Pluto in the 1st House

As small children, the people with this placement were very vulnerable. Yet they had an easy sense of power, a feeling that they were the centre of their universe, their reality. However, the realization that parents held the power came early; and since children don't have the ability to make money and earn their own way, this strong self-centered experience was sacrificed. Even though these children realize that they are powerful, it doesn't seem to manifest externally. One way to keep the illusion of power is to try to appear invulnerable, strong, aloof, capable, etc.; and Pluto first house children do this despite the knowledge that the parents and other authority figures have control over their lifestyles. This emotional adjustment will manifest as secretiveness and an unwillingness to share feelings or desires that could possibly be used manipulatively to gain control over the native. This can also create the illusion of shyness in a child with this placement - it's better not to say anything at all than to have one's words misconstrued to another's benefit! Coming with this essential loss of power in childhood is the feeling that she/ he is very wrong somehow, and must become stronger, more perfect, etc., in order to really deserve the importance and impact which the inner soul feels it is due. This sets up a tendency for the child to be extremely critical of its own expression - analyzing it, probing the self looking for flaws. When an imperfection is found, then a struggle ensues to bring that area up to par, to perfect the self. When that doesn't work (and generally, attempts at perfection don't!), the child becomes very unforgiving towards himself or herself. In short, the child will try to appear perfect and all-knowing, not needing anyone else's help. Yet behind that façade, intense self-analysis is going on, and possibly there is self-punishment for not truly being the ideal person that is projected on the outside. Embarrassment and humiliation are terrible threats which could expose the Pluto person's failures.

This produces negative personality patterns. The initial (and unfortunately for some, the long-term) response is to work the body so as to appear powerful and strong. This can include developing largeness in size or weight, or weight lifting and other muscle building activities. There can be personal aggrandizement to increase the sense of power and importance through significant or 'heavy' language, impressing the listener that the Pluto first house person knows inner secrets of the universe or unknown factors about the listener which the listener has no way of denying, disproving, or even finding out! This can be an attempt to set up the self as a guru, demanding respect from others and keeping the self somehow separate from and above them. A follower does not question the guru, and so a sense of security can be felt by the Pluto 'teacher'. Even when this individual does have a special, unique key to the universe, he or she is often unwilling or even unable to relay that information clearly to another. There is the fear, too, that another person could steal the information and use it, thereby getting all the credit for thinking of it. Unfortunately, this can mean that the powerful information a Pluto person knows may never reach others, and the person may end up feeling that others don't understand.

Coupled with this, there is frequently a difficulty in getting backing or funding, since investors not only have little idea about what they are financing, but have virtually no piece of the action either! The Pluto first house person is intensely self-critical and, much like a harping parent, continuously tries to redo himself or herself. Inner responses to self criticism create crises and personal overhauls in the personality, as well as in the surrounding events and environment of the person. This individual finds it hard to know when to stop pickling on himself or herself. Ultimately, after trying to avoid the continuous hassle and pain of the overhaul brought on by himself or herself, the Pluto person self-destructs through self-punishment. The lifestyle will seem to become a landslide, pulling this native down to the pits, to the bottom. This creates situations that don't seem to stop, but only help to continue the devastating momentum. In some cases, the individuals lose their sources of income, their homes, their lifestyles, everything; and have to struggle in order to start over something else. Others will avoid these people, fearing that the landslide could be 'catching' - that it might affect them.

Pluto people are considered to be too egotistical, and there is seldom any pity felt for them. Others will say "Well, he (or she) deserves it, since he (or she) brought it on himself (or herself)". Unfortunately, Pluto first house people are not aware of what they did to bring things on themselves. They will close the door to the frustrating past, and grudgingly go on. Friendships and connections are severed entirely, with little chance of reviving. Labeled either a 'loser' or an egomaniac, this person can simply disappear from the scene. Indeed, the Pluto native is often hard to find anyway - but under times of stress he or she can simply vanish, leaving no forwarding address or any clues to his or her whereabouts.

Of course, not every first house Pluto native has this particular problem of unrelenting crises, etc.. But she / he will generally still be a very private person. Few people, if any, will get to know this person intimately. Yet, there is often an aura of excitement around the Pluto native, which suggests that here is someone who lives life very richly and excitingly. Being around such a person can lend an aura of glamour to one's life; and others feel that they are somehow more exciting people because of this connection with power.

The Pluto first house person is a magician, and that's what magnetically attracts others. Somehow, others simply know that the power of this person can bring into his or her life anything she / he wants - anything! The focus of awareness is deep, and the sense of dynamic, powerful inner motivations can tap into the resources of the universe. By being clear with desire, the essential nature of Scorpio and Aries (the two signs most frequently associated with Pluto) creates that into reality. The native can experience life intensely in the moment, and is extraordinarily perceptive. Like a hawk or an eagle, people with first house Pluto are aware of their environment, and of how that environment reflects their own nature. They can live life with excitement, involved in unraveling the mystery of reality, and exploring their own magical resources - of which there are many! When this individual can positively use Pluto, she / he will not feel destroyed if others think him or her silly or ridiculous. Seriousness is replaced with purpose; and there is a sense of cosmic humor with this placement, n understanding of how funny the universe can be. He or she can be vulnerable, and in that vulnerability can have the capacity to respond openly and in depth to feelings and stimuli. This is truly powerful. This person is selective in the choice of who or what to respond to, and doesn't necessarily feel obligated to be or act with your usual social politeness. Yet, she / he can be very tender, warm and understanding, when she / he chooses to be.

This individual has the power to act on his or her own decisions, and feel good about it, trusting the inner self. Even though others may think this person rude at times, the Plutonian knows what is true communication and what is really verbal manipulation, and responds accordingly. Without the paranoia of the negative Pluto person, the positive individual can truly feel the difference, and will not be manipulated. He or she, however, will be open and expressive, and supportive of anyone about whom she / he cares greatly. This gives incredible depth to a relationship, and a deep and secure bond between the parties involved. Life with a Pluto first house individual is never routine! If you are one, or are fortunate enough to know one, you'll be aware of the magic of life, when Pluto is used positively. The Pluto individual will always be able to achieve his or her heart's desire, for she / he has the qualities of courage, self-forgiveness, and personal security through self-knowledge. With a grand perspective, this powerful personality creates tailor-made a unique and exciting reality for himself or herself. With the deep kundalini force within the self expanding outwards, the Pluto person lets his or her own magical genius complete that greater destiny she / he knows is waiting for him or her.

Probable outcomes of the pattern mentioned before include the development of a powerful will, many upheavals throughout life, high levels of endurance, non¬conformity, resistance, intensity, and weight on the body (particularly about the hips). Others will notice this person's intense gaze, which hints at fire and power smoldering under the surface. This person can be overly aggressive, or seemingly painfully shy. The face may have deep-set eyes, and a strong chin. Sometimes, despite the power of the jaw, the distance from chin to nose can be small in proportion to the space from eyebrows to hairline.

Physical manifestations in the reality of the Pluto first house person include several uprootings throughout life, such as moves to other and perhaps distant locations. There can be danger of accidents, particularly during a Pluto transit of the first house. Most often, however, there is simply a withdrawal from outer social events, a tendency to seclusion or reclusiveness. Physical problems can absorb a great deal of time in treatment; and the native is often not averse to using any new technological or occult methods, making his or her body a testing laboratory, so to speak. There can be extremes of involvement with the health, or total denial of the body, which can occur particularly in a religious or spiritual context.

The Pluto native is talented in new technological developments that enable him or her to get access to more and more information, which can be used to substantiate inner knowledge about the world. This placement can often denote a scientific skill, an inherent understanding of the laws of physics. Willing to be a non-conformist, Pluto first house types are possibly good candidates for making great breakthroughs in style or knowledge. Unfortunately, this can also lead to egotism, as mentioned earlier, antagonizing others and thereby denying the benefits that could come to someone less difficult to know and work with

.During Pluto's transit of this house, the individual will often change life directions, which will be reflected in changes of hairstyle, clothing, cars - even spouses. Those who care for the Pluto first house native or transit individual will have to bear with and understand this person's need for long hours alone, or time for concentration. Resistance on the part of friends and lovers at this time could endanger the relationship. The peak of transit intensity occurs within a degree or two above the Ascendant, and during the following three years as Pluto goes through the first degrees of the first house. Only the Pluto person will suspect what is actually going on. On superficial inspection, nothing will really seem different in the manner of speech, attitudes, etc.. But know that great changes are taking place, the results of which will surely appear evident in time.

If you have Pluto in your first house, or by transit, there are ways in which you can change ongoing negative energies into positive ones. First of all, and most significantly, Pluto tends to hold onto the past with such power that you'll need to clear some of that out before you can use positive Pluto power in the present and the future. The best way of beginning the letting-go process is to forgive yourself for having held on to the emotional junk and negative attitudes which you have held for as long as you have. If you have difficulty doing this, imagine yourself a few years back, or even into childhood, in a situation that you managed quite poorly - one for which you criticized yourself later. Let the current, present tense you forgive the past you for that stupidity or failure. You can go all the way back into childhood and clear out events that were difficult in your growth by forgiving the past self to whom those events happened. When you do this technique, remember to separate yourself emotionally from that earlier self, so you won't have to feel the pain and anger all over again. Hug that child, adolescent or younger adult, and let him or her know that you are standing by to support him / her. When you have difficulty forgiving yourself and others, it may help to visualize a bubble of white or purple light being thrown by you over the party you're forgiving. If you loved or hated someone in the past and don't want to let go of that feeling, imagine this person in a beautiful garden where she / he can rest, and where you can visit whenever you like. This can give the rest of your daily life some peace. If you have difficulty remembering powerful or emotionally intense incidents in your past, sit down and write on a sheet of paper the names of all the people you have ever been angry at. If your first house Pluto is by transit only, this may not be that long a list. However long the list is, routinely go down your list and check off people's names as you forgive them. Most of those from the distant past will be relatively easy. You may need to spend more time with the people who are currently frustrating you, until you feel a change in your heart, a freedom, a space of opening up. This happens as you let go of your attachment to being angry over time. Then relax. Relax completely. Get a visualization tape or some meditation music at your local occult bookstore, and lie down on your bed and listen to it. Let go, deeply let go. Relax methodically every muscle in your body. Breathe fully, deeply. Don't hold your breath at any time. Simply pull the air in deeply, and then let it out. Don't strain, just let your breathing calm you.

Next, when the music or tape is over - that is, if you're not asleep - imagine yourself in the future, say three years from now. What do you look like? Are you happy then? Where do you live, and with whom? Use your imagination - you have plenty of it. If you find struggle and difficulties in your image, then you know there will be more of the same old negative Pluto trips ahead. Instead, at this time, consciously choose to have a positive future image of yourself, with magic, fun, excitement; and without struggle, poverty, being overweight, etc.. When you can truly get into the new picture of yourself being powerful and happy, note the feeling in your heart. Is it open? Does this image feel good to you? Remember this feeling. You will at any time be able to recreate this body sensation of relaxation and pleasure at will, especially whenever you feel bogged down with the trivialities of life. Use this future image to help you get out of negative mental attitudes and images. As your ability to see the new image grows, add its power to your current reality, bit by bit. Focus your desires into positive interests, and watch your strength and Pluto power grow for you.

Pluto in 1st House: These people are always intensely themselves, possessing little or no power of compromise with community, family or society. Generally, they are attractive, often emanating a strong but somewhat disturbing kind of sexual charisma. They must be careful of attracting dangerous types.

Pluto rising can bring strong sexual attractions that contain a destructive element; sexual partnerships may bring them grief in one form or another. This position is also a partial testimony to homosexuality or peculiar sex experiences.

Pluto rising people are inclined to take dangerous risks, sometimes to the point of being self-destructive. With hard Mars or Uranus aspects (or Mars or Uranus in Fire signs), they can have a volatile temper that explodes periodically into rage. They are highly demanding of partners, and not given to compromise themselves. They are inclined to marry someone very different from themselves and, because they resist change themselves, their marriages often don't last.

They act independent, as though they can and will do as they please no matter what, yet often they are really extremely dependent emotionally and financially on family, mate, or friends. This is something they can't change as long as they will not acknowledge it and continue to insist on their own independence in the face of all evidence to the contrary. This may be doubly hard to take because they do not refrain from making wise remarks; they generally allow their sarcasm to run rampant.

Their pig-headedness brings on difficult situations, which can force them to think, and ultimately to grow from bitter experience. They are extremely tough, as difficult to destroy as to change. They have tremendous powers of survival in spite of the crushing weight of difficulties they bring down on themselves (and on friends and family), though sometimes they manage to get themselves done in, usually in some horribly dramatic fashion.

They are fascinated by human limits, curious about others and the forces that life beneath the surface, but not particularly interested in lending any support. They will work for causes, but usually alone and in their own way, and often by some form of destructive sabotage or non-compliance. Unless there are other strong planets involved, Pluto rising people often find it hard to act, hard to make necessary moves, hard to be on time. They see things very differently from most people, and this makes them silent, or witty and sarcastic, but rarely up-front with their true attitudes. Pluto is a deeply internal influence. Even on the angles, only intimates are usually aware of its full effect. The effects of Pluto rising may not be apparent to anyone but those who are closest to them or who have to work with them.

Pluto in 1st House: Self-expression: With Pluto in the 1st, there is a deep intensity of self-expression. It's as if the power of the unconscious exists for all to see right at the surface of self, and that power has great impact. People tend to immediately like or dislike you, sometimes in spite of themselves. In some instances, others both like and dislike you simultaneously, experiencing attraction and repulsion together. This is because your natural radiance demands psychological confrontation between yourself and others, even though that demand is largely unintentional. Your projected energy is mysterious, promising more than is shown, with a hint of danger. Curiously, you are often blind to the compelling nature of your own personality, and you wonder why others respond to you as they do. Natural persona: Your natural face is difficult to read, but impossible to ignore. Something dark and brooding is present, indefinable, unseen, but strongly felt. Your name-tag says, "I am not what I seem; I am more and less than you realize."

Self-awareness: Quiet intensity of expression and powerful release of subconscious energies furthers inner self-awareness. You have deep emotions waiting under the surface; and when they are released, you become more conscious of your existence. While they are 'cooking', however, you tend to be a blank page in your inner awareness, just being, without knowing anything about your current state. When these intense feelings come out of the oven to erupt through your external personality, they create a sense of self so heightened that the awareness stays with you long after the eruption has subsided. You then operate on the memory of self until the next eruption. It's like drilling for oil. You'll strike a geyser only rarely; but when you do, it will fuel all your efforts to come through the many dry wells you may drill before hitting the next strike.

Boundaries: The magnetism of powerful and purposeful emotions provide contact between your inner reality and the outer world. Superficiality, blockage, or 'frozen' expression destroys the lens; but all forms of subterranean manipulation - such as emotional dominance - bind the two worlds together in chaotic compulsivity and the experience of silent terror. The challenge is to hunt for a way to fuse your inner and outer environments together without obliterating either in the process.

Vitality: You have truly remarkable powers of recuperation, although psychological disorders are more crucial than physical ones. You are subject to all manner of intense and compulsive habits, but the will to live is symbolized more strongly here than with any other planet. You absolutely must learn to temper the tendency to burn out your body through love of intense excess. If you must 'rev' on something, let yourself rev on your own positive vitality. Feedback techniques are immensely powerful here, so remind yourself often that Life wants to come through you. Should negativity still exist, then exorcise it in a cleansing purge. 'If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.' Remember, however, that such extreme techniques are to be used only when all other avenues have been exhausted.

Pluto in 1st House: You can choose how to achieve your ambitions. Although you go to extremes in asserting your will, you have a strong sense of purpose, and you will reshape your environment in order to achieve your goals. Perhaps the frustration of your early years made you decide to let nothing stand in your way again. Your destiny may require you to make an important contribution to society, for you are concerned about political conditions at all levels. You aren't afraid to speak out when elected officials fail to carry out their promises. You respect education because you know the public must be informed in order to be effective. You know how to gain public support in protesting the misuse of power by elected officials. In your personal and business affairs, you insist on fair play. You sincerely hope that your children will also stand up for their rights. You want them to take advantage of the opportunities you provide to take their place in the world. You want to know that society can use your resources to improve human conditions.

You can turn to powerful friends for support. You know how to scheme when necessary to achieve your objectives, and you don't tolerate anyone who violates your trust. Most of your friends respect you for this, but few genuinely like you. You know what you want out of life, and you know you can do more with your ideas than others can with theirs. Having an objective helps you focus your ideas effectively. Your current situation may not be challenging, but it may be the catalyst you need to get started. It is important to be involved in some significant social activity that requires your talent. Otherwise you will never feel that your life has been meaningful.

You must learn to modify your extremism and take advantage of opportunities. Rather than try to control your competitors, wouldn't it be more profitable to gain their support? Why not assume that they would welcome you? You can convert fear into dedication if you present a worthwhile purpose that will benefit others as well as yourself. Don't worry about being undermined; you can 'smell' deception when it first appears. You are in control of most situations, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain through co-operative effort. You may have to break with the past before you can make a commitment to your goals. Your personal relationships will be enhanced if you are free to indulge in them with no strings attached. Your success in marriage will indicate how well you've handled the frustrations of your childhood.

After much soul-searching, you may decide to do what you can to justify people's trust in you. If you are willing to serve the interests of others, you may earn gratitude and sincere appreciation for your efforts. In this way you can also motivate others to follow your example. Make sure that you aren't motivated solely by desire for personal gain, or the process may disintegrate and fail.

You may undo all your accomplishments if you assume that you can get away with anything. Try to be more moderate and compromise when it seems appropriate. You can undermine your position by being too self-indulgent, neglecting other people's needs. If you are responsive to your social obligations, you will gain many benefits. After all, much of your success comes from the public sector.

Pluto in 1st House: In this tradition, the first house is often called the 'House of the Personality'. What's actually at stake here can be expressed more precisely: the first house represents that part of the Self which we make obvious to the world through our habitual styles of action, behavior, and self-presentation. Think of it as the interface between two parts of your humanness: all the complexities and ambiguities of your deep psyche, and the fundamental requirement of material life that we make visible, behavioral choices .Someone offends you. Inwardly, you experience dozens of emotions and reactions. Anger. Hurt. Understanding. Contempt. Shame. Transcendent Indifference. Fear. They're all real. Which inner state will you express? Or more precisely, which state will you express first, as a reflex? The answer is reflected in the natures of any planets in your first house, as well as with the cusp of that house, which we call the Ascendant.

Pluto in the First? Let's have a look....Your high destiny: You've probably had the misfortune of serving on committees in which the healthy principles of democracy and consensus exhibited their shadowy sides: endless inaction, lengthy obsession with trivial concerns, deadlock. This downward trajectory is often characterized in its early stages by mutual displays of courtesy, respect, and attentiveness. By the end of the process, we typically observe backbiting, scapegoating, and childish vindictiveness reminiscent of a medieval court. And still nothing is accomplished. At such a time, one often longs for real leadership to appear, the sort of leadership that can quickly cut through layers of verbiage and get to the heart of the matter.

Your high destiny involves providing that kind of incisive direction. Such leadership doesn't need to be cruel or autocratic, but it is not typically much concerned with being liked. Human society needs its truth-sayers; and if they do well in popularity contests it's generally posthumously. In times of crisis, society needs men and women of action, self-confidence, and steady nerves... people, such as yourself, who can make painful decisions in ambivalent circumstances quickly and without looking back. Such sharpness of impact is not simply about galvanizing groups into focused action: it can just as easily be about punching the energizing, challenging truth through to the individuals: telling people what they don't want to hear, in order words. And it does not need to function in face-to-face mode; it can operate less directly, if the rest of the chart favors such an approach. Examples of that latter possibility might exist in journalism, for one possibility.

Your distorting wound: The first house is a very sensitive area. A planet there is said to be strong in the birth chart. While we all have Pluto in our charts, it would be fair to single you out as a markedly 'Plutonian' person, even from very early in life.

Now, a Plutonian person will tend to see the world through Pluto-colored glasses, and that means that you have always been good at seeing he sorts of realities that make people uncomfortable. We live in a world that's full of threatening realities, some serious, some more trivial, but all taboo. I can imagine you as a young child at a family reunion. You've overheard some hushed conversations at home, learned some things that no-one intended you to know. "Uncle Jack", I hear you exclaiming before the assembled relatives. "What's a bimbo and why are you in love with one?"Your taboo-sensitive Plutonian radar picked up a certain mishmash of tension and fascination in your parents' voices as they discussed Jack's romantic proclivities. You were not out to hurt anybody. You had no idea that you had stepped into dangerous territory. But, with Pluto in the first house, your natural instinct for action lay in the direction of exploring emotionally charged realities.

Nobody is born knowing what's taboo; we have to learn it. As a Plutonian person, you had a natural hunger to get at that deeper, less comfortable layer of life. But inevitably you were naive. How does Uncle Jack respond to your query? Unless he himself was a Plutonian type, there's an excellent chance that he punished you for your question. That punishment may have been a sharp, angry word. More likely it was simply a very awkward moment: a pained, clueless look on Uncle Jack's face, then mom or dad to the rescue somehow... looking at least as pained as Jack. You never intended it, but you hurt everyone in that tableau. And that itself was your punishment.

You began to learn that there was something about your nature that people found upsetting, unsettling, or plain reprehensible. You were too young to grasp that certain truths are kind only in certain seasons, and sometimes never. You began to carry your Wound: a secretiveness, an inward intensity not to be shared, a caution about expressing yourself spontaneously.

Carrying the Wound angered you. Sometimes that anger leaked out half-intentionally... you knew how to hurt people, and sometimes you'd do it just to release some venom. Perhaps you stayed on that hurtful road; it is more likely, if you're the sort of person who'd be reading this book in the first place, that you overcame that kind of compulsive angry self-presentation. You just held all that fiery truth inside. But it's still a Wound: a dark, bitter self-contained edge in your character. Maybe you show it, maybe not. To some extent, that depends on the 'politeness quotient' in the rest of your chart. But it's there. In a nutshell: the idea that truth-carrying and truth-embodying should be a source of shame does not occur to a child. You walked into that trap, and were scarred by it.

There's more. Anything in the first house tends to radiate visibly and obviously from the personality. With you sending out such Plutonian vibrations, people around you often let you symbolize that part of life for them. And when they are not at ease with Plutonian realities - a fair bet most of the time - they'll have a tendency to project their discomfort onto you, naming you the 'bad' one: you're 'too intense', 'too psychological', 'too sexual', 'too morbid', whatever. This scapegoating pattern is likely to have made itself felt at some point in your life, and it too is part of the Wound you carry. Your navigational error: Like the beer can sitting by the compass in our earlier parable, your truth-carrier's scar or your scapegoat's wound can distort your course through life. Essentially, you can hold back too much, or express yourself vigorously and passionately but in pointless ways that have little to do with who you really are and what you really feel.

Until the necessary inner work is done, you are vulnerable to finding yourself in situations where you 'know too much' but feel incapable of acting on that knowledge.

You may, for example, find yourself working for a company that's cutting corners in terms of environmental regulations. Depending on other aspects of your character, you may deal with that reality by becoming cynical, or by rationalizing, or by justifying your choice to work there and keep silence as a prerequisite to feeding your kids or paying your bills... as though no other jobs existed. In all those dark expressions, we see the basic mark of Pluto: in each, you are bound to the truth-suppressing self-containment that is characteristic of the unprocessed first-house Pluto Wound. Further, those accumulated inner toxins would then add an unpleasant edge to your off-the-job character. The natural, healthy urge to express the truth thus becomes vulnerable to being charged with anger and then mis-expressing itself. A classic mis-expression of such energy lies in appointing oneself psychologist to 'safe' people in one's life. Without intending it, you might act in ways that are too pushy, especially in terms of other people's sensitive zones. Illustration: you might tell your best friend that the reason she's having trouble losing weight is that her excess pounds are really just armor against facing her discomforts around sexuality. And that might very well be the truth. But is she ready to hear it? And will it help her? And why are you really saying it? If your nature is less psychologically-oriented, we might see inappropriate assumptions of practical authority over others - the 'too much advice' syndrome. We can also observe manipulative behavior - and such behavior is usually successful because of your instinctual knowledge of other people's woundedness and hence of where their vulnerabilities lies.

Underlying it all, there would arise a dark, brooding 'existentialist' mood - the inevitable mark of low Plutonian energy. Let's add that the first house has much to do with our ability to act and to make choices. When you are in balance in that department, you naturally choose to function in Plutonian ways - as someone who is inclined to delve, to penetrate, to ferret out truth... and often to lead or inspire others in that regard. But if the Navigational Error dominates, then you become directionless, and slip into a kind of existential attitude of coping reactively with a meaningless universe.

We must emphasize repeatedly that, when talking about Wounds and Navigational Errors, we are never speaking of immutable character defects; we are looking at psychological twists that can be untwisted, thereby freeing energy for vastly more helpful and interesting behaviors.

The Healing Method: Going beyond first house Plutonian traps is not polite business. To succeed, you have to take two steps: you must face the dark and you must express what you learn to at least one other human being. Facing the dark can take many forms. Sometimes - but only sometimes - that means doing deep psychological work on oneself. Anyone who has been through the process of real psychotherapy, including its bleak terrains, has done it. Other possibilities exist. I am imagining a person volunteering to work in a hospice. Perhaps she approaches the work with idealism but some naiveté, expecting lots of 'cosmic' experiences around death. If she sticks with it, she'll have some of those high experiences too - but she'll also see a lot of petty, frightened, dispiriting behaviors on the parts of people who are dying exactly the way they lived. What will come up in our volunteer as she faces these people? All the dimensions of her Plutonian Wound. She'll face some taboo truths in the hospice to be sure; death is the ultimate taboo subject. But she'll also face cynicism, coldness, and anger in herself, and those are the marks of her own wound: the burden of her own silence.

A young man might undertake a Vision Quest in the Native American style. He goes alone into the wilderness, perhaps armed with crystals, shamanistic fantasies, and naiveté. By the second day of his fast, he is terribly hungry, frightened, empty and vulnerable. He feels his death close by, and it's not very inspiring. His Wound rises up - but perhaps something else rises up in him as well. Perhaps he finds something in himself that is strong enough to face all his primal fears, to name them, and to integrate them. The point is that, with Pluto in the first house, you were born with a capacity to function decisively in the presence of fierce truths. Since even acknowledging those truths is not common practice, you were shamed and punished for having that capacity. The healing process for you lies in placing yourself in situations where that ability to look darkness in the eye and act consciously anyway is necessary and useful. The hospice image illustrates the idea of undertaking the healing process in a public context; therapy or Vision Quest illustrate its more private face. Either method works. But both methods only begin the process. We must recognize that the first house is quite social.

That is, it pertains to our social presentation of ourselves. To complete the healing process, a first house Pluto person must integrate the experience of the dark with his or her outward, social self - and that's where expressing what we learn to another human being comes into the picture. In the hospice there's an old man dying of cancer. He's pretending he'll be find. He's cursing his doctors, his nurses, his family. Nothing is good enough. He's obsessed with money, fears he's being robbed. How do you really feel about him? Well, sadness and maybe even compassion for him might figure in your answer. But anyone who sits with such a curmudgeon on a daily basis is going to have saltier emotions to express as well. The first house Pluto person must find somewhere to express all those thoughts and attitudes, and thereby to integrate that earthy, dark-facing energy into the Self.

The energizing vision: Human culture needs its beads read sometimes. We need people such as yourself who are born with the rare ability to face their own radical fury and their own bleak desolation. We need them, after that personal 'descent into Hell', to emerge and help us face the dark in our own lives. You can do it, and you were born for it. You will thrive in an environment where people are up against their most basic issues and fears, willing to face them, but perhaps uncertain of how to do so. When people are ready for the truth, you can step in. You'll help them, of course, but that's only part of the point. The rest of it is that you'll feel alive and energized there. Something extraordinary happens in you when real human drama unfolds, when people are stripped of their pretences and posturings and stand naked. Then, they are like dynamite waiting for a match - and the match is a sense of what to do, where to aim all that fire and willingness. The match could be called leadership, and you can provide it. That leadership can unfold in obvious collective ways, such as un a business or a civic group you might influence; or it can be expressed in private, a mind-triggering word uttered to one individual. It might put you in the public eye as a kind of role model, or it might develop more quietly. Those kinds of distinctions can be made astrologically, but only through knowledge of your entire birth chart. Either way, you are at your best in situations of naked honesty, immediacy, and directness. And conversely, you are least comfortable in circumstances where truths are being avoided, hidden behind theatrical veils of form and propriety.

Pluto in 1st House: Pluto in any angular house or sign shows that a new evolutionary cycle is beginning. This means that a whole evolutionary cycle has come to a close. Pluto in the First House will thus correlate to an individual who will feel that he or she has a special destiny to fulfill. These people will feel this sense of special destiny on a very instinctual basis. This sense is based on the fact that there is a new evolutionary cycle beginning for them. The first tentative steps to develop and actualize this new cycle have begun in the most recent prior lives for these individuals.

Since these people have begun a new evolutionary cycle in the very recent past, they will need, and gravitate to, independence and freedom in this life. These individuals will be likely to be self-centered and somewhat narcissistic in early life. Primary allegiance and identity is with themselves. They have and will desire, freedom and independence to initiate and fulfill any desire or experience they deem necessary, because experience if the vehicle through which they discover or become who and what they are. This emphasized need for freedom and independence is compulsive, because the new evolutionary cycle that they have embarked upon is so instinctual. There is an intense sense of personal self-discovery that is felt at every moment. In other words, something new could be discovered or realized at any time. Because this sense of self-discovery is not conceptually formulated, self-discovery is linked to that which is to come. Thus, the sense of a special destiny that is waiting to be discovered demands essential independence and freedom. These individuals must be free enough to pursue whatever experience comes their way in order to realize or discover something about themselves. that they did not know before. It is the instinctual attraction to the immediacy of a potential experience that serves as the vehicle through which this sense of special destiny can be realized.

The evolutionary intent has been, and often is, to find out something new and unique about oneself. This evolutionary pressure set in motion a process of continual becoming that is highly magnified or intensified. The First House, by its very nature, demands unchecked expression, action and application. Yet Pluto, by its very nature, seeks security through familiarity. Pluto needs perspective and wants to know 'why' prior to the initiation of an action or desire. When these two processes are linked, a natural conflict occurs. On the one hand, these individuals naturally gravitate to independence and freedom.

They claim the right to be free to do what they must do. On the other hand, they can resist the instinctual impulses to evolve beyond what they are at any moment in time. The result, on a cyclic basis, is an identity crisis experienced in varying degrees of magnitude. Loss of perspective can occur whenever these individuals cyclically implode upon themselves. Implosions result when the evolutionary desire and pressure to forever move forward through one experience after another meets the intrinsic resistance of Pluto to secure and maintain that which one already is - familiarity and the known. The identity crisis that occurs is thus based on the simultaneous sense of stagnation, limitation and restriction in terms of what the individual already is, and the need to eliminate these restrictions by initiating new experiences or actions.

The need for new experiences will have the effect of creating insecurity with respect to what the individual already is and how he or she has structured his or her life. Again, these instinctual evolutionary desires to grow, evolve and move forward do not manifest in well-formulated thoughts, concepts, or ideas about what to do. They simply manifest as an intense instinctual impulse to do something, anything, that will create the necessary movement that allows for a continuation of self-discovery. The natural resistance of Pluto when linked to the instinctual impulses to change can result in feelings of inner frustration and anger that can be very intense. Often this anger is projected upon others who are seen as the source of the restriction, stagnation, or problem. In extreme cases, the potential for physical violence exists. The polarity point of Pluto is the Seventh House. The evolutionary desire or intent of this sign or house is ignited as the cycles of identity crisis continue and deepen. It is ignited as the loss of perspective creates cycles of inner torment and anger. The evolutionary desire will progressively lead these individuals into relationships with others. The process of self-discovery and the actualization of a special destiny cannot occur by maintaining a primary allegiance to just themselves. The prior-life instinctual impulse to maintain freedom and independence promotes a 'natural loner' coming into this life. The vacuum of individual isolation from others that has maintained this prior evolutionary need and impulse will promote the identity crisis because the person has reached an evolutionary limitation that is rooted in him- / herself. The loss of perspective experienced during the identity crisis will manifest as a desire to initiate relationships with others who can help the individual answer the questions: "Who am I?", and "What am I?". By experiencing a personal limitation wherein these questions cannot be answered completely within him- / herself, the individual must learn how to open up to other people. "Who am I?", "What am I?" will be the stated or unstated cries leading to interaction with others. These individuals will subconsciously attract other people who can have a rather shocking effect upon them. This shock effect can occur through the information, advice, or perspectives given to them by others. The vibrational resonance emanating from their Souls attracts those who will help the individual answer these questions.

As a result of this natural process, those with Pluto in the First House will be instinctively attracted or repelled by many other people. Often the attractions are linked to a sexual or a physical magnetism. Such attractions may or may not be acted upon, depending upon the contributing factors in the person's total nature: Mars may be in Capricorn for example. In all cases, the basis of an attraction to another will be what I call hypnotic attractions that occur on a very instinctual basis: the individual does not consciously know what the basis of the attraction is - it just is. And, of course, others can be attracted to the individual in the same way. The basis of the hypnotic effect, either way, is a natural vibrational resonance emanating from the Soul that creates in each person a feeling that he / she would learn something about him- / herself because of the relationship formed to the other. These First House Pluto people naturally draw others who can help them fulfill their evolutionary requirements; and others are drawn to them for the same reasons.

This process works very instinctively, and can be quite fleeting in effect. The time duration of this type of relationship does not matter. That which occurs through the encounter does. Some relationships will be longer-lasting than others. Some will be sexualized; others will not.

When these individuals feel the instinctual attraction to another, there is a natural desire to find out what the basis of the attraction is. Frustration can result if existing circumstances of life do not allow them to follow through upon the attraction. These circumstances could involve many things including involvement with someone else.

When these individuals feel instinctively repelled by others, they may almost totally deny that person's existence. Sometimes this attraction / repulsion dynamic works in such a way that they feel repelled by the very people they feel attracted to, because the attraction may directly affect the existing nature of their reality.

Relative to the three basic reactions to the evolutionary and karmic requirements for life, these individuals can react in three possible ways to the attractions they feel toward others, and the information coming to them from others:

1. Total rejection of the information or attraction if the individual felt threatened or attacked by someone else, or if he or she felt another's intentions were suspect.

2. To take in the information or follow the attraction wholeheartedly if he or she felt the intentions or motivations of another were sincere, pure and worthy.

3. To reject some attractions or information and, at other times, take in some information and / or follow an attraction.

As the life unfolds, First House Pluto individuals also come to realize (desire) that they want and need to be in an intimate relationship on a sustained basis, not just brief and intense encounters. From the standpoint of evolution, these individuals are literally learning how to be in relationships on an equal basis. They are learning how to give rather than take, listen rather than dominate a conversation; learning that they are equals with others and that they are just as important or unimportant as anyone else.

By learning how to give to others first, they will learn that their own needs are answered as a result. By learning how to listen, they will know what to give. By listening and giving, they will learn the evolutionary lesson of equality and relativity.

Commonly, most of these people will experience difficulties in relationships that revolve around confrontations of an emotional, intellectual, or physical nature in the early part of life. Often they must experience the sense of being attacked, or attacking, of being misunderstood or misunderstanding another. These experiences occur to trigger the realization of where they and others are coming from - the motivations, intentions, and the basis of an attraction of repulsion. In other cases, intense confrontations may occur through which these individuals experience the sense of not having their needs met by another, or of another confronting them because their needs are not met by the First House Pluto individual. The reasons for these types of confrontations are the same: to promote lessons of equality, of giving, of listening; to fulfill another's needs before one's own; to promote the awareness of one's intentions and motivations, and the awareness of changing needs.

Those with a First House Pluto will react in one of three basic ways to the evolutionary intent implied in the above experiences. At different times in life, an individual may experience each one of these reactions:

1. To seek out relationships in which they are the dominant force, which leads to an unequal situation. They subconsciously attract this situation because it will ultimately guarantee a separation from that relationship. This type of situation maintains the need to freedom but does not meet the individual’s evolutionary needs. The desire for freedom, thus separation, dictates or creates such a relationship. For the very same reason, these individuals may reject or repel relationships altogether. In this case, they fear becoming overly embroiled in another's demands and needs. If they become overly involved in another's needs, they would consider such situations as potential 'detours' that interfere with their own desire to actualize their 'special destiny'. Some individuals, in this reaction, will pop in and out of relationships as the desire or need dictates. The identity crisis is now whether or not to be in relationships, as cycles of personal limitation and stagnation occur.

2. To seek out relationships in which they are being dominated, which also leads to an unequal situation. This is an extreme reaction to the desire to return to the Source, and is usually caused by an old karmic pattern that has led to subconscious guilt. The guilt is usually based on the subliminal knowledge of being overly egocentric and very manipulative in other lives. Thus, there is a need to 'atone' for the guilt. This is accomplished by drawing the type of partner who is totally dominating by nature. They dominate by compulsively confronting and pointing out the individual's weakest areas. This type of partner presents him- or herself as the individual who will reconstruct or reformulate the First House Pluto person according to his or her idea of how these individuals should be.

3. To seek out relationships that contain the potential for equality, with each partner giving and receiving in equal ways, each partner helping the other to understand him- / herself in open and non-defensive ways, and each partner allowing for independence in the other. Each would value commitment to the other and the relationship. Each partner would desire to define the relationship in 'new ways', and be open enough to let the relationship evolve and change forms as necessary.

4. The evolutionary prescription demands that these individuals learn how to balance their need for freedom and independence with their need for relationships. Rather than falling into an either / or situation, the evolutionary need is to realize that both needs and desires are relevant and necessary.

Such individuals must learn that the optimal relationships for them are with others who encourage and allow for their freedom and independence. They must learn to recognize that this rhythmic need to be alone or to be with someone is not predictable, nor is it know to the individual prior to its instinctual manifestation. The challenge is to follow these opposing rhythms as they present themselves. If this is not done, then loss of perspective, emotional distortion, misidentifying the cause of a problem, and an identity crisis will occur. If these rhythms are followed, then these reactions will be minimized.

Because the First House Pluto person is in a new evolutionary cycle, the individualizing impulses manifest on a very instinctual basis. These people will not know the reason of these desires, nor how to explain them or account for them in a conceptual sense. As a result, they feel less competent than others at explaining themselves, their actions, their needs and who they are. Negatively, this dilemma can create a situation in which the individual adopts someone else's values and beliefs. This inevitably leads to an extreme reaction in which the individual rejects those beliefs at some point. In this reaction, the individual retreats into isolation in order to recover or discover who he / she is as an individual, independent of what he / she has allowed him- / herself to adopt. Yet, because the evolutionary pressure is to be in a relationship, the person ultimately reacts against this isolation and seeks out relationships. This process will keep repeating until the person realizes that comparing him- or herself to others in this way is not productive. Then the person will seek out relationships with others who listen to and encourage his or her individual self-discovery as it occurs, rather than forming relationships to others who try and dictate who and what he / she is, or try to make him or her into something that he or she cannot be.

Positively, these First House Pluto people manifest the courage and will to be different, to strike out on their own in a leadership capacity and to serve as examples to others that they too can assert their right of individuality in the ways they deem necessary. Their lives can serve to motivate others to do what they must do in order to realize their own special destinies.

Once the evolutionary lessons have been learned by First House Pluto people, then their ability to balance their own legitimate needs with the needs of those around them is unsurpassed. Their evolved ability to listen to another will allow them to give to another exactly what he / she needs. In so doing they will attract to themselves others who will have the capacity to give to them that which they need. They have intrinsic courage and capacity to break new ground in whatever aspect of life they apply themselves to, and can give courage to others to do the same thing. Furthermore, these individuals can become aware of the basis and nature of their desires, and why and how those desires determine their reality. They can apply this knowledge to others as well, and help others become aware of the basis and nature of their own desires. This knowledge can be used to help themselves and others make the right choices as to what desires should be actualized, and which ones should not.

Common characteristics of the First House Pluto types are these: intense individualists, can be very strong-willed, intense, magnetic, bull-headed, defiant against arbitrary authority, courageous, possess inherent leadership abilities, are not given to meaningless conversations, have a penetrating gaze, and can be hard to get to know deeply. They have very strong physical bodies.

See also: Pluto in the 1st House;

Pluto in the 1st House: Ursula Andress, G.W. Bush, Prince Charles, Robert De Niro, Bobby Fischer, Henry Kissinger, Carl Lewis, Karl Marx, Joni Mitchell, Jack Parsons, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Sting, Meryl Streep, Nikola Tesla, Orson Welles, Tiger Woods, Cate, Collon, Doug, Fisher, George, Jason, JerGar, Joy, Judi, LucJr, Marybeth, Patrice, Tammy, TomW, VinG, Zoë

Pluto in the 2nd House

As a child, but more often as an adolescent, people can be very self-critical about their own worth and value. 'Am I good enough?' is a common anxiety to teens, as they compare themselves with other popular, good-looking and successful young people. Well remembered by every adult, this time is fraught with concern over one's self-image and how others are responding to it. Even though insecure, most adolescents will try to cover it up, pretending to be strong. This 'show' or game can go into adulthood as a habit, leaving adults at the mercy of their peer group's values. Emotions that may betray feelings of insignificance or low self-esteem are repressed or simply denied. Asking for affection can display weakness, and so affection may be hard to come by, too.

Usually, to compensate for feelings of inferiority or unworthiness, people strive to get self-validation from outside, from others. This includes getting possessions that are 'in' (be the first on your block!), or dating a popular person. A teenage boy gets a car and shows it to his friends, getting more social status. A girl may dress in the latest fashions, evoking an envious response from the other girls, and inviting male interest. Beauty and popularity are foremost; and those who have it flaunt it. Others without such natural assets have to accumulate some of their own in order to establish their self-worth and a positive self-image. Second house Pluto people may acquire possessions that can be shown off to advantage, or display talents that inspire the admiration of others. Possessions mean power. They mean validation, as in 'you're okay, since you have such neat things'. This is an elementary form of influencing and controlling others through money or things, of impressing others with a show.

This pattern shows up in adulthood as individuals strive for success, not for the pleasure of it, but for the rewards that justify and validate them. The rewards indicate that they are 'okay'. This motivation to struggle to the top CAN draw out natural talents and resources of the individual (which are plentiful given this Pluto position, as we'll see later), but that still does nothing to raise this person's level of self-esteem. Insecure, these people can be really slick and slimy business-wise, willing to go to whatever extremes are necessary just to pull a buck or a reward out of something or someone.

These people, not trusting themselves, will seldom trust others; but when they do, they will be victimized by them! There is a show of generosity to impress others, who may then turn around and steal from the Pluto individual, or retaliate in some way. There is often no recourse for the Pluto person, as there may be an 'inside' or possibly even illegal aspect to the transaction. Victimized and isolated, the Pluto second house sufferer has justification for not trusting anyone ever again.

The reflections of a poor self-image can be extreme. On the one hand, these natives can be broke frequently, struggling to pull together their inner resources and turn around those financial landslides. These second house Pluto people may even turn down job offers out of insecurity, a fear of incapability, or out of an inflated sense of what type of work they must have in order to get the validation they need to prove to themselves they are worthy. This person gives the appearance of being very picky, without being able to afford that attitude, being virtually destitute. Also, they will balk at the idea of commitment to a job or work program, since they do not have the necessary self-knowledge to clearly make a good decision for themselves. Their insecurity and lack of self-trust can make it difficult to attract good opportunities. Generally, these people are the chronic complainers who are always in the midst of financial crisis or breakdown. Yes, they DO survive, but anything beyond that - such as a luxury, for example - is denied them. Indeed, they often have financial losses just before their anticipated successes. This is a result of a failure of self-confidence and self-trust.

The other extreme of this Pluto placement involves the struggle for domination over money. If self-worth is such an issue, those people with large amounts of energy are going to work and struggle really hard in order to make a lot of money, which will enable them to not have to think about money ever again. This sends them on a work pace that is never-ending, for they may not be able to judge when they have enough money to be secure and happy, and thus keep on working. That stopping point, if there can indeed be one, can only be recognized when the person has sufficient self-worth. Then she / he knows when to stop! But the Pluto second house struggler misses that grand finish, and one million dollars just doesn't become enough. Neither does the second million dollars. Neither do the summer vacation houses, or the four Mercedes cars, the servants, the private beach. None of the glitter will fill up that inner hole in the psyche, or cause the person to say "I am worthy, and I am unique, significant, and important to myself - and my knowing this is all that truly matters". Although the behavior of people driven by insecurity can look terrific - they can be super achievers, super-manipulators, etc. - the motivation will still trip them up at some point, especially when they begin to realize that they are not really fulfilled with owning impressive things (this includes spouses too) and knowing famous people. Then they will be faced with a self-image crisis, and will have to re-evaluate their feelings of worthiness. Those who never come to realize this discrepancy between motivation and results will drive themselves into the financial ground, and will burn out their energy, their resources and / or their bodies by literally working themselves or their spouses to disease and death. The disease of cancer is often a companion to mis-channeled Pluto energy, as it is one of degeneration - a Plutonian principle.

Fortunately, a positive use of Plutonian principles and power will bring in great results much more easily. The incredible amount of resources available to second house Pluto people is simply staggering. They can utilize things which others have given up as useless. They have ingenious abilities to revitalize a dying company or concern, to turn it around and make a sizeable profit out of it. They are able to turn financial tides around, in their own sphere as well as in their extended environment (which includes family and friends). They are not possessive, as the negative Pluto-users are, for they are basically secure in themselves. They are selective with their trust, and seldom get 'burned' by others, since they have a clear head and reliable intuition upon which to base their decision whether to trust or not. They have what is known in common lingo as 'street smarts'. They have extraordinary talents with their hands, and can indeed do well at anything that interests them.

The amount of money they make, and the amount of prestige and power they get in society, reflects rather than validates their own inner sense of worth and self-trust. This appreciation of their own identity enables them to make money easily, without struggle. Their investments will tend to bring high returns and work for them (instead of them having to work for their money). Even when beset with legal difficulties, the final outcome is all right, and doesn't shock the self-worth. If all their possessions are taken away from them, such as in a divorce case, etc., they know that they can rely on themselves to build their resources back up again. They know they have the power and strength to do that, so the loss is one of possessions, not of self-image. They are not crushed, but pick up their power and ability to act and go on.

Later in life, their interests will turn from mundane financial concerns to higher values. They may become interested in inner growth, with metaphysical values and attitudes becoming more important than material ones. However, if this metaphysical interest comes too early in life, before a comfortable financial position is attained, there tends to be a reluctance or resistance towards financial success, for they will often get involved with the personal negative ego and thereby fall back into negative personality patterns (see above). Pluto here must be grounded by financial success and self-worth in the natural house of Taurus, a foundation house, so that spiritual values will not be warped by material concerns. Individuals who have this placement will experience unexpected financial shifts that tend towards the positive end of the spectrum, rather than the negative, disastrous end. Still, at times these individuals, whether they are thinking negatively or positively, will understand and know that resources, money, etc. can be had easily, without struggle or pain. It's only the attitude that makes the difference in the results! Most of the obvious events experienced by the Pluto second house person are covered in the previous paragraphs. Briefly speaking, the negative possibilities include: sudden financial losses just before an anticipated success; financial breakdowns and landslides; denial of resources and money; inability to develop their natural talents for some reason; risks brought on by greed; being bilked by a shyster; possessiveness; and legal difficulties, particularly if underground activities are occurring. These problems reflect the restriction of resources in one way or another, and they often come about from the attitude that the struggle involved in getting something gives it value. Without struggle, there is no value, no importance, no significance. This attitude stems from a lack of inner self-trust and self-worth. On the positive side, Pluto second house experiences include: the appearance of financial partners when they are needed; an ability to revive faltering financial ventures; control of large investments, great talent and the power to develop it; high returns on investments; and the discovery of higher metaphysical values.

Many of the above patterns can be seen during a Pluto transit of the second house. For some people, Pluto moving through this house can create a conflict between the value systems of the individual and his or her parents. Throughout this transit, values will be overhauled, and the individual to whom this is happening should be prepared to change willingly. Pluto, just as importantly, will bring in the new values which are destined to create more power through the use of natural resources (such as inner talents). As this transit takes several years, the metamorphosis can proceed slowly and thoroughly - it would be hoped to be completed by the time Pluto moves on. Yet, this completion will always be subject to re-evaluation and change, since the process of examining and shifting principles and values is an evolving one. Any events in the life during this time will hinge upon the individual's estimation of his or her self-worth. A good self-review and positive self-image will create pleasing, exciting, and dynamically powerful changes and events.

Clarity of one's inner values and sense of self-worth will save many an individual from the onslaughts of Pluto power in the second house. If you have this placement, you'll need to develop self-trust and self-esteem. Start by making a list of your natural abilities. What are you good at doing? What natural talents did you have as a child or adolescent, but never developed? If you had to borrow a thousand dollars tomorrow, from how many sources could you get it? How many people support you in what you want to do? Answer all these questions to the best of your ability. Reflect on them. How can you incorporate any undeveloped talents into your life now? How can you expand the number of people who make up your resource group? How do you feel about using people as a resource.

Now look at your self-trust and self-confidence. Monitor each Tuesday for seven Tuesdays in a row, to see how and when you are confident and self-trusting, as well as how and when you aren't. Write down at least six examples of each, at the end of the day. Notice the areas of your life in which you are usually confident, and those in which you aren't. You cannot have zero self-confidence - if you did, you wouldn't have survived to this point! Recognize that your self-worth, self-trust and self-confidence are selective, working positively in some areas and negatively in others.

Examine your self-confident areas, and the talents that you know you have. Tune into the feeling of what it's like to be self-trusting. When you can really feel it, transfer this feeling over to the areas in which you don't think of yourself as worthy or confident. Imagine now that you are confident in these areas. How does it feel? Write this down, so you can refer to it later. Now imagine yourself in the future, say two or three years from now. Imagine that you're confident in those areas where you previously didn't trust yourself. Feel how great this is! Enjoy yourself in this visualization. Write down anything that you have seen in this imagined scenario, or any emotions you felt. Keep this for reference; and whenever you feel discouraged about this area of your life in the future, pull out what you have written and let it remind you what it feels like to be free of your anxieties. Get those good feelings going again! With a little practice, you will be able to more easily turn on your confidence when you feel the need for it. You will trust yourself more; and important things will start working out better for you. To reinforce this technique, you can (once a week is good) imagine being your confident, successful self - feeling good, feeling on top of things, etc.. Step out of it back into your current image. Step into the more pleasant image once more. Step back out of it again, back into your present self-image. Now drain all the color out of your present image, turning it into a black and¬ white picture. Imagine your current scenario with a chorus line of dancing elephants or something else silly in it. This can take away some of the seriousness of the situation. Now return to the more confident image, and fill it with color. Make it more realistic than the other image. Touch it, smell it, taste it and hear it, as well as seeing it. This will reprogram your mind to accept the more confident and favorable self-image as the truer one. And as this happens, the circumstances around you will come to reflect the new image, creating for you a more positive reality!

Pluto in 2nd House: Sex is the force that individualizes these people. It brings experiences that enable them to grow. It will be the road to power for some, and for some the road to despair and ruin - aspects will help to indicate which. They know this instinctively and therefore may fear sex and attempt to repress it. Almost always, they are very cautious with it, attempting to conceal its effect on them. They possess a compelling sexual charisma that does not always attract the ones they want. They may attract dangerous types or people who are not good for them, or who take advantage of them. They are apt to be sensualists and love good food, wine, and comfortable, active surroundings, including attractive companions. They are compelled into situations by their sexuality. Yet, at the same time, they are afraid of it, so they are liable to ignore, frustrate, or repress it, and this can cause them to take odd turns. They may turn to alcohol or drugs to relieve the pressure. If the sex drive is heavily repressed (as indicated by hard aspects to Saturn), their natural sensuality can turn to obsession, S. & M., cruelty, or hysterics. This is a good aspect for artists and writers, since these activities give a creative outlet for a sensuality that can be dangerous if given free rein, and equally destructive if repressed. They make good generals, as control of sexuality is a necessity of army life, and sexual repression a source of power; and they instinctively know how to channel their own repressed urges and those of others. They are often sexually attracted to those who are forbidden in some way, those of a different race, much younger, much older, married to someone else, or who come from a more primitive, less-educated or less-cultured background, or who gamble or are violent. They crave the excitement of the unknown at the same time as they fear it. They will be much happier if they can accept their sexuality and allow it some freedom. They will be healthier and less liable to personality and emotional problems. Unfortunately they are inclined to go to extremes, and so if they don't repress it, they may flaunt it. It is best if they channel it into art, painting, sculpture, music, or writing. They can get involved with illegal, immoral, or dangerous methods of obtaining income, or become involved with someone who does. Although in general they are not highly acquisitive, pretty much taking what life has to offer without asking for more, they are capable of conceiving a passion for some object (or person) and going to great lengths to acquire it. It is wise for anyone with Pluto in the second to be cautious about maintaining accurate records, because these people are vulnerable to tax audit.

Pluto in 2nd House: You place much emphasis on accumulating possessions, because they give you an artificial sense of power. Regardless of your motives for acquiring these resources, you risk incurring other people's resentment if you use your assets to enforce your will. It is natural for people to fear and resent someone who uses this kind of advantage. You generally get what you want by impressing people in important positions that you can accomplish almost anything if given the opportunity. You should have little difficulty with superiors, for they will delegate to you the necessary authority to satisfy their objectives. You have the savoir-faire to use your skills effectively and attain the limits of your potentials. You will probably succeed because you are not afraid to take chances in demonstrating your abilities, which you do with dramatic flair. You realize the importance of making some contribution to fulfill your social obligations. Perhaps you are motivated by a feeling of guilt for having prospered at the expense of the public, or perhaps you understand and want to help solve the awesome problems of society. You doubtless will have everything you need to enjoy a fairly early retirement; and your free time will allow you to become involved in the needs of the public.

You have a powerful urge to be secure and totally independent of others. You will probably make investments or invest in a retirement plan that will assure you of this goal. But you will attract hangers-on who will try to talk you into sharing your bounty with them. The only way this could be a problem is if you've accepted favors in the past that you must repay. You know your abilities and your limits. However, the important factor is love, which may have inspired you to succeed. The need to serve your children's best interests will certainly be a major consideration as you exploit your creative talents to the fullest.

It will take a lot of moral fortitude to resist the temptation to get what you want through collusion or by issuing ultimatums. But with some religious training or spiritual awareness, you can easily achieve your goals without resorting to those methods. You've probably had to work hard to learn as much as you have; and you pride yourself on being a self-made person. You understand the power associated with money, and you also recognize the social responsibility this entail. Your intuition will help you make wise investments, both for yourself and in counseling others. You put a high premium on your services because you know you can get the results people want. When the price is right, you don't deny yourself whatever you can get, either in acquiring worldly goods or in satisfying physical desires.

Try to communicate with people in terms that they can understand. Learn to relate to others and encourage them to trust you. You can be a positive force, helping people gain confidence to seek their own destinies. A little sharing can pay big dividends when you observe the fruits of your efforts to help people who need your stimulating encouragement. You cannot fail to win their appreciation. Don't be afraid to ask how you can help, for the chances are you can do much more than you realize.(Steven Forrest)In the tradition, the second house is often called the 'House of Money'. In practice, that's a valid association, provided we keep the idea in perspective. Here, as in many other areas of astrological interest, I find it helpful to recall that astrology is far older than human culture. I'm not speaking of the knowledge of astrology, but rather of the astrological mechanism itself. Primitive hominids nuzzling around the Olduvai Gorge a couple of million years ago had birth charts and responded to astrological stimuli. They didn't know it, of course, any more than does a modern Senator or physics professor. What did 'money' mean to that hominid, ages before the first VISA card? The best answer is probably food, rocks to throw, perhaps a warm animal hide to wear on a cold night. And how did that hominid feel if he had those resources in abundance? Probably pretty good. Confident. And if he lacked them? Insecure.

That's the core logic of the second house. To feel self-assured, we must feel that we are prepared and equipped to face the requirements of life. We need resources, both materially and in terms of skills, connections, and knowledge. Money is certainly one such resource, but far from the only one. With any planet in the second house, the skills, connections, and knowledge most naturally associated with that planet are at the heart of the matter for us when it comes to maintaining a pleasant feeling of legitimacy, self-respect and capability.

Pluto in the second house? Let's have a look....Your high destiny: Every Age has its folk wisdom. Some if it is truly eternal and precious; some is hooked uniquely to the transitory blind spots of time and culture. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' - that, I think, is in the former category: eternal and precious. 'A woman's place is in the home.' 'Boys don't cry.' Those nostrums seem less compelling today than they did a couple of generations ago. Here’s another nostrum: 'You're good enough just the way you are'. We hear a lot of sentiments along those lines nowadays. How eternal are they? That's hard to say. Certainly exhortations toward loving self-acceptance can serve useful, healing purposes. But they don't help us understand the logic of the second house. Here we face the human need not so much to accept oneself as to prove oneself. How? Each planet has its own story, but with Pluto in the second house, you must prove yourself to yourself in distinctly Plutonian ways. And Pluto, as we have seen, thrives on extremity and intensity. With Pluto in this position, the realization of your high destiny involves going to your emotional limits. It might literally mean facing the risk of physical death - as for example when a person attains self-respect and self-realization through climbing a mountain or fighting back against a violent attack or virulent disease. Very often, there is a Plutonian Rite of Passage in which some powerful taboo must be broken - a man or women, for example, marries across a race line or 'comes out' as a gay person in conservative society. And thereby attains dignity.

Earlier in the book, quoting Robert Bly, we spoke of a 'witch' who guards the gate to higher states of energy, keeping out 'wimps' with all her treachery and ferocity. If you have Pluto in the second house, in realizing your own high destiny that metaphor has particular relevance for you. Often, for people such as yourself, there is one critical fear-facing, taboo-breaking test that arises, often unexpectedly, like a crossroads in your biography. A friend says, "Let's quit our stinking jobs and move to Europe". If you do, you've crossed the Rubicon. A month later you're making ends meet by serving pizza in Zurich. Everyone you know back at the Insurance Agency thinks you're crazy. Some days you do too. But in that dramatic, taboo-breaking action you've proven something to yourself: that you have inside you the basic resources of survival, that your life did not depend on your job, and that you are far more autonomous than you ever imagined.

Your Distorting Wound: Zen Buddhists say that being born is like setting to sea in a leaky boat. Unless either you're very young or your Pluto is very weakly placed, you probably don't need me to explain that proverb to you. Life is full of perils; and sooner or later we die. None of that makes anybody very comfortable, and so there is an unspoken collective agreement not to emphasize such Plutonian perspectives in normal conversation. We designate a priestly class to handle those realities for us. We dress them in black, encourage them to wear long faces, and generally don't invite them to our parties.

Ever since you were small, you've had an instinctual sense of the fragility of our circumstances. Second house energy is concerned with arming ourselves against threats; and Pluto is particularly skilled at recognizing even the most dreadful of those threats. The linkage of planet and house is very natural here; they reinforce each other. Thus, Pluto in the second house often represents a cautious quality. Caution is a virtue in many ways, but taken to extremes it can cripple a person. And if it is taken to extremes unconsciously, its effects can be devastating. How much fear was in the air in your family home? What was the nature of that fear? These are critical questions. Because your natural awareness of life's fragility was like a vacuum into which your mother's fear and your father's fear rushed. Unprocessed and left unconscious, that fear can profoundly affect your view of life, leaving you hesitant to extend yourself toward your most interesting potentials.

In the state of grace, a child with Pluto in the second house wants experiences of the 'edge'. He or she wants to climb high in a tree, wants to see the scary movie - wants to forge a basis for self-confidence, in other words. But all children are busily forming a view of world based in large part upon parental and communal descriptions of 'what's out there'. The more the child perceives parents motivated by fear, the more he or she internalizes a sense of being inadequate and powerless. "If they are scared, I guess I should be too."Complicating this dynamic, we also observe a tendency for any form of abuse, deception or betrayal to immediately lodge as a kind of poison in your second house circuitry - that is, in your self-confidence. Earlier in the book, we raised the question of 'where we carry the Wound', observing that not everyone who suffers the same hurt will bleed from the same place. For you, your self-esteem is the Plutonian lightning rod. The psychological wiring diagram looks something like this: 'There must have been something bad about me or I wouldn't have been hit, lied to, dismissed, ignored, abandoned, and so forth’. Your Navigational Error: The 'beer can' near your existential compass can manifest as a systematic underestimation of your ability to deal with whatever life hurls at you, leading you toward an unnecessary emphasis upon safety, guarantees, and certainty as you navigate through life.

In our culture, money is generally heralded as the ultimate guarantee. Certainly having money does solve a lot of problems - it would be naive to pretend otherwise. But one point is sure: people who make weak responses to their second house Pluto’s tend to give money too much power in their thinking. They pay too much for money. They squander their lives in safe work that bores them. They fear trading the money they've earned for joy, experience, and adventure. They imagine that a lack of money prevents them from doing what, in their hearts, they hunger to do. Money becomes a substitute for the inner security that this Plutonian configuration ideally signifies. Often a person going down that money-road will acquire a lot of financial clout. But will these people ever feel secure? Probably not. Furthermore, tawdry circumstances often surround money bought at that price and for that reason: the hint of crime, or shame, or of something that couldn't stand the light of day. Money is only part of the picture. Think of the vast array of factors that help you feel safer in the world. There's a good chance that none of them is an inherently 'bad' thing; and blindly dumping all life's safety nets is certainly not the ideal path for many people. Maybe you come from a traditional extended family, and living near your relatives gives you a sense of well¬being and security. If so, those people are part of your second house net. Since you have Pluto there, you need to consider whether you are leaning too heavily on that family solidarity. How can you tell? Ask yourself what your dependency on those people is costing you in terms of intensity and fulfillment. Have you avoided looking for work in other states? Are you thinking too much about what the relatives will think when you choose friends, hobbies, belief-systems, clothing? These questions are not always easy to sort out, but there's one sure test: if your Pluto is unhealthy, no matter what house it's in, you'll feel a kind of dull, passionless emptiness in your daily life. If you do, and you have Pluto in the second, you're paying too much for safety somewhere in your life. And it may have nothing to do with money.

The Healing Method: Pluto in the second house must prove itself to itself in extreme, intense circumstances. It demands a Rite of Passage. Earlier, we used the colorful example of a person quitting a boring job and moving to Europe: a scary experience, but she comes back home with a sense of being able to do anything, anywhere.

Pluto laughs at nickel and dime bets. It wants to see big bills on the table. It wants winning to be life-transforming... and the price is that losses are potentially catastrophic. To realize the best that's in your second house, you need to hurl yourself into frightening tests. Many times those tests involve facing your greatest fears. A young man might tell his domineering, shaming father to go to hell... and risk a beating or disinheritance. A woman might confront her boss about his sexual innuendoes, and risk losing her job. These two examples involve the classic Plutonian strategy of speaking the hard truth, eyeball to eyeball, with a person who might not want to hear it.

A man with severely limited eyesight might swallow his fear and travel abroad for an experimental corrective operation. He faces grave risks, but the potential reward is the inestimable resource of sight.

A fifty-year-old woman might take her life savings and use the money to finance going back to school to become a computer programmer. She's scared; and 'voices of reason' are telling her to hang onto that money as a hedge against Whatever in her old age. Instead, she invests in herself now... and her old age promises to be vastly happier and more interesting, and probably more prosperous as well. She trades the resource of money for the greater resources of marketable skills and the kind of self-confidence that comes from challenges accepted, met, and conquered.

The Energizing Vision: Security is an inner state, not an outward one. That's one of the genuinely ultimate truths, so easily lost in a web of lesser truths. Certainly having money in the bank, a good job, credit, and so forth are not to be despised; and you'll not read anything here about holy poverty. Poverty is merely an outward state, and as such is not inherently holier than any other visible condition. But true security is a confident attitude one has toward one's capacity for survival in this universe: an attitude that, come what may, there's an excellent chance I'll be able to land on my feet.

Some of that security derives from practical sources: knowing that we possess an array of skills that make us valuable to others or knowing that we are linked to supportive human networks. Some of it comes from our own history: remembering that we have often managed to improvise methods of survival in dicey circumstances.

Some of it comes from possessing the right tools and the knowledge of how to use them. Some small part of this confidence derives from money.

But the lion's share is an internal sense that we are wise enough, cunning enough, fierce enough, creative enough, to deal with whatever comes along. And that confidence can only be forged in a spirit of Plutonian venture and risk.

Pluto in 2nd House: Pluto in the Second House indicates a prior evolutionary desire and need to develop self-reliance and self-sufficiency. In the broadest sense, the Second House correlates to physical and biological survival of the human species. Just as the species has learned to survive physically by identifying the resources necessary to accomplish this, such as learning to make fire, so have these individuals learned how to identify their own personal resources to sustain themselves. Those with Pluto in the Second House have an extra strong survival instinct as a result. From a biological standpoint, they have a very strong sexual nature because a function of survival is to reproduce the species.

These individuals come into life with an emphasized need to survive and sustain themselves on the physical and, therefore, emotional plane. They will come into this life with a natural self-reliance and natural self-sufficiency. In prior lives they have been learning how to identify their own personal values and needs in order to develop these qualities. Whereas the First House Pluto had to initiate action and experience in order for self-discovery to occur, the Second House Pluto individual has needed to withdraw into him- or herself in past lives and will naturally gravitate to experiences of withdrawal in this life. By withdrawing, these individuals have internalized their conscious focus in order to discover their own values and needs from within.

By remaining rotted (fixed) in themselves, these individuals have experienced, sensed, or discovered their own essence as contrasted with the changing flux of circumstances around them. As a result of this process, these individuals commonly come into this life with what I have called 'frog in the well karma'. In other words, the frog in the well has identified a small piece of the sky - that which it can see from the bottom of the well. Furthermore, the frog has identified this small piece of the sky as the entire universe. The frog, of course, is quite secure and safe in the bottom of the well. In the same way, these individuals come into this life with a limited vision or knowledge about themselves and life in general. This limited vision is known, familiar and secure. Thus, there is a reliance upon this limited vision because it 'works'. This reliance upon the past can create an inertia or laziness, and a resistance and to jumping out of the well. The degree of resistance and limited vision is relative to the mitigating factors determined by the signature of the main karmic/ evolutionary dynamic in each birth chart. As an example, if the South Node is in Gemini the degree of resistance and limited vision would be less severe as contrasted with the South Node in Capricorn.

Relative to physical survival, those individuals in a herd state evolutionary condition tend to identify material values as a vehicle to self-sustainment. We can see the implied limitation here. Others in the individuated evolutionary condition have learned to identify themselves as the resource creating the means to self sustainment. Those in the spiritual or universal evolutionary condition have learned that the Source or Universe provides that which they need in order to sustain themselves when one is receptive to that provision. They commonly isolate themselves from the environment and others in order to concentrate upon their relationship to the Source.

In all cases, limitation is implied. For those who have related to material values as a means for self-preservation or self-sustainment, the limitations are the values themselves. The material needs and desires for these individuals can be a bottomless pit because they believe that physical security brings emotional security. Relative to the fear of loss intrinsic to Pluto, there is a subconscious fear of losing (or not having enough) material goods. Possessions and money equal power because of the status that is implied in material wealth. Some of these people are not beyond manipulating the possessions, resources, or money of others in order to gain them for themselves. Others are not beyond forming vicarious relationships to situations or people who represent, or are the embodiment of, this kind of power and status. In other words, some of these people have identified that they have these needs and desires, yet are too lazy to make the necessary effort to create the resources for themselves. It is easier not to do so. Instead they form vicarious relationships to others who have such resources, and become extensions of their identities and values.

A small percentage of those that manipulate the resources of others to gain those resources for themselves have used very devious or underhanded tactics to do so. A small percentage of those who have made minimal or no efforts to actualize their material needs may live beyond their means; driving the fancy sports car they cannot afford, charging the limit of their credit cards, going into debt. Individuals who have made the necessary effort to actualize their material needs can accumulate vast sums of money and possessions due to the concentration (Pluto) upon the desire and effort.

With the polarity point being the Eighth House, the evolutionary intent will lead these individuals into intense internal and external confrontations. Such confrontations will reveal the limitations implied in their value systems, in how they have learned to relate to themselves, and how they have identified the nature of their personal reality - the frog in the well.

For those who have amassed wealth, the shock of confrontation will involve the realization that material abundance does not equal happiness or emotional security. The Eighth House, and Pluto itself, evokes or symbolizes the awareness of deeper levels of reality; that there is more to life than material values.

Those who used devious means to obtain wealth will be haunted to their graves by a gnawing sense of guilt. Guilt would serve to shine a light upon the internal motivations leading to this situation. This in turn can lead to deep internal shocks of self-knowledge because these individuals have been typically 'unconscious' of these deeper motivational forces. In other cases, the wealth may be taken from the individual in order to enforce a re-evaluation of their value system. The issue of self-reliance is then experienced in a new way.

Under some evolutionary and karmic conditions, individuals with a second-house Pluto are born into difficult material conditions of lack in order to enforce lessons of self-reliance. In other cases, some individuals will be born into life situations in which there is wealth linked to the parents but they are denied the material resources because they are not able to relate to their parents' values, or cannot conform to the dictates of the parents' desires. In a few rare cases, the individual can experience the shock of imprisonment if criminal means were used to acquire the material wealth. In other cases the individual will be made to struggle throughout the entire lifetime for material security. No matter how much effort they put into sustaining themselves, prior karmic causes will dictate that they live or survive on a marginal basis. An overall evaluation of the entire evolutionary/ karmic issues pertaining to the individual's past must be made in order to understand the reasons why any or all of these conditions exist in this life.

For those who have been living beyond their means, the Eighth House polarity will at some point produce shocks of repossession because of the compulsive spending patterns. If material goods are repossessed, or if the individual experiences the increasing pressure to keep making money to pay for these material goods (which are a form of bondage), then at some point the internal or external shocks experienced may produce the necessary awareness as to why they are operating in this way. Again, the frog is forced from the well.

For those who have identified themselves as the resource for self-sustainment, i.e. some talent, capacity, or ability, then the Eighth House polarity enforces the lesson of merging with another or others. These individuals must open up to other people or situations through ways in which their own personal limitations and ways of relating to reality are exposed. They will have a deep sense of who they are, and they will relate to themselves and others from this more or less fixed sense of self-definition. This attitude not only produces self-limitation, but also produces personal isolation. These individuals may have identified their essence, their capabilities, their personal values; but if they do not know how to implement or apply them to 'forces' outside themselves, i.e. society and other people, then the Eighth House confrontation of limitation, denial or isolation will occur. It may be wonderful to have natural talent as a potter, yet if the effort is not made to integrate, apply, or link the ability to societal needs in ways that are compatible with others' value systems, it will not be possible to sustain oneself with that ability. Evolutionary and karmic necessity will create the effect of denying the individual's ability to sustain him- or herself relative to the intrinsic capability that they possess in order to do so.

Individuals with a spiritual focus must learn to open up to new rituals, techniques or methods that allow for a further deepening of their spiritual commitment. They must also learn to share their spiritual resources with others in some way, rather than living in isolation and nurturing only themselves. By their opening up and sharing themselves, a metamorphosis occurs due to the implied limitations from the past. If they do not learn to open up and share, then the Source or Universal will cease to provide the material needs necessary to sustain themselves. In addition, the small piece of the Universal sky that they have identified from their wells will progressively become filled with the clouds of stagnation. As a result, the deep inner core of spiritual sustenance will dry up. The resulting inner confrontation can produce the necessary metamorphosis through which these individuals open themselves up to their karmic and evolutionary requirements.

In all cases the Eighth House polarity point demands a confrontation with personal limitations. The frog must be forced from the well to expose it to the full light of day. This process occurs by forcing the individual in upon itself in some way to examine the internal dynamics that are creating these life situations. Thus, they are being forced out from the well to examine the larger and deeper forces at work within them: the motivational patterns and the reasons for those motivational patterns, their desires and the reasons for those desires, how they have been relating to themselves and why they have been relating to themselves in that way, what resources they have identified with in order to sustain themselves and why those resources, and what personal values they have identified with and why those particular values. By doing so, these individuals create the potential for a total metamorphosis: to bring about a totally new way of relating to themselves, others, and reality in general. In this way, these individuals can adopt redefined value systems that allow for the necessary growth to occur. This natural evolutionary process occurs in such a way that these individuals subconsciously draw or attract life situations in which they experience the limitations associated with their value systems, needs, self-image, and the ways that they have been relating to themselves and others. The personal implosion that this produces forces the individual to examine all of these dynamics in order to find out why they have identified themselves in a particular manner.

Progressively these individuals will learn to unite their own resources and lives with others so that a personal transformation can occur; a transformation of limitations. Because of the implied inertia of the evolutionary past, changes occur slowly. Most of these individuals need to know 'why the change' prior to making the change. This fixity creates the potential for internal or external 'atom bombs' or cataclysmic upheavals through which the landscape is utterly transformed. Because of the evolutionary intent of the Eighth House polarity point, those with Pluto in the Second House will attract, at key points in life, intense and powerful people. These people will be timely messengers that deliver or create the necessary encounters and confrontations of personal limitations.

See also: Pluto in the 2nd House;

Pluto in the 2nd House: Johnny Depp, Robert Downey, Jr., Isadora Duncan, Bill Gates, Robert Hand, Nisargadatta, OmNi, Osho, Ezra Pound, Ramakrishna, Evelyn Robert de Rothschild, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mark Zuckerberg, Abbe, Arine, BarryKl, JerryGr, Johanna, Leigh, LouG, Molly, Phylissa, Prabhuta, SFor, Sky, Sugeet, TonyO

Pluto in the 3rd House

As children, we listen to our parents and / or older siblings talk about the world which we know we are to inherit in time. These images of the world stimulate our imagination, and we try to understand the common denominators of what we hear so as to put together a 'world view' of our own. Although filled with possible misconceptions put there by older children or by our own untrained perceptions, we discover at some point what can be called the 'common reality'. We begin believing things that others (including the adults) believe. We essentially agree on the hardness of objects, the smells, tastes and sounds we hear. We identify objects similarly so as to discuss them and to communicate what we are learning. Since, as children, we didn't originally have this common world view, we could just as easily have thought that it was possible to simply jump up and fly with the birds, or walk through a tree! With the coming of a rational approach to the world, we join the rest of humanity for the sake of communicating and reaching out. The child thereby gives up his or her personal powers of perception in order to assume the prevailing social attitudes. This form of understanding becomes automatic, and we all go through it sooner or later. The few people who resist this ordering of the world in common with others are harshly labeled as retarded, crazy, mentally inept, stupid, etc.. Some brain-damaged people also have had to throw out this socially accepted picture of the world, relying instead on incomplete information about reality until they regain their perspective (if ever they do). However, for the normal or average person, the world appears real, solid, fixed and obviously just the way it is - and it cannot be imagined any other way. This is automatic thinking or comprehension, a major aspect of the third house.

This house also represents the undercurrents of the mental concepts and attitudes of the father (or fourth house parent). With Pluto here, the native absorbs the beliefs about reality and attitudes about the world from the father. With the third house rounding out the quadrant of the self, including the self-image and self-worth of the individual, the native with this placement assumes that the response of the father indicates his or her value as a person. This can lead to initial self-recrimination when and if one assumes that one is not worthy enough to deserve the father's praise. Unfortunately, in this house, self-worth attitudes as derived from interactions with the father are taken in automatically, and included with the world view. The native has little incentive to rebel against any negative self-concepts, assuming that they are as real and valid as the environment, as the world itself. Thoughts are assumed to reflect logical reality rather than an imaginative one, and the native assumes that he or she knows the true attitudes of the parents - which are taken to be more valid than his or her own attitudes.

This develops into a personality pattern that can be recognized easily. As an adolescent, and into adulthood, this native can be defensive and touchy concerning moral or ethical beliefs. He or she can be an extremely good manipulator, whether refined or not, by implying a threat of some sort if others do not agree. This threat is most often felt, and not spoken. This native has learned to use the assumption as a tool for power over others, to maintain control and to keep up the defenses against vulnerability. This individual is afraid to consider that others may be right, that she/ he could be wrong. 'Isn't it obvious?' may be a frequently asked question in this case. The extremes of this behavior, as with all Plutonian influences, range from excessively quiet, acute self-questioning, to aggressive bragging and tendencies to pick fights with others.

This person may be the oddball in the family, always trying to rebel against beliefs that others maintain easily. This person would initially have been willing to fight for the family attitudes; but as time passes, feels that she / he must somehow assert some individuality. This rebelliousness attaches itself almost randomly or arbitrarily onto the assumptions which he or she believed to be true up until the rebellious period. This causes confusion, as the native gets lost in subtleties and tries madly to put together a new, workable world order. Although this rebelliousness is often necessary to establish one's sense of power, if it isn't resolved it can bring on a sense of resignation over the inability to find personal power. Then the person may tend to fall back into petty mental habits of taking things personally, particularly if the message is verbal or spoken. Easily roused to anger, this individual may become known for his or her temper, as she / he attempts to defend parental points of view or her / his own - which are often just the opposite. These people can be hard-liners, unforgiving of their fathers, siblings or other family members who may have slighted them in the past.

They may appear to rationalize everything to excess, in order to preserve a poorly functioning world view. They are constantly looking for problems to solve, as their minds are deep and penetrating by nature - and this tends to attract many problems, too! Once they have a problem to work with, they will attack it with great mental intensity, not sparing the feelings of anyone else who may happen to be involved. These natives have been known to unwittingly say scathing things about other people, sometimes even to their face. However, Pluto third house people feel all along that what they say is the absolute truth, and that they have a moral duty to inform everyone of what is real and what is not - as if they were just about the only ones who know! They may not even admit that they are opinionated, preferring to think that it is everyone else who is so intellectually arrogant.

However, most of the Pluto third house bravado covers a great insecurity: namely, a sense of not being able to make decisions on one's own, based upon a solid self-concept. This is where these people are apt to fall flat on their faces. Their self-concept is low initially, and they feel a need to somehow cover up this obviously real flaw. They do not attempt to disprove or disbelieve the flaw, because they actually crave the feeling of mental dissonance. They don't revise their own self-opinion, or look within themselves for the answers. They believe there is an objective, infallible truth known to them; and that if they prove these ideas to others, the whole mental scheme will be validated. What they are trying to do is get recognition and approval from the father, yet they probably do not suspect it at all.

Women with this placement may transfer their beliefs and ideologies over to those of their husband, looking for their sense of self-worth (which is usually low) to be validated in or through someone else. They may then face a personal struggle over whether to let their spouse make the decisions for them. This can lead to a complaining, bitchy demeanor and manipulative attitudes. Men with Pluto here may feel they have to accomplish great mental strides and be super-intelligent in order to prove their worth to their father - even if he is dead and gone! They will try to justify and explain their reasoning to others, even when no-one else cares to listen. Both men and women with this placement can antagonize people and make many enemies. Fortunately, not everyone with Pluto in the third house takes the negative road. The vast majority of people with Pluto here have periodic bouts with the problems just described, but are able to transcend the major difficulties thus presented, and manage to emerge from them as strong individuals. The positive use of Pluto will also be noticed at an early age, as the child is fascinated by the mysteries of the world he or she is inheriting. Extremely sensitive to environmental changes, such as moving to another city or losses and gains of friends and family members (through death, birth or marriage), this child questions everything: "Why?" He or she must find the answers, which leads to a search for understanding that takes various intriguing twists and turns throughout life. Reality for these people is never dull, for there is always a new mystery to solve. Very early in life, this child displays an astounding knowledge of how things work, which can possibly lead to a scientific career. His or her ingenious and penetrating mind searches for significant explanations to life's mysteries, and is fully willing to explore novel ideas that are far ahead of their time. The thinking processes are organized almost scientifically, with a remarkable capacity to categorize things in a unique but personally useful way. What the Pluto third house individual is looking for are the limits or boundaries of perception. Intellectual disciplines satisfy the urge for power which characterizes this mind; and the analytical abilities are pronounced. A kind of intuition comes from this placement, which the native sometimes cannot even begin to try to express logically, because the understanding has passed the normal limits of linear thinking. The life perspective is high and all-embracing.

What the child does with this aspect in its positive sense will reflect on the relationship she/ he enjoyed with the father (or fourth house parent). When there is support from within the family for the child's efforts to search, discover and be unique, then the self-esteem runs high. The child does not feel that it is a moral infringement to doubt the commonly accepted reality and try to find a new one.

Instead of feeling that life is vicious, and that reality is inherently destructive, this individual will often believe, and use to his or her advantage, the concept that the universe is friendly and supportive.

With this placement, people can focus deeply on whatever they desire, and they can see the result in their environment. This encourages them to develop their powers within a mental format. Positive response comes from others and from the environment; and a feeling of security grows inside the self. This gives them a positive belief that all things have a reason, and that all problems have a solution. With higher and higher understanding, they begin to choose consciously what they want to be true, and then to act from that new perspective. With each new understanding, Pluto people gain more mental leverage, reaching into higher and more profound plateaus of thought. The positive Plutonian learns how to make decisions on his or her own, and thereby evolves to a high personal level of confidence, self-worth and self-esteem. His or her perspective can be magical, without the usual limitations imposed upon it by social conditioning or any kind of pressure to become something important - something which the subliminal father figure may have desired, for example.

When Pluto transits through this house, there is generally a crisis of opinions and attitudes in the person's life. Old belief structures, particularly those concerning the nature of success, can crumble under this transit. The individual can then see beyond the struggle for the buck, and understand why he or she is pushing so hard to make it. Absolute truth becomes relative at this time, and the individual can feel that he or she is caught up in a moral or spiritual crisis. People being hit with this shift in their mentality may resist the change, fighting to uphold past doctrines for fear that they won't be able to find anything to replace them. After all, this is similar to the belief widely held in the 16th century, that if you sailed westward from Europe into the Atlantic, you would come to a great cliff - and literally fall off the world! There can be a similar kind of fear when Pluto moves through the third house.

Those who are ready for Pluto's perspective and power will begin (as well as finish!) untangling confusing and conflicting concepts, and create a new, more useful and more powerful world view. Their new picture of reality will be more fluid, the perspective changing as the limitations expand. More and more is revealed. The person who works with Pluto positively, and who has developed a higher sense of self-worth during Pluto's transit through the second house, will choose freely what she / he will accept as a part of his or her current reality during the third house transit. This can manifest anywhere between the two extremes of a magician or a sorcerer, weaving powerful spells of reality, and the destructive mind gone crazy, incapable of functioning in the world with other people any longer.

Those who have Pluto natally in this house may find their lives filled with sibling problems that aren't solved until the early or mid-thirties, when communication truly begins to take place. Careers this person is likely to pursue can include the sciences, writing (especially the kind that stimulates the reader's imagination), communication dealing with the masses, teaching (the small-scale guru who helps younger people in their development), or research of any kind that requires the high levels of concentration this placement gives. Indeed, this individual has the capacity to do anything at all that he or she wishes, provided his or her belief structures are sufficiently expanded to make it possible!

Changes negatives to positives requires a shift in one's basic perception of reality. If you have this placement, you'll need to develop alternate ways of thinking. As this Pluto location often indirectly affects career fulfillment, examine your career - what is it that you desire to do for money, personal fulfillment, etc.? Since no-one else will ever know the answer to this question, be honest with yourself, and sit down with pen and paper. Write out all the beliefs and attitudes you can find by searching within your own mind, everything that has anything to do with current or past obstacles between you and your career fulfillment. If you feel that you don't have enough money, write down what money means to you. Include in the list what you believe your parents thought about this subject. Then add your current beliefs in this area. Examples with money could include: 'Money is power', 'Money is the root of all evil', 'Money is hard to come by', 'Easy come, easy go', 'In order to make money, one has to have so many college degrees', or ''When you have money, other people envy and hate you', etc.. Ideas like these, believe it or not, are in your mind at any given time. With this list, you'll find out exactly why you haven't made that money, or why you haven't solved your problems in the area of on-the-job relationships.

When you have finished your list, at least for now, begin again by going over each point, each attitude. Find an example in your recent past in which you acted from one of these attitudes or beliefs. If you can't remember any, monitor yourself for a day or so until you do find one. In other words, find how you use that belief in everyday situations. See the possible ramifications in your life. Decide what you'd rather have as an attitude in its place, and write that new attitude down on a separate sheet of paper. Forgive yourself for having held on to a nonfunctional belief for so long, and allow yourself to start over with the new idea or belief.

Although this procedure can take some time, it is generally worth it, for it can help the third house Pluto individual clear up conflicting ideas about reality. After you have finished working your way through the whole list, and having changed what you wanted to change, then begin to live out the new ideas consciously whenever and wherever you can, starting ten minutes at a time. And if the old attitudes still stubbornly show up and give you trouble, say "No, I've finished with that old pattern now, and I'm doing things the new way!" You have used the conscious power of Pluto in the third house to decide your new reality! As your new thoughts and attitudes begin impacting your reality, you will notice changes in whatever area you've been working on. Problems will clear up, giving you access to new information and new opportunities - all through the positive use of your own mental power. Then you can apply this new technique in other areas too. Remember, knowledge is power!(Haydn Paul)In this position of natal Pluto, the emphasis lies upon communication and the expressing of self and ideas, especially through words, either spoken or written.

This need to communicate can seem to be almost compulsive, and is both an effort to reach out and contact others, and a need to release an overactive inner energy. Whilst this energy can also be transmitted via the hands, often in healing, you are most likely to use it through speech, as there is a natural affinity and talent with words, and the likelihood is that you can develop into an effective, powerful speaker.

The energy is basically linked to the mental level, and you will have a sharp and penetrating mind, with your ideas on life carefully thought out, organized, and the ability to express your opinions and beliefs strongly to others. You can develop your own original ideas, and you will be attracted towards communicating them to others, so that they can help to spread them through society. This clear expression of ideas can be a way for you to gain influence and control over people, as your ability to persuade is considerable. You may have to be wary of any tendencies developing that lead you to abuse this talent, by taking advantage of others and dominating them.

Despite your clarity of expression, you will have to realize that in itself, this does not mean that the content of your ideas is inevitably right. Anyone who can communicate effectively to others is liable to fall into this trap, and become ego-inflated, seeing others as inferior, treating them with a patronizing attitude, and believing that what they themselves think and say is naturally correct. That illusion is a dangerous one, for yourself and others, and allows no space for real communication to occur.

Another tendency is to become fixed in your beliefs and opinions, so that there can be no compromise and change occurring over time as a natural result of greater life experience and deeper thought. Your way of perceiving life and interpreting meaning is your own, and may not be suitable for others, so any dogmatic approach is always restrictive and futile. Pluto is attempting to lead you to realize that what you think and communicate to others will have consequences, great or small, depending upon your degree of social influence. This involves responsibility for what you transmit into the world, so be very aware of your limitations and the quality of content, because it will have its inevitable effect. In your relationships, you will have to avoid a tendency to scheme and manipulate, and you will need to learn how to listen more carefully to your partner, and not just see them as a foil to your own wit and cleverness.

You are likely to analyze and over-intellectualize your relationship, often maintaining a certain distance from your emotions, as you feel uncomfortable with them; and feelings are much more difficult to express fluently in words. Sometimes your words act as a smokescreen for you to hide behind; blow away this smokescreen, and there may be less of real substance there than may initially appear to be the case. Your words may glitter but be hollow. Eventually you experience a loss of substance and meaning in life, or others begin to see you as essentially shallow, without any real contribution to make. However, if you can use it creatively and positively, with real awareness for others, you can greatly benefit from this energy.

Pluto in 3rd House: These people believe words are so powerful they have the power to destroy. They are extremely careful to control what they say, lest they give away some information that another might use to harm or control them. This condition occurs when at least one family member had a black belt in tongue karate, a sarcastic or scathing individual they were powerless to resist. This might well be a brother or sister, probably older, who was so overpowering that the Plutonian learned to keep quiet. As adults, third house Plutonians can either be afraid or verbal abuse or be verbally abusive and sarcastic, agreeing that the best defense is a good offence. Another possibility is that words can be the focus of a power struggle - as long as they don't give you their words, they have the upper hand. In relationships, they may withhold communication. As employees, they may withhold paperwork or other important information. As students, they may be the ones who won't turn in their papers, asking for extension after extension. Words can also be used to manipulate, with great effectiveness. People who use this placement constructively are perceptive and deep in their thinking and communicating. They are gifted at seeing others' motivations, and can penetrate deeply into any problem. They can use words to heal, going straight to the heart of the matter. They are fine analytic writers and teachers. Rather than being manipulative, they can use words to influence and empower others for good purpose.

Pluto in 3rd House: Because the third house symbolizes knowledge and Pluto is a demanding planet, a conclusion can be made that the individual with this planetary position has a demanding attitude toward knowledge and information. If information is needed on a subject, it has to correspond exactly to the need of the moment, definitely and without compromise. The spiritually awakened individual needs a lot of deep knowledge. Pluto’s position in the third house does not signify the development of an exceptionally brilliant mind or exceptional spiritual qualities. The individual is not a spiritual guru; there are other planetary positions that signify much more potential for such development.

Nevertheless, the third house Pluto offers the possibility for deep insight in mentality.

The attitude toward knowledge should be examined more deeply: How does the Plutonian power mix with the matters of the third house? Those who are not deep intellectual seekers must still associate knowledge with power. Those who are intellectually inclined may have more outlets for their search for power with knowledge. On a lower level, this planetary position may manifest itself by misuse of information or unfairly keeping secrets. For many individuals, keeping or revealing secrets may constitute big turning points in their lives. Information that has been kept secret may be brought to light by someone. The uncovering may even cause a shocking effect and change in life direction. In one person's case it caused enormous psychological pressure. She sought psychotherapy after that.

This planetary position often brings strong intellectual defenses. Partly this is due to the will to control others intellectually or verbally. Some individuals develop compulsive speaking for the same reason. Furthermore, this kind of individual does not easily accept his intellectual weaknesses, which he tries to cover, for example, with compulsive speaking, an overflow of words. Pluto always makes little weaknesses seem bigger. Intellectual or mental defensiveness may also be shown by withdrawal or abstinence. A restless planet like Pluto in the third house may also bring irrational fears in relation to self-expression. The standards for self-expression may also be so high that they are difficult to reach. All kinds of pressure are possible in relation to self-expression and thoughts. It is noticeable that many dancers (always physically moving) have this planetary position. Movement (third house) is important for them as a means for spiritual development, whether or not they are conscious of it. Thus, one of the best outlets for Pluto in the third house is to find means to associate movement with spirituality or self-development. The conscious individual could act as a 'guru of movement’. Third house association with the environment does not facilitate contacts with siblings. One of the siblings may be difficult or cause trouble; thus, Pluto teaches development and consciousness in that way. Pluto never gives anything for free. One woman experienced a traumatizing shock in her childhood when her sister threatened to sell her. This trauma probably still influences her choices in life. Another individual, a male, was informed that his brother, a homosexual, had been exposed to the AIDS virus. Plutonian experiences touch life through siblings. Pluto may also drive away from close environment if the pressure becomes too heavy. In that case, faraway countries are imaginary or real destinations.

Pluto in 3rd House: This position affects the ability to communicate, especially with peers. If there are other indications of mental instability, this will add to it. Communication can be felt to be dangerous; there is a fear of publicity, of being revealed, a fear of exposing oneself through communication. There may be a fear of travel or a fear of getting lost. These people are easily caught up in intrigues, or are afraid of being caught in them. Their peers may think they are odd - too intense, perverse, overly secretive ¬which may be true, but may only be due to their difficulties in communicating. Difficulties in communicating with peers and the community in childhood may drive them to leave home early and seek a more congenial environment, though this rarely works. Difficulties with siblings may be the prime motivating factor. There may be a sibling (or siblings, or neighbors, or associates) who bring(s) them sorrow by living dangerously: either through an unconventional lifestyle, by having underworld connections or illegal financial dealings, or through association with underground political organizations. The worst aspects may indicate a sibling or close associate who is chronically ill or insane, or who is killed accidentally, or murdered.

Early difficulties with communication may cause them to hold back and keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves to a great extent, then pour it all out to one who seems tolerant and non-judgmental; but if their choice of a confidante is poor, they will be in worse trouble than before.

This position seems to restrain all forms of communication. Out of ninety-two writers in a sample, only four have it; out of 145 performers, only five. It gives a rich fantasy life, adding greatly to the ability of the imagination, but this is mostly non-verbal and subliminal. It is good for writing poetry (of the four writers with this position, two are poets), for casting ideas and thoughts into images, but it is difficult for publication as their anxiety over publicity keeps them from doing anything that might reveal too much to the public. There may be some justification for this, because with this position of Pluto, they are vulnerable to slander.

It gives an awareness of the dark, subliminal levels of the mind, an understanding of the animal in man, of herd psychology, of the dark forces that civilization seeks to check but that break out and cause much of the irrational behavior of humanity, both in individuals and in groups. Consequently, there is a great ability to manipulate others by means of playing to unconscious, compulsive drives. They are often attracted to macabre fantasies, science fiction, etc..There may be dangerous, difficult, or amazing occurrences while travelling. Travelling should be approached with caution. People with this location of Pluto probably should not pick up hitchhikers. There may have been a traumatic early life experience connected with school, playgrounds, a sibling, or playmates.

They are fascinated by non-verbal communication, by words as symbols, and by the growth and structure of language, but not so much by the ordinary use of words to communicate thoughts or information.

Pluto in 3rd House: Like Uranus or Neptune in this house, Pluto in the 3rd aims to transcend the ordinary limits of the mind or intellect. Those with this placement often have a deep, penetrating and incisive mind able to 'laser through' to the heart of any matter. There could be an interest in extra-sensory perception or a desire to expose and freely talk about subjects which others find taboo (such as sex and death). Their minds are well-suited to any form of research or depth studies. Some might seek knowledge for the power and mastery it gives over others and the environment.

Occasionally, they give birth to ideas which could have a transforming effect on society. They may have a certain power with words. However, Pluto's strength can be used treacherously as well; and those with this placement are often known for their cutting tongues and acute sensitivity to where another person's weakness lies. Negative moods could creep up; and they can be overwhelmed by obsessive thoughts, as if their own minds betray them. Their thoughts can turn very destructive; and some will be afraid to speak because of a fear of what might come out. Others hide what is going on inside them in case exposing themselves would render them too vulnerable.

The 3rd house covers the early environment and the growing-up years. As children, we all have difficulty distinguishing between having wished for something and the belief that we have actually done the deed. For instance, if a little boy is angry at his sister for getting more attention than him, he may entertain a passing thought that he wishes she were dead. Let's say that the next day his sister falls out of a tree and breaks a leg. The boy in question might equate the negative wish he had with the accident, and therefore believe that his bad thoughts caused it to happen. Taking whole or part blame for it, he will walk around guilty and afraid of being found out and punished for his evil doings. As we grow older, we realize we are not so omnipotent, but those with Pluto in the 3rd may still harbor fears and guilts about the power of their thoughts and the bad things they made or make happen around them. Secret sins can torment a child or adolescent with Pluto in the 3rd, and he or she may be terrified to tell anyone else about it. And where there is shame and guilt, anger and rage are not far away. Obviously, parents of children with Pluto in the 3rd should try to create an environment in which the child feels safe to talk about what is going on in his or her mind, rather than allowing thoughts and feelings to fester underneath too long.

The early environment may have been experienced by those with this placement as threatening or non-life-supporting, and could leave the impression that they have to continually guard themselves against others. They will not easily forget a wrong¬doing, and may hold on to resentment for a very long time. The relationship with siblings is usually complex and ridden with undercurrents of sexuality, competition and intrigue. This placement often indicates difficulties with neighbors and problems with early schooling. For some, being sent away to boarding school is a major upheaval and felt as a kind of banishment or punishment for some imagined transgression.

Even short journeys can be harassing. They may arrive at a friend's for a quiet weekend in the country to discover they have stepped into the plot of an Agatha Christie thriller.

Those with Pluto in the 3rd are powerful on the mental plane; and if they hold a certain attitude towards another person, they can 'box' the person in to such a degree that he or she inevitably acts out the projection. Therefore if they want someone's behavior to change, they might try altering the context in which they are viewing that person. It is a basic fact of life that attention carries energy.

Pluto in 3rd House: Outreach: Pluto in the 3rd house shows that your subconscious speaks to you through the immediate surroundings. It's like an Easter egg hunt, or a search for buried treasure. What makes stimulus and movement in the real world a positive or negative experience is the presence or absence of a 'psychic map' of the environment. Activity for its own sake is meaningless; what matters instead is the ability to see signals and signposts at critical points. The pitfall is that you may be blind to your own need for exploration, for digging up valuable but hidden treasures existing all around, often right under your nose. The challenge is to keep activity deeply purposeful, and to remember that reality is often quite different from appearance.

Concrete mind: The intricacies of rationality are compelling. Though your mentality may work toward the surface slowly, like magma rising within a volcano, the process is inexorable, for you are sensitized to the power that comes through knowledge. If the power can be harnessed, it can work wonders, both for yourself and for those around you. The pitfall is being asleep to the intensity of your own mind, while the challenge is to gain control over these resources by studying the rules of logic.

Curiosity: For you, curiosity is a probing tool, an auger bit cutting through the surface to reach into the hidden inner workings of life. Never content with appearances, you want to see the wiring within the walls, the plumbing beneath the floors. At times you are likely to be bored stiff by otherwise interesting puzzles, and you won't hesitate to brush them aside in the quest for what you believe lies underneath or beyond. Inquisitiveness is mentally intense, but sometimes emotionally blind. The pitfall is symbolic vivisection, while the challenge is respect for life's mysterious wholeness.

Basic education: Here a child encounters the first experiences with something larger and more powerful than the self. It may be the authority of teachers; it may be the sudden onset of group and peer pressures; it may be the astonishment of learning itself. But in any case, the life can be dramatically affected by these early years in one of two directions: either open or closed psychologically. Basic education repeats itself over and over in the adult life. Fundamental learning is the key.

Communication: Your speech is a direct outlet from the deepest realms of inner feeling, realms often unknown to your awareness. The key image here is invisibility. Words and feelings bubble away together far below the surface, gradually producing an amalgam that is neither fish nor fowl. There may be long periods of inarticulate silence, followed by eruptions of profound expression. In the insights, though, there exists an irresistible power. Your insights about the people in your world may be communicated more didactically than you intend, so be prepared for strong reactions to your words, since they often cut to the bone. Others should not expect self-revelation from you, but if it comes it will be direct, blunt, and total.

Pluto in 3rd House: You have a distinct gift for solving problems, especially when the problem has already defied other attempts. The more mysterious the circumstances, the better, for it gives you an opportunity to search deeply and test your abilities. You are concerned about social and political conditions in your environment, because they usually have a direct effect on your life circumstances. Your preoccupation with the future stimulates you to do what you can to bring about conditions that you can live with. This is why you admire other people with backbone who have a feeling of social responsibility and who challenge demagogues who would gain control of the masses. Such an individual would earn your respect and attract your attention as a possible marriage partner.

You are impatient with people who do little more than talk about the future. You cultivate self-reliance in your own children, so that they can choose their own life-directions independently. Because of your concern for them, you also make them aware of the hazards that lie ahead. Your perceptive ability has far more depth than your contemporaries realize; and they may be surprised when you show a decided interest in the unknown and the occult.

You should become thoroughly informed about any subject that deeply interests you. You must know as much as possible about the political, social and religious philosophies that often serve as catalysts for important social changes. You resent the fact that people continue to adhere to old attitudes when the reasons for them are no longer valid. Be prepared for every eventuality by developing all your creative potentials. You protect your future interests when you can accept the opportunities that are offered to you.

If you develop your skills adequately, you won't have to accept the bottom line offered in your career. You will serve yourself best if your profession requires you to apply your skills in serving the best interests of society at large. If you work diligently to give your best, you are less likely to be harassed by the people who are affected by your decisions. Your awareness of public and individual needs will arouse you to make your skills available, especially if you know that your efforts will work and be appreciated. You are concerned about the financial leverage that people in important positions use to later the destinies of the masses. But you apply similar pressure to gratify your personal desires.

Though your parents might not agree with your goals and objectives and your driving commitment to them, they must admit that you have a talent for making the most out of even ordinary assets. You consider every challenge as an ultimatum, forcing you to go to extremes to win, if necessary. You can usually make a seemingly worthless situation appear to have great value. You are most attracted to programs that aim to provide lasting results for everyone who is affected by them.

Pluto in 3rd House: In the tradition... the third house is associated with speaking and listening. That notion is typically extended to include writing and reading. In the modern world, we take it a step further and include broadcasting, computer networking, satellite uplinks and downlinks, radio, video, desktop publishing, you name it. The human urge to gather data and express it: that's the third house.

But there's another third house process, one that underlies all those avenues of communication, at least ideally: thinking. This is the house that seems best to reflect all the micro circuitry of the mind itself: our habitual underlying paradigms of thought, such as 'thesis + antithesis = synthesis' or 'every truth has two sides'. Planets and signs connected with your third house will provide sharp insight into those tectonic structures that are the foundation upon which all your insights rest.

Let's go one step deeper: before thought, there must be perception. It is difficult to conceive of a mind with absolutely nothing to perceive and digest. Even the embryo in the womb is flooded with external sensations - light, sound, mother's moody biochemistry. Could thoughts even form in an eternally silent, isolated mind? Admittedly, that's a serious philosophical question, but the basic logic of the third house suggests that perception, thought, and finally communication are a kind of triadic psychic package. If you want one. you've got to accept the other two.

Data in, data out. That's the third house. What if that data must always be filtered through Pluto? Let's have a look...

Your high destiny: Most astrologers have had the thoroughly delightful experience of astounding a skeptic. Astrology works; but almost universally nowadays people are 'educating' into believing that it does not. "So, 1981 was quite a year for you in the relationships department, huh?" And the skeptic’s jaw drops.

How quick we humans are to construct models of the truth, believe them, and then blithely ignore our own real experiences. Individuals do it. Cultures do it. Astrology's foes do it - and so do astrologers.

Your high destiny is that of the paradigm-buster. You were born to shake people out of their comfortable certainties and render them naked and open to the raw truth that's pouring in through their senses, denied and unobserved.

Your destiny in this regard is inextricably bound up with communication. Generally that means language, whether it's spoken in private whispers, broadcast over the airwaves, printed, rhymed or reasoned. Sometimes people with Pluto in the third house do their communicating in other ways, using photography or video or cartooning to get the images across. Whatever form it takes, it's all communication.

And for you it must be distinctly Plutonian communication: which is to say that the teachings destined to pass through you into the larger community are often initially shocking in nature. They bother people, unsettle them. But it doesn't end there. It ends with the listeners - the ones who are willing to hang in there open-mindedly ¬being energized and inspired.

Meanwhile, the ones who do not hang in there may be plotting your crucifixion. Part of the paradigm you are living out is the perilous tale of the bearer of true tidings. The world will resist our voice. Upon that we can count.

Your distorting wound: Any third house planet functions on a perceptual basis. The same could be said for any sign connected to your third house, especially the sign on the cusp of the house. Thus, we all inevitably observe our surroundings through a system of filters. A suspicious person is more likely to observe dark, secret motives in someone's behavior than a trusting person. On the other hand, a trusting soul will be quicker to see all the angels standing in line in the grocery store.

With Pluto in your third house, you have an innate perceptual bias in the Plutonian direction - which is to say that ever since you were born, you've been skilled at picking up unspoken, taboo or denied energies in any situation. I'd like to start with a trivial illustration. I picture you as a small child sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Granny burps. And nobody misses a beat. Politely, they act as if nothing has happened. And you were dumbfounded. Not that the burp was any great offence; what held your attention was the perfection of the collective denial of the event.

Burps are only the beginning. Far darker realities exist, realities to which you are perceptually attuned by instinct. Daddy is drinking more and more lately. Sister is sullen and distant. You take it all in. Are others denying these realities or simply not seeing them? Often it's the latter. 'Reality' is largely a mythic belief system; and part of the human heritage is an extraordinary ability to enter the shared myth of family or community and not see anything else. That's true of most of us, but not you. Psychologically, you have the eye of a private detective: penetrating, calculating and suspicious.

When a person knows very well what he or she is seeing but no-one else agrees, a predictable series of wounding events unfolds. Here's your story: First, in innocence, you spoke out and got clobbered for it. The clobbering may have been literal, or it may have taken the form of everyone looking at you pityingly as though you were out of your mind. Then you clammed up... and concentrated silently on the negative perception.

That's the critical point: the more others denied that dark piece of the truth, the more you felt compelled to study it, claim it and inwardly insist on its reality. Thus, a distortion entered your perceptual system: a bias toward emphasizing the Plutonian content of any complex reality.

Your navigational error: Raw Plutonian realities, by their nature, tend to make us feel either angry or sad. Or both. Your distorting wound, if not addressed and healed, turns your mind in a suspicious, doubting, negative direction. All perceptions must pass initially through this house and be filtered there. Since one of Pluto's qualities is an attunement to frightening, uncomfortable truths, your mind could become dominated by those perspectives.

Since anything in the third house is wired directly to your tongue, you will then tend toward bitterness and harshness in your speech, angrily and unconsciously using psychological insight to hurt people. Misunderstanding and miscommunication will abound in your life; and your own mind will be filled with paranoid, leery constructions of reality while people around you complain incomprehensibly about your 'tone of voice' or your 'attitude'. That... or if the rest of your astrological nature is very fierce, they may simply fear you and nervously watch their p's and q's whenever you're around.

Your 'paranoid, leery' interpretations of events may at times be 100% valid. The point here is not so much that there is a proneness on your part toward ungrounded horror-fantastical perspectives; it is far more linked to a distorting emphasis upon the Plutonian - an emphasis which can be traced directly back to your early solitude in facing life's darker dynamics. You were isolated by what you saw; you could cling to the truth of what was pouring in through your senses, or you could lose your mind. That was your choice. Both possibilities were very real. The better of the two choices lay in clinging to the truth of what you were seeing... but even that choice hurt you. How? By biasing your mind in the Plutonian direction. You could spend your life seeing the blood and missing the flowers.

The Healing Method: As always, in considering the dark side of the Plutonian equations, we must underscore that these bleak possibilities are in no way your fate. Through the Plutonian process of remembering the truth of what actually happened to you, they can be unravelled and higher energies come into play. That is pure Pluto, no matter what house it's in: we liberate ourselves by making the unconscious conscious. For you, that process is utterly bound to speech. The third house sacrament at the heart of your healing method is conversation. There is an eternal dance in the process of building real intimacy. One person takes a little risk and shares something a bit more revealing than normal party talk. The other person responds in a way that unmistakably acknowledges both the information and the risk. Then it's the second person's turn, and maybe the pair moves a little deeper together... and moves a little further into each other's confidence. With Pluto in the third house, in this conversational process, you heal. Specifically, the very aspects of your character which were driven into silence and isolation by the unsettling, taboo power of what you perceived are now welcomed back from the cold. In a nutshell, your healing method lies in putting the more intense aspects of your inner life into words. That process can occur in profound, conversation-intensive friendship. It can occur in a deep psychotherapeutic context... although here we must make cautionary reference to that breed of 'therapist' so wedded to forcing you into his or her 'positive' or 'negative' belief system that the simple, healing act of telling one's own story spontaneously and uninhibitedly is stymied.

Writing is another healing method, since writing is also a kind of conversation. People with Pluto in the third house often recover their true natures through journalizing or soulful correspondence. If the rest of the chart supports it, we might even find healing here through poetry, story-telling, film-making, or novel-writing. All the methods come down to one technique: tell your story.

The energizing vision: You are a Truth-sayer. Or a Teacher, in the best sense of the word... which is to say that you are one who shocks us into thinking for ourselves. That is the destiny with which you were born. Circumstance may have done its best to beat that quality out of you, but that's still what you are. Snatch that power back from the forces that have tried to rob you of it, and you'll find yourself full of fire and energy. Nothing in this world will better fill you with the heat of life than a chance to punch through the veil of comforting phoniness and superficial politeness that threatens to turn us all into stick-figures. There is an element of confrontation inherent in what you are born to say, but not meanness or pointless destruction. Still, not everyone will be ready to hear your message: accept that. But you have been given three extraordinary gifts: a penetrating eye, a nose for sniffing out denial and collusion, and a hypnotic way with a tale. Use them! In the end, it comes down to this: with Pluto in the third house, you must reclaim your voice. And you must hold onto it, even in the face of the forces that would have you silent.

Pluto in 3rd House: Individuals with Pluto in the Third House have experienced the evolutionary necessity to project themselves into the physical environment in order to collect information, facts and data. Thus, this process has led to the evolutionary development and emphasis upon the mind and intellect. In the Second House, evolutionary necessity required withdrawal and internalization in order to discover the sense of individuality from within; to give it value, meaning, and the ability to identify one's own unique resources to effect self-reliance and self-sustainment. In so doing, emotional stability and security could be realized.

In the Third House, the individual necessarily has had to move out from this centre of subjective isolation - the frog in the well. Those with Pluto in the Third House have had to project themselves into their immediate physical environment in order to make broader and larger connections to it, and thus to themselves. These individuals have gained new experiences through which they have expanded their ideas and conceptions of who and what they are in relation to their physical environment. They have been developing their mental powers and intellectual abilities to logically order their existential existence. In other words, they have needed to give names and classifications to the objects and forms of the physical environment in order to understand and know it. By doing so they have also defined themselves by understanding, or attempting to understand, their relationship within the scheme of things - or, as the Taoists would say, 'within the ten thousand things’. In the broadest possible sense, the Third House is the need for the human species to give names and classifications to what is otherwise a phenomenal world. By naming and classifying, we have made ourselves intellectually, and therefore emotionally, secure. In the deepest sense, the Third House relates to our need to know the physical laws of our world in order to understand how it works.

Thus, individuals with the Third House Pluto have desired to experience many kinds of circumstances and situations of their own making. Their natural intellectual curiosity has allowed them to build upon, from their own evolutionary point of view, the idea of who they thought they were and think they are now. There has been a desire and need to understand their 'world' in a larger and larger framework. There has been, and will be, a desire to accumulate a storehouse of facts and information about their world in order to build a logical framework or superstructure of ideas that rationally and empirically explain their relationship to the environment. The desire in the past has not been to understand the deeper meaning of these facts; the metaphysical or cosmological laws as contrasted with the physical laws of the world. The focus has been, and will be, upon facts which are verifiable through the senses. The emotional security of individuals with a Third House Pluto has been linked with their ability to logically order, and thus 'know', their environment and their relationship to that environment. By knowing their environment, these individuals know themselves. This dynamic of emotional security linked to the ability to intellectually organize reality sets up a unique problem. On the one hand, the evolutionary desire and need has been to expand upon the intellectual framework. On the other hand, the desire for emotional security has led to the desire and need to create a foundation upon which the expansion is built; a specific point of view. The problem is that the desire to expand, to collect ever more information or facts, cyclically leads to a situation in which the new information directly undermines the existing foundation. Being simultaneously attracted and repelled by the desire for new experiences or information, these individuals have necessarily made choices as to what information would be taken in and what would be repelled.

From an evolutionary standpoint, these choices have created intellectual limitations because of the need for intellectual/ emotional security. Given the attraction / repulsion dynamic, these individuals will experience cyclic intellectual implosions or cataclysms in which the logical structure of intellectual organization disintegrates. Emotional security is affected, but they have learned how to adapt because of the inherent mutable nature of the Third House. The symbol for mutability is an upwards-moving spiral. The intellectual / emotional implosion re-organizes; and the metamorphosis produces a new foundation, a more inclusive point of view.

The intensity of the intellectual / emotional implosion is directly proportionate to the degree to which the individual has taken in the information. If he / she has totally identified with the information or idea, then the cataclysm will be total; the foundation seemingly completely removed. On the other hand, if the new idea is just being considered, identified with or absorbed in a minimal way, then the intensity of the implosion will be less. These cyclic implosions are always caused when, through evolutionary pressure, the intellectual framework has become limited or stagnated to the extent of preventing further growth or expansion. The degree of resistance relative to the need for expansion determines the degree of the cataclysm.

To determine the degree of personal identification in any Third House Pluto birth chart, check for other contributing or mitigating factors connected to Pluto. The evolutionary pressure of the Third House Pluto to take in new information and to generate new experiences has created a rather intense degree of perceptual restlessness that resonates within the Souls of these individuals. This restlessness, linked to boredom and stagnation, has led to the formation of an archive of experiences and information to which these individuals constantly refer, to increase their understanding and to communicate this understanding or knowledge to others. In other words, restlessness compulsively drives these people onward for ever new information or experiences.

Third House Pluto individuals have, and will need, relationships with others in order to process themselves; that is, to release the intellectual / emotional build-up of mental energy. In extreme cases, some of these people may become compulsive talkers. They need relationships not only to process themselves, but also to bring in new information from others. This continual interaction with others brings a constant need to adjust their ideas, which means that more and more facts are needed to explain in even greater detail the 'complete picture' of themselves and the world in which they live. The problem is that these individuals feel that they will never know enough. Consequently, the 'data banks' run the risk of becoming so large that they threaten to topple and disintegrate. Disintegration happens by having too many facts that logically connect in so many ways that there is no one composite or holistic way in which to relate all the data. Chasing one interest, idea, or desire after another, these individuals can end up walking down many different roads at the same time in a compulsive and unconscious effort to find that one fact or piece of information that will put it all together for them.

On this basis, these people can end up in a land of revolving perspectives with no centre or foundation through which to create a consistent composite picture. The individual's inner experience of his or her own 'centre' is one of revolving perspectives, of a revolving mass of emotions, and the feeling that the centre or foundation is always moving. Feeling lost and insecure, they can desperately reach out for one concrete fact to identify with and call their own. And yet, from an evolutionary point of view, the inner centre of these individuals must move. The centre or foundation is the movement itself. This spiraling effect can be endless as the perpetual cycles of contraction and expansion occur. The evolutionary basis for the constant movement of the centre is to eliminate intellectual limitations that periodically form in the attempt to stabilize and feel secure. In addition, these cycles of contraction and expansion occur to progressively lead the individual into the awareness that there is an intrinsic limitation to what the empirically oriented mind can know in and of itself.

With Pluto's polarity point in the Ninth House or Sagittarius, the evolutionary intent for this life is to develop the intuitive faculty as opposed to an intellect that is primarily concerned with empirical facts. By developing the intuition, these individuals will progressively understand the deeper meaning or significance of the facts; the metaphysical or cosmological laws that are the basis of the physical laws themselves. They will learn how to synthesize all the data into a composite or holistic understanding of how the parts are related to the whole. Intuition is the faculty in all of us that becomes aware, or is aware, of knowledge that is not a product of deductive thinking. Intuition is that part in all of us that knows what it knows without knowing how it knows it. The necessary development of intuition for Third House Pluto people demands that they learn how to quiet their constantly busy minds. By doing this, these individuals can open up and tune in to the intuitive faculty which is naturally plugged into the 'truth' that exists in our universe.

A primary way in which these individuals can harness and quiet their minds is to align themselves with one comprehensive philosophical or metaphysical system that makes the most sense to them on a gut level. By doing so, these individuals can intuitively align themselves with one holistic principle upon which all the pieces of information floating around in their heads can be given a bottom line. By their creating a bottom line, all the facts can be synthesized in order to reflect the 'truth' of the particular philosophy they have identified with. By aligning themselves with a comprehensive philosophy that is personally identified with on a gut level, these individuals can create a consistent interpretation of the facts and the world around them. A quieting and harnessing of the mind will result.

