social reforms intended to heal and integrate. They may fail when powerful egos try to divert Plutonian force to their own ends, and one person’s reform can be another’s oppression.

For individuals, Pluto – Jupiter often accompanies long-term therapy, healing or self-improvement. The negative side appears when someone is so convinced of being right that breaking the law seems justified – and they are sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

Transits to Saturn

Saturn has two faces. The more familiar represents discipline, order, structure and necessity – often experienced as obstacles that frustrate personal desires. Traditional astrology cast Saturn as malefic, but it is not an intentional evildoer.

The higher face, like Pluto, is transcendental, marking the boundary between interpersonal reality and the beyond.

Consequently, Pluto transiting Saturn is demanding rather than gratuitously painful. It requires persistence and a willingness to learn hard lessons, yet one need not be enlightened to manage even the toughest combination.

On the interpersonal level people commonly meet a hardening process: freedoms narrow, opportunities dwindle, choices shrink, and events feel fated.

At the transcendental level, however, what seems fated is really a summons to transcend consensus reality. Extreme Pluto – Saturn pressures force withdrawal from the so-called real world, revealing alternatives that ordinary consciousness would never imagine.

Transits to Uranus

Both planets signify change, but in different styles. Pluto rules metamorphosis – slow, powerful shifts driven by long-term forces, like the motion of tectonic plates. Uranus brings sudden, unpredictable change and extremes. Continuing the geological metaphor: when Pluto’s immense force becomes jammed, Uranus releases it in a sudden earthquake. Lightning, the classic Uranian phenomenon, illustrates its electrical nature.

Historically, their combination marks upheaval. The 1960s Uranus – Pluto conjunction, opposed by Saturn, coincided with civil-rights battles, student unrest and the rise of the counterculture. From 2010 onward a series of Uranus – Pluto squares opened with the Arab Spring and closed with the rise of extreme fundamentalisms.

When Pluto transits natal Uranus (assuming Uranus is strongly placed), an individual may undergo great personal change or become deeply involved in social revolution. A useful phrase is revolutionary change. Even if one’s life remains stable, sensitivity to collective upheaval sharply increases.

Transits to Neptune

Their combination is difficult to grasp fully. Neptune blurs ordinary reality; its energy suggests that reality itself is mutable. At its highest it connects to sublime spirituality, though that is not how it is usually experienced.

Pluto, meanwhile, signifies slow, powerful, inexorable transformation. Together they point to the forces that bring things gradually into and out of existence as we know it.

Transits to Pluto

Transits to Chiron

In living organisms growth is governed by internal timing mechanisms that trigger major changes – puberty, for instance. Sexuality’s development is a Plutonian example, as are successful psychotherapy and certain spiritual practices. Pluto itself is not sexual or spiritual; it simply governs long-term transformations in an organic whole. Unconnected events are not Plutonian.

Thus, when Pluto combines with Chiron, the result can be healing and spiritual growth, or disintegration and decay.

Transits to Midheaven

The Midheaven is a point, not a planet; it has no intrinsic energy. It is the place where energy manifests. When Pluto aspects the natal Midheaven, its transformative power affects what appears through that point. All major aspects from Pluto to the Midheaven are therefore potent and deserve attention.

Transits to Ascendant

Pluto transforms. When it aspects the Ascendant, it alters how we appear in the world. Pluto also signifies extremes, power and cycles of breakdown and rebuilding. Each Pluto transit to the Ascendant brings those themes into visible expression.

Many such changes are simply phases of growth. But if Pluto’s energy is blocked, it intensifies and the changes become problematic. Suppressed change may erupt suddenly; if blocked again, psychological, physical or relational breakdowns can follow.

Though drastic transformations are seldom welcome, they can restore original conditions and permit renewal. A psychological crisis can begin a spiritual rebirth; physical illness, properly treated, can inaugurate renewed health.

Transits to the Lunar Nodes

The four nodal points mark stages in sending energy into social and personal networks (North Node) and receiving its results (South Node). The bendings bridge the two.

Pluto’s transcendental energies operate largely outside ordinary awareness, so it is hard to be conscious of what we do and experience during these transits. They seldom cause immediate crises, but lack of awareness can have consequences at the next transit within the same lifetime. Because each phase’s experience is shaped by actions at the previous one, these cycles genuinely warrant the overused term karmic – karma literally means action.