Pluto transits can just about wipe you out — especially when they hit the angles of the chart. Pluto is about viruses, corporations, secret societies, death, transformation, sexuality, the unconscious and mineral wealth (just to name a few). Pluto cares about the soul, not the ego. When it comes into contact with personal planets, certain areas of life are intensified and demand change.
Pluto is far from the Sun, far from the soul and the light of the world. Therefore, it represents the dark depths of the human psyche that are locked away and dejected. And as a shallow society based on false values, we have truly rejected the darkness within ourselves and projected it upon others. By doing this, we see the results: a lack of maturity, a lack of true security and a certain chronic psychological paranoid neuroticism.
By working with Pluto, true spiritual power and internal strength are manifested. Pluto transits are major life-time karmic arcs. This dwarf planet makes a single orbit in 248 years or 90,560 days. These are life-long lessons that often take multiple lifetimes to work out.
Pluto is also very much related to Scorpio and there is a lot of overlapping themes: intensity, obsession, emotion and hidden wealth. We often spend several lifetimes figuring out how to manage our personal power and deal with people imposing themselves on us.
1.) Take Back Your Power
People, places and events take our power away by controlling our internal state (eg: how we feel). We are sad because one person said something to us. We are angry because traffic is horrendous. We are depressed at a lack of future prospects. Ultimately, by realizing that we have no control over the external, we turn within. Power comes from acknowledging that you have the option to choose how you will react to every circumstance in each moment.
“Life is just one damn thing after another.”
— Winston Churchill
The story of when Alexander the Great met Diogenes, the cynical philosopher, is a great example of embodying Pluto.
Diogenes insults the young king by telling him that he can’t tell the difference between the bones of a homeless man and the bones of his late father. Alexander respected the courage Diogenes displayed by insulting him without trepidation. He asked if he could grant him anything as a reward. But his only request was for the king to step out of the way a little. He was blocking the sunlight.
Diogenes could not be bribed with wealth or pleasure, nor threatened or coerced with pain or loss, since he had nothing to lose. Similarly, someone who has mastered Pluto will be like the Indian God, Siva — very powerful and creative, showing equanimity in both pleasure and pain.
2.) Letting Go of Control
Pluto transits come and supposedly “wreck our lives.” If we are prepared and have a certain level of spiritual growth, these become times of great empowerment. It’s challenging but rewarding. With Pluto’s energies having been mastered, life still happens, tragedy strikes, but we are largely unaffected and quick to overcome it.
An example of Pluto creating havoc is saving money your entire life to open a business, only to have a group of thugs burn it down without reason. This is very Plutonian. Although Pluto is destruction, it is also creation. Highly creative and wealthy people have a strong Pluto.
We have little control over the larger trajectory of our lives. We do have control over our reactions. We can choose what emotions to engage in, what thoughts to think and what words to say. By consciously choosing, we can better let go of controlling the externalities of life.
Remember that people are going to do what they’re going to do. Like it or not.
We aren’t going to have much luck in changing them. Even in a care-based professions dealing with people, whether one is a nurse, counsellor or astrologer, there is an underlying idea that we can help everyone. It’s not really true. People have their own karmas to work through. They have their own power to live and direct their lives.
That power is unrecognized because they’ve been living in the conditioned mind for so long. By saving others, we deny them their personal power and accept the false idea that they do not have any power over their circumsntaces. On the larger scale, we don’t. But to some extent, of course, we do. Pluto is creative as well as destructive. Through visualizing and choosing our thoughts, emotions and words with care, we can start consciously creating our life circumstances.
3.) Finding Meaning
Pluto people, or those who have Pluto on an angle or as a critical planet in their chart, long for meaning and a certain depth to life. The superficial just isn’t going to cut it. Pluto can make us very compulsive and obsessive, if channelled incorrectly. Creativity, healing and wealth come from a well-aspected Pluto.
We can see how our destruction gave way to a new life or new path. Or how our personal obstacles and setbacks were actually pivotal in our spiritual development and happened to lay the foundation for our destiny. Frederich Nietzsche once said that every creation comes with some form of destruction. This is true. In order to create, something must be eliminated to make room. Knowing this dualistic fact, one finds meaning.
Pluto comes to terms with the realities of life (similar to what Saturn does) and has us move beyond a surface-level-approach to life, creating a deeper and richer experience to it. Instilling your life with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose through the right knowledge and the right perspective on suffering, you can access the great riches of the subconscious, which relates to the often overlooked wealth that is beneath the earth: diamonds, gold, minerals, oil and more.