Relative to the past evolutionary and karmic conditions, some individuals will create their own bottom line philosophical or metaphysical principles upon which they base the arguments and 'rightness' of their opinions and facts. These types will not align themselves with a philosophical system outside themselves. Others will align themselves with two, three, or more 'systems' outside themselves. In so doing, they will select the principles in each that agree with some pre-existing point of view that they refuse to give up. In this way, they will synthesize these systems into their own brand of philosophy and truth. Others will make a total commitment to one philosophical system outside themselves that they feel most drawn to in order to create the necessary bottom line. The voice of personal authority, with respect to their opinions, will thus be linked to the authority of the system itself. In all cases, the evolutionary need and pressure to seek out the bottom line cosmological or metaphysical principles upon which the facts are based is the same. This evolutionary pressure is teaching all of these people the connection between the physical and metaphysical, between the mind and intuition, and the limitations implied by the empirically oriented intellect.

Through the polarity point of the Ninth House, the individual must intuitively learn to realize the truth that explains the basis of what can be empirically observed. In other words, the archetype of the Ninth House correlates to the laws that are the very basis of creation, the very basis of why human beings have developed religions, beliefs and philosophies. Just as belief systems can be limited or sectarian in nature, i.e. one version being 'more right' than another version, so too do the Third House Pluto individuals run the risk of limiting themselves to a version of metaphysical truth by responding or reacting to the evolutionary requirements in the ways mentioned above. On the one hand, it is necessary to understand intuitively the bottom line metaphysical principles upon which the facts are based. On the other hand, to consider that those principles are the only ones that are relevant and 'right' will promote a sectarian attitude. The narrow viewpoint is linked to the need for emotional security of an intellectual nature, and often implies a need to convince or convert others to one's own point of view. This implied limitation will thus guarantee, from an evolutionary point of view, that internal and external confrontation will continue to occur until the individual realizes that his or her version of the truth is just that: a version. It may be a necessary and relevant version given the individual's evolutionary and karmic background and requirements. The version is not the question in and of itself. Considering the version to be the only valid system is the problem. Once the individual is forced to make this realization, or intuits the problem, then two things will happen: A. the individual will not need to defend personal opinions and philosophies to anyone, nor deny another's - thus, the resulting metamorphosis will allow the individual to participate in conversations of all kinds in a non-defensive way, and to learn how to learn from others as well as others learning from him or her; and B. to continue the evolutionary journey in the discovery of the whole truth. This journey will ultimately lead the individual into the awareness, intuitively realized, that the truth exists in and of itself. It always has, and always will. In this realization, the individual will understand that the empirical mind and the intellect does not know what is true in and of itself.

In addition, the Ninth House polarity point will be teaching all these individuals the differences between reactions and responses. Prior to the necessary metamorphosis, these individuals will be more or less a reactive type. In conversation, for example, they may not really listen to another, or they may wait for an idea or thought to react off. By not really listening, these individuals are concerned with impressing themselves on other people with their own ideas and knowledge. By waiting for a thought or idea to react to, these individuals are waiting to use another's thought or idea as a launching pad to assert their own point of view. Of course this dynamic can lead to conversations that go nowhere, or end up in inverted spirals of clashing perspectives. It can lead into arguments or intellectual confrontations in which all parties concerned try to convince or convert each other to their own points of view without seriously considering or listening to anyone else. In other situations, this reactive process can lead these individuals into simply walking away from a conversation wondering if they could have said something else, or said it in a better or different way. Or the individual could simply shut the person off and just walk away from a conversation. In all cases, the intent and effect of these people is the same: to stimulate awareness of their own intellectual traps, games, limitations and motives, and the needs and dynamics that have created them.

As this evolutionary drama unfolds, these individuals can learn the lesson of response versus reaction. A response is considered action that translates in this case to knowing when to talk and when not to, what to say versus rambling or trying to prove a point, and listening to other people's ideas and knowing what to take in and what to reject. Rather than buying a load of books that are not read, or are partially read, these people will learn to buy one book at a time within a certain subject area that they feel intuitively drawn to. Progressively, from an evolutionary point of view, these people will come to realize the difference between opinions and that which is true.

The four natural evolutionary conditions determine the kinds of ideas and philosophies that these individuals gravitate toward. Those in the herd state will listen to consensus opinions and ideas about any subject and would consider this point of view their own. They would gravitate to the 'accepted' forms of religious or philosophical expression.

Those in the individuated state would desire to think for themselves. They would reject consensus opinion and would explore for themselves the subjects that attract them. They would tend to reject unquestioning attachment or bonding to any pre¬existing formal philosophy, religion, or cosmological system. They would create their own system, or synthesize concepts from many different systems into a composite whole. Some individuals in this evolutionary state will select one pre-existing formal system that they feel intuitively drawn to. This is a sign that these people are moving rapidly toward the spiritual evolutionary state because they are beginning to realize the evolutionary and karmic limitations in creating and relying upon a metaphysical system of their own making. In other words, truth is to be realized, not created from an egocentric point of view. By aligning themselves with a system outside themselves that reflects what they intuit to be true, these individuals are admitting that there are forces or powers larger than themselves.

Individuals in the spiritual state itself would attempt to understand the timeless basis for the physical laws of our world, and would use facts to illustrate a spiritual point or principle. These individuals will align themselves with specific cosmological, metaphysical, religious and philosophical systems that they feel most drawn to intuitively. These systems will be based on the intrinsic metaphysical truths and laws that are the basis of Creation itself. These intrinsic truths and laws are commonly communicated by these people, and the system itself, through metaphor, analogy, parables and inference wherein an empirical fact is used to illustrate the principle, truth, or law. Even within this evolutionary state, limitation can exist when either the specific system, or the individual, denies another system as 'wrong'. Evolution occurs in this state by progressively teaching the individual the whole 'truth', and the essential unity of all paths leading to the realization of the truth.

Once the necessary evolutionary lessons are developed, the Third House Pluto individual will have natural communicative skills that can inspire, motivate, enthrall, hypnotize, and metamorphose other people's intellectual patterns and opinions by sheer contact with them. Their ability to understand the connection between the macrocosm and the microcosm, between truth and fact, is unsurpassed. This ability can translate into taking any number of facts of a diverse nature and relating them to one central principle from which the facts emanate. The penetrating intellect can identify the essence of any question, problem, or issue that is posed by, or to, the individual. Once the core of any problem, question, or issue is exposed, the solution can soon follow.

Common characteristics of the Third House Pluto individual include: deep, penetrating mind; being intelligent; being curious as long as he / she can control the direction of the curiosity; the ability to recognize the weakest possible link in any argument; ability to uncover the facts; appearing to be very logical yet intellectually / emotionally defensive when other peoples' ideas threaten his / her own intellectual order; and natural power emanating from the hands.

See also: Pluto in the 3rd House;

Pluto in the 3rd House: Al Capone, Carlos Castaneda, Wilt Chamberlain, Cher, Mick Jagger, Angelina Jolie, Martin Luther King, Jr,.Carl Jung, Cathy O’Brien, Bruce Springsteen, Ludwig van Beethoven, Jesse Ventura, H.G. Wells, Brian Wilson, Elijah, Flickinger, JerryP, LaurieSw, LucSr, Maureen, Merrill, Mikael, Nicole, Roberto, Shiloh, TonyC

Pluto in the 4th House

Pluto placements in angular houses are always more obviously intense, because they are setting the pace for an entire quadrant of the horoscopes; in this case, setting the tone for the second quadrant's use and display of personal power. In the fourth, a parental house, Pluto refers to early intimidation by and love of the father (or fourth house parent. As an infant, the child with this placement senses the amount of power that the parents have through their use or misuse of anger. The father may appear aloof or invulnerable to his children; and although he ostensibly controls his anger as best he can, he still gives vent to violent outbursts at times. He is perceived as a man under pressure, expecting himself to have his life in perfect order and resenting it when this doesn't come true. He has difficulties expressing his emotions, and feels that to do so would be to give the appearance of weakness in some form. He fears that he may be manipulated emotionally if he lets anything show.

Anger held if festers, however; and the predictable, erratic blow-ups in the family circle are scary for the young child, who believes that they may end the family relationships at any moment. The young child's sensitivity tells him or her that the psychic disruption brought about by repressed, long-term anger may signal not only the end of the family relationships, but also perhaps the physical death of one of the parents. The Pluto fourth house child senses cosmic law, in which destructive thoughts bring about destruction. This fear can create a great deal of insecurity in the child, who begins to believe more and more than anger destroys. Since he or she is usually not allowed to express anger, the child learns early in life to suppress it, to deny the self any channel for that anger. This individual can sincerely believe, albeit subconsciously, that angry thoughts on his or her part can lead to the destruction of the household, and therefore tries hard never to let it show. If something bad does happen to one of the parents, the child may be overcome with guilt and self-reproach, repressing negative thoughts even more deeply.

However, anger does occur in normal, healthy individuals, and our Pluto child is no exception. Over time, repressing one's anger can lead to fears of loneliness, of misdirected power. Children with a fourth house Pluto become willing to sacrifice their personal creativity and expression for the sake of domestic tranquility and security. After all, at age five or six, they cannot support and clothe themselves. Because the pattern with the father is so strong, their natural love for him can turn to hate, the other extreme. While still trying to make an impression on the father in order to win his approval, these children will submit to the expectations of adults in general, and bottle up their inner selves. They become very dependent on their parents to provide and sustain the home; and they distort the parental images in their minds. The parents come to be seen as all-powerful, possibly threatening individuals; and the children feel they have no power.

This power giveaway for the sake of domestic security and parental support is common; and virtually all of us have done it. However, the fourth house Pluto person struggles longer in adulthood with the consequences of this childhood pattern. Like the parents, the growing child assumes a posture and image of aloofness, restraint, and control of all feelings, resulting in a 'stuffed psyche'. He or she begins to look for other authority figures to extend the childhood reasonings and logic about life. The fear of loneliness, coupled with the fear of hurting another person with his or her anger or other negative attitudes, causes many a fourth house Pluto person to distrust or avoid relationships. Throughout adult life, this person can carry a chip on his or her shoulder, possibly blaming the parents for missed opportunities which, had they been taken, would have resulted in a successful and happy life in the present. Sometimes the domination of the parents is even more obvious, in that the child (usually a male in this case) still tries to please father, and overworks himself in the name of success. "Maybe then father will appreciate me, for now I am powerful and unfeeling and self-controlled, just as he was or wanted me to be" could be one expression of this response. Yet, father isn't going to pat the son or daughter on the head and say, "Now I think you're really great, and I'm so proud of having you as my child - and I love you". With a Pluto fourth house, it simply would not occur to the father to make that gesture! The dependent child often grows up into a timid adult, looking for authority and the meaning of life outside himself or herself. This person is usually afraid of risks, and will continue to try to live up to someone else's expectations, whenever he or she can figure out what those might be. Even when crises come, it is difficult for these individuals to change their modes, so determined are they (out of love or hate for the father) to maintain his image and expectations and live by them. Even if the home they had struggled so hard to get was on the line, it would be difficult to change their attitudes and try something new if there were no guarantee that the house could be saved. Since personal power is given to others, these individuals may not be motivated until they get some kind of assurance from whomever is currently the stand-in for an authority figure in their lives.

In women's charts, Pluto here often signals a tendency to give up their identity to their boyfriends or husbands, becoming subservient and sacrificing their own power as adults in exchange for the security and comfort of a home, a car, etc.. Even though they may get all the material advantages they want in exchange for this, they have still sold their souls. A prostitute (another Plutonian type) can be more honest about her search for money and security than most people, even though she may be ridiculed or hated by those who fail to see their own dishonesties in the same department! This Pluto individual tends to have very intense emotions which are an overload from the past, and for that reason life is seldom comfortable. There is always a tension driving these people onward. Often of choleric temperament, they always seem to be in the midst of personal or domestic problems. Within them is a conflict between their personal identity and the parent's conception of who and what they are - which conception they have tried to adopt as their own. The strong influence of the parent continues within the psyche, and works itself out through subjective crises. Remember that the image of the parent is a subjective, assumed picture put together by the child. It does not represent the true parent, even though the child may defiantly defend his or her image of the parents (or a parental substitute such as a city, country, etc.) throughout life. This loyalty to inner images may obscure the fact that these natives have given away their personal authority to outside figures. The only advantage to this placement, in a negative sense, is that there is always someone else to blame.

Sometimes these negative images can be part and parcel of the individual's life, relentlessly forcing one identity crisis after another on him or her. Sometimes the parent dies at an early age, causing not only grief and guilt, but a feeling of awe over the idea that the individual somehow caused the parent's death. Fears of this type of event repeating itself can lead to an emotional complex, in which the person fears that everything he or she touches will ultimately turn out to be cold and hard ¬including relationships.

However, despite the intensity of this placement, there is great opportunity for the individual to open up and express his or her latent psychic powers. There is a natural ability to link the conscious mind with the subconscious mind, bringing up incredible personal and 'cosmic' information from the depths of the psyche. Instead of being born into a quarreling family, this individual may have parents who understand the use of personal power and encourage the youngster to assume more and more responsibility for his or her actions when the time is right.

This Pluto individual, whether encouraged or not, will develop for himself or herself a natural and personal sense of authority, based on the security of knowing that he or she can handle whatever situations may come up. In that attitude lies the true inner sense of security, upon which an openness and personal expressiveness can be built. There is no fear of emotions getting out of control and leading to self-destruction, because this person lives life at a depth of richness of feeling that simply doesn't allow emotions to go unexpressed for very long. The ability of the individual to tune into his or her inner depths may qualify him or her to be a professional medium, provided she / he is capable of making decisions of an adult caliber. There can be a passionate love of people here, and a sincere understanding of the frailties of human nature. Yet, simultaneously, this person needs privacy and a place where emotional drains can be flushed out and psychic batteries recharged.

With maturity, the Pluto fourth house person begins to reconnect with the parents, whether on the outer level or in the inner sense. The love-hate polarity has its chance to become love alone; and mended feelings can lead to the family working together on financial projects. No longer obsessed with having to earn all the money in the family, these persons can begin to accept some from other people without cringing at the possible loss of personal power. Yet, you'll still see that they intend to do the spending! There's just a sense of authority in them that commands attention, a presence that is difficult to describe. These people will tend to have their way. They are masters of their house, and it can be either a benign rulership or a tyrannical one. These people are extremists, due to their intense psyche. They are loyal to family and friends, and have a unique way to solve any problems that may come up. While Pluto transits this house, situations will arise that demand a look at the inner relationship between the native and his or her father. Situations or event patterns from childhood may be repeated almost exactly, such as bankruptcy, moving to a strange town, etc. - and the emotional content will be very similar. In this house, Pluto begins its ascent in the chart after having been down for the whole of life until this point; and the individual is almost forced to begin moving in new directions. In order for these new directions to work for rather than against the person, the attitudes and beliefs about what really went on in childhood may have to be recalled and adjusted. Most of this process can go on subconsciously, but when it is emphasized on a conscious level, the cleansing of the past will take place much more easily and quickly.

A person can go through some rather aggravating and repetitive problems throughout the first few years that Pluto transits across the cusp of the fourth house. Changes of one kind or another will begin to 'rock the emotional boat', so to speak. If the individual has given away his or her personal power to some outer authority figure (such as someone in government, the military, a relationship or a job), then there is a potential for self-destruction. This is due to the fact that the individual has given to someone else the power to deal with rebellious, dissenting attitudes, which consequently are bound to burst out into the open. This releases a surge of emotional information from the subconscious which he psyche has no choice but to deal with in some way. If the person's will is underdeveloped, she / he will be literally swamped with this regurgitive process and overwhelmed by it. The environment will tend to reflect the state of the psyche, so that there is a potential for personal danger as a result of such natural forces as floods and hurricanes. This in turn can lead to a loss or disruption in the individual's life, which may cause a very deep bitterness.

When the person has been growing and learning how to make Plutonian choices, then the results can be exciting and positive. This may be the time when the individual can really and truly connect with the power of the inner self, and begin using it to create a joyful, rich and satisfying life. Although the person may appear to retreat inward during this process, she / he is simply gathering the inner forces which are destined to be used for building personal and spiritual success later. Often, the positive Pluto experience will at this point include an ascent into the metaphysical or spiritual planes of evolution, due to an increased openness to higher levels of information. If the person experiencing this Pluto transit can avoid egotism at this time, he or she will return to society and build a place for the self which will permit the development of the strength and power needed to satisfy and fulfill personal needs. She / he will be respected by others, and will continue to grow spiritually and personally.

Occasionally, an elderly person will use this transit to leave the physical plane in the final transformation known as death. Yet, this death on a Pluto transit is truly a rebirth on another level, and the soul has chosen this pathway as a vehicle for pursuing its own best spiritual interests. Frequently, these individuals know about their physical demise ahead of time, and use this knowledge to put their affairs in order. Before they leave, they are already in sight of the light on the other side, and therefore this kind of transition can be a joyful experience. If at a time when Pluto is transiting your fourth house you should lose a family member to death, consider that this may reflect his or her soul's decision in a very positive way. Pluto’s transit through the fourth house has a very direct impact on the psyche, which in turn has an indirect effect on the surrounding reality or environment. Pluto here can also have an impact on the person's feelings toward legal matters, government employment, social work or teaching. Working with those who are less fortunate can bring out some of the positive Plutonian traits and encourage self-confidence and authority. Living by the water can help encourage the kind of inner 'cleansing' the Pluto person needs.

Changing the negative Plutonian influence into a positive one starts with the forgiveness principle. In this case, you must forgive your father or fourth house parent. Whether you are a man or a woman, the chances are that with this placement you have sacrificed some of your inner identity to maintain your father's. You may have subconsciously and psychically programmed yourself to BE your father! If you look within and discover this, you may also find that you probably did it out of love for him. For that intense bond you have with your father, whether it is love or hate, can never be broken - only resolved. And now is the time to resolve it.

Encourage yourself to visualize, and learn some form of meditation, even if it is through guided visualizations on tapes or records. When you feel comfortable enough floating around in your psyche, turn your attention to a visualization of your father. See him as a man with both weaknesses and successes, problems and frustrations, etc.. Don't see him as a parent or an authority figure, even if he is also your boss or the governor of your state! Forgive him. Tell him in your imagination how sorry you are that things had to be the way they were, and that you forgive him for not doing all the right things for you - for not communicating his love for you, for not appearing to understand you. Let yourself see your father as an image inside yourself, and talk to him. Tell him about all the things he did to hurt you, and let him know you forgive him for that.

One of the greatest teachings of the Master Jesus came when he said on the cross, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!. If you have a father relationship with God, ask God to forgive your father also. But remember, it is important that you definitely take responsibility for forgiving your father yourself. Then tell your father about some of the good times you had. Think of them! There were some, truly. Remember how it felt to love him as well as to hate him. Imagine a beautiful purple bubble appearing and settling down around him; and let your love flow to him inside that bubble of forgiveness. Forgive the hate within yourself as well as within him. Let go of grudges. Keep forgiving him until your anger, hate or pain is released from within you. You'll know what I mean when it happens.

If you have a difficult time forgiving him, and feel yourself insistent on holding onto your pains and grudges, then return and do this process again later. If you desire revenge of some sort, acknowledge that. Avoid tearing him down as a person in your mind, for then you'll need to apply the antidote of saying no to your ego. Your ego is holding out in order to get some leverage in your life. It often tells you how much you are suffering. However, your ego thrives on that kind of stuff, and you end up being miserable. So say 'no' to your ego, and shut up that little voice inside you that tries to entice you into thinking negative thoughts about someone else. Use your will, and be forceful about it! Put your ego in its place, and return to the forgiveness visualization. Pluto power will take the visualization and transform it into reality. When you have forgiven your father, your reality will soon begin to reflect that, giving you new freedom to develop yourself outside his shadow, and opening up the possibility of loving him finally and accepting him at last. With forgiveness, you have an open door inviting you to enter. It is your new self, your new image, and it extends into your future, just as the old self reached back into the past. Decide who you want to be, and walk through that door!(Haydn Paul)This implies a compulsive need to feel physically and emotionally secure, and is likely to involve a tendency to retreat back into your physical home and internally within your feeling nature, as an attempt to evade any 'threats' that you feel are confronting you in the external world or wherever you feel unsure and insecure about life.

Essentially, you try to build your own personal 'castle', wherein you become lord and master as you hope to have total control over your immediate environment. The need to create your own private kingdom may stem from your early life, where disruption and a lack of physical and emotional security may have existed, through perhaps the loss of a parent, or by family power struggles which affected you. In your adult life, you will expend much energy on your 'castle' and family; and they will hold intense meaning and importance for you, representing an emotional and physical space into which you can retreat and relax, a controlled security. However, your need to maintain this control and stability can lead to family friction. You may tend to 'imprison' others, through personal domination, as you build a protective but restrictive barrier between your 'castle' and the world; certainly you will be very resistant towards anything new entering the home life which might bring in disruptive elements, ideas, people, etc.. You are likely to find it difficult to be aware of this demarcation line that you are drawing for others, of the way you restrict how they are allowed to experience the world, and of the limits to their personal freedom that you tend to insist upon. You manage the home environment in a way that makes others dependent upon you, and subservient to your demands. You need a partner who basically supports your emphasis on 'home as a castle', and who does not contradict your needs and values, but acts as a complement to them and is capable of maintaining an open contact for you and the family with the outer world. To some degree, everyone expresses this tendency in home and family life, but with this Pluto placement, the likelihood of it being quite compulsive and obsessive is greatly emphasized, to the point where it could create problems for yourself and others. It is likely that in several ways your adult life at home could become quite disruptive and you could experience upheavals as direct consequence of your attempts to satisfy your needs for security, particularly if imposed upon your family. You are likely to be attracted towards exploring beneath the surface of things, with possibly considerable insight into the emotional depths of others through a natural attunement to the unconscious mind. Such a link will work both ways though, and Pluto will try to create conditions that transform your needs for physical / emotional security in a tangible form, towards greater self-understanding which can give you an inner sense of security not dependent upon outer supports. You should be striving to find an inner centre of peace and fulfillment, as ultimately this is more lasting than one based in the outer world.

Pluto in 4th House: This is a very Plutonian person, especially when Pluto falls near the fourth house cusp. One parent, most likely the mother, was powerful, intrusive and controlling. When one parent was outwardly domineering, however, the other may have been more subtly manipulative - !It's you and me against that monster". Often there are great undercurrents of resentment in the home, particularly resentment of the child's needs, or of the necessity for nurturing. Sometimes a grandmother exerted great influence, in the manner of a matriarch. There may have been an actual abandonment, such as a death of a parent figure, or there may have been the constant threat of abandonment if the child did not behave. Perhaps everyone was mourning a death near the time of this child's birth, so the mother was in a melancholic state and had little to give an infant.

When people have Pluto in the fourth, the adult home may become a battleground for power struggles; or, to avoid repeating past family patterns, these people may decide to live alone. It can be hard to cope with living with anyone, unless this type has absolute control of the situation. "My house is my private turf, my secret sanctuary, and I can't really bear to share it." It is essential that people with this placement respect their need for privacy and solitude, knowing that even when they live with others, they still need time alone. As they heal childhood traumas and resentments, it will become easier for them to live with someone else. The home life then becomes the wellspring of regeneration, giving them healing energy to take out into the world. They have the ability to heal themselves of early traumas; and, when they do, they may share what they learn with others who have been similarly wounded.

Pluto in 4th House: The fourth house is closely connected with the deepest self, our psychological roots and our feelings of protectiveness. At the same time, it is an expression of our family, family ties, our home where we came from. Intensive, ruthless and demanding Pluto is not easily compatible with these value, and, unfortunately, often brings the necessity to experience something rather dramatic in family life. Compatible or not, strong emotions and grief are part of the psyche of the individual. Nevertheless, bad planetary positions do not exist. There is always a signification and a learning experience inherent in them.

Many individuals with this planetary position were born with strong feelings of separateness and insecurity. Childhood experiences often correspond to that; for example, one parent is missing and that causes insecurity. Yet, most of all, planetary positions show themselves in the psychological structure of the individual. So these people experience childhood experiences more traumatic than, for example, other siblings who don't have a strong psychological attitude to experience grief. The fourth house is so sensitive that these people may tell a different kind of story about their childhood from other siblings of the same family. The same environment for those siblings may not seem at all so threatening or imbalanced.

In reality, there is something Plutonian in childhood conditions. One of the parents may have been domineering or the kind of person who sows the seeds of fear in his close environment. The fear of rejection is often real. Pluto has a well-known strength in causing deep fear; and in this house it is related to childhood and family. Fear is not easy to deal with; and it has a tendency to show itself in close relationships. The emotional life of the individual goes hand in hand with the fear of rejection. The more he has feelings towards someone, the more he is afraid of losing the other person's affection or fears that in one way or another the relationship will break up. Often the biggest problem for the individual is that he is looking for the security that should have been given to him in childhood. It may not be apparent that he is looking for a mother or a father figure for partner. With that kind of figure beside him, his biggest fears don't come up so easily. Something is undermining the relationship if it is not based on equal sharing, giving and caring between two adults.

Personal rebirth is possible, but it doesn't happen without going through and working with childhood experiences and the fear related to them. He may become uprooted in a positive way. Pluto in the fourth house is not compatible with close and warm ties with the natal place (sometimes with the natal country!). Often life forces bring one to other horizons. Pluto also means transformation related to the birth place (fourth house).Because of the watery nature of the fourth house, Pluto can bring emotional explosiveness - a regrettable tendency if it is not worked out. Also, the individual's desire for control easily shows up in the family sphere. In the worst case he abuses, dictates and controls everything. Others may have to walk on tiptoes in his home. If the individual desires to develop, he should channel his Plutonian energy into the forces of change and transformation in his home: renovations in the home, challenging places to live in, transformation of the home life into something deeper and more meaningful. Superficial, routine home life is not for him. Pluto’s tendency to secrecy and revelation may lead to scandals concerning home and family.

One of the best outlets for this kind of Plutonian energy is in the ability to dig up hidden matters in a Plutonian exhaustive way. Old family secrets and prehistory may offer good outlets, as well as archaeology and ancient architecture. Pluto can, no doubt, be very fertile in giving new dimensions to home furnishing. French astrologer Jean-Pierre Nicolas noticed that this planetary position is common in the charts of those who research caves; they go deep instead of being caught with strong emotions, and probably make better use of the energy. The fourth house at its best may represent a deep and mysterious relationship with nature. This Pluto's position is reminiscent of archetypal Poseidon.

Pluto in 4th House: Complexes, traumas and unresolved issues from early childhood often seethe below the level of conscious awareness if Pluto is in the 4th house. These people may try to cut off their deeper feelings altogether, exerting rigid control over themselves as a way of defending themselves against these raw emotions. And yet there is always the sense of something dangerous lurking underneath which could overwhelm them in the end. For some, their whole life is built around suppressing what's down there; and in this respect they are dominated by those very things they are trying to keep at bay. Finding the self is like peeling an onion - layer upon layer has to be removed to reach the core. More than any other placement, this is the deep-sea diver who must plunge into the depths of the personal unconscious, bringing hidden complexes to light so that they can be examined, worked on and (it is to be hoped) transmuted. These complexes probably stem from their experiences in the early home environment (the family of origin), and may resurface later on in their private and domestic lives. Since the home sphere is where they feel most vulnerable, they may attempt to manipulate and control those around them so that nobody slips up and detonates their inner time-bomb. Obviously, this does not lend itself to the most relaxed of home atmospheres, in which there are probably many unwritten rules about what is or isn't allowed to be said or done. Wherever Pluto is in the chart is where we fear our own destruction. In the 4th, the bogeyman lurks under the bed, or in the wardrobe, or stares at us from across the breakfast table. It is like living by the side of Mount Vesuvius. Those with Pluto in the 4th might experience major reorientations in their lives through upheavals in the domestic sphere or the collapse of the family structure altogether. Although this is hardly likely to be easy, they have the capacity to rise out of the rubble reborn, it is to be hoped wiser and with greater self-understanding. On the positive side, Pluto in the 4th is a good indication of strong regenerative powers and the ability to rebuild the self after any kind of breakdown. The survival instinct runs deep; and resources they didn't know they had come to the fore at the time of crisis.

If we take the fourth house to represent the father, he could have been experienced as exceptionally powerful, dark or threatening. Children with this placement may be keenly aware of the father's passion, sexuality, frustrations and pent-up rage. Sometimes it is the death, disappearance or psychological distance of the father which affects them strongly. more positively, he could represent someone with great courage, fortitude and creative potency.

The 4th house describes how we end things; and with Pluto or Scorpio there, endings are often final and irrevocable. There may be the need to dramatically finish certain phases of life, or cut themselves off from people or places to which they have previously been tied.

Those with Pluto in the 4th may have a love and reverence of nature, an almost primeval tie with the earth and its mysteries. Attempting to fathom the secrets of nature, there may be an interest in oceanography and deep-sea diving, archaeology, psychology, or metaphysics.

Some will be able to transmute their inner struggles and emotional churnings into creative expression. Through psychological exploration, deep inner reflection and meditation, and the nurturance of seeds of self-knowledge, those with this placement may mature into extremely wise and radiant sources of strength, inspiration and guidance for others. The Greek God Pluto was in charge of buried treasure; and those with this planet in the 4th just need to dig for it.

Pluto in 4th House: This placement of Pluto endangers the home of the happiness of the home life in some way. If Pluto is in a fire sign, there is danger from fire; in air or water signs, from storms; in earth signs, from bankruptcy or other money troubles.

This is also one indication of an early or violent death. There may be violence or danger in early life. There may be disputes within the family that erupt into violence, or threaten to. The father or another relative in the home may be violent, revolutionary, or in trouble with the law. The life of the father may be threatened. He may be imprisoned or exiled, be in hiding, suffer racial discrimination or social ostracism, or be connected with the underworld.

The family may be broken up, lose its home, suffer bankruptcy, etc.. Without several bad aspects to Pluto in the chart, it is probable that nothing of the sort will actually happen, but the threat of such things may add stress to the early life that affects the adult life to a great extent. It can cause them to be fearful of putting down roots, of establishing a traditional home and family of their own, or of being held prisoner by family responsibilities.

Those with this position are usually revolutionary, in their thinking if not in actual activity, and if not openly, then quietly, striving in some way to reform civilization from the ground up. Pluto in the fourth is deeply philosophical; early life difficulties start them thinking over the great imponderables of existence at an early age. They are students of life, and see more clearly than others how individuals are parts of a whole and how each one is related to the rest through a vast network of cause and effect. They may see this in a dark light - the individual crushed in the machinery of social existence - or it may strike them as funny. Some will choose to fight the system; some to back away from it, to create a safe existence as far as possible from the mainstream.

This position tends to make a person shy, not eager to jump into the limelight. If these people do rise to prominence due to other factors, they will always carry Plutonian vibes with them that can never be completely hidden. Although, in reality, they may be the sweetest and mildest of humans, with a stress aspect or two, their public image will cast the shadow of the revolutionary, or the lone wolf, or one who is prone to violence or madness, or a denizen of prisons, brothels, or mental institutions; as one who will not hesitate to use force, one who will cause permanent change, or who threatens to do so by his / her very presence.

Pluto in 4th House: Microcosm: Your inner sanctum is a dark and mysterious place. It may be foreboding or comforting, but in either case it involves contact with the unknown. Your private self is an enigma existing in a region of psychological turbulence, an oven of transformation rather than a secure haven. The pitfall is the possibility that your conscious self will be devoured by this unknown space, while the challenge is to use the inner sanctum as a caterpillar uses its chrysalis: to promote fundamental changes of consciousness.

Personal security: Personal security emanates from deep within the self. Home as a physical place has no natural meaning; but home as a psychological construct is all-encompassing. You are often blind to your own complexity around family issues, protesting that you need no security even as you dig deeper and deeper to find a safe place. The family is an event of confrontation with great power, the power of the unconscious; and the pitfall lies in being consumed or dominated by this power. The challenge is to rebirth a more loving and self-respectful form of family security, one without the compulsive need to control others or subjugate the self.

Emotional imprints: Your imprints are of a most profound nature. There was no distinguishing between events and emotions, for everything blended together in a deep, pressurized chamber, locked within the self below the level of awareness. Though you may have always possessed an almost absolute sense of belonging in your family, it's more likely that you didn't know why you were there, what your function was, or how you were linked to your family members. No other planet indicates so strong a need to unearth one's early imprints. This is the stuff of classical psychotherapy, where culminating realizations achieved after great effort and long periods of time can completely transform your understanding of your background.

'Inner-link' parent: Pluto indicates even more deeply than Mars the presence of power conflicts existing between mother and child. These may form an unshakeable inner bond; but curiously, the depth of the connection is often unseen or denied. It's possible that you felt dominated or driven by the powerful love of a mother who sought fulfillment through you, but any resentments that may exist are often buried beneath a sugar coating of feigned love and respect. Even in the best childhood, there is here a presence, a compulsion surrounding the care. If you eventually reach the bottom of your feelings about her (and hers about you), you will discover profound evidence of the sacred relationship of all mothers to all children.

Private intuition: There is a source of infinite power and knowledge buried somewhere within you, existing like a secret weapon to be used only in times of profound significance or great peril. The catch is that it's ordinarily invisible to the conscious mind: you must hunt for it until it decides to be found; you chase it until it catches you. The function of private intuitions here is to destroy outmoded life games, to utterly change your emotional perspective from the inside out. Access to your guides is allowed rarely, but when it happens, you'll know. They are like psychic surgeons with very sharp scalpels; and they don't mess around with superficialities. Instead, they cut right to the heart of the matter.

Pluto in 4th House: Your early circumstances conditioned you to feel strongly obligated to your family. Pressures from those in authority over you produced deep-seated tensions that will be relieved only when you can stand on your own. You know that one day you will have to do this, but you are inclined to let the situation ride until a crisis forces your hand. You have a strong desire to be useful to others, but you aren't sure you can express yourself within the narrow confines of family life. You would like to prove your effectiveness in dealing with the problems of the larger society. You know you have the creative imagination to improve social conditions, so you apply yourself in developing your talents on your own. Subconsciously you know that when the time is right you will move to fulfill your destiny. The delays you encounter until then only deepen your commitment and give you the courage to withstand the demands of those who are close to you. You know that eventually your contribution will be appreciated.

Knowing that you need to be financially secure, you will take advantage of your imaginative ideas to achieve independence. You know how to communicate your ideas to those who have the resources to promote them. you are able to apply yourself to improve your skills; and hard work is no deterrent. Success will follow from self-development, because you know your ideas have the potential to provide long-term yields. You are not afraid to knock on doors, because you know that in time your persistence will be rewarded. But mainly you need to know that you've made the only decision possible - to alert others to your talents and skills.

Coping with your responsibilities to yourself will be delayed if you let yourself be intimidated by your family. Alienating conditions in the home will force you to assert your independence as you establish your position in a competitive society. You will grow increasingly confident as you learn to meet challenges successfully; and you will build a strong foundation for your life. It will be satisfying to know that you have risen above your early difficult circumstances and that you have demonstrated the importance of doing it in your own way.

Some painful sacrifices are necessary if you want to fulfill your ambitions. But having to live in obscurity is more painful to you than the necessary investment in time and energy to become financially independent. You don't want to always be at the beck and call of more successful people. You know that eventually you will serve your fellow man, but you want to decide for yourself how to do it. Getting an education will expand your options. When you have the right training, you will become spiritually committed to solving the problems of others. You will feel content with yourself for this service.

Being uninformed is your greatest liability, and will keep you from accomplishing as much as you can. You must be willing to apply your talents; but you have to ask yourself if you are ready to be the best in your field. Learn to listen to others, if only to realize that you are as talented and as capable as they are. You need to dramatize your creative potentials and communicate with people outside your family to be assured of your gifts. You may have to postpone making close ties with others until you can build independence without losing your identity.

Pluto in 4th House: In the tradition, the fourth house is the 'House of the Home'. In most modern astrological texts, it is interpreted in more psychological terms, as the house of the inner self, the feelings, one's deepest archetypal roots.

Both perspectives are valid; and certainly 'home' and 'psychology' are intimately related notions. Ask any psychologist what he or she spends the day discussing. Generally, the answer will reflect the eternal concern with one's early family dynamics, their bearing on one's present home life in its horrors, rewards, or in its absence.

Sleep with someone in a spirit of love and revelation for ten years, and you might really begin to get to know the person - which is to say, to penetrate his or her fourth house. We all have a profound inwardness, shrouded in secrecy and mystery. The obscurity of the fourth house is not necessarily intentional. Rather, it is built into the fundamental realities of human nature.

Here's an image guaranteed to make any adult smile: a teenage boy rapturously describing the profundity of his relationship with his girlfriend of six weeks. "We know everything about each other", he exclaims, "I mean, there are absolutely no secrets."

We humans open slowly to each other, like flowers. And the innermost petals are the shy ones, revealing themselves only over years... if at all.

Revealing those innermost petals requires levels of interpersonal trust that simply cannot be forced... or plausibly guaranteed in the heat of passion. A relationship must feel proven, solid, and radically safe before we take such a risk. The heart of the matter here is not so much psychological intensity as it is a simple vow, perhaps unspoken, that we are in it together, forever. That's the true meaning of Hearth and Home - a mythic fourth house paradigm almost lost in this age of transitory, disposable relationships.

Your high destiny: The human story is a long one, but as individuals we are like gnats watching the shoreline erode. Our lives are too brief for us to have much intuitive sense of the big picture. Fortunately, we all have two kinds of memory. The first, the gnat's memory, is short and filled with the details of biography and education. The second is the archetypal memory: the entire human legacy as it breathes inside you. There, your recollections go back a lot further.

With Pluto in the fourth, you were born understanding something most of us forget: clan, hearth, family. Bonded, unbreakable relationships.

Collectively, we could use a little reminding in those departments. Every human who has ever lived possesses a fourth house. Translated, we all to some degree have a need for 'family' - a word we must use broadly to mean a set of unquestionably secure social relationships. Loyalty and lifetime commitment are the critical notions here, not blood kinship. Depth, often unspoken depth, may possibly develop in these bonds, but it is less central. Roots, a safe haven, a place to let one's hair down - these are the crucial concepts.

One of the great unarticulated sorrows of our present age is our collective loss of recognition of the psychological necessity of such roots. Families break up. People leave their friends and communities to take jobs in distant states. Your high destiny, while it can manifest in many different directions, involves an expression of your wisdom, experience, and instincts regarding this most basic and intimate human drive. You have sight here, where most of us are blind.

All of these factors contribute to the continuing evolutionary lesson of inner security. These individuals are learning to know and trust themselves so that they can know and trust others. Until they trust and know themselves, they cannot really know and trust another. In fact, many of these individuals will come into this life naturally mistrustful and suspicious of others and their motives. This lack of trust is based upon having been dumped on in situations or with people in whom they had become overly dependent. For many of these people, this lack of trust is also based on unconscious memories of experiencing emotional rejection or non-responsiveness by one or both parents in the most recent prior lives. And many will have similar experiences again in this life. the only real antidote for this condition in this life is for these individuals to get to know and trust themselves, i.e. the nature and basis of their emotions and self-image, and to stop looking for security through external situations or other people.

Some individuals with the Fourth House Pluto will be exceptions to the above situations. through prior-life efforts these individuals will have already learned the lessons of inner security, the minimization of external dependencies and the acceptance of their own unique self-image. Generally, about twenty percent of Fourth House Pluto individuals have made real efforts to learn these lessons before. Such individuals will be born into a family in which one or both parents contribute positively to these ongoing lessons. These will be parents who promote a positive self-image, encourage the individual to stand on his or her own two feet, and do not permit excessive dependency.

In some instances, the Fourth House Pluto individual will be born into a family that does not supply this support, yet the individual is not negatively impacted. These individuals will simply use that kind of family and environmental situation to further their evolutionary needs. Even in these cases, however, the emotions, moods and feelings described earlier will occur in varying degrees of intensity and frequency. In such individuals these emotions, moods, and feelings will occur for two reasons: 1. when the nature and structure of their reality become stagnated, and 2. when internal or external environmental circumstances manifest in such a way as to trigger an unconscious memory based on other lives.

The polarity point is the Tenth House. The evolutionary intent is one of self-determination, learning how to accept responsibility for one's own actions leading to emotional maturity, learning how to walk on one's own two feet, and learning how to integrate or establish one's own personal authority or individuality in the context of society or culture. These lessons can, and must, occur through the individual's work or career.

When the Fourth House Pluto person acts upon these evolutionary intentions the 'child' becomes an adult. These people will learn that the responsibility for their life situation rests within themselves. By developing inner security and minimizing dependencies ('somebody make it happen for me'), these individuals will learn how to trust themselves, know themselves, and ultimately know others. They will also learn how to be healthy adult children (we all have a child in us) who are able to be vulnerable and sensitive in a positive way.

By learning how to accept the responsibility for their own actions, these individuals will stop blaming others for their self-created 'problems' or life conditions. In this way, they can even learn to understand the role that their parents played in creating the necessary evolutionary lessons. Perhaps they will learn to see their parents as just people who have various strengths and weaknesses; that they are just people who happen to be their parents. Those in an individuated and spiritual state can realize the karmic conditions and issues involved, and resolve to correct the situation in whatever ways necessary.

By making a self-determined effort to actualize the right work or career, they will create a counter-point vehicle through which the work environment allows for a natural reflection upon the sources, origins, and causes of the feelings. Through this process, the individual gains personal knowledge and progressively develops control over his or her emotions, moods, and feelings. As the causes become known through reflection, these individuals will progressively be less inclined to be swept away, thus out of control, with their shifting emotional states.

The degree of emotional empathy that Fourth House Pluto individuals can feel for others will allow them to help others understand their own natures. They can encourage self-determination for others, and can help others accept the responsibility for their own actions. In addition, they can help others understand the nature of their own emotional blocks, and help or encourage them to minimize their own dependencies. In advanced evolutionary conditions, these individuals can achieve a total and equal integration of their masculine and feminine components - the anima / animus dynamic. This evolutionary metamorphosis will produce individuals who are able to identify their goals and, via self-determination, actualize them through their own efforts.

Common characteristics of the Fourth House Pluto include: being emotionally intense and demanding (overtly or covertly expressed); cycles of depression and optimism; ability to be emotionally manipulative, insecure, defensive, easily threatened, potentially cruel, mean or vindictive if deeply wounded; but also ability to be empathetic, sympathetic, nurturing in positive cycles; being intensely loyal to those close to them; needing to control their personal environment or space.

See also: Pluto in the 4th House;

Pluto in the 4th House: Milton William Cooper, James Dean, Melanie Griffith, J. Krishnamurti, Donovan Leitch, Charles Manson, Wilhelm Reich, David Rockefeller, Mitt Romney, Suzanne Somers, Dipesh, DJenkins, Fergus, Gina, Ju, Jude, Kyle, Q, Shakura, Silas, Suzanne, Victoria, Yarrow

Pluto in the 5th House

With Pluto in the fifth house, we find an emphasis on the heart or feeling centre of the person. This is the house of creativity and self-expression, and it's a natural channel for the intensely emotional fire of Pluto. Yet, as a young child, the fifth house Pluto person is initially overwhelmed by his or her creative passion. Since he or she is too immature to handle it, the creativity goes instead into establishing intimacy with another person, usually the mother. The original identification of the child with the mother is the bond represented by this house. This deep feeling is intensified, bringing with it an intimate commitment, although the expression of this at such an early age is definitely limited. This sets up a desire to always have the same intensity of feeling within relationships all through adolescence and on into adulthood, because the inner self knows that it is possible.

However, at some point in early childhood, there is a separation between the growing person and his or her mother or other parent. Personal independence lures him or her to explore the environment, leaving the protective and nurturing arms of the mother, who can now concentrate on other things besides the baby. This experience is at the same time both pleasurable and painful. There can be the feeling that the desire for independence leads to a loss of intimacy, or even to outright rejection (particularly if the parent must be away at work a great deal). For Pluto fifth house natives, this experience creates a powerful need to close off any intimacy with the parents, until such a time as they believe (or hope to believe) that the mother or parent will truly belong to them without question, and that the possibility of feeling this rejection will not exist.

At the same time period, or a little later, these Pluto fifth house children learn that there are definite ways of relating in order to get a positive response from others. They notice how adults relate to one another, and assume that they are happy and enjoying the wonderful bond the child so recently lost. So children begin to parrot the actions of the adults, particularly those of their own sex, and find that they get social rewards for doing so. This works so well that there is hope for the bond to be revived with others, and the children take on the sexual patterning of their same sex role models. They consider the affection between adults to be just friendship or love bonds, until they reach adolescence, when these Plutonian individuals plunge full force into their own sex drive. Then they discover the basis of a lot of this adult activity! So Pluto fifth house people can develop into the idea image of their sex, cultivating all the most admired social games and attitudes that go with their particular gender. As these children grow into adolescents, they discover the passion of this Pluto placement. The heart centre cries out for expression, for love, for sex, for a creative explosion; for a dynamic bond somewhere, with some special person. Relationships at this time are filled with love and / or hate; as if when one polarity doesn't work, then one must go immediately to the opposite extreme. It is exciting to be playing these role games with other people, rather than just watching older people do it, as had been the case only a few years earlier. Yet, just as the little child felt rejected when he or she took the initiative to be independent, the adolescent feel easily humiliated or rejected. The ego suffers and complains.

This leads many adolescents with Pluto in the fifth house to become obsessive and proud in their dealings with others. They begin to expect their special someone to love them unconditionally, which means that they can go around exploring all they want (even into other relationships) and still have that individual bonded and committed to them. This way, no rejection or humiliation is possible.

Unfortunately, this infantile expectation leads to the very upsets these individuals so desperately wish to avoid! When an adolescent or young adult feels that he or she has someone to play this role of devotion (often a disguised substitute parent role), then she / he can strut around with this person who enhances his / her sense of value. In this manipulative situation, the Pluto person gets reward and status, as well as control or domination over the pace and direction of the relationship. The victimized party gets to bask in the charming radiance of someone who has mastered his or her sexual patterning, and gets the occasional intensity of the heart centre when it is directed towards him or her.

Relationships in this phase of development echo a strong need for social and emotional security, and often don't have the maturity of a relationship built upon other, inherently stronger foundations. The expression of these games shows up in the form of possessiveness and a desire for being the centre of attention. Plays of sexual and emotional domination are frequent, creating a demanding relationship both ways. When the Pluto person runs into a significant resistance to his or her plans and desires, the relationship may end suddenly. This abruptness can cover the fear of exposure - of exposing insecurity, frustration, inadequacies as a love, manipulativeness, coldness, and the impact that the other person has on the Plutonian individual. Others are attracted to him or her nonetheless, because life is always somehow more exciting in the presence of a Pluto fifth house individual. These people somehow fit their roles well, being natural leaders, very colorful and theatrical. By serving these Plutonians, others are in a position to pick up the exciting crumbs that drop from the banquet table, so to speak.

However, the Pluto person is often inflexible, insisting on his or her favorite and preferred methodologies and beliefs. Few would suspect that this person is low on self-love, and is only putting on such a convincing display of the opposite! Pluto fifth house people often feel that one must always be in control, having it 'all together', and winning respect from others. Of course, these Pluto people soon find out that not everyone wants to play into their prideful games or humor their infantile (albeit cleverly disguised) behavior. Appearing nonplussed, the Pluto person will simply find some basis for rejecting those who oppose him or her, so as to preserve his or her sense of self-justification. This power play can best be seen even later in life, when couples fight over who gets the children in a divorce settlement. This possessive domination extends to the children as well, as Pluto fifth house people attempt to set up the same bond they lost so long ago - perhaps in the hope that they'll get it right this time. (By golly, the children aren't going to reject them!)Fortunately, Pluto in the fifth house can mean a positive use of the heart power. The individuals who are so fortunate as to realize the nature of bonding can find spiritual recognition through loving others. Although they are not sacrificial lambs, they are willing to explore the feelings sincerely and deeply within the framework of a relationship whether it is with adults or with children. They feel karmic ties or spiritual bonds with certain people; and although they love intensely, they don't hate as powerfully. Unlike the negative use of Pluto, which encourages revenge or spite when rejected, these people will forgive and therefore will find love elsewhere. They know there is no limit to love, and that it can be found everywhere, especially within themselves. Generally, they have developed a sense of self-esteem and so are not as insecure within relationships. They are more willing to take the risks that come with caring for others.

Even though the focus of Pluto in the fifth house is on love and relationships, there are other special attributes that are highlighted here as well. These Pluto people have great creative gifts; and their children will have these gifts too. They are able to throw themselves passionately into whatever they are doing, making life an affair of the heart. They fascinate others who take the cool, sophisticated approach to life, therefore missing out on the power of living in some respects. These people have the capacity for great loves, whether for other people or in the career. And they aren't happy unless their career is fun and intense, and has room to explore and build self-love and self-esteem. They naturally become the centre of attention in whatever field or area they devote themselves to - which they do, heart and soul! Theatrics are a natural channel for the expression of their emotions. In whatever career they choose, they entertain. Others watch them, for they have a certain charisma, an electricity that stimulates others to reach into their hearts and find love there, too. These Pluto natives can make great salespeople, for they can channel their emotions so much that the prospective client cannot help being moved. These people have the power of the heart; and when they don't sell out their love for a secure relationship, there is nothing in this world they cannot achieve if they really want to. Pluto in this house can bring certain difficulties into the life stream. Either natally or by transit, there can be an influence which lends itself to personal violation through misuse or abuse of the natural life energy. Sexual violation is possible, as well as abortion, miscarriage or stillbirth. Well-loved creative projects can soar or crash depending on the market or on forces of nature. Sexual abuse within marriage, or even child abuse, is possible. And when the heart centre closes off, there is a physical counterpart. Circulation is restricted. Over a long period of personal emotional abuse, or repressed love or creativity, the individual with this placement may develop circulatory problems, high blood pressure, and ultimately heart disease. Prevention of this is both easy and difficult. The people who have this Pluto placement must learn to be vulnerable to loved ones, to avoid the pretence of knowing it all or having it all under control. They must learn to express their feelings of love comfortably. With true loving intimacy and trust, the patterns underlying heart problems can be dissipated. Even if rejected, it is best to honestly admit and express the pain, hurt and anger one feels, for trapping it inside will only lead to health and relationship problems later. Because they have a tendency to look at emotional bonds very seriously, those with this placement natally or by transit will need to 'lighten up'. They will need to allow themselves the flexibility to become more spontaneous, thereby opening up their creativity.

When Pluto transits through here, the person affected will experience a readjustment of his or her social and sexual role. Those patterns we took for granted as valuable in the first twenty years of our life do not work much beyond that time. With Pluto here, one must find a new meaning within the concepts of masculinity and femininity, beyond the stereotypes. Once we are aware of the rigid rules of the man / woman game, we can allow ourselves to express ourselves more fully, more richly, more deeply. And then, relationships will grow into the spiritual bonds we felt to be our protected birthright when we were still children. Then the individuals involved in the relationship can become themselves, filled with the joy of discovering who they really are. No longer will the woman be attempting to play 'superwoman' or 'supermom', or reflect the depth and intensity of two people loving each other to the fullest. What better experience could there be? During this transit, there will be pressure in the form of crises that require the individual to change negatives into positives. After all, Pluto power doesn't know how to do anything gently - this is the heavy planet of power! Relationships can end if people aren't willing to change their attitudes or overhaul the way they relate to others. The children of fifth house Plutonians can undergo suffering at this time, whether from their own need to rebel (and the Pluto parent's resistance to it), or from health problems related to difficulties in giving and receiving love.

Whatever form the crisis takes, it can be unpleasant, for it forces any lazy people who haven't done their homework in the self-love department to get up off the floor and make some sweeping changes in their approach to love and life! If you have this position natally or by transit, then you may want to avoid the kick in the rear that Pluto has been or will be giving you. What do you expect out of love, and what do you expect to give in return? Write down any attitudes and beliefs you had as an adolescent, and ideas your parents may have given you about love and sex. Is sex all men want? Is money all women are after? Are love and sex the same thing? Is love hard to get? Is a relationship easy to get, but hard to keep? Does love die after marriage? What beliefs were prominent in your adolescence, and which ones can you find still rattling around in your brain now? Let your imagination flow! Be creative about this, if possible. Relax. No-one else is going to see this paper. Now consider: who has rejected you in your life? Write down another list of the people who have left you, either for their own reasons or to be with someone else. Now forgive those people. Read the instructions for forgiveness at the end of the Pluto in the fourth house section, and apply it to the people who have rejected you. Now you're clear to start afresh. Look at the people you love right now. These people may or may not include your spouse, children, co-workers, etc.. What are you getting out of these relationships? What are you giving to them? To what extent are you afraid of being seen as less than perfect in someone else's eyes? How far are you willing to open yourself up and explore your deepest feelings with your special someone?

Watch these important people in your life. How much impact do they have on you? See if, for a moment or two, you can identify with them so much as to know what they'd love to have or to do. What would you enjoy? Next, within the coming week, figure out silently what your loved ones would like to experience from you, and give it to them willingly. Is what they want something possibly humiliating or even hurtful? If so, start with something small or relatively insignificant. Do they like flowers? Gimmicks? Toys? What? Now give them something, at least one thing for each loved one, and don't let them know in advance what you are giving them. It's a secret! You'll get no visible reward for doing this. You probably won't even see their surprise when they discover your gift.

Make sure they cannot trace it to you! If you can think of more than one thing to do, do it! Don't spend a great deal of time and money on this, because it isn't an exercise in personal struggle and sacrifice. After you give your gifts, note how you feel within yourself. Good? Bad? Indifferent? Why do you feel the way you do? Would you ever want to do it again? In this technique, you are exploring giving as a means of opening you up to your own loving nature, with no expectation of any ego-stroking in return. This is a self-love builder!

Pluto in 5th House: You are likely to express the compulsion to feel important, to be in the public eye, and to be a known, recognized character. In short, you gain a strong feeling of self from the acknowledgement of others. In many ways, this emerges as a compensatory factor for an inner sense of insecurity and personal inadequacy, a lack of self-confidence and understanding. You believe that if you are capable of projecting out into the world an image of yourself which is recognized by others, them somehow you become more important than you truly feel inside. Public recognition is a heady brew. As this need to be important can be frustrated, and circumstances can conspire to divest it of its glamour by showing you the more negative aspects of public frame, you will need to undergo a thorough re-evaluation of this compulsion to be a 'somebody'. This may involve a process of self-examination, a coming to terms with your own nature and capabilities. Above all else, it may be advisable for you to achieve something of actual value which others can recognize as an expression of a personal skill or talent. This is preferable to the frustration of desiring to be a name and a face in the public eye, and yet being unable to 'deserve' such fame in any way. You will have a certain creative talent, possibly an artistic one; and if you succeed in directing this energy towards practical expression, then you may begin to explore undiscovered areas and 'make your name' as a pioneer. You will be attracted towards love affairs and children, as part of your need to enjoy the pleasures of life that you feel you should have as a result of fame. Sexual love will be extremely important and intense for you; and you will need a regular partner to help reflect back to you an impression of yourself in relationship. Such closer emotional experiences with lovers and children will help you to learn how to redefine your understanding of self, so that (it is to be hoped) you become more inwardly settled and content. You will have to be careful to avoid domination in your relationships, either being dominated by others, or dominating them.

Pluto in 5th House: With Pluto in the fifth house, at least in older generations, there is often a situation of being forced into marriage because of a pregnancy. Even within marriage, pregnancy might be used as a means to gain control of the relationship, for instance to ensure that the mate doesn't leave. Since this is not a very successful way to control, these people often wind up resenting or spoiling the children in an attempt to make up for not wanting them in the first place. Brats are very often unwanted children who've been raised this way; the parent has given excess power to the children and over¬indulged them because of guilt. Such children resent how they are being used, learning early to manipulate and maneuver both parents. The children can also be seen as a means to power, or can be one parent's ticket to never being alone, so the ties become symbiotic. On the other hand, people with this placement may refuse to have children at all. When the 'inner child' has been denied by a parent, these children grow up to fear or resent the demands that their own children would make. They fear parenthood would take over their lives and leave nothing for themselves. There is also the unwelcome issue of power that parenthood would bring. Childlessness can also be a form of revenge toward either the mate or the parents, a refusal to confer them immortality. With Pluto in the fifth, one parent may have been overawed by the child's creativity and have seen it as a means to wealth and power. Like pushy stage mothers, they have gone too far, and talent became the focus of power struggles. Talent can become the focus of many power struggles, especially with lovers who think love is power that will transform and bring out budding genius. Romance and transformation are all mixed together for people with this combination. "Let me love you so I can make you over in my own image." Or vice versa. For more insight into the romantic functioning of this placement, read Pluto in the seventh and eighth, are they are similar.

Pluto in 5th House: The fifth house is related to Leo, so it represents values like specialization and individuality. The individual has a strong feeling that he has a special destiny, an important mission to accomplish. It may be an authentic feeling of being a human being among other human beings, but egocentrism is likely to be quite well-developed with this house position. It is the opposite house of the eleventh house, which concerns larger humanity and the whole. the fifth house concerns the personality of the individual and his personal needs and desires. The special mission is probably based on very personal needs and on the need to draw attention to the self or to be considered someone exceptional. His special mission or task in life my directly derive from personal charisma or an exceptional outlook or style. He is able to conquer with his charisma, which is always of a mysterious nature. This planetary position is not suitable for politics (if other planets do not contradict), because collective power is not easily used by him. The concept of power (Pluto) is tightly connected to his personal charisma and not to the collective whole, so he could be lured by corruption. If he is found in politics, he could advocate a cause with too much emotion. The power of the individual is often in his mysterious, animalistic magnetism. Pluto in the fifth house is apt to make a personality that is a channel for strength and power to other people. The depth and demanding nature of Pluto finds the best outlets in fifth house matters like show business, entertainment and arts. The individual has the cosmic right to influence others with the strength of his being, with a special style and with charisma, to draw people to movie theatres and concert halls. Influence must be dissociated from abuse. The relationship with children (fifth house) may be very strong and powerful. Power is probably connected to children so that there is a tendency to control them too much. Children may constitute a turning point in the life of the individual. Sometimes it is a difficulty or fear related to conception. Children may contribute strongly to the spiritual development of the individual. One woman, for example, joined a meditation group after her son had discovered it. Love life and free time have a deeper meaning with this position. Sometimes the individual has an irresistible need to intensify experience. Deep inside he knows that these experiences given him transformation and a possibility to grow spiritually. At worst, passion leads to fruitless destruction. The fifth house symbolism includes games and gambling. So, anything is possible in these matters with Pluto. (Pluto = riches.)One of the most impressive outlets for Pluto in the fifth house is in connecting arts with psychology.

Pluto in 5th House: The key to working with Pluto in the 5th is the development of a healthy sense of one's own power and worth. Everyone has the need to feel important and special in some area of life; but with Pluto in Leo's natural domain, this could become an obsession. Excessive pride and an inflated self-opinion could bring many problems to those with this placement. However, too weak an ego, or too little a sense of their importance, value and effectiveness can also be the source of difficulties. In either case, they may resort to extreme gestures to prove their potency. As children, we feel that we are more likely to be protected by our parents if they find us enchanting and captivating. Therefore being somebody special is linked in our minds with warding off doom and disaster. For those with Pluto in the 5th, the need for love, approval and power may still be mixed up with the survival instinct.

Obviously, this dynamic may spur some people on to high achievements. For others, it could mean bitter disappointment at the lack of their recognition and worth and angry resentment towards those who appear more successful. However, failing to win the status they seek may provide the impetus for further self-evaluation and self-knowledge. For children with Pluto in the 5th, the sandbox could be the place where they scale new heights, or the scene for traumatic experiences. It just can't be any old castle, but must somehow express from the depths of their feelings who they really are, complete with moat and secret chambers. Mars threw sand in the face of his friend who did a better castle; Pluto might go a step further - accidentally on purpose kicking over the rival's castle, provoking a fight and breaking the friendship. It may be days or weeks later before Pluto returns to the sandbox at all. Later in life, creative self-expression may still entail working through traumas, blocks and difficulties.

However, the problems encountered serve to bring unconscious patterns and unfinished issues from early life to the surface where there is more chance of resolving them. Some with this placement will be able to give expression to creative works of great power which can awaken and transform others. For both men and women, this position of Pluto suggests that bringing children into the world could have a life-changing effect. Although this is generally the case for anyone who has children, the issues of parenting are somehow more far-reaching with Pluto in this house. For many men with this placement, becoming a father for the first time heralds a traumatic awakening to the fact that they are no longer the 'eternal youth' themselves. For a woman, it could indicate difficulty with child-bearing; and she is wise to look after herself with extra care during the pregnancy. Issues around abortion and miscarriages are not uncommon with Pluto in the 5th. Even when an interrupted pregnancy cannot be helped, there is still the need to grieve and mourn for what is lost. As with Neptune in the 5th, the anguish incurred in such circumstances is more productively utilized if some meaning or purpose can be attached to the experience. Parents with this placement may meet their own dark and subterranean sides through the behavior of their children. The parent with Pluto in the 5th may over-control or try to dominate a child not purely out of a desire to love and protect, but because the parent is frightened that the child, if left to its own devices, might do something which is untoward or personally threatening. If this is the case, the children may have to break radically with the parent in order to establish more freely their own identities. In the long run, it is far better that the parent examine his or her own fears and complexes and what has given rise to them, rather than attempt to control life as a way of avoiding confronting these. Having said all this, I have seen many instances of Pluto in the 5th where the parent-child relationship is handled with strength and dignity. With Pluto in the 5th, romantic pursuits may become entangled with the power drive and some degree of sexual compulsiveness. Those with this placement may fear the intensity of their sexual drive and try to inhibit it altogether or find ways to transmute libidinal expression into channels which they deem more acceptable. Others may derive a sense of potency through sexual conquest and attract love affairs which involve power conflicts, dramas and intrigues. Carried to extremes, they could use other people too much to prove their own worth - a form of psychological rape. True mutuality, sharing and respect for another person's integrity are the lessons to be learned if Pluto is in the 5th.

Pluto in 5th House: This is a fairly good place for Pluto, especially when it is trine the Ascendant. These people are intensely creative. They must have healthy outlets for their creative impulses or they will go bananas. It is an excellent position for painting, writing, or for any field that provides a creative outlet. The imagination is fertile, constantly responding to external stimuli. They will not be able to buckled down for long to a routine job that leaves them little latitude for creativity, and will willingly undergo all kinds of struggles to maintain their creative independence. They rarely can accept anything the way it is; they will work to make changes of some sort. Generally handy with tools, they will continually be making changes to their environment. They are always ready to do their part to make positive alterations to the social and economic structures of their community, experimenting readily with new methods. They have extremely sensual and passionate love natures which they become very adept at keeping on ice, so that even those closest to them may not realize this about them, thinking them cool, dispassionate, even cold. Indeed, they may not even realize it about themselves until circumstances trigger an outburst. They are attracted to Plutonian types and will have at least one painful or even traumatic romantic / sexual episode with such a one that makes them cautious from them on. They are capable of burning with desire for someone for years without showing any sign of their passion. It is rare that they do not marry; and they often marry quite early. Marriage is always the culmination of a passionate soap opera-type romance; but marriage is not the end, for if romance dies out of the marriage, they will become involved with another. This is in spite of the fact that they may do their best to fight it, as romantic intrigue frightens them as much as it attracts them. Sexual attractions can become obsessive; and they must learn to steer clear of hopeless involvements as the power of Pluto, if damned, will bring terrible emotional anguish. They are good teachers. Due to their innate understanding of subliminal emotional levels and their ability to communicate non-verbally on these levels, they have a talent for dealing with difficult, unhappy, or disturbed individuals and are often able to assist them in achieving breakthroughs and releasing their own intellectual / creative powers. They are strongly attracted to children, and will usually have their own. If for some reason they can't, they will find a way to be with them. Being in the presence of children increases their subliminal creative energies. This placement is a partial testimony to unconventional sexual attractions of all kinds which, if repressed, will cause a variety of psychological problems. They may seek power as a wider range for their creative energies to graze on, but they often have such a struggle maintaining control over themselves that their lives never reach that point. They are inclined to be perfectionists in all they do and, whenever they are hard on those they love, it us usually their perfectionism at work. They may learn through loss not to be as demanding of others as they are of themselves.

Pluto in 5th House: Conscious persona: With Pluto in the 5th, normal conscious persona with its heightened appreciation for an audience is unconscious with no audience-awareness. This is method acting at its apex; you don't 'perform' a role, you 'become' the role, totally immersing yourself into it. You don't so much take on a character as become your natural self at a much more intense level than usual. Every trait is intensified and concentrated, so that the self pours out onto the stage with profound impact. Curiously, the audience assumes that you're acting, but you won't be. The 'act' here is a direct reflection of what's going on in your subconscious. The pitfall is complete loss of personal ego control, while the challenge is to transform both yourself and the audience with ego power, but to do so in ways that respect everyone's dignity. Romance, giving love: You're motivated toward courtship from deep within the emotional caverns of the subconscious realm. Romance is a compulsive eruption of the need to love so totally that self and beloved fuse, forged into a new metal by the heat of passion. For you, it hardly matters how this is accomplished; and the main pitfall lies in misuse of power through dominance or submission. Total romantic love pulls you up by the roots; and the experience can be excruciating. Love and hate often intertwine. Your challenge is to allow love to arise in its own time and place, then to banish all emotions of negativity, imbalance or hatred, purging them in love's fire. Do not attempt to transform love. Rather, let love transform you.

Sexual performance: The physical act of making love is paradoxical. At times it's like kissing your sister. You wonder where the passion went. But look out. It can also be ravenous, insatiable, a tidal wave of feelings erupting from God-knows-where. At either level, it is more compulsive than conscious. You could veer between charismatic impact and cruel insensitivity. Sexual success comes from the power of your emotional radiance, not from the skills of technique. The pitfall surrounds emotional blindness, while the challenge is to provoke fundamental change. But if transformation occurs only within the beloved, it has failed; you must also be receptive to the 'death and rebirth' inherent in your intense sexuality. Otherwise, it's simply unconscious lust for power and control.

Personal creativity: Despite your magnificent potential, you may at times fail to live up to your billing. This is due to the largely unconscious nature of the creative drive. At times you may not feel it at all, thinking yourself barren; at other times you may be compulsively driven by the urge to create. The pitfall is extreme reactions: you could agonize over occasional blockage, or you might equally blot out every other consideration when the flow moves through your ego. The challenge is to create something that touches everyone.

Competition: You are more competitive than you may realize. You hurdle headlong into personal risk, or you sit glumly on the sidelines, not understanding the game.

There are no rules here, no road maps. Instead, you surprise even yourself by rising to the occasion, bursting open to reveal uncharted depth, ingenuity, and sheer, competitive fire. Hold back nothing in those exquisite moments when you really go for it. The challenge is to let your brilliance come forth in its own time, its own way, without your ego pretending it is in control. Create something out of nothing, and share the credit with the Gods.

Pluto in 5th House: You exercise your will at every turn, because you have an exaggerated sense of your importance. You enjoy having power over others; and you don't meet much resistance, because you are clever in winning support by capitalizing on other people's weaknesses. You are aggressive in romantic relationships and easily offended when you are rejected, perhaps even resorting to violence. Although you want to spend all your time satisfying self-indulgent needs, you have the creative imagination to earn public respect for your contribution to social causes. You show some talent for politics, in which you could succeed with training in government and law. Other areas that might interest you are investment, insurance or medicine. You could work effectively with young people, who would admire your strength and dedication to their needs. You can teach young people to have self-confidence to make a life for themselves. It would be satisfying to know that your efforts were productive.

You have a gift for making your point effectively; and people usually don't realize that they've been mesmerized by your dramatic showmanship. you always find ways to satisfy your desires; and few people can resist your charm. You know what you want, and you don't beat around the bush. You will even use flattery when someone seems to resist you. Not a flighty person, you are deeply concerned about finding solutions to social problems. You do not sit idly by and tell others how to remedy the situation. You want a partner who will share your dedication to your goals. You are not really compromising, although you give that impression. You try to make others submit to your will, but you are generally fair, and you will defend your children when their well-being is threatened.

You may not enjoy looking to the future, because you are so preoccupied with present pleasures. You must plan ahead, so that your financial affairs will be in good order. If you plan now for security in your later years, you will not have to be dependent on anyone. It is very embarrassing to you to be without sufficient funds, because you realize you have no-one to blame but yourself. If you want returns and security, you will have to make a contribution for that purpose. You're a better manager with other people's money than with your own. You will be more of an asset to society if you accept your obligations dutifully and not mind working behind the scenes where the problems are. Your healing ability could help mitigate the unacceptable social conditions that diminish man's dignity. Your demands are usually met; and you expect favors from others, but this has not diminished your enthusiasm for making a life of your own. You know how to use your talents productively to assure your security. Although you may be a wheeler-dealer by temperament, you know that your exaggerated self-image can't carry you through life. You know you must work at developing your skills to achieve the highest possible level of competence. This is the only way to be sure that you can successfully meet competition. The worst thing you could do is coast to your objectives by being a parasite on those who are making on honest effort.

Pluto in 5th House: In the tradition... the fifth house is often named 'The House of Children' and taken literally and narrowly as astrology’s way of referring to kids. That notion is not so much wrong as it is limited. Certainly people with the fifth house strong in their charts commonly find themselves much involved with children. Maybe they have kids of their own. Maybe they're grammar school teachers or toy designers or social workers helping children who've been abused or abandoned. But fifth house emphasis also appears commonly in the charts of people involved with creative work ¬musicians, actors, painters. Or very active, engaged hobbyists. Or simply in the charts of people whom we might view as particularly colorful or entertaining. The common denominator is not children in the outward, concrete sense. It is the 'inner child' - that playful, expressive, self-indulgent, often self-centered part of every human being regardless of his or her age. Something inside us all is noisy, innocent, and hungry for attention. It wants to have a peak experience and to have it immediately. And if we try to ignore it too utterly, we grow either dispiritingly flat or dangerously explosive.

Traditionally, the fifth house has a cautionary side as well. It's recognized as a House of Debauchery. The human need to have pleasure and emotional release is like a mighty river that can over flood its banks, leading to obsession and addiction. The old astrologers recognized the pattern: people with powerful fifth house emphasis in their charts were over-represented among the compulsive gamblers, the drunkards and the gluttons. Needless to say, the wilder aspects of human sexual expression are evident here too. So, we need to have some fun... but what's so much fun about Pluto? Let's unravel it....Your high destiny: What makes humans different from the rest of the animals? Not a heck of a lot.

Fundamentalists like to put 'Man' in another category entirely, but increasingly we see both science and eco-conscious popular culture are moving toward a realization that the gulf between ourselves and the rest of life isn't as wide as our ancestors imagined. We used to say, "Humans use tools" ¬but more and more we are recognizing tool use among other creatures. And language: but chimps are learning sign language at an alarming rate, and anyone with a cat or dog can tell you it has got a large and expressive vocabulary. What about a shared culture transmitted down the generations? Check out the tribal 'songs' of the whale cultures. A cynic might play a trump card: we humans are unique in that we are the only species that has ever threatened to wipe out life entirely. Compelling - but wrong again. About a billion years ago, green planets began pumping huge volumes of a grossly toxic chemical into earth's atmosphere, destroying almost all existing life on the planet. The 'chemical' was oxygen. Are humans truly distinct in any way at all? Maybe not, but if I had to defend our uniqueness in a debate, I'd forget all the old claims and rest my argument on art. We are creative creatures. And even those of us who are not actively creative still respond to art... and make 'creative' choices regarding what color shirt to wear, what sofa to buy, which automobile most pleases our eye. Art, as I am using the term here, is very broad. Essentially, it is any attempt to represent experience, and through that representation to interpret it. Thus, a woman telling a joke at a party is in the same boat with Georgia O'Keefe: she's expressing herself creatively. Virtually everyone enjoys art in some form. ninety-two percent of us spend a lot of our lives in front of the television, for example. Most of us listen to music or go to the movies sometimes. And the enjoyment itself renews us. Some art is legitimately there simply to make us laugh - and wouldn't life be hard without any laughter? Even 'silly' art serves a serious purpose. And of course there is 'serious' art - films and novels, for example, that deal with complex, emotionally volatile topics. Could we be fully human without them? Without the artists who represent these aspects of life to us, we would all be terribly alone - as alone as the mourning dove staring blankly at the body of her mate. With Pluto in the fifth house, your high destiny involves developing your capacity for dramatization, representation, and self-expression. It is 'creative' in the broadest sense... but I want to emphasize that creativity isn't always 'artistic' in the narrow, obvious way. It boils down to a vigorous, striking exhibition of some inner state or heart-held value. Your high destiny entails channeling ego-energy colorfully and unselfconsciously in a way that encourages others to forget themselves momentarily and lose themselves in an identification with you. One way or another, it puts you on centre stage. And what is your message? We cannot know precisely because above all it is highly individual - that's really the point with creative self-expression. But we do know that the message is Plutonian: your destiny lies in symbolizing the dark for us, and ideally, representing for us a path through the dark.

Your distorting wound: Grandpa is dying of cancer. He's emaciated. Chemotherapy has stripped him of all his hair. He's as pale as blotchy snow. Little Billy is brought to the hospital to say good-bye to his dying grandfather. It's a very dramatic moment for the child. Everyone is gentle with Billy; and in a few minutes he's allowed to leave the room. A few days later, grandpa exits the flesh. A month later, there happens to be a family get-together. Life is back to normal and the adults are in the living room talking, drinking, and laughing. In walks Billy. He's got a stocking pulled over his head, reproducing his grandfather's pale, hairless visage. He's applied powder and lurid rouge to his face. His cheeks are sucked in. Zombie-like, he walks into the living room and speaks his grandfather's name. And you can imagine the reviews his performance receives. Billy is following the deepest impulse of his fifth house Pluto: the impulse to represent the dark. But people have mixed feelings about that kind of performance. In this case, Billy in his innocence hit everyone a little too hard and a little too unexpectedly. Mom rushes him out of the living room, leaving his relatives shocked and stunned... until nervous giggles release the tension. This story is dramatic; yours may not be so extreme. But in your youth you had a fascination with what the world would call the 'morbid' or the 'macabre' - in fact it was simply a fascination with those aspects of life which make us all uncomfortable or embarrassed. You were very likely to have been punished for it either directly or through the withholding of love or approval. You were told to keep a lid on it. And that hurt you. It hurt your inner child - specifically it hurt your childlike spontaneity, your guileless urge to share yourself. And less directly that repression impacted your innocent, wanton desire for fun. Your navigational error can take a lot of different forms, depending in part upon the nature of the rest of your birth chart. But if they break down into two clear categories. The first is an inappropriate expression of the drive for creative pleasure. The second is an unnatural suppression of that drive-in the first category we recognize forms of 'fun' that prove destructive either to yourself or to other people. In all the examples that follow, we observe one common denominator: the unconscious urge to represent, in one's own bodily life, the dark. Down that road we may see a person who consistently gets herself or himself involved in hurtful, unseemly, or empty sexual affairs. We may see the addict or the drunk. We may observe a person who is morbidly obese. Or one in constant, self-created financial dilemmas. The point is that all these behaviors become part of the individual's public 'act'; unwittingly, he or she is symbolizing the darker, more taboo aspects of life for the community: the natural human hunger for pleasure run amuck. Such a person may feel out of control and ashamed by these circumstances, or may take an arrogant 'in your face' attitude. Either way, we notice the same critical features marking the behavior as unconscious. The pleasure-seeking behavior doesn't work very well: such a person is not actually having much fun. There is an apparent drive, owned or not owned, to make the dysfunction visible to the community. And the individual may inevitably be cited as 'a bad example' by others. All this is the shadow expression of the high destiny, which would turn the Plutonian juice into art in some form, to be shared with the community in a vastly more healing - and more pleasurable – way.

The second Plutonian fifth house navigational error lies in an unnatural suppression or 'demonizing' of the same creative, pleasure-seeking drives. There is a wildness in all pleasurable activity, a shadow dimension in everything that fills us with few and life.

A person might become so inordinately and unnecessarily frightened of that loss of self-control that he or she withers into a judgmental wet blanket. Then, quite unconsciously, there arises a simultaneous compulsion to limit the pleasure and self-expression in the lives of everyone else. He or she delights in the words 'Thou shalt not', and applies them liberally and equally to self and others. And in the cellar, down in the ashes, behind both that repressive behavior and the wild, injurious behavior we explored earlier, is a sad child who heard the word 'No' to many times. The healing method: Many years ago I attended a concert given by the virtuoso jazz guitarist Mahavishnu John McLaughlin. I had good seats, and my eyes were bugging out. I play some guitar myself; and while my skills are not within a hundred light-years of McLaughlin's, I knew enough to know that I was in the presence of extraordinary talent. One images remains impressed on my memory: his face contorted in extreme concentration. McLaughlin dazzled me with the fastest guitar lick I'd ever heard. Then his face relaxed; he looked heavenward with an expression of transcendent bliss - and played the same like twice as fast. Creativity has an ecstatic component. While one must certainly make substantial effort to master the techniques, tools, and crafts connected with one's chosen form, there is a place where magic enters the equations. John McLaughlin demonstrated it in his concert that night. The skater who transcends herself and delivers a sublime performance does it too. Or the actor who utterly loses himself and becomes the role he's playing.

Your Healing Method lies in tapping into your latent capacity for that kind of Dionysian creative ecstasy. Maybe you join a drumming circle and find yourself in communion with your pagan ancestors, lost in rhythm trance. Or maybe you quietly take up watercolors and stay up until four in the morning painting a flower arrangement. The shape of the creativity doesn't matter. What matters is that you lose yourself in it, surrender to it, go willingly and intentionally toward that edge beyond which lies madness. Something in you must abandon inhibition and self-consciousness, and learn to roar. The energizing vision: In old Welsh culture there was a proverb: 'Three equals: a poet, a harper, and a king'. This seems to me a splendid attitude, and one that is also sound psychologically. Human culture needs inspired leadership - 'kings' - but just as fundamentally we need our 'poets' and our 'harpers': our artists. They uplift us and inspire us. They comfort us in our pain and grief; and sometimes they temper our laughter with wisdom.

You are a Plutonian bard; your message may not always be easy for us to hear, but we need to hear it anyway. So convey it to us skillfully and gracefully, with beauty, craft, and patience. And if lightness and laughter enter the message, there's much good to be said about that too. Your art need not be 'heavy' all the time; many times we hear the truth more clearly from a comedian than from a minister. But what if you don't feel like a creative person? In writing these words I am confident that there are readers with fifth house Plutos who will find these ideas foreign. If you're one of them, I have two things to say to you: First, remember that Plutonian creative self-expression must be defined as broadly as possible. Sometimes it comes down to volunteering personal anecdotes that start conversations about sensitive topics: a 'performance' in every sense. Reveal enough of yourself in the tale, and others are encouraged to do the same... even if they do so only inwardly. That's high creativity and healing theatre, just as much as anything that might be more readily identified as 'art’. Second, if you don't feel creative, remember the nature of your Plutonian wound. Earlier experiences of the Big No may have damaged your capacity to abandon yourself fully to your creative energies. You may, in other words, be a lot more creative than you think. If you uncover that creative force in yourself, you'll reap the classic Plutonian benefit: a wealth of wanton, profligate, vital Energy. And you can do with it as you please.

Pluto in 5th House: Individuals who have Pluto in the Fifth House have been learning the evolutionary lesson of creative self-actualization. The Fifth House is naturally a fire-oriented archetype. As such, these people will feel as though they have a special destiny to fulfill, just as those with Pluto in the First House do. Individuals with Pluto in the First House needed to maintain freedom and independence in order to discover their specialness through experiences they felt instinctively drawn into. They were in a condition of perpetual discovery on a moment to moment basis. Individuals with Pluto in the Fifth House have needed, and will need, to actualize this special destiny. They will need to establish and project this creative purpose upon the environment. This creative purpose is no longer a matter of discovery, but is already formed, in the Fifth House Pluto - it is inherent and complete. As a result, these individuals will deeply sense this special purpose in the depths of their Souls. The evolutionary desire and need has been, and will be, to fulfill this purpose from within. On this basis, these individuals have also been learning to take charge of their lives, and to seize destiny and shape it out of the strength of their wills. In other words, these people have needed to direct their own plays.

Because Fifth House Pluto individuals emerge from the womb with this deep feeling of specialness, they have desires and needs to be recognized and treated as special and unique. These feelings are so intense that they can create a virtually bottomless pit in terms of the need for love, attention and flattery. Whatever is received is never really enough. Although the needs can be temporarily satisfied, the compulsive emotional craving for attention, love and adulation drives the individual ever forward for more. Children with Pluto in the Fifth House can create unique tests for their parents because they can go to any length to get recognition, love, and attention, even if it is negative attention. These children can unconsciously manipulate situations, parents and others in order to receive the required attention. They can feel highly threatened or defensive when another child or person is given attention or love, or when the parents themselves show affection toward one another. Of course, this type of emotional behavior follows the person into adulthood.

People with Pluto in the Fifth House can be highly self-centered and self-focused. They can feel as though the universe revolves around them. Just as the Sun is the centre of our solar system, individuals with Pluto in the Fifth House (the Sun naturally rules the Fifth House) can expect to have all things revolve around them. Yet these individuals must learn to understand that this condition has been the evolutionary intention, desire and need from the past: to creatively actualize and be in charge of their own unique and special purpose. We must strive to understand that Fifth House Pluto individual in this light, and resist the temptation to harshly judge this kind of emotional behavior in the earlier years of their lives.

Even though this orientation will be the theme in all Fifth House Pluto individuals, the variety of mitigating factors that condition and qualify the behavioral manifestation of this orientation will lead to many different kinds of expression. In different examples, the evolutionary theme and necessity are the same. Yet the mitigating factors have conditioned the application and ways to fulfill those evolutionary requirements. With Pluto in the Fifth House, the focus has been, and will be, upon the creative principle. Creativity can be expressed in any dimension of life. It can be expressed through whatever unique and special capabilities the individual has. Because the evolutionary desire and intent from the past has been to actualize and establish the special creative purpose, these individuals have necessarily required an intense inner focus and determination to shape their destinies with the strength of their own wills. The mode of operation as symbolized by the South Node, and the vehicles to facilitate the mode of operation symbolized by the planet ruling the South Node, will show how this has been shaped in the past. All Fifth House Pluto individuals will have this need and desire regardless of the evolutionary condition or state. However, the evolutionary state will correlate to and qualify what is and is not possible for them to do with their creative needs. It will also correlate to the areas or external life conditions that it will operate through.

One of the karmic and evolutionary problems of this dynamic is that many of these people will consider themselves as the source of their own creativity because individualized (subjective) power is at maximum development or expression with Pluto in the Fifth House. Thus, many will feel that they, and they only, are the directors of their own plays. From a universal point of view, this orientation obviously implies a limitation. All the mitigating factors, and the observed evolutionary conditions, must be assessed to determine to what degree an individual has identified with the creative principle in this way. In the worst scenarios, some of these individuals will consider themselves to be miniature gods who are able to create and destroy reality at will. In all cases, whatever the mitigating factors and karmic conditions, these Fifth House Pluto people have been, and will be, learning to take charge of their lives in order to creatively actualize their own special purpose and destinies. The need to emotionally unite with the creative principle is the same in all conditions so that this evolutionary need can manifest. How this is done, and the reasons and ways that are karmically determined, will be different in all cases. Because the bottom line in all cases is the Fifth House Pluto, all will feel a sense of special destiny at a core level. All will feel the need to be recognized as special in some way. All will feel the need to express and actualize their creativity, and will feel that they must be in charge of their lives in order to actualize their destinies. When the individual does not receive enough recognition according to his or her specific requirements, then a variety of emotional problems can result. When the individual is either overly identified with the creative principle from an egocentric point of view or experiencing a false sense of powerlessness to actualize the creative principle, then the individual will create or draw conditions that have the effect of counteracting the problem of false identification either way. Of course, varying shades of these two extremes can manifest. The specific pattern or arrangement relative to how the person has identified, applied, and responded to the creative self-actualization principle will determine the specific kinds of life conditions that are drawn or created to further the development of this evolutionary need in this life.

Many of these individuals with Pluto in the Fifth House have had prior lifetimes in which they were recognized as special in some way. As a result, many of these individuals will have unconscious memories of being treated as special by others. In this life, these unconscious memories can lead into a situation wherein they simply expect to be treated and acknowledged in the same way again. They expect that others will cater to their needs, that doors will open before them, that the red carpet will unfurl as they emerge upon the scene of life. These memories can condition and dictate what these individuals think and feel they need in this life. Again, some will manipulate situations and people to receive the desired attention and recognition. This can be done in a variety of ways relative to the specific way that the individual has responded to this evolutionary impulse.

As a result of this prior evolutionary intent, and the associated memories, it is not uncommon for many of these individuals to create what I call the pyramid reality structure in which they place themselves at the very top. Every other factor in their reality structure revolves around and serves them; every other factor is subordinate or secondary to the fulfillment of their own purposes. Again, this can be done in a variety of ways. Because the need for recognition, acknowledgement, and attention can be so compulsive, many Fifth House Pluto individuals are not beyond taking emotional gambles or risks to get the needed attention. With respect to the pyramid reality structure, if the individual is not getting the needed attention or recognition from the point of view of his or her inner reality references, then he or she can threaten to topple his or her existing external reality structures in order to get the required attention. Thus, for example, if an individual is already married and is not receiving the required love and attention that he or she feels is his or her due, then he or she may involve him- or herself in a love affair to get this type of emotional feedback. Such emotional risk-taking can take many forms; but the need for power and recognition will always be the underlying theme. In the case of an affair, the individual, of course, runs the risk of being discovered. If the individual is discovered, then the possibility of having the existing reality (the marriage) destroyed would exist. This kind of emotional shock, and the different forms that this shock can assume, will serve to create the necessary blow. This blow will enforce upon the individual the necessary realizations as to where he or she was coming from, and for what reasons. With reference to the pyramid reality structure, many of these individuals will unconsciously manipulate others in order to have their emotional needs fulfilled. In the example where the individual could seek out an affair, he or she could cater to the desires of the potential lover in order to fulfill his or her self-centered desires and needs. As soon as the need is fulfilled, then the person will terminate the emotional risk situation.

As an example, a woman who came to see me for astrological counseling was the unwitting victim of such a Fifth House Pluto individual. The man was a very prominent individual, married, and had children. Apparently he was feeling less than satisfied in his marriage. He 'needed' a love affair. My client was a photographer. The Fifth House Pluto man was getting ready to publish a book - which mirrored my client's own wishes linked to her career. He led her on by promising that she could produce the cover for the book; by catering to and manipulating her in this way, he had his own desires met. When the affair ended, he asked someone else to do the cover of the book. My client, of course, felt used.

Fifth House Pluto people can also be quite given to shaping and controlling the lives of those around them, including their children. This can occur because they have been learning how to identify their own special purposes and actualizing them through the strengths of their own wills. Thus, it is only natural that they will project this developed inner capacity onto others, since their own Souls resonate to this vibration. Keep in mind that this process will work in all Fifth House Pluto individuals in some way. Even in certain negative cases, the individual could attempt to shape and control the lives of others in this way: to suggest to others that they have their own self-centered needs and desires met in the very same way that the Fifth House Pluto individual does, i.e. feigning victimization. This need to shape and control the lives of others can be overtly or covertly stated; and it will manifest in varying degrees of compulsion and intensity. In the worst cases, the individual will subconsciously play God as he or she attempts to direct the lives of others according to what he or she feels or thinks another should or could do. In positive cases, the Fifth House Pluto person will encourage the individual development of those around him or her, because he or she values this need in him- or herself. Yet, even in positive cases, it can be very difficult for the individual to resist the desire to encourage this development according to what he or she thinks is right for the individual.

Fifth House Pluto people can be very giving and generous. And yet this giving and apparent generosity is commonly extended only when it suits some personal need. Because there is such a high degree of self-focus, the giving is commonly not related to the actual needs of another, but to what these people think the other needs. This emotional complex, of course, is relative to all the other mitigating factors in terms of its degree of fixity and the different lenses - the position of the Nodes and so forth ¬through which it will be expressed. This dynamic can be difficult for many Fifth House Pluto individuals to understand, because they are giving within their own reality references. However, that is exactly where the problem lies. In other words, the giving is occurring from within their own reality references, and not others. This orientation can set the stage for emotional scenes and confrontations when others manifest negative feedback in relation to what is being given by the Fifth House Pluto individual. These scenes, when they occur, are necessary because they can serve to undermine the pyramid reality structure of the Fifth House Pluto individual. In their so doing, the individual will begin to experience the effect of the Fifth House polarity point: the Eleventh House.

The evolutionary intent described in the Eleventh House polarity is one of developing an objective rather than a subjective consciousness and focus. The individual must learn to link his or her special destiny and creative purpose to a socially useful or relevant function. In order for this evolutionary lesson to be realized, many of these individuals will be blocked or denied in fulfilling their unique purpose. The blocking force will be the social structure itself. This situation can lead to tremendous emotional frustration and anger. Frustration is heightened because society apparently is not acknowledging or recognizing the Fifth House Pluto individual as special. These people sense within that they have a special destiny to fulfill, yet are blocked in a variety of ways from being able to realize it. Even if they can succeed in some way of actualizing some aspect of their creative purpose, they may still experience the lack of enough recognition according to their own estimations of how much they should have. Accepting their lot in life can be very tough as a result. The royal red carpet seems to remain furled, the remembered acclaim but distant memories. By being relatively relegated to the sidelines, these individuals are forced to learn the lessons of objectivity. In addition, they are learning how to become detached from the pyramid structure of their inner reality. As a result, these individuals may come to realize how to link their purpose to the needs of the whole of society. In so doing, they can contribute to the relevant needs of the whole; and their unique and special gifts can be their function as individuals who will learn that others are just as special as themselves. They can give to society or another in the ways that are needed as a result of this evolutionary intent. These individuals are learning to be a member of the play, not the director of it. As this process unfolds, the evolutionary metamorphosis will produce people who can now recognize the individuality and needs of their children. This metamorphosis will allow them to guide their lives objectively, rather than willfully creating their children's identities out of their own self-centered images. it is not uncommon for Fifth House Pluto people to have children who are very strong-willed, self-centered, and resistant to the dictates of their parents. The resulting collision of wills produces the emotional confrontation necessary to induce the lesson of objectivity and detachment. The children can serve as mirrors who reflect the deepest inner dynamics of one or both of the parents. This mirror effect can be quite stark for one or both of the parents, especially if they are emotionally resistant to accepting, admitting, or seeing these similar dynamics in themselves. The evolutionary lessons of the Fifth House Pluto individual must also be passed on and taught to the child.

By learning the necessary lessons of objectivity and detachment, Fifth House Pluto individuals can also realize that they are not the source of creativity; they are a channel for the expression of the creative principle in the universe. This fundamental lesson is very important. Until it is fully realized, the creative flow can cyclically dry up or be blocked in order to induce the progressive realization of the true source of creativity. In this way, these individuals learn how to acknowledge creativity and specialness in others without feeling threatened. Once these evolutionary lessons are put in motion with conscious intent, these individuals can create something new and unique in whatever field of endeavor they are destined to fulfill. That which they create can have uncommon depth and power of a transformative nature. Sometimes this creation may be ahead of its time - the dead artist syndrome. Yet, eventually that which was created will become accepted. These individuals can achieve a degree of fame or acclaim with respect to what they do apply themselves to. They can act as natural leaders and pioneers, and objectively understand how to guide the individual development and actualization of those that they touch. In some, the natural leadership abilities are a sight to behold. The other day I was watching several children play. They were all four- and five-year-olds. At one point an eighteen month-old baby wandered by these children. This little girl had a tremendously powerful aura. All the four- and five-year-old children stopped what they were doing and began to follow her. Mesmerized, they simply fell into line behind this child. The baby was undaunted, and simply kept walking. After watching this scene, I asked the mother of the baby if she would give me the birth data for her child. She humored me and obliged. As it turned out, the little one had Pluto in the Fifth House. This intrinsic leadership capacity created an almost Pied Piper -like effect upon the four- and five-year-olds even though she was only eighteen months old! Common characteristics of Pluto in the Fifth House people include: having tremendous strength of will, being dignified, being creative, needing attention and acknowledgement, being loving, being giving, can issue attention and love upon others, being magnetic, being generally narcissistic, having a king or queen complex, being powerful and intense at a core level, can be quite demanding in overt or covert ways, being suspicious of yet needing flattery, and being very protective of those close to them.

See also: Pluto the 5th House;

Pluto in the 5th House: Alan Arkin, William Blake, Johnny Cash, Deepak Chopra, Lady Gaga, J.Paul Getty, Alex Jones, Michael Jordan, John Lennon, Maharaj Ji, Paul McCartney, Meher Baba, Friedrich Nietzche, Robert Redford, Susanna Arundhati Roy, Mark Twain, Jon Voight, AndySc, DavMcC, Flossie, Mick, Nancee, PaulS, Ralph, ScottS

Pluto in the 6th House

The sixth house is the house of the adolescent, of the values learned throughout the teens, which values are applied to life's goals then and later. However, the preparation for the adolescent period takes place much earlier in childhood. The parents of the Pluto sixth house person were hard workers, perhaps struggling to make ends meet. They were dedicated in their own way to their own special work and ideals. They had very definite attitudes about how and why they should or should not succeed, as well as how little children should behave. The atmosphere was one of 'Let's all pull together in a family effort!' This quality is certainly good when a family member needs inner strength to overcome an obstacle, but it isn't useful when each member is trying to discover his or her own individuality. So the little sixth house Pluto child was expected to help out in the family. Although that develops a certain competence in doing everyday chores and routine maintenance of the family home or business, it can cancel out some of the natural inquisitiveness of the child, whose vision of what lies beyond the family ends up being limited. Indeed, the message for survival to this child is to be unselfish, to help out and serve the common cause; to compromise and work together in order to get a common goal accomplished, etc.. The little Pluto children will therefore tend to sacrifice their personal power of action to the common cause, and give up all forms of selfishness - even the positive selfishness of having a personal sense of vision and individual aspiration. Being a mutable or changeable house, the sixth reflects the easy kind of adaptation that the child has until adolescence. Then the power is transferred from parental dictums to the messages of the peer group. Pluto people totally plunge in, seldom seeing any alternative modes of behavior or thought. They cease to think for themselves, accepting whatever is told them as the truth about reality - the reality of living in a society with other people. This conformity is not only desired, but actively sought after, for it gives a sense of security. These individuals do not want to stand out or look different, so they struggle hard to belong, to become the perfected symbols of adolescent glory. Mercilessly they criticize their self-image - the clothing, the behavior, the values, etc.. They are willing to go to any extreme to be accepted, to feel secure. This behavior, naturally, carries itself into adulthood, and colors all relationships with other people, whether work or personal. When mistakes are made, the sixth house Pluto people may have a hard time forgiving themselves, and will push onward, striving to be better and better. This can become an obsession, released only through hard work or submission to some ideal. There is a need to prove that they are either better than everyone else ("Look how hard I've tried!") or simply an awful person, worse than everyone else ("I've tried so hard to be a good person, but it just isn't in me!").

This struggle to establish where they sit on the social, spiritual or evolutionary scale can reflect itself in religion ("I'm such a sinner!"), work ("I work so hard but I just don't get paid as much as other people!"), or relationships ("I can't have a good relationship because I'm so selfish and critical!"). It is definitely a tricky task to grow beyond the alluring, simplistic, adolescent personality, which can make sense of the world only in terms of absolute black and white judgments. The person who can't use Pluto positively tends often to become a doormat to other people, and then complains about everyone who walks all over him or her. These people have a terrible fear of being aggressive, different, selfish or rebellious. It is much safer to be victimized, underpaid, used, sick and therefore excused; a workaholic and self-denied (while being contemptuous of the self who is being dominated). Some young makes will become violent, hostile and rebellious with this placement, but they are rare unless the group they hang out with is violent. In that case, they will do what they need to do in order to belong. The rebellious desire is there for everyone with this placement, but it is seldom expressed as openly as in 'Society, go to hell!'Often the Plutonian adolescents and young adults will become obsessed with perfection, to the point that their bodies will be treated like a laboratory specimen. Excessive grooming or explorations into diets and strange forms of exercise are not uncommon. The fascination with the new control over the body that a diet or exercise regimen gives can lead to virtual starvation or excessive musculature, depending on the sex and / or the desired body image. Throughout life, there will be a strong, intense involvement with food and health, and auxiliary struggles with guilt and contempt for what has or has not been eaten or done properly. If the drive for perfection is carried too far, these people may rebel against their very own self-imposed criticisms, and become ill as a result. Illness is a grand excuse for not living up to the expectations of the peer group or the self. Throughout this, the attitude of 'I know what I'm doing!' gives others the impression that this person needs no help. In fact, if the Pluto in the sixth house individual is helped, it's because someone else pushes him or her to seek and accept it. This doesn't lessen the motivation to complain later that 'No-one wants to help, or is ever there for me!'Unfortunately, a lot of this suffering and struggle covers the true potential and beauty of the sixth house Pluto placement.

Health obsessions can be channeled more gracefully into the helping and healing professions. There is an inherent sensitivity to the body and what it needs, which can be of immeasurable service to others - while the Plutonian individual is getting paid for it, to boot! They understand social motives, having been so intensely involved in them, and are therefore well suited to the psychological and counseling professions. They have an instinctive understanding of the ways and means to regenerate the self, whether through therapies such as massage, body work, etc., or even through such businesses as building and wrecking or salvage enterprises. In the work arena, there can be a willingness to work extra hours for the common good of the company. Yet, they are also capable of making meaningful and creative contributions to the company, whether they own it or are just employed there. They have a powerful understanding of time, and are skilled at finding ways of improving existing work methods so as to enhance efficiency and quality of output. They are often good with their hands, and can be creative craftspeople, willing to put that extra touch of quality into everything they create. The sixth house Pluto person can see many connections between the mundane / physical and the spiritual; and this higher quality will shine through in whatever career or work area this individual becomes involved in. In all areas of life, there is a strong capacity for problem-solving, whether it be in the home arena or as a systems analyst in a large contemporary office building. With Pluto in this house, the individual may find some familiar patterns showing up in his or her environment. The spouse or lover may be demanding, arrogant and selfish, causing a lot of trauma and heartache. Often, whatever is assumed to be true will be severely tested in one form or another. There can be times of rejection by the peer group, due to Pluto natives always criticizing or having an axe to grind about a key issue. There can be illness when the body isn't balanced and the psyche is overloaded with concerns and frustrations. Problems are continuously coming up, since this individual is an expert at them and often attracts them to himself or herself. At work, power struggles may ensue. There may be involvement with unions, fighting unfairness while at the same time being victimized in some way by the company you're working for or even by the union itself. Arguments and problems with supervisors could encourage poor attitudes or rebelliousness at work, affecting performance in a negative way. This person needs to feel special; and often others won't support that because they think of him or her as uncooperative. Then the Pluto person rationalizes the situation in his or her own inimitable way, and continues making demands on co-workers either consciously or unconsciously. When Pluto transits this house, upsets in health could occur.

Overhauls in diet and lifestyle are common, for now these individuals may feel threatened by their own body in some way. Yet, the key to health problems here is the mind. All mutable houses take in the mental qualities of the planet which rules them; and the sixth house is no exception. As the natural ruler of the sixth house, Mercury indicates a deep loyalty to certain attitudes and beliefs. Criticisms of the body, during adolescence, although they may be forgotten in adulthood, still leave their mark. The negativity of the mind directed against the self goes underground into the psyche; and health complications arise as a result. During this transit, any negative personal attitudes that aren't dealt with on a conscious level will be felt in the body. Resistance to change can manifest as internal toxicity or elimination problems (either too much or too little, such as constipation). In the work area, the individual can become too sensitive to chemicals in the air or to the mental environment on the job. This may mean the end of the job and the beginning of a new one. At this time, measures need to be taken to improve the attitudes that have been ingrained since late childhood and early adolescence.

During the transit, the individual may change residence or in some other way lose his or her circle of friends, and may therefore have to spend a lot of time alone. This may be good for the personality, as the Pluto person can then start revamping the mental attitudes that created problems in the first place.

Relationships can fall apart under this transit if the individual, in his or her obsession about the self and its problems, makes the other party in the relationship feel left out. Unable to help, the other person is bound to feel frustrated. Old styles of interaction may not work anymore; and the supposed selflessness of the Pluto transit individual may be discovered as an ego cover that serves to hide the vulnerability he or she would feel if he or she freely accepted him-or herself. If you are affected by Pluto transiting this house, you will need to revamp your attitudes. Positive thinking will get you anywhere, even though it may not work for anyone else. (So don't plan to organize everyone you know into a positive thinker's program.) You will need to move out of a small range of activity into a larger one which can give you greater scope to explore broad perspectives beyond social theories and beliefs. If you are changing your job, ask yourself why. If the answer puts the blame on anything other than your own attitudes, you haven't found the real answer yet. It's in your head, not out in the environment! You need to begin to take power back from your environment to yourself. You will want to heal yourself, whether the problem is manifesting physically (as in a health problem) or spiritually (discontent with your life).

To avoid the pitfalls of a negative Pluto here, you can use forgiveness: you need to forgive the adolescent you, that teen within you, who feels that she / he cannot make a move or have his or her own vision, independent of anyone else. Imagine yourself in the room where you lived as a teenager. If there were several places you lived during that time, then let one of them show up; or use a composite of one or more. There is no right or wrong room to use here. Let your subconscious supply you with the image. Next, imagine your adolescent self sitting on the bed engaging in his or her usual activity within the room. Since you have a memory of adolescent times, you probably have a good idea what that is. Don't become him or her. Remain yourself, the adult that you are now, and watch for a moment as the teenage you does his or her thing. Now, begin to carry on a conversation with him or her: 'Hello, how are you; are things going okay; is there anything I can do to help you with your problems?' Relax, and watch your adolescent self respond. Let him or her talk. Allow the adolescent to tell you about the way life is, what's wrong, what the problems are, etc.. If you can imagine it, hold / hug your teen self. Send love and understanding to him or her. Once you have established inner communication with your teen self, then you can begin to fulfill his or her fantasies. If his / her ears stick out too much, correct them with an imaginary magical operation. If your teen has pimples, apply an imaginary magical solution and clear them all up. Find him / her a lover, a special car, a beautiful home, whatever it is that she / he wants. When you feel your concentration beginning to fade, and you can't solve any more of your teen self's problems, tell him or her that you are going to leave now, but that you will come back and do some more later if she / he wants. (Your adolescent will generally want this.)Then tell your adolescent self that she / he is forgiven, that there's nothing wrong with him or her any more. Let the teen know that you are going to change your attitudes and think more positively, and that she / he can think whatever she / he wants, but that she / he is not allowed to interfere with your adult life in any way. The teen may object, but that is the nature of adolescence. She / he wants no restrictions, yet she / he knows that they are very much needed. After this inner session, you can go visit your teen from time to time, and forgive him or her while you fulfill his or her desires. This begins to clear out the adolescent influences you have in your daily life, enabling you to plan and activate powerful, adult behavior. Enroll in a personal growth class, prayer group or meditation class. Learn how to create and activate positive mental thoughts. As you learn these, you will begin to heal yourself; and your Plutonian problems will stop creating nasty crises in your life. Yet, now you must begin to take your power. Pay attention to your thoughts during the day, and take a mental note of how many negative or critical thoughts you have. Begin consciously reducing the number of them by stopping whenever you find them coming up into your conscious mind - then make yourself think something positive instead. Skeptical, critical thoughts and sarcastic attitudes are common during adolescence, but your adult self has little use for them, beyond causing you grief and trouble. As you gain more and more control of your thoughts, you will find that you and your environment are both more peaceful. You come in touch with the creative, healing wellspring within you. More love for yourself and others will then come out, but in a natural way rather than the forced way so typical of the adolescent. Rather, you will truly love being of service to those for whom you care deeply, and you will find the world supporting and serving you in return. And that's okay!

See also: Pluto in the 6th House;

Pluto in the 6th House: George Clooney, Ty Cobb, John Dee, Thomas Edison, Queen Elizabeth II, Sigmund Freud, Michael Jackson, Ken Kesey, Paul Newman, Ronald Reagan, Antonio, GaryCl, J, Judin, Marcy, Marie, Mark, Michael, Olof, Samp, Tara

Pluto in the 7th House

This house initially belongs to the child; and very often when people exhibit childish behavior one can find planets which represent that behavior pattern in the natal seventh house. As the young child begins to grow socially, she / he discovers that by imitating the adults in his or her environment, she / he is learning about personality patterns and growth-oriented interactions with others. This gives the child a sense of security. After all, there's no need to figure out how to act and what to do, for models of behavior abound all around. Children with Pluto in the seventh house learn their lessons well, and can become accomplished mimics of adults. As they practice their new behaviors, they receive responses from parents, adults, and older children, which tell them whether the actions are pleasing or not. Children do want to please, for that assures them that the world is moving along smoothly, that they will have plenty to eat and other children to play with, etc..This original sellout is necessary, since children cannot truly fend for themselves. The personal power is, as commonly happens with Pluto, exchanged for security. With this placement however, it is often more difficult to take that power back once adulthood is reached. It is here in the seventh house that social experiments are made, that the learning cycle on how to get along and fit in is begun. It is here that children establish their limits, the boundaries that demarcate what they can and cannot do.

With Pluto here, these boundaries can be very confining, which sets up a repression of energy that could either explode later or else seem to disappear entirely into the personality. Since children are rewarded for imitating adults and older children around them, the behavior is reinforced and there is a tendency to continue it. These children look for validation of their self-image from others, hoping that they look right, act normally, dress within the mode (or code), and generally fit in with society. This process of learning is a seemingly long one, taking all of the early life to accomplish. Yet, the behavioral tools necessary to deal with unforeseen situations remain limited, even into adulthood.

When disaster strikes, it is usually because of the environmental situation or someone else, rather than the Pluto native. This seeming passivity is a logical result of thought processes that set up other people as the source of power in life. (If others can give the self value, they can destroy it as well.)This child gets in touch with the emotional content of relationships very early in life. He or she may have been picked on by older children or siblings, or victimized by them in some way. One such case was a boy who was encouraged to participate in some naughty activities by an older brother. When the child was caught he was punished, but his older brother was not. (He had sworn to secrecy as part of the deal.)

His loyalty to his word kept the parents in the dark as to why their younger son was such a troublesome case, until years and years later. Yet, such experiences can leave emotional scars on young children, and they may try to avoid any intimacy or close involvement with another person as much as possible.

They may withdraw and spend more time watching than actually participating in relationships, even though to have a friend or closer relationship is the one thing they desire most in life. Unfortunately, the child assumes that others have all the answers, and transfers the awe of parents and adult authority figures to other individuals who are older and / or seem stronger and more powerful. If someone else becomes angry with them, the impact on these Pluto people will be very strong. They will either meekly submit, while fuming secretly within; or they will become an aggressive, rebellious underdog and resist openly. Power plays in relationships seem to occur frequently, but that is the natural attempt of the Pluto individual to find the limits of his or her own power. Over time however, those with this placement may still not have discovered their own personal power, and may still be waiting for an okay from someone else before proceeding with their own life. All this activity can be subconscious, for the original feelings associated with the early adaptations have been lost. They have floated out of sight, only to run the show from a booth on the side rather than taking their place on centre stage. These patterns have a nasty habit of sliding by unnoticed through adolescence and into adulthood very easily, as they are strongly reinforced by the peer group (which is an adolescent replacement for the parental authority figures).

The person still has a tendency to expect someone outside himself or herself to know all the answers - a mentor, a teacher, a spouse or an angel from God. She/ he may remain a passive resister of the first rank, leaving to someone else the responsibility for any messes that may occur in life. She / he will even move out of the familiar neighborhood to be with someone who gives him or her that special feeling. Instead of adolescent games, the seventh house Pluto individual will have discovered a broader spectrum of games in the marketplace with other (apparent) adults. Just as this person was inadvertently abused as a child, now his/ her business opponents give him / her a rough time. This can manifest as getting in trouble with his boss, a loved one or the bank! In order to appear as successful and 'together' as others, these Pluto people will try to have all the answers themselves. The unfortunate aspect of it all is that, due to their limited self-expansion and experimentation as children, they don't have that many answers. Somehow, somewhere, they will foul up and someone else will get the cake - the raise, the relationship, etc.. This can set up a pattern of frustration and anger at certain other manipulating individuals, which can fester over long periods of time. Whether they treat others nicely or not doesn't mean that the lesson of this placement has been learned. Being rebellious, treating others like dirt (a possible extreme manifestation) is still a reaction to the belief that the desires of others must always come first.

What these people have to learn is that by becoming the very opposite of what they were trained to be, they are not really rebelling. Instead, they are only confirming that their training was valid, that the parents and other adult authority figures were right. These negative actions are merely saying that the Plutonian is angry about it and wants to punish others for having more important desires and activities than he or she does.

The other mode of response is that of the quiet, introverted, passive resister. These Pluto individuals can explore the opposite extreme of their unruly brothers and sisters, by trying to appease everyone they meet, cringing with anger and / or sacrificing the self for the hope of a harmonious relationship. These people will do anything to stay at home with someone in order to keep the game going, to keep the relationship alive. There can be a terrible fear that the relationship could end (generally when the other party walks out) ¬and then they will be alone, without someone of power around them to assure them that they are all right, etc.. They will also refuse to see the major impact they have on the partner's life, thinking themselves somehow invisible and unobtrusive. That's hard to be when you have this Pluto placement! Not trusting themselves, they look for someone else on whom they can rely.

Fortunately, many people with this Pluto placement do grow up and begin to make choices for themselves. This can create profound relationships, from exciting and synergistic business partnerships to soul mates. Even though the partner is usually a strong-willed person, there is an appreciation of his or her spunkiness and strength, and a willingness to make the relationship a special or even magical one. The two heads, like rams, may butt each other every once in a while, but he relationship definitely won't suffer from boredom! To others, these people may appear to have nasty fights, but instead it is a healthy way for them to let off steam, and the anger is quickly forgiven and forgotten. Both partners will acknowledge the power and impact they have on each other, and will be willing to commit themselves to working out solutions that don't hurt the other one or break his or her trust. These Plutonian natives have learned to balance their own desires with the other person's. hey neither consistently demand to have their own way, nor do they give in to the wishes of the partner all the time. They have learned a great deal about life through relationships, and they have a healthy self-image.

This placement is very good for those in the legal profession, including judges, because these people are very fair. They are also good psychologists, having come into that subject with an intense curiosity about what was happening in their own life and relationships. These Plutonians make many conscious choices during the day, without needing the advice of others. And they can keep up their positive energy, because they are confident in their public image.

Those with Pluto here can also do well in mass communications, should the rest of the chart favor that, because the public image can be powerful and their message can move multitudes. They take responsibility for their lives, and they have indeed grown up.

Situations that seem to accompany this placement can include disaster on the home front; separations, domination by partners and spouses, bitter ending of relationships, fighting futilely, vengeful partners, sudden disappearance of important people in their lives, and persistent difficulty in getting and keeping a mate. Generally, as was said earlier, events with this placement seem to come out of the individual environment, and this can feel scary and evoke deep feelings of insecurity about possible future heavy events also catching them off guard.

When Pluto transit individuals realize they have a choice in the matter, the tables turn. But then they will have to accept responsibility for the tremendous power they have chosen. The partner is often the most significant person in this individual's life - particularly the romantic partner. Heavy karmic tie-ins to the past are possible if Pluto rules house ten or house four. In that case, the individual with this placement may be looking for a replacement parent. If you have this Pluto position, beware of falling into that trap! While Pluto transits this house, relationships will have to be overhauled. At the very least, the way the individual looks at the relationships will have to be transformed. Often, this can manifest as the disruption of a personal relationship or business partnership. It doesn't have to end however, if both parties can go through this transformation together. But the responsibility for communicating to the partner about needs and changes still lies with the Pluto person.

Legal hassles and tendencies to evade the law can come up at this time also. But generally, most of the results of this transit will directly or indirectly reflect the powerful impact of the person's overhaul on his or her environment. If seen that way, then something can be done about it. The crises must ease up, and this process must start with the individual who is affected by the seventh house Pluto, either natally or by transit. To change the negative impact of Pluto in the seventh house, one must stop being a martyr or victim. Forgive others (partners, ex-spouses) for what they've done to you, and clear that emotional debris from the past. See the fourth house for forgiveness techniques. Then look at your current life. Monitor a few days of your life, and note how many times you conceded or compromised your views for those of another person. Start paying attention to how you feel at those times. In many instances there are fine, practical reasons why you take the other person's ideas or activities so seriously. But in some instances, you will find that you have a nagging doubt, a resentment or a moment of indecision. It's this kind of situation you will need to focus on and change. Changing doesn't mean that you must now insist on doing something different from what the people around you are doing. That would only indicate that you have still failed to make a clear decision on your own, and are simply reacting to others in a negative way. What you really need to do is to regain conscious control over your thoughts and actions.

Every time you fail to clarify your preference, your own inner sense of security and trust suffers a bit. It's far better to say 'Wait, let me think about it' than to go along with someone else merely because that person seems to have stronger, more pronounced views and motivations than you. Don't submit to pressure from others through intimidation, anger, guilt, etc.. If someone is manipulating you, put them on hold until you have discovered what it is that you really want to do. Go off by yourself if necessary, and make them wait. If the situation is a crisis that can't wait, then let your instinct take over. But there will be very few real crises coming your way once you begin tuning into how you deny your own choices.

If you are the type of person who is blustery, and you don't feel well-liked or appreciated, then it may be that you have been playing the rebellious but passive resister all these years. Monitor yourself for a few days, and you'll discover that you may believe one thing but act just the opposite way. If this happens, you know that your assertion of independence and identity is not real. You still haven't discovered what you want from yourself.

When you disagree with someone, check within yourself to see whether it's an automatic negative reaction or not. Is it a habit? If so, remember incidents in which you disagreed with others, but eventually went along with them. Replay the scenes and rewrite the endings in your imagination, and then ask yourself how you could have handled the situation differently, so as to get the results you wanted. Learn the contemporary methods of personal assertion; how to get what you want while the other fellow is not manipulating or being manipulated. I's a wonderful new frontier! Now is the time to explore it, and discover the depth and vibrancy of your relationships.

The evolutionary intent is teaching these individuals to develop more fully the lesson of giving to another so that the individual's own needs can be met tenfold. In this way, the balance of relationship will be realized. As these evolutionary lessons are developed, the Seventh House Pluto individual will be one of the most giving of all people. He or she will be able to identify the reality as it exists for anyone with whom he or she interrelates. In so doing, these individuals can give to others exactly what they need. In addition, they will learn when to give, and when not to give. By developing these lessons, they will learn how to participate in relationships in a non-dependent way, and will encourage independence in any partner or mate. Because of these lessons, these individuals will learn how to be inwardly balanced in any external situation in which they find themselves. They will no longer run the risk of losing themselves by trying on differing values, ideas, and beliefs that others represent. These individuals will learn to appreciate the diversity of human nature, and recognize their own individuality because of it. This realization can translate into the gift that they give others: the courage to discover and be themselves.

Common characteristics of Pluto in the Seventh House: compulsive need to be in relationships or to relate with others in order to feel complete, the need to dominate or be dominated by another, the need to be needed by others, the need to be liked by others, having a hypnotic effect on people, and the need to solicit advice or to give advice to others.

See also: Pluto in the 7th House;

Pluto in the 7th House: Fred Astaire, Kim Basinger, Warren Buffett, Sean Connery, Jane Fonda, Mahatma Gandhi, Dustin Hoffman, L.Ron Hubbard, Helen Keller, Vaslav Nijinsky, Barack Obama, Edouard de Rothschild, Bertrand Russell, Mother Teresa, Robert Anton Wilson, Joanne Woodward, Malcolm X, Paramahansa Yogananda, AbbieJ, AlexP, Andrea, Ashira, Bram, Cesar, David, DonW, Duane, Dunja, Erin, JT, Medwick, RoyO

Pluto in the 8th House

The child with this placement is in touch with his or her inner psychic forces early in life. The inner attunement often runs counter to what is expected of him or her, or what the child is expected to believe and accept in life. On the one hand, there are philosophies about success which suggest that one has to work very hard over a long period of time before one is rewarded. This is also known as 'paying your dues'. Yet, the Pluto eighth house child knows that whatever is desired intensely and single mindedly can manifest in a flash, as if by magic. This manifestation of occult power is seldom noticed by the parents, and is generally extinguished by the age of five or so. Yet this inherent quality of the individual who has Pluto in the eighth has led psychics to speculate that such a person may have been a magician in previous lifetimes.

Children with this placement often experience a conflict between their world view and what they assume to be the world view of their parents. The intensity of these children can inspire in the parents a need to control the fire which they sense exists in the children; to tame the wild spirit, as it were. They know that children cannot yet support themselves, so they use things (home, school supplies, clothes, food, etc.) as a simple means of keeping the child aware of where its resources are coming from, thus maintaining a sense of control over the child.

Often they want to protect the child from the dreariness of life as they see it, little knowing that they are draining the color from the child's inner imaginative life. Of course, none of this is intentional. Parents usually do not wish harm or unhappiness on their children. In this case the eighth house Pluto child seems to want everything, because the desire nature is so strong. And that is what disturbs the parents, who have visions of pregnant teenage daughters and wild gang-prowling sons. They feel a need to cool the temperament of this intense child.

The impact of this Pluto placement occurs mainly in childhood, as opposed to adolescence. The child, in exchange for a secure and comfortable environment (whatever that means to the child), will sacrifice the power to manifest his or her resources magically, in exchange for the knowledge and social understanding of the much older and larger parents who 'know the score'. In a nutshell, power is sacrificed for the security of the parents' resources. This sets up a pattern in which others will have the resource power, and the child will defer to them because of that leverage factor. Of course, despite the initial success of this sacrifice, the child soon begins to resent the choice, feels frustrated, and is often unwilling to be grateful for what he or she is receiving.

Also during childhood, there is a sense of having to discover how the world is put together. This search for knowledge is not unique to the eighth house Pluto person, but it is intensified, especially in the area of physics and metaphysics. As might be expected, death and other endings carry a great significance to the eighth house Pluto children, who ponder its whys and wherefores. They search for the cosmic bottom line, the ultimate meaning of life. However, since these children are often denying their psychic powers, there is also little or no access to the mental regions that would make this higher understanding possible. Consequently, they will then wander about in search of the things in life that make it meaningful. And this search can mean that they will be loners as children, and as adults they may brood about the nature of things.

The final issue, and one that carries over into the adult personality, is learning how to deal with trust. Desire, a major component of Pluto energy and the eighth house, is strong. Pluto natives want their emotional desire energies to be intense and pure. Yet, when their trust is abused, psychic confusion can result. Then they will close off their avenues of receptivity towards others, and withdraw. Trust can become an issue throughout life if it is not worked with and understood, for trusting others is an extension of trusting the self.

When inner knowledge is traded for food and rent, the self with its wild imagination and magical reality must be sacrificed too. Then what intuition can these people rely on? They have lost the security that comes from trusting their inner senses. This is covered over with a veneer of bravado, showing everyone that 'I can do it the hard way', or 'I have all the answers' (the most common early expression of this Pluto energy). Yes, they do have all the answers - but they aren't in touch with them! They separate these answers from mundane reality, so they remain in limbo until freed by conscious thought later in life.

Other personality patterns which show up with this placement include refusing to accept help from others, sexual intensity, extremism or abusiveness, taking the self much too seriously, a tendency to go through periodic personality overhauls, manipulativeness in order to gain money or other desired items, secretiveness about what he or she is doing, and a morbid curiosity. Most of these traits come as a result of inner emotional wrangling over the lack of his or her own resources, and the frustration of seeing others in possession of desirable things.

This can become a crisis; and the individuals with this placement may resort to illegal means to obtain what they want, whether it be money, drugs (for a 'spiritual' high), information, power over someone else, sex, prestige, etc.. The rest of the chart will indicate whether this extreme will be manifested as petty crime or something worse.

A terrible fear of compromising often comes with this Pluto placement. People born with Pluto in the eighth may refuse any gift that is offered to them if there is the slightest suspicion of any strings being attached. These individuals will most often feel that they have to do everything themselves, without any help. That means making all the money, doing all the errands, completing all the projects. What a tall order! At the same time, these Pluto people will probably resent anyone who has had the good fortune of being helped by others. They will rationalize it, and hold a grudge to the effect that their talents are somehow overlooked.

These Plutonians are progressive but at the same time conventional people, and are seldom noticed as bright lights by the public. They think in terms of what other people have, rather than in terms of what they themselves can create. They are impatient with trivialities, and can have a do-or-die attitude. After having been manipulated by the patents' money, they may spend a great deal of their life doing the same with others, not being aware that this merely limits their own access to power and continues their unnecessary struggle for things. The struggle for personal and financial success can be a long one; and results may be slow to appear. The main way these people can get in touch with themselves is to create a crisis in which their inner resources are almost forced out of them, overcoming the blockages formed in early childhood.

Fortunately, Pluto in the eighth is in its own house, its most magical location and truest placement. Positive aspects to this Pluto placement will manifest after a great deal of turbulence and thrashing around in the psyche, so to speak. By the thirties, a new self-understanding generally begins to unfold. (Fortunately for some, it happens earlier.) These people find that their desire to understand the 'cosmic bottom line' is bearing fruit. Higher levels of understanding bring strength and resourcefulness to the surface of the personality, where it can be used even without a crisis.

They are in touch with the higher or larger social evolutionary levels. They have an innate understanding of how metaphysics works, and they begin to use it. This turns them into scientists in the true sense of the word, questioning and observing reality. They magnetize and bring what they want to themselves, which may include another person who can fulfill their many desires. They don't resent other people who have great resources, but are usually curious about how those resources are gathered, because they figure it's something they need to know for themselves. They will want to replace the magical skills they once traded for security, which have gotten rusty from years of disuse.

They can then get financial backing from others, for they don't manipulate people with guilt or other types of social pressure any more. They accept separations and endings with relative equanimity, as they have great control over their focus of attention in life, and can shift it from one thing to another whenever they desire. They are unwilling to cry about the past, for they are busy programming and rearranging the future, as if it were plastic and malleable - which it truly is!

Their desire to know the answers to life's mysteries draws them deeper and deeper into the inner temples of the self, creating a pathway of meaning for them. They passionately develop their intuition, which they are learning to trust. They deal with emotional issues as they come up, no longer needing the spur of a crisis to discover the stuff of which they are made. And with that step, they are becoming more vulnerable to those who love them. When they accept intimacy, they will show more tenderness than they do when they are acting out of the lusty sentimentality with which they originally begin a relationship. They allow themselves to be nurtured by someone, without having to resist it in order to demonstrate personal independence. Stubbornness is being replaced with flexibility and selectivity.

Being a deep and mysterious house, the eighth doesn't yield its secrets quickly. With Pluto here, few people seem to experience those outer situations that characterize Pluto in the other houses. The crises associated with Pluto here are underground; and any effects in the environment or life result from significant shifts of power in the deepest levels and recesses of the psyche. Sexuality can be expressed in extreme fashion. These people can be extremely poor or very, very wealthy. Frequently, those with this placement seem to disappear from public view, hiding in the woods or in the anonymity of a large city. Problems with resources may arise in the traditional eighth house areas of credit ratings, insurance penalties, taxes, inheritances, etc.. The deaths of people around them can create major changes in their lifestyle.

Because of these individuals' intense self-absorption, they may appear not to hear anyone else. Don't be fooled! Generally, these people hear everything, but their outer response can be slow or nonexistent. Yet, in a few days, months or even years, they may present something they have heard as their own concept, albeit in a new package. These people are good at assimilating the views of others into their own perspective, and do not consider it stealing. They are natural brokers, functioning well as middlemen between people, tying together the rich tapestry of ideas and making sense out of it.

With Pluto transiting this house, you may not see much activity. The most intense think that could happen would be for a family member to die, or a friend to be lost somehow - but that is very rare.

Generally, an overhaul of the attitudes about money, wealth, society, etc. begins to take place. New ideas on love and sex will show up, as these individuals sort out their love lives. At this stage, the people affected are learning to become more consciously receptive to their inner workings and messages. The lesson of this transit is to learn how to let go of old blockages that keep the self from being successful in getting and being what it wants. No compromises this time!

If you have negative eighth house Pluto problems, you will find a need to get in touch with your inner resources and intuition. Let go, forgive yourself for holding onto old attitudes about money, love and success. If you are having physical problems related to Pluto's rulership areas (elimination and sex organs), your kundalini power has been misplaced, chopped up and detoured in your body. A psychic healer could undoubtedly help you visualize an appropriate meditation for the healing you need, as well as assist you with his or her energy. Be sure, if you take this path, that you allow yourself to receive this energy from outside yourself, and that you listen without defensiveness to what your advisors have to say.

If you are having difficulty obtaining as much money or love as you'd like, visualize what you want as clearly as possible. In your inner movie, see yourself enjoying what you want. See other people enjoying your having it, too. See your entire neighborhood enjoying your enjoyment, and supporting your pleasure. Then imagine your suburb or town enjoying your enjoyment, then your county, your state, your country, your continent, and the whole world... everyone pausing to enjoy your pleasure with you, glad that you have what you want. Sometimes this visualization, as simple as it is, can break down invisible barriers of attitudes you may have had, in which other people resent or envy your success, making you feel guilty or afraid of it.

When you feel an opening in your chest, a sense of a semi-physical, partly emotional 'shift' in your body, then you know that you have done your programming well. When that is felt (you'll know it when it happens), turn your attention immediately to something else that is pleasant to think about. Take your heavy brooding off this subject for a day or two. Then come back and repeat the visualization. Good times for this are when you are in bed just before going to sleep, or when you first arise in the morning. At those times, you are closest to your inner psychic channels, more receptive to the subconscious mental powers that order your entire life experience. Know that your goal is to make your subconscious conscious. As you work towards that goal, you will discover all the magic you will ever need or want to fulfill your heart's desires.

In this kind of relationship, the idea or phenomenon of Soul-mates could be realized. However, strictly speaking, Soul-mates must have a spiritual foundation upon which their relationship is based and to which all that is inwardly and outwardly experienced is referred. The essence of a Soul-mate relationship is to promote the spiritual development of each person because of the relationship. The confrontations and growth pains occur, of course, yet they promote growth rather than degenerating into recriminations or vindictive, cruel or mean behavior toward one another. Until this third course of actions is adopted by the Eighth House Pluto person, the other two courses of action will promote negativity. Because one or both partners may feel that they have invested themselves totally in the other, when unexpected problems or confrontations arise, or when one person leaves, negative behavior can result. Remember that these individuals can have unconscious memories of this kind of activity from other lives together, which conditions their behavior in this life. All that the Eighth House Pluto individual can act upon is a desire for revenge: an eye for an eye. In varying degrees of intensity, this one motive and desire can create the basis for the karmic connection which can exist between this person and others. Every intimate relationship that an Eighth House Pluto individual has with another will be based on a prior life connection. This will apply to all evolutionary conditions and all possible karmic patterns and requirements.

Many Eighth House Pluto individuals have had a series of prior lives in which the rug has been pulled out from under their feet. This has occurred either through karmic retribution, or because they have overly invested themselves in, and become too dependent upon, a situation or person in their lives. The degree of over-investment or dependency will determine the degree of emotional shock associated with the experience. If the individual has a karmic signature wherein he or she has used his or her sexuality to get what he or she needed, or to control others, then the individual may experience this type of retribution in his or her own life. The worst cases might include the possibility of being rape, for example. The prior-life memory of having the rug pulled out from under their feet is responsible for most of these people coming into this life with a conditioned defensiveness, and a conditioned suspicion as to the motives and intentions of those who desire to be involved with them in some way. This dynamic creates emotional retention or withholding for fear of having the rug pulled once again. It can take an abnormally long time for the individual to really trust another or a situation in which he or she is involved, as a result.

The polarity point is the Second House. The evolutionary intent is one of utter self-reliance and learning how to identify one's own internal values and resources in order to sustain oneself. On this basis, these individuals are learning how to minimize compulsive dependence on anything outside of themselves. They are learning how to look within and use themselves as the symbol for their own personal transformation. The evolutionary intent demands that they progressively learn to simplify their lives ¬do make it more basic. Thus, it is important for these individuals to effect relative isolation from the impact of the external environment to look within and examine the whys and wherefores of their own existence. In this way, they will learn how to identify who they essentially are versus the pieces of themselves that are actually other people with whom they have been karmically linked through relationships in this or other lives. This karmic linkage is associated with the osmosis effect of sexuality, and the uniting of themselves with others on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level. In this way, they can discover the core of themselves, and will learn how to sustain themselves by identifying their own personal resources. By so doing they will become emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, physically and sexually self-sufficient. They will learn how to participate in a committed, growth-oriented relationship in a non-dependent, non-compulsive way. In this way, they will naturally attract another who is self-sustaining by nature. They will transmute the karma of manipulation because the need for growth will not be linked to or dependent upon external situations or persons. These individuals will learn how to make consistently correct choices as to what to involve and not involve themselves with. In addition, all personal misuses of power and sexuality will be completely eliminated. Walking upon the road of self-reliance, they will dance to their own tune, and not someone else’s. This evolutionary intent will allow these individuals to face the limitations implied in the totality of their natures, and make the necessary adjustments to allow for additional growth. This intent will either be desired and consciously developed, or it will be enforced through the necessary karmic blows or shocks.

As the Eighth House Pluto individual evolves into the Second House polarity, the transformation produces individuals who are self-motivated. They will be able to encourage and motivate the growth concerns of others with whom they come into contact in an utterly non-manipulative way, and will not allow for others to become dependent upon them. They will encourage others to strip away all the layers of conditioning that have dictated their behavior and orientation to life. In so doing, they will encourage others to realize their own individual essence and to sustain and apply themselves on that basis. Their intrinsic capacity to identify the essence of whatever issues or areas of life they focus upon can now be used to penetrate, discover and solve the 'mysteries' of life for the betterment of themselves and for others in general. Common characteristics of Pluto in the Eighth House include: intensity on all levels, a deep radiating core of power, can be very fixed and stubborn, dislike of all superficial relationships, can be vindictive when taken advantage of by others, strong likes and dislikes, magnetic, transforming those (for better or worse) who are involved with them, being black and white without shades of gray until the necessary transformation takes place, ability to motivate others, being a 'why'-oriented person, can be emotionally manipulative, cycles of emotional withdrawal, and being secretive.

See also: Pluto in the 8th House;

Pluto in the 8th House: Shirley Temple Black, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Princess Diana, Bob Dylan, Georges Gurdjieff, Jimi Hendrix, Adolf Hitler, Elton John, Timothy Leary, Bruce Lee, Mickey Mantle, Bob Marley, Groucho Marx, Elvis Presley, Ramana Maharshi, Albert Schweitzer, Patti Smith, Ted Turner, Gore Vidal, Swami Vivekananda, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Oprah Winfrey, Andrew, Erika, Farmer, Jamie, Jane, JRosh, Jyothi, Lance, MFor, Michelle, Nirvesh, Pankaj, Sarik, Steve, Tom

Pluto in the 9th House

Very often, this Pluto child is brought up in an environment of strong-willed parents. Often the mother feels she knows all the answers or has at least to look as though she does, and the child is fooled by the grand show put on by his / her super parent. However, what the child feels and intuits about the nature of life is often disregarded by the parents as being charmingly meaningless. This child, who so easily tunes into perceptions that go beyond space and time, is puzzled at the firm faith and belief others have in limited philosophical doctrines. The mother of a child with this placement is often either strongly religious or anti-religious. Whatever her beliefs, she takes a very exacting and definite position, as if to say "My child will learn what's right!" This can create a crisis for the child, who finds she / he can't integrate his / her magical perceptions of life comfortably within the framework of parental beliefs. In order to preserve inner mental peace, a choice is necessary. The obvious winner will be the beliefs which he child sees in his / her parents. This sets up the tendency to take everything the mother says as being absolutely true. Mother knows it all! Of course, after a few years the child is exposed to alternate ideas and ways of thinking, and can make attitude adjustments. However, the early imprint remains so strong that the child will often attempt to assume that other people have the same capacity for absolute knowledge as the mother. Sometimes with this placement, the child has a reverent devotion to the tenth house parent, whether it be mother or father or any adult guardian. When this child has questions, and she / he certainly has a lot of them, they are presented to the mother for the explanation that the child assumes mother or father will always have.

Answers come easily and readily in the early formative years, but when the time comes (as it must) that mother or father can't answer all the questions any more, panic strikes the heart of the ninth house Pluto child. Although still loyally affirming the world view of his or her parents, and believing them to be virtually infallible, the child or adolescent looks inward and sees that his / her own self doesn't know all the answers. Consequently, he / she turns to the social world outside in search of them. With the powerful urge to know that is so characteristic of this placement, he or she is not content to sit back and let the answers reveal themselves. There is an aggressive mental search for the truth; and the answers must be known as soon as possible! This causes many young people to turn to other young people for answers. The ninth house Pluto person waits and watches, learning constantly, even when his or her questions are not asked out loud. Many questions reflect his or her nature, and are asked inwardly, non-verbally. They can only be answered by experience, which unfortunately doesn't come until later in life. The young person usually doesn't find the answers he or she is seeking in other young people, and therefore searches for them in the larger mainstream of society. This search and learning process can include excessive television watching, as well as early involvement in cult groups or gangs. This child or adolescent is not attracted to timidly expressed ideas - they must have impact, they must be important and meaningful, and they must be infallible and cover every possible situation. On the one hand, this can lead to a spiritual search; and on the other hand, it can result in extreme narrow-mindedness and intellectual arrogance.

For those who continue searching outside themselves for a solution to life's mysteries, meanings and purposes, advertising can be hypnotically effective - it can even brainwash them. These are the people who, even though they are adults, will still use a particular brand of toothpaste because the advertisement impressed them. They will buy the correct and best dishwasher detergent, wine, or pain reliever, because they believe the ad. Women with this placement could become obsessed with their appearance, attempting vainly to look like an Eileen Ford model, feeling that something in life is tragically missing because of their lack of physical beauty. Men may become excessively defensive over their masculinity, and befriend others who have the same political or business axes to grind. One never discusses politics, religion or morality with this type of man, because he will always quote the ultimate authority, whether it be the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, the government, scientific documents, etc.

Neither of these types of men and women can function well and happily; and they will seldom move beyond a close group of associates who constantly reinforce the same beliefs. This clannishness gives these people a sense of spiritual, philosophical or political security. In a sense, they have sold their soul to the devil, to the mental expressions of others. They have little to say on their own authority - after all, everything has been figured out for them, starting with mother. This pattern is reflected in those who blindly follow leaders, religious or political gurus that do their thinking for them. They can be intolerant of other beliefs, and may feel 'called' to preach, discovering a sense of personal destiny in the service of social, religious or governmental institutions. Originally manipulated by advertising, they have no qualms about brainwashing others when given the chance. This quality can even be seen in mundane everyday affairs, when several individuals who are supposedly sharing a conversation are actually vying for the attention of the group, trying to persuade others what is right and wrong, that they know what is best for humanity.

A real danger of this placement can be that individuals feel they have found the answers, so there's no need to search any farther. They may also be those who are so insecure in their own ability to think that they will believe virtually anything in print or in the news. By their own unwillingness to think for themselves, they have lost their power to transform themselves and the world, even though such a transformation is a goal to which they aspire longingly. They may even create for themselves a situation of exile, as their learned beliefs conflict with the environment and society around them.

However, the fanatical extremes of belief are relatively rare in these people; and although they bark loudly, few of them have any real 'bite'. Although their philosophical narrowness can continue for a while, it is often dramatically shifted at some point during the lifetime. The world view changes as they begin questioning their parents' philosophies and attitudes. Often this change is expressed initially in a rebelliousness against learned attitudes, even to the extent of refusing to read the papers, watch television or go to church or synagogue. Then a dramatic restructuring of their views occurs, which can initiate changes that bring upheavals over a period of several years. They begin to get in touch with their inner visceral comprehension of the world. They begin to expand their mental horizons so much that they will observe other cultures in order to provide grist for the mental mill. They will study a great variety of philosophical ideas in order to get a grand perspective on life, and may express this mental expansion with statements that tie opposites together by way of their common denominators. For example, such a person may find the common thread between various religious or political systems. As controversial as this usually is, the individual is merely trying to find what makes a polarity a polarity. The commonality is enthusiastically pursued, and when found, it gives access to a perspective that is beyond either extreme.

Pluto ninth house people, whether they go through a philosophical overhaul or not (they usually do at some time in their life), can achieve recognition through higher education, governmental service, or religious institutions. They are intolerant of hypocrisy, and evoke inspiration in others. This is a calling which can be used on any level; physical (in relationships), mental (as in the ability to skillfully reach the masses through advertising), or emotional (by creating and maintaining movements for spiritual or social change and service). These people are definitely capable of having a mystical experience, as their world view transcends time and space, and they have the potential to tap into perceptions far beyond the capacities of the normal or average individual. Their broadened perspective brings wisdom eventually, and with it comes a desire to positively change society - not through violence, but through education. These people find their answers through spirit; but even though answers do come, the creativity of this placement inspires more and higher questions. The eternal search may never bring total peace; but those with this placement are thrilled with the search itself, and find pleasure in the constant expansion of their personal horizons. They become natural guidance counselors, or psychics who understand the insecurities and foibles of human nature with a perspective that just may help those who are reaching out to them. They understand its spirit as well.

Dramatic crises in life come as a result of changing belief systems. Sudden understandings of a larger scope, or even the glimpse of another possible reality beyond the mundane every day one, can bring this about. As a result, careers may be changed. Students may suddenly drop out of school, wondering why the motivation to do what they had been doing is no longer there. A period of questioning may create rifts in familiar or traditionally based relationships. The affected individuals may retreat into the country, hoping to get back in touch with some peaceful dream lost from another era. Or, people under this influence may just seem to withdraw from society in some kind of alienated protest. Fortunately, this protest seldom lasts very long. These rebellious individuals will soon discover that broader perspectives could bring about a rebellion against the very things they have recently embraced! And on and on it goes, as the perspective expands. Some people join organizations at this time, in the hope of finding security within a group. Again, few in this type of crisis are destined to stay in narrow confines for very long.

Pluto transiting this house can bring about any or all of the above-mentioned crises.

Yet, with this transit often comes an emphasis on challenging the beliefs and social attitudes of the mother or adult female guardian. Remember, these beliefs or world views are assumed on the part of the Pluto person, and may not objectively describe the mother. Other children in the same family could have another Pluto house placement, and might feel that the mother represents something totally different. So the person hit by Pluto in this house will have to deal with these concepts within himself or herself, by re-evaluating who and what the mother represents specifically, and what attitudes must stay or go.

This is a scary time, philosophically, because any and all things suddenly have the possibility of being absolutely true, even though they may contradict each other! Although not everyone can be an astronaut, imaginings like this could crop up during this transit. The natural tools of fantasy and imagination run rampant, as the individual attempts to hastily put together a new belief package that can work in his or her daily life. This can be an extremely difficult transit to have during adolescence, for then there is a mad dash to keep up and grow up, with a tendency to defer thinking until some later date. This backfires sometimes, later in adulthood, when the challenge to think for himself or herself once again arises, creating disillusionment and panic.

A good way to go about developing the positive potential of this aspect is to question everything. Be willing to have what you believe to be true thrown out of the window if it's shown to be false. And how do you know if something is false? An idea is false for you if the choice to believe it is based on fear, rather than on self-esteem and love. A child would rather believe the world view of the parents because it creates a sense of security. Disagreeing with or moving away from the parents' beliefs can create anxieties, fears that what you are doing is not quite right. You do not want to have your current crop of beliefs and attitudes based on insecurity and anxiety. If you are willing to examine some possibly scary alternatives, you may find out that what you were originally taught really is correct. In that case, you can now make a positive choice to keep that belief - because you want to, not because you are afraid not to. And the same goes for a belief based on childhood anxiety, which you don't want any more. Throw it out - you are the one who decides now what you wish to believe, feel and know! Take a belief that causes you a lot of trouble, such as 'People can't have both love and money at the same time'.

Admit that you have it! Then acknowledge the ramifications of that belief in your daily life. Writing down examples of how you express the belief over a period of a couple of days is very helpful in identifying the impact that the idea has on your daily life. Then forgive yourself for having held onto that belief for so long, and forgive your mother or father who taught it to you. (See the fourth house Pluto for a description of forgiveness.)Now decide what idea you want to put in its place. Ask yourself why you haven't let yourself activate this new idea already. What are your resistances? Acknowledge them, and then decide to change. Gradually increase the amount of time each day you spend in the new mental framework. You'll begin to see the difference in your life!(Haydn Paul)You will feel the need to have a strong ideological support structure guiding your life, to give it a definition, clarify your choices and offer a clear direction to follow. In many ways, your beliefs help to create your sense of personal identity, as they act as a centering energy giving a sense of solidarity and permanence.

The areas which will interest you, and from which the ideological base will emerge, are those of morals, ethics, politics, education, law and religion. Your social conscience and sense of responsibility will be awakened; and you may become involved with the attempt to alleviate causes of social and world problems. Certainly you will want to help in these directions, to add your contribution towards healing the ills of the world, and to oppose social hypocrisy and injustice. Once you have adopted and established your chosen platform, you will feel a need to express it to others; and this can lead to excessive dogmatism and self-righteousness, especially in the first flush of your enthusiasm for the particular ideology. All those who possess 'the truth' or 'the right answers' suffer from this tendency to convert, convince others that theirs is the only right way. It may well be for them and an associated group, but it is most unlikely to be for everyone; not everyone accepts or believes astrology for instance.

Pluto in 9th House: Your intuitive abilities will lead you in a generally harmonious direction which should benefit others; and you will be ambitious to achieve success in all your endeavors, possibly becoming a spokesperson for your beliefs. Much will depend upon the nature of the ideology that you adopt. Some are more inclusive than others; some can be too restrictive and limit personal freedoms; whichever you choose, it will mould your personality, so be very careful which you get involved with. At an extreme, you could become a religious fanatic, or a political revolutionary attempting to impose your perception of life upon others, expressing basically divisive attitudes into the world, as do many religious and political leaders.

The transformation which Pluto requires is for you to develop your own unique ideological approach to life, not one which relies upon following a group belief structure, and to have the strength to stand on your own feet and have the courage to follow your own path and convictions. This implies an eventual sharing with others of the individual freedoms to search and discover, not merely an attempt to convert; and an encouraging of each to find his own unique path by releasing the need to feel secure by reflecting group beliefs uncritically and without question. Such a new approach to the underlying tendency will act as a liberating force, potentially leading to more personal experience of the reality and validity of your essential beliefs, or to their unsuitability and failings. Pluto will act to undermine your compulsive need to adopt a structure to guide your life, by stimulating conditions that cause it to fall apart and erode your confidence in the beliefs. However, this is only because it wants to lead you towards new horizons, which are more fully expressive of your unique individuality and through which your own light can shine in freedom.

Pluto in 9th House: This shows a deep, analytical mind; yet this person may balk at completing a higher education. This type resents having to get a degree to succeed, as getting one would mean his or her parents won. Many such people go all the way through school, then somehow fail to complete the last semester, the last course, or even the last paper. This is a great revenge, maddening to parents who so much wanted their child to have an education, which was seen as a magical key to getting somewhere. This may be seen as a fail for spite ploy, because these people also believe that education is powerful and life-transforming, and that without it they won't get anywhere. Where Pluto is, one tends to give over power, so one is stuck there - 'damned if you do and damned if you don't'.

Resentments can be displaced onto society. One highly intelligent man with this placement who had just one course to go to complete a badly needed degree expressed his resentment toward society. I should him by saying, 'You know what? Society doesn't care whether you finish your education or not! Society doesn't even know you exist! The education is only for you!'. Startled into clarity by this deliberate shock therapy, he went on to finish his degree. (Similar resentments and self-spiting patterns may exist toward The Law or The Church.)When these people work through the resentments that are getting in their way, Pluto here can be an excellent placement. These people are actually born scholars and researchers, and would get great satisfaction from studying on their own. They could also be powerful teachers who could get to the heart of abstract issues, using the power of the mind to release others from the bondage of ignorance. Knowledge IS power, and the right use of knowledge could transform the world.

Pluto in 9th House: Through the ninth house we acquire the sense of belonging to society, its order and hierarchy. The ninth house often determines the nature of this belonging and eventual difficulties and challenges inherent in it. The ninth house also has strong connections with traditions and cultural background. Thus, Pluto is not necessarily very comfortable in the house. The individual is easily estranged from his domestic, religious and cultural background. That sort of hierarchy and values are not naturally adopted by him. Sometimes fate has determined that the individual has a family whose traditions and way of life differ far from those prevailing in society at large. Pluto’s position in the ninth house brings feelings of rootlessness so that the view of life or religion has to be looked for in other horizons, perhaps far away. Other countries and cultures may be sources of inspiration for new spiritual concepts. This kind of 'wandering instinct' often results in a lot of spiritual wisdom (Nostradamus), and may lead to a continuous spiritual search for higher truths. Instead of wandering physically, some wander in their minds. This individual is apt to live a solitary life is he so desires. The search for vision and beliefs may become obsessive, so that the views are defended strongly and considered as absolutely right. This attitude may lead to intolerance. The zeal to convert other people to follow the individual's own views is sometimes very strong. Jeff Green calls this a 'Billy Graham archetype'. In a positive way, the individual is able to get near the truth after a long search, and transmit his knowledge to others. Important is to remember that the truth is never held by a human being. In a positive way, he can also contribute to questioning old religious systems. He has an inner capacity to see their flaws, and thus can contribute to their transformation. Pluto in the ninth house symbolizes transformation (Pluto) of religion (ninth house, analogical to Sagittarius).This house position allows the mind to develop because the ninth house has to do with higher thinking and non-trivial matters. The mind is usually very sharp and performing, especially if Mercury is also strong and not disturbed. It may lead to erudition, theoretical work and studies in different kinds of fields. Many have a deep-rooted view that knowledge is power, and thus are keen on studying and not letting their minds languor in disuse. According to the French astrologer Jean-Pierre Nicolas, a lot of time, studies and experiences are needed before life starts to express itself. One of the best means to channel this planetary position is to participate in changes in social life, hierarchy and politics, all of which represent the ninth house.

Pluto in 9th House: I have observed that, in general, people approach the house in which Pluto is placed in two very broad but different ways. Some plunge into the affairs of the house, grappling with the deeper issues and implications of that realm, and inevitably are changed and transformed through what they experience there. Others, trying to preserve their already existing sense of self and fearing what this planet might do to them, close the door and try to shut Pluto out of the house altogether. They forget that he has an uncanny ability to break locks. This same dynamic applies to Pluto in the 9th. On one level, the challenge for those with this placement is to join Pluto in a quest for a deeper awareness of the ultimate concerns in life. With Pluto here, religious and philosophical issues are often approached with a seriousness and reverence, as if their survival depended on coming to grips with the nature of God or existence. The spiritual drive can be obsessive and fanatical: they are often voracious to find answers and to discover the basic, irrefutable laws and patterns which govern life. In search of the truth, they reach for the bright heavens or plumb the dark undercurrents and depths of the psyche. And what they are really looking for is the ground under their own feet. How can life be lived unless there is something to stand on? Even if the ground is slippery and treacherous, it is still better than no ground at all. Even if it should turn out that life has no givens, and there is no pre¬ordained design or structure to existence, those with Pluto in the ninth still desperately need to find or create meaning. But Pluto is a destroyer as well; and sooner or later their philosophies may be subjected to some sort of purgatory, or be torn down and structured anew. In this sense, they are sometimes betrayed or let down by their cherished religion or beliefs. The collapse of a belief system may be an almost overwhelming experience, throwing them into deep despair and depression, until they are reborn again through another one.

Their dogmatism and self-righteousness could stem from the fear that if another person's philosophy contradicts their own, then what they believe in may have to be questioned. Rather than endangering the sanctity of what they worship and adore, they may try to control what everyone else believes in or convert all others to their side. The image of God is often colored by what planet is in the 9th. For those with Pluto here, God may not be all justice, beauty and light. He may have a dark side to His nature and occasionally decide He doesn't like them. He could delight in leading them to the edge of a precipice, dangling them there, or destroying them altogether no matter how 'good' they were. It is no wonder many of the people I have met with Pluto in the 9th have difficulty conceiving of a rosy future. As dire as this may sound, some real benefits arise out of their dilemmas. Firstly, they are forced to take a stand on suffering and find some meaning through it, even if it is a fate they can do nothing about. Secondly, they will try to derive as much as they can from every experience, engaging themselves in each and every moment far more completely than others who have a less harrowing concept of God. I said earlier that some may not welcome Pluto in the house at all, although he invariably finds a way of sneaking in. Along these lines, I have met people with this placement who, afraid or thwarted by the search for truth, turn nihilistic. Diametrically opposite to those who use Pluto's constructive probing, these people are aimless and apathetic, and don't see the value in anything. Why bother if it all ends in death anyway? But this is exactly why they should bother. Death is probably the most important event in life; and we can't die well unless we have lived well. Cicero said: 'To philosophize is to prepare for death'. Unlike those with Pluto in the 8th, these people are not necessarily suffering from the repression or malfunctioning of sexual or aggressive instincts, but from the repression or frustration of an equally important and particularly human drive - the will to find meaning in life.

While the 8th house represents drives which push us from within, the 9th represents strivings or goals which pull us from without. For those with Pluto in this house, there is a strong pull to follow Pluto's lead, and yet much anxiety and trepidation about what they might encounter in the process. This dynamic applies to the pursuit of higher education and long journeys as well. Experiences which evoke profound transformations can occur through higher education. Pluto is met within the halls of academia, either in the guise of an important professor who profoundly arouses them, or though conflicts and challenges which any particular course or educational system presents. In certain cases, they may drastically alter their major focus of study at some point during the education. A few people with Pluto in the 9th might make discoveries which require the rewriting of history, the revising of any discipline, and the elimination of that which is old and false in some system of thought.

Long journeys represent another area in which a 9th house Pluto is activated. They can be transformed through travelling or through encountering and assimilating the knowledge and traditions of cultures other than their own. There is a possibility that some people with Pluto in the 9th may project the unacceptable parts of their own psyches onto another race, religion or culture - persecuting and blaming something outside themselves for what is dark or evil in the world. The relationship with in-laws might also be the sphere where Pluto is felt. For instance, if in difficult aspect to the Moon, the mother-in-law or sister-in-law might be seen as threatening or manipulative. The death of an in-law may have a profound effect on the life.

Pluto in 9th House: For those with Pluto in the ninth, politics is their Achilles heel. Either they are afraid of it and shy away from any dealings that smack of political maneuvering, or they go into it with the idea of changing things and get hurt in the process. They generally exhibit a cynical attitude toward politics or any kind of political dealings, yet they themselves are among the most instinctively adept when it comes to manipulating others to get what they want or to get out of what they don't want. Even so, they have a tendency to get caught in political dilemmas and lose thereby. They have a broad streak of righteousness that can surface under stress, causing them to say and do things that can make enemies, often silent ones, that work against them behind the scenes. They have a genuine desire to do good and accomplish good works, but must be careful how they go about it and not offend broad-based interest groups of long standing until their own structure is sound and can withstand a siege. They have a tendency to fly in the face of authority over some immediate issue, which brings about nothing but their own loss of face. They have a great thirst for freedom, and bitterly resent any encroachment upon it, real or imagined. They are generally fearful of getting involved in any group endeavors involving the signing of papers, lawyers, etc., fearing that someone may be pulling a fast one on them. This paranoia can put them at a disadvantage; it can make them hold back from worthwhile opportunities and cause them to put their trust in those who are clever at manipulating their fears to their own advantage. Part of their nature craves the limelight and feels a great urge to step forth and proclaim the truth as they see it; and part of it is terrified of exposure and all the dangerous or embarrassing situations it might bring about. The tension of this ambiguity can cause them to behave very oddly when and if they do step forward. It also makes it hard for them to fight for an issue, because they will surge forward at one moment, then hold back at the next.

Pluto in 9th House: You are tuned in to current social and political problems and disturbed by the failure of those who are largely responsible for dealing with them. Your reading includes philosophy, religion, metaphysics and psychology. You feel that government officials must have a more comprehensive understanding of the great social problems that cut across the barriers of race, creed and national origin. By developing your own skills, you could make a substantial contribution through political or social activity. You obviously care enough to make this effort; but you need training to accomplish your objectives. Finding a suitable career should come first on your list of priorities. Serving the public's needs would exert a positive influence where it's most needed, and would give you a feeling of spiritual enrichment as well.

People often seek your counsel, because you listen attentively to their problems, and they know you can offer them valuable advice. You generally hear more than is being said, as if you were reading between the lines of their conversation. This gives you keen insight into people's problems and an understanding of what motivates them. Your partner must share your interest in social issues and should be similarly concerned about finding solutions to them. It is not likely that you will ever retire, because you consider it a waste of time when you can still accomplish so much. Though you may not require it, you can always turn to your friends for help. Be prepared to revise your past opinions as you gain new information. This will assure that your views are always current and will allow you to withstand those who try to intimidate or gain control over you. If you are troubled by conditions that you observe in your environment, the only answer is to learn whatever skills are required to do something about them. You can be instrumental in guiding people to greater freedom by helping them find solutions to their problems. You should incorporate this objective into the duties of your career. You are deeply sensitive to human suffering, whether the cause is physical, social, political or economic; and you can do much to relieve these anxieties.

Don't depend on getting a lot of help from your family in your endeavors. They may be sympathetic to your aims, but they may not provide you with the financial resources you need to get the education and training for achieving your goals. Resolve to go after what you want with determination that you will succeed. There may be sacrifices in preparing for the life you want; but the rewards will more than compensate for what you have to do without in the meantime.

In general, people trust implicitly in your judgment because you give the impression that you are intimately concerned about them, and you are. They derive many benefits when they capitalize on your suggestions about using their resources more effectively to achieve their goals. Pay some attention to your motivation, though, for if you are primarily interested in winning public attention, your achievements might boomerang. People pick up that kind of vibration, and may resent you for using them to satisfy your personal desires. If publicity comes with accomplishment, fine. But even if it doesn't, do the very best you can.

Pluto in 9th House: Conceptual frameworks: Your higher mind undergoes periodic purges. At certain points in life, you discover a new philosophy, and it hits with unbelievable conviction. All previous ethical understanding is swept away, obliterated by the new clarity. Your entire approach to living changes overnight as the new allegiance galvanizes your mind. Then you stabilize until the next mental housecleaning. Each plateau of mind has immense power. It can be a surgical scalpel, cutting to the essence of life, or it can be a weapon, bludgeoning others into submission. The challenge is to choose the former and avoid the latter.

Cultural perspective: Where cultural diversity is concerned, you're either open or closed. You can be incredibly presumptuous in believing that your particular experience of the world is natural for everyone. In that state, you can't see any farther than your own nose. During these periods, travel is irrelevant; your personality remains unaltered. At other times, your subconscious mind is sufficiently 'cooked' to release its contents into awareness. Then travel can have a profound effect as you open. You become insatiably curious about alternate ways of living; and your pursuit of change through cultural relativity becomes a whirlwind of insights.

Higher education: Education is used as a tool to support intense emotional beliefs. You look for principles to justify your passions. Whatever you're currently studying becomes the whole of your understanding, as if nothing you ever knew before had any relevance. Although it's natural that your quest for understanding will necessitate abandonment of some old ways of thinking, be very careful about what you destroy. The challenge is to promote enlarged awareness, not just to trade one inflexible orientation for another equally fanatical philosophy. The search for truth: Revelation is profound for you, since, unlike some people, you change your life to fit what you understand as true. But truth is not simple; it hides between the lines. So be careful. Lies often masquerade as truth, like wolves in sheep's clothing. Be honest, but do not bludgeon people with your truth - they may hit back with truth of their own. Let others find their own paths. Relativity is what you must develop, the ability to integrate new truth into your life without completely forgetting everything you've unearthed in the past. Remember that all great truths can and do coexist; and don't use the truth destructively. It may come back to haunt you later. Truth is powerful and dangerous, awesome and ultimate.

Ideal society: You would certainly change society, giving it more power, until it surged with volcanic intensity, pregnant with possibility. Wherever outmoded social structures inhibited growth, they would be destroyed. Emotional power would rule ¬pure, pulsing, primal energy. For others, it might end up being heaven or hell, Utopia or 1984. As Ruler of the World, you would be an absolute authority. Your word would be law, but everyone would agree with you anyway, so there would be no need for dissent.

Pluto in 9th House: In the tradition... the ninth house bore a rather romantic name. It was the 'House of Long Journeys'. The implication was that of a mythic Quest, a journey into strange and perilous places, a journey from which one would return, if at all, a changed person. The ninth house was also associated with religion... and that is not as much of a leap from journeys as it might at first seem. Religion is a human attempt to impart meaning to life, or to discover life's meaning. And we learn about life by living it - by fully accepting and undertaking the 'journey'. it is this 'religious' dimension of the ninth house that is really the heart of the matter, as we shall see.

Furthermore, nothing will so challenge and focus our own beliefs as an encounter with their passionately held alternatives. Generally throughout human history, such encounters have been hard to come by. 'Multiculturalism' has been a rare phenomenon; cultures have tended to be monolithic, with a particular set of commonly held values, morals, and mythologies binding them into unity. To experience the full-blown reality of alternative perspectives, one didn't have a long list of options. And travel was high on the list. Just leaving town. Going among the foreigners, the 'heathens', the 'infidels'. It would provide an 'education' unavailable elsewhere......At least until 'education' became widely available - and that is yet another traditional meaning of the ninth house: universities, learning, scholarship. Closely linked to those notions was the idea of the dissemination of knowledge. Hence, the association of the ninth house with the publishing industry... and who hasn't ever been taken on a 'Long Journey' by a book? But it all comes back to the endless search for meaning, pattern and significance in our lives: our 'religious' needs.

What does it mean when Pluto lies here? Your High Destiny: Life hardly feels meaningful automatically. Much of the time we are merely struggling with our responsibilities and wrestling with our circumstances. What honest, reflective person has not occasionally been plagued by that eternal question, 'Why bother?'? Jodie and I saw a cartoon once in which the Almighty appeared to a harried fellow in a vision. His message was, "The Universe exists to annoy you!". I don't think that cartoon made it onto our refrigerator. I guess it cut a little too close to the bone.

In the face of the seeming meaninglessness of life, we turn naturally to religion - and by that word, I don't simply mean Catholicism or Islam. I mean any of the Things To Believe In that humanity has devised. Science serves the purpose for some of us. Art does it for others. Humanitarianism may fit the bill for one person, while making a million dollars may do it for another. And every one of these 'religions' has not only its adherents, but also its spokespeople. Call them Teachers, Exemplars, Preachers... whatever. We humans instinctively seek them out. We want a man or a woman to embody the ideal for us, to speak to us authoritatively and confidently about the moral or metaphysical framework of life.

Your High Destiny is to be such a figure. The responsibility here is enormous. Whenever you speak of Right or Wrong, or the Meaning of Life, people will naturally listen to you. It is as though something radiates from you, a kind of message from God saying, 'Take what this person says seriously'. And if you put out the notion that life is a hopeless mess unfolding in a random universe, people will be mightily influenced by that viewpoint. You can do a lot better than that, but first you must face...Your Distorting Wound: We humans are pretty brilliant as monkeys go. I suspect that perspective is not terribly far from the way the angels look at us. We are inventive, cunning, and creative, but our knowledge of this vast, multidimensional universe is exceedingly limited. When the preacher ascends the pulpit on Sunday morning and begins fulminating about the nature and purpose of life in the cosmos, imagine the angels having a good laugh. Even if the preacher's heart is in the right place, his head is still stuck in the three-dimensional, time-bound world.

But preaching is his job, and he prides himself in it. And when he was a young seminarian, he was deeply inspired by a teacher no older or wiser than he himself is now. What doubts he had in his inherited belief-system were dispelled by that teacher. On top of that, the congregation isn't paying him for his doubts; they want certainty, clarity, and confidence - 'faith', they call it. It’s a commonplace observation that religion has caused more bloodshed and unfeeling, self-righteous sadism in this world than money, sex, and the territorial imperative combined. People will do things for 'faith' that they couldn't stomach for any other reason. And their 'preachers' egg them on with 'messages from God’. With Pluto in the ninth house, you instinctively see all that. You have a skeptic’s capacity to ask the right, embarrassing questions. Reflexively, you question the assumptions underlying whatever metaphysical card-castle you are presented with. You have an especially wary eye when it comes to observing the 'preachers', sniffing out the subtle traps their own egos lay for them, and places where their Shadows leak out into behavior.

When you were young, you were presented with a religion and strongly encouraged to accept it. This religion may not have been a conventional one - it could have been liberal or conservative politics, education, money, almost anything. And you smelled something rotten, and doubted... or believed deeply at first, and thereby set yourself up for a harder fall. Synchronistic principles here often suggest early contact with especially virulent examples of religious or moral hypocrisy, or other similarly disillusioning experiences. The pedophile priest. The philandering guru. If we add such outward biographical events to the stew, your Plutonian education in religion's dark side was that much more intense.

However we read the story, your Distorting Wound is a learned response of doubt, cynicism, and hesitancy to believe. Your Navigational Error: Those of us raised in the Christian tradition know the story of Christ's encounter with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. The gospel accounts give an impression of Pilate not so much as a bad man but as a weak one. He seems motivated to afford Jesus a way out of the crucifixion, if only Jesus would plea-bargain a little. But of course Jesus won't. Near the end of their dialogue, Pilate despairingly asks "What is truth?". In Sunday school, we are encouraged to view this as an example of Pilate's perfidious character, but in fact it's a pretty good question. What is truth? The world is full of people, nefarious or merely gullible, making large sums out of claiming to provide the answer. You figured that out before you were very far into your adulthood; and such parasites make your blood boil. In your compulsion not to get fooled again yourself, and to roust out the tricksters into the bargain, you might make any of several fundamental errors.

The first error lies in adopting doubt and cynicism as your 'religion', and doing so without realizing that they are as narrow and limited as any other doctrine. And not nearly as uplifting, we might add. A person under the spell of that dogma will live a life full of fear, hesitant to reap the real joys of love, charity, and fellowship. He or she might withdraw from real sources of inspiration, and recoil from the pleasures and advantages of simple faith. The second error involves reacting unconsciously to the 'religion' of one's childhood - and moving fanatically into another doctrine as far removed from the birth-religion as one can find: a classic 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' move. Daddy was a right-wing entrepreneurial capitalist; daughter is a left-wing Marxist saboteur. Joe was raised Pentecostal, but then he found Zoroastrianism. Wherever we wind up, if we are in the grips of this error, one eventuality is sure: the preachers of the new religion will prove just as fallible or morally culpable as the preachers with whom we grew up.

A third possible error lies in becoming an Inquisitor regarding either all religions or the religion of one's childhood. Down this road, one zealously, fanatically seeks to discredit belief at every opportunity. The attacks may very well be cogent; our concerns about them lie more in a consideration of their motivations and their benefits to the attacker. Typically, there is a big element of unconscious anger in such attacks, and they accomplish little that enhances anyone's life. A fourth error is an attempt to escape the whole issue, and in fact to shirk one's high destiny. It can be made to sound pretty good, though: "Everybody has to figure it out for him- / herself. Who am I to judge? We should all just trust our inner guidance". These are certainly laudable ideas in many ways. But the miss something. We all wear shoes, but not everyone is cut out to be shoemaker. Most of us drive a car, but only a few of us can rebuild the brakes or the ignition system. Similarly, not everyone is wired to distill the chaos of daily life down to a few reliable moral principles. That's as much an inborn, unique skill as the shoemaker's or the mechanic's. And not everyone possesses it. You are mentally wired to be a philosopher. You carry those instincts and reflexes. And you are not the only one who knows that - anyone sizing you up is going to come to the same conclusion. That's how it works with Pluto. Like it or not, you're set up for that kind of destiny, and people are going to see through that kind of filter. They'll take moral cues from you no matter what you do.

The Healing Method: The first part of your healing method is simple to say, but absolutely essential to the recovery of your high destiny. You must physically leave the land of your birth. This leaving is not necessarily permanent, although it often is. Nor does it necessitate crossing international boundaries; cultural lines count for more here than political ones. If you're a native Californian, moving to New Hampshire might do it. The point is that there is something liberating and refreshing for you about culture shock. Your ninth house wounds are tied up with the 'religion of your people' - your church or temple in youth, or the collective attitude of your ethnic group, your neighborhood, or your extended family... or any combination plate of such factors you might assemble. Just getting away from that environment clears the air. And in that clear air, you will naturally begin to think more freshly.

A second part of your healing depends utterly upon your committing yourself to an educational journey. This may very well involve matriculating in a formal degree program, complete with the diploma to hang on your wall. It may just as easily take a less official form, as, for example, when a person sets out to master the practice of astrology and commits zealously to the formidable intellectual exercise that entails. Again, what is at stake here is a stretching of the boundaries, an extension of consciousness beyond the narrow framework of one's early life. Synchronistic principles declare that in the course of travelling far from home and acquiring an education, you will encounter a religion that works for you. That is part of the shape of your destiny. The third step in the healing lies in accepting it. By 'religion' we refer to a world view or a moral perspective; a set of values to live by. It may or may not be a religion in the customary sense.

The religion that works best for you will be Plutonian, of course - that's what suits your nature. How do we recognize such a belief system? For starters, a Plutonian religion is one that isn't quick to view doubt as a sin; it will encourage questioning, scrutiny, and testing. It is a religion that makes some satisfactory account of the problem of evil in the world; no greeting-card philosophies will work. It is a religion that encourages and supports introspective psychological self-analysis, and ties it inextricably to the notion of the spiritual quest. Typically, it will deal energetically and at length with the realities of death and the dying process, and be willing to embrace positive views on the spiritual potentials inherent in consciously directed sexuality. All these notions are simply Plutonian; a Plutonian religion, which is natural to you, will embrace them all to some degree.

The Energizing Vision: What are we if we believe nothing? What would life be if everything came down to meaninglessness? What would be left? Only appetite....'Man shall not live by bread alone', Jesus said. And it is a simple truth. We need more than mere appetite. We need purpose and meaning. But if, as some tired modern intellectual theologians say, purpose and meaning are purely human creations, it all rings a little hollow. Why bother? Here’s the essence: in your guts, you know that life has purpose. You were born with that certainty. Some early experiences of disillusionment nearly knocked that faith out of you, but it only went underground. Employ your healing methods and the faith is resurrected. And it radiates from you. And that faith is given an integrity and a legitimacy by your own fierce commitment to doubt. How strange that phrase wounds from a conventional religious perspective! But your willingness to question yourself and everyone else, always to go deeper, always to let the truth be more than what you already know, those qualities lift you out of the morass that so often captures the evangelist and amateur guru. You are called upon to speak as one of the moral voices of your community. And as long as you are willing to stay in communion with your own Plutonian shadow, you'll not slip into mere moralizing. Need renewal? Then go questing again! Journeys will punctuate the conscious life for you, and each one will stretch your spiritual frontiers a little wider.

Pluto in 9th House: Individuals who have Pluto in the Ninth House have had the desire and evolutionary need to understand life and themselves in a cosmological, metaphysical, philosophical or religious context. In the broadest possible sense, the Ninth House and Sagittarius are the archetypes through which humanity has a need to explain its connection to the phenomenological nature of the universe and the world in which we live. The Eighth House and Scorpio generated the awareness of 'larger forces' in the universe and the world, forces that were sensed as originating outside the individual. Consequently, there was a need to form some kind of relationship to these forces in order to become identified and united with them. In effect, the relationship allowed the individual to experience these forces directly, and thus to undergo a metamorphosis of his or her personal limitations. The individual became that to which he or she formed a relationship through the osmosis effect. Because of the direct need to experience these larger forces, people and cultures have developed rituals, methods and techniques to harness, possess, control and know them. As a result, this desire and need has led into an understanding and explanation of occult or hidden knowledge. It has also led into internal psychoanalysis or psychological investigations of the inner dynamics or laws that explain who and what we are and how we work. In the Ninth House, the desire and need has been, and is, to explain one's relationship or connection to larger forces. Whereas the person with Pluto in the Eighth House sensed this connection, in the Ninth House the connection is known. As a result, individuals with this placement have needed freedom to pursue whatever experiences are necessary to discover the knowledge that explains those larger forces. As with Pluto in all natural Fire houses, the Ninth House placement gives the individual the feeling that he or she has a special destiny or identity. In the Ninth House, the special identity is directly linked to the individual's relationship to the cosmological, philosophical, metaphysical or religious principles that explain their connection to the universe and the world. These people recognize the phenomenological nature of the universe at large, and in contrast to those with Pluto in the Third House, are not as focused on the immediate physical environment. They understand that, in a phenomenological sense, the world or universe simply exists; that it exists of itself beyond labels or classifications. Yet, because it exists, Ninth House Pluto individuals have desires to understand the fundamental truths that explain the existence of the world and the universe. Truth implies natural laws or principles that govern the totality of life as well as the individual's life.

On this basis, these individuals desire to be free in order to generate whatever experiences are necessary to discover the truth of their existence. They need to understand and explain their relationship to the universe via the principles founded on cosmological, metaphysical, philosophical or religious terms. As a result, many of these individuals come into this life as natural loners. Many of these individuals have travelled far and wide throughout many lifetimes in the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Many have incarnated into diverse cultures all over the planet. It is also common for many to leave a culture, society, or nation in which they felt inhibited or stifled in their pursuit of truth and knowledge. Consequently, many Ninth House Pluto individuals have experienced and will experience a fundamental alienation from their own culture and society. Alienation occurs because most cultures, societies or nations are based on a specific religious or philosophical system, arrived at by general consensus, that serves as the framework for understanding or explaining its relationship to the world and the universe. Because the desire and drive of the Ninth House Pluto person is to search for and discover truth in an unrestricted way, alienation arises from the limitations of society. These limitations lead to external, and therefore internal, confrontations for these individuals.

The confrontations reinforce the sense of alienation from the culture or belief system into which they have been born. Given a prior-life history of incarnating into diverse cultures, many of these individuals will experience alienation because each new culture or society will be different from the one that they have just experienced. The unconscious 'memories' of the most previous life experience will induce the alienation relative to the 'new' culture. This produces a cultural, emotional and philosophical shock that threatens the unconscious security needs of the individual. The experience of restriction, alienation, confrontation and shock reflects the evolutionary impulse to discover the comprehensive truths, principles or laws that underlie the diverse expressions of phenomenological truth as defined by any culture, at any time. Alienation is a necessary experience because it fosters an elimination of any barriers, be they individual or cultural, that are preventing a direct understanding of the fundamental laws and principles that govern this comprehensive and total truth of existence. Because of this evolutionary impulse, many Ninth House Pluto individuals will feel rootless; rather than identifying with any specific nation, they will consider themselves citizens of the world. On the other hand, many of these individuals will naturally gravitate to certain philosophical or cultural expressions that reflect their own inner intuitive sense of how life should be explained or understood. For some this natural gravitation to a specific philosophical or cultural expression of truth is at odds with the society or culture that they were born into in this life. The memories of the past often create a desire or need to rediscover or align themselves with a religious or philosophical tradition from another time and another place. For others the culture that they are born into will mirror perfectly the philosophical or religious tradition necessary to continue their evolutionary journey and to fulfill their karmic requirements. For these individuals the experience of alienation will be minimized or eliminated altogether.

Because Ninth House Pluto individuals desire to understand themselves in these ways, there is a concentrated development of the inner intuitive faculty. Because these individuals know that they are connected to larger forces beyond themselves, and because of the desire to discover the natural laws that explain this connection, they have necessarily had to develop an intuitive faculty - a 'sixth sense’. Intuition is the inherent ability in each of us to 'know' something without conscious reasoning. This knowing or understanding occurs without any effort on the part of the egocentric and subjective mind. Because these individuals know that they are connected to larger forces in the universe, they have 'tapped in' to those forces. By intensely focusing upon those forces, they become aware of their nature and, therefore, of the laws and principles behind those forces. Laws and principles translate into concepts or conceptualization of those forces. Concepts and conceptualizations translate into beliefs. A composite of concepts, laws, principles and beliefs translates into a comprehensive philosophical, metaphysical, cosmological or religious system. The specific nature of mankind's belief systems is determined by individual and collective evolutionary development and geographic locality. In other words, the fundamental laws or principles are the same for all individuals or cultures, but are conceived, conceptualized and expressed in a diversity of cultural and individual ways. This becomes clear when we observe the world's amazing array of religious and philosophical systems. Even though the basic laws and principles are the same for all peoples and cultures, the individual and cultural interpretation of those principles reflects not only diversity but individual and cultural necessity. Individuals with Pluto in the Ninth House will interpret these intrinsic laws and principles according to their own natural evolutionary condition and karmic necessities. The evolutionary need to focus upon and develop the intuitive faculty in order to know the truth of reality creates many problems for the individual and for society. These problems are rooted in the two co-existing desires within the Soul. The desire for separateness results in an egocentric over identification with a specific philosophical or religious system that reflects the needs of the society or the individual. This over identification is based on the need for emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual security and stability. This need for security and stability gives rise to the need for the society or the individual to defend against the intrusion of other interpretations of the same intrinsic laws and principles by other cultures or individuals. In this state of delusion and separateness, the individual or culture will either attempt to impose its system upon another or will withdraw from the threat posed by another individual or culture. The history of human experience on the planet abundantly demonstrates this fact. The recent turmoil in Ireland, the Middle East, and South Africa, China's imposition on Tibet, and so forth are only the latest manifestations of this sad evolutionary development.

See also: Pluto in the 9th House;

Pluto in the 9th House: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Walt Disney, Clint Eastwood, George Harrison, John F. Kennedy, Terence McKenna, Jack Nicklaus, George Orwell, Brad Pitt, Robert Plant, Joseph Ratzinger, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Steinem, Al, Arrow, Bobbie, Cheri, ChrisC, Cynthia, Geoff, Jean, JerryH, JonathanG, Joze (end), Kay, Lori, Prabhukar, River, Supr, Suji, Zeno

Pluto in the 10th House

With Pluto in the house of the more obviously dominant parent (usually the mother in childhood), the early patterns involve extremes in the parent-child relationship. This Pluto child sees his / her mother as overbearing, possibly impatient, smoldering with anger at him or her; an exceptionally special person who inspires extremes of love and hate. To be included in the special grace of her magnetic energy is what this child desires most, and therefore the child is willing to follow the mother's dictums and do whatever is necessary to receive that powerful blessing.

Of course, as these Pluto tenth house individuals grow into middle and late childhood, the inner psychic touch and intense love-hate bond with the mother will prove to be a threat to the growth of personal independence. A crisis occurs in which these children must choose between the security of getting along with her by obedience to her social training and expectations, and the insecurity of rebellion, knowing nothing of what might come next. Most children will opt for the security, for they fear that if they are rebellious then mother will get angry, and the relationship will end. And this particular relationship is a powerful one, for these Pluto children will never at any time be able to ignore their mother. The connection is just too magnetic and intense!

The only way to get out of the aura of such a strong parent is to be physically separated from her over great distances. Even though there may be no communication between the adult Pluto tenth house people and their mothers, the impact of this parent lives with them, creating profound attitudes about personal fulfillment, status and success. It is in the tenth house that people are able to get the rewards for their own essential lovability; and it is usually the mother who originally makes the child aware of this factor. She indicates through her actions whether her children are lovable or not, giving them an idea of what being loved means, or what not being loved can do to one's life. This factor can show up later in calamitous business and personal decisions that are based on the low levels of self-love and lovability that Pluto people believe they possess and deserve.

Insecurity over this factor can cause children and later adults to toe the line, giving up the need to be free agents, to think and feel for themselves. This is reflected by children who grow through adolescence without the usual rebellion or clash of wills that is so common in that stage of development - only to have it happen later, much later! A few rare individuals never break with this position of powerlessness before the parent, authority or society. Most who don't make the break in adolescence, however, will experience it in their thirties, at the latest. Some children or adolescents rebel earlier; and the clash of wills with the mother is a daily struggle. These people often believe that she is standing in their way, preventing them from loving themselves; or that because of her their life is not as fun and lively as they think they deserve. They become resistant to any form of suggestion or command, and decide that they know much more than the teachers they encounter at school.

Expressions of personal anger can be scary with these individuals, for it was never allowed in childhood (although mother and father both seem to have given themselves ample room for this disruptive emotion). Because people with this Pluto placement are insecure in expressing their anger, they may become self-righteous, and refuse to listen to what anyone else says - particularly a teacher or any other authority figure - for fear that anger could erupt through open disagreement and become destructive, destroying relationships around them. The early confrontation with personal will, and the decision whether to develop or deny it, leads to career extremes in adulthood. Often these people can be found in low income or bottom of the ladder-type jobs, because they have allowed their parents and then society to assume the power over their lives. Their bosses are people to be feared, drawing out the same responses that mother did years before. They quietly do their job, smoldering with resentment, in anguish because their uniqueness or special destiny is not being fulfilled.

They may be considered poor employees, because their temperament generates clashes with their fellow workers. They may suddenly quit, or get injured on the job and receive disability payments. Or they may just up and disappear without notice. They may continue in some unfulfilling work to punish themselves for their independent thoughts, sacrificing their career to prove mother wrong (or possibly out of misguided love for her).Others with undeveloped Plutonian energy decide to have the best revenge on their mother, by making themselves more important than she was to them. These people become bosses, and treat their employees with a punishing attitude originally developed in childhood as a response to the mother (or father). They can drive themselves unrelentingly, and deal harshly with any sign of weakness on the part of an employee. They have a hard time delegating responsibility, and wish to have power over other people's lives. They can be very possessive toward their employees, who seldom go beyond the call of duty because their extra efforts are neither rewarded nor even remembered. Seldom will those with this Pluto placement ever ask for help or admit that anything is beyond their competence. Fiascos can result from too much posturing and too little knowledge; and strange circumstances may befall these people.

They have a desire to move beyond their current status, whatever that is, and expand it to include more and more of society - and more power too, of course. In fact, they'd like to change society, and they're sure they know just how it should be done. If they don't get some kind of public power, they'll certainly use whatever power they have on the people who are available to them. Playing 'top dog' can take many a nasty turn - extreme egotism is ultimately self-defeating. They demand attention; whether negative or positive makes no difference. Whatever helps to fill that void within them which makes them feel so unloved and powerless. Some Plutonians do manage to take their own power and lovability back from outside themselves. This usually occurs in the late twenties, when there is time to develop a feeling of self-sufficiency. Despite their intense relationship with the mother, they still realize that they create their own reality, even if it is still very limited in scope.

A desire for public power comes with this placement, but it doesn't necessarily have to take a destructive path. The sense of purpose and personal destiny that this placement portends can be fully realized, but only if the Pluto person invests less energy in confrontations with the mother or other authority figures, and applies it to a passion for work and life. This passion is then channeled into the career, making work a personally fulfilling activity, reinforcing the feelings of self-esteem and self-love that are already there. There must be a gut-level desire to do whatever it is they're doing, for these people to be at all satisfied with themselves. Whenever they get involved in something, they will move to the top of it and understand it in a way that few others could. They are entrepreneurs, successful executives, or fulfilled parents. This placement is found in the horoscopes of all kinds of leaders, because it emphasizes reaching large numbers of people, expanding awareness on a large scale, and utilizing the most advanced technology of the day. These people are born scientists (physicists in particular), but they are fully capable of being great teachers, healers or mystics if they want. They do not have to demand respect and authority, for they magnetically attract these things. Those who come in contact with them don't have to be convinced of that! Once these individuals learn to deal with the mother (authority figure) without and the mother (internalized parent) within, they have learned the essence of self-nurturing, and this brings them a great feeling of inner security. They know they will always survive and prosper. They know too that they will always be able to magnetize significant improvements into their life, as if by magic. (And incidentally, this magic will work in the business sphere too. It would come as no surprise to find one of these people lighting ceremonial candles at home over a big business deal planned for the next day.)

The outer results of the positive or negative use of Pluto in the tenth house are obvious. Either these individuals are successful in some way, or they are not. Success in this case is measured by the amount of personal satisfaction they get out of the life work they have chosen to do. This satisfaction is the result of personal passion, a love of the self that is expressed through being as well as doing. With the development of self-love comes the willingness to forgive and let go of the past, which includes surrendering the habit of blaming others for personal failures. Letting go of the past also means that mother in particular is forgiven, and the seemingly countless disagreeable things she did during the person's childhood are for the most part forgotten. The new, mature relationship with the mother re-establishes itself in these Pluto children's maturity, bringing out the loving quality of that powerful inner bond which has been untapped for so long.

When Pluto transits this house, however, major changes in the way people think about themselves are bound to take place. A crisis of self-image or self-love can create upsets in love, home and career. Powerful career interests from the past no longer hold the same sway in the psyche. There needs to be a new expression through career or love fulfillment that reflects the change in self-image which is taking place. During this time, difficulties with mother or any other powerful authoritarian figure in the life can take on the intense love-hate polarity developed in childhood. Transformation of relationships requires much attention, and a lot of struggle too. The reason for all this overhaul is that Pluto, planet of perspective, has just reached the very zenith of the chart, and is expanding the individual's perception on a very deep and personal level. Old inner psychic programs from the past are regurgitated into the conscious mind at this time, and must be dealt with and discarded. Failure to do this willingly results in many an unpleasant crisis. Extreme resistance to dealing with the crises at this time can create death - death of the self or of someone significantly close to the individual affected.

If a close death occurs, the person will have to re-evaluate life; and therein lies the hope that a new perspective may make life more meaningful and fulfilling in the future. This crisis of self-love will bring out the individual's capacity for self-healing, to let go of things and people that don't work any longer, and thereby to create self-love and passion. If there are no obvious visible effects when Pluto transits across the cusp of the tenth house, then often the birth time used for the chart is incorrect. If the time is truly correct and the individual still experiences little or nothing, then simply wait. It sometimes happens that Pluto energy, although shifting at this time, is in the process of building up 'from the bottom', so to speak, into a major shift later on. It will deal with issues from the initial hit (the time period coinciding with the transit across the tenth house cusp).

Know that deep changes are still being made, and that the outer appearance of these changes, even though it may be delayed, will still be significant. Also, any work done on personal growth at this time could result in much greater success in all areas of life, which could forestall the need for a crisis-style awakening. If you are experiencing the negative effects of Pluto in your tenth house, whether by transit or natally, you can only overcome them by forgiving your mother or other tenth house parent figure. Become aware of how you project your mother's image onto other people who aren't your mother, who don't look like her, and who are unique in their own right. Refer to the visualization instructions at the end of the fourth house Pluto section for a parental forgiveness technique. What you must do at this time is to let go of the emotional image of your mother as a parent. Let her become a real person, with failings, weaknesses, strengths and a unique personality all her own. Don't make generalizations about her any more. Even if you would never choose her as a personal acquaintance had she not been your mother, now is the time to let her become your equal, and you hers.

Give her the freedom to be herself, and in the process you will invariably begin freeing yourself also. When you forgive her, don't expect any response from her now that your image of her is different from what it has always been. Even if she is still alive and playing the same old mind games with you, don't concern yourself with her attitudes about you. You need only be concerned with your attitudes about her! You see, when you change your own attitudes, the reality around you changes. This is seldom as apparent as when Pluto is in the tenth house. When you change, then your mother will change also, whether she is alive or not. The inner image of your mother, that person within your memory, will change. Your attitude about her changes, and so does your past with her. You are literally giving yourself the change to rewrite your past, creating in it a successful mother-child relationship.

I'm not making any guarantees here, but I have often observed that people who truly forgive their mother are able to transcend many old emotional barriers and hang-ups. Despite your having a seemingly resistant and manipulative mother, the relationship actually changes! You could be giving yourself the greatest gift possible; a new and positive relationship with your mother, and therefore a renewed, inspired love for your inner self. You will have succeeded in the Plutonian challenge of transformation, and you're bound to find your own personal fulfillment as an outgrowth of this change.

Pluto in 10th House: The compulsive nature of the Pluto energy mediated through the 10th house focuses on the nature and expression of authority. You are likely to aspire to positions of power and authority, with the recognition that this implies. You will try to develop your natural will-power and harness it to your drive to be a success, enabling you to rise to prominence in some social or career area that you are aiming towards.

This search for authority is partially derived from a search to define your own sense of separate identity, to be known as 'someone', rather than to be an anonymous 'nobody'. You also tend to believe that those at the top are there because of right and suitability, that essentially they are superior to others, and that support of the status quo and an elitist establishment is necessary for social stability. You will be able to understand the ways of authority, and have the ability to work successfully with people in positions of power; this can aid a possible career in politics, government and local affairs involving hierarchies and bureaucracies.

If you find that you cannot personally rise to heights of social and public prestige, then you will attempt to maintain contact with those who have, so that power by association can be experienced. Other ways to express this compulsion are either to oppose the Establishment, by having extreme revolutionary or libertarian views, or to use any influence and power that you have in order to reform existing structures of authority. The way of direct confrontation is likely to be merely a replacement of an existing system which is disliked, by a new one which is just another personal or group preference. Either is usually an imposition on the majority by a powerful minority, and historically never works as well in real life as it does in theory; and in general the new régime becomes as dictatorial as the previous one, stamping out all dissent. Any attempt by you to initiate change will create controversy, and polarize your supporters and opponents; and you could often feel quite misunderstood. Much will depend upon how you deal with people, because that is likely to sow your seeds of future success or failure. You will need to evaluate your personal motives and values in the light of any public fame or success, to free yourself of any glamour and illusions concerning authority and power, and from the need to tie your sense of identity in so strongly with your ambitions.

Pluto, acting as a transformative and subverting energy, will use such aspects of your life to force you to discover new ways of understanding. If your personal identity is supported by being in a position of power, then be ready for Pluto to erode your influence and reputation, perhaps stripping you of it altogether. You need to have a deeper perception of the social responsibilities of authority, and how to use it correctly and in a socially beneficent manner; even if the immediate sphere of influence is limited to your immediate family, the same applies.

The abuse of authority is seen throughout history; the self-creation of leaders and those who follow is a common picture. To enter any 'New Age', each individual has to release his own inner light, and learn to follow his own path in co-operation with others who have achieved the same, in a unanimity of purpose and freedom - not as leaders and followers, and by the imposition of a self-serving authoritarian élite.

Pluto in 10th House: These placements show very difficult conditions with authority figures and most probably a parent who was oppressive, controlling, and perhaps even abusive. The result is deep-seated resentment toward people in power (maybe toward the whole world) and a determination never to be under the control of someone else. The bind is that these people are also very success-oriented, and it is difficult to succeed if they are forever setting up battles with the powers that be. The scorpion's sting means that they are usually the ones who wind up getting hurt. They may be playing with the Big Guys, who are born strategists, while their own resentments lead them to make ill-considered moves.

Parents with this position who are not able to be powerful in the world may act out power needs on their children, repeating, in fact, what was done to them. Pluto in the tenth shows a critical, highly ambitious parent who respected nothing but BIG success and was never pleased with child-sized successes. The parental curse 'You'll never amount to anything' may have been frequently heard; and this Plutonian may go through repeated humiliating public failures in order to get even. This depth and degree of the fail for spite game is not fun! These people may be stubbornly resistant to healing, because all healing in some way represents being under someone else's power. Possibly it is best taken alone. Working through exercises on resentment could be very important. A healing career is quite possible - and they will have to heal themselves in the course of their studies! People who are freed from the negative manifestations of this placement, who are able to work with power in a clean way, can have a strong impact on the world, bringing about healing and reform.

Pluto in 10th House: If we take the tenth house to represent the mother, then those with Pluto here may see her as dark, threatening and possessing the ability to destroy them. She can be experienced as a witch, or someone who is primeval, ruthless and manipulative. They may sense a seething anger and pent-up frustration or sexuality emanating from her. They feel as if she is always there, somehow watching them, even if she is not physically present. In short, she is felt to be dangerous and untrustworthy. However, in reality, she may not be this sort of person at all, but the child with Pluto here, in certain cases, may experience her predominantly this way. Or sometimes the early death or loss of the mother is the root of later problems in life.

As covered in the general discussion of the 10th house, our earlier experiences of the mother (our first container) will contribute to the way in which we relate to the larger container of society. If the image associated with a negative Plutonic mother is projected onto the world, then these people will fear that the world is a dangerous place intent on destroying them. Some with this placement may react to this by withdrawing from society and having as little to do with the world as possible. Others may compensate for their dread of being devoured with an obsessional need for power and control over others. Attempting to regain a lost sense of infantile omnipotence, they strive to extend their territory of influence to include as much of the world as they can. If they are in control, if they are the ones in authority, then they feel safe. Their need for power can be so consuming that any means will justify achieving those ends. Also, there is a distrust of anyone who has authority over them, a desire to dethrone or destroy those in charge before it's too late. For all these reasons, those with Pluto in the 10th need to re-evaluate and come to a deeper understanding of their underlying psychological motives for ambition, power or worldly success.

Of course, the above description is a one-sided explanation of Pluto projected in a negative light. It is possible that the mother may carry a positive Pluto association. She could be viewed as the great bestower of life, and experienced as an exceptionally capable source of comfort and support through all the contingencies of daily life. Some people I know with this placement have watched the mother struggle successfully with a personal crisis or a severe life trauma, and were most impressed with her ability to manage hard times and come out the other side renewed and regenerated. She then become a positive prototype for later challenging experiences with which they had to contend. In this way, as adults with Pluto in the 10th they model qualities of strength, will and endurance to other people. Pluto’s placement in the chart is where we periodically tear down, destroy or alter existing circumstances in order to create new ones. It is where we may be reduced to nothing in order to rise again. In some cases, Pluto here may indicate the loss or leaving behind of an established career and the necessity to embark on a new vocation of an altogether different nature.

Those with Pluto in the 10th ultimately require a career which is deeply engaging, meaningful, and exciting. Either the work is of a 'Plutonian' nature or they approach the whole area of work with the kind of intensity and complexity associated with this planet. Some may be responsible for reforming existing institutions of society which are outworn or outdated. Other fields related to Pluto are those of medicine, psychology, and occult or psychic work, investigative science and journalism, politics, mining, atomic research, etc.. I have done charts for two people with Pluto in the 10th who were in jobs in which they were not allowed to reveal the exact nature of their work. Some may engage in careers which reflect society’s shadowy side - such as prostitution, crime or underworld involvement.

Occasionally, I have come across people with Pluto in the 10th who tell me that they have no ambition. After my talking with them for a while, it becomes clear that they still see themselves as 'small' compared to the big, powerful world (mother) out there. Usually, on some level, they are frustrated by the lack of influence they wield, or the unchallenging job they are already in. In certain cases, it strikes me that some people with Pluto in the 10th may not find their true vocation until they are more capable of using their power wisely and for the good of the larger whole, rather than for purely personal ends.

Pluto in 10th House: You are disturbed by your knowledge of what's wrong with society, and you know who must be held accountable for the problems. If you had the chance, you know you could help reverse those conditions. In fact, it is part of your destiny to pursue that goal in addition to satisfying your personal ambitions. Your career will give you sufficient leverage to help determine how society will evolve. You know how to solve problems, especially those of large groups of people. You exert the right pressure to achieve your objectives; and no-one is better at applying creative skills for that purpose. You naturally attract the attention of important people. By effectively using your financial resources, you can influence the right people to help create a better world. This talent assures that you will have the financial security you need so you can indulge yourself in this important pursuit.

You are deeply sensitive to the problems of society and to people who are victims of political, social or economic injustice. Because you understand people's individual difficulties and problems, you are better able to cope with larger social issues. You use any tool you need to help those who cannot help themselves. Privately you feel that you are destined to serve society by fulfilling this obligation and that in the future you must be dedicated to serving others.

Relations between you and your parents were probably strained; but you resolved to succeed in spite of that fact. You may have sublimated some of your resentment and decided to prove that you could succeed without their support. This is probably why you want to improve the quality of life for others while improving your own life. You are impatient with people who lack the courage of their convictions or who have no convictions. You are happy to help those who are willing to help themselves. Your mate must share your enthusiasm for your goals and support you, even though your career may cause problems between you at times. You realize that your gains will be overcome by losses if you aren't ready to accept all the responsibilities that go with an important position of trust.

With knowledge comes power as well as the responsibility for upholding the highest standards of using that power. You have an opportunity to satisfy the most pressing needs of society, because of your talent for getting people interested in the programs you start for their benefit. You have the power to do whatever is necessary to have them accepted. Because you are devoted to the task, you will win the support you need to achieve your goals and help others achieve theirs. You are demanding of your children, and you expect them to take full advantage of the benefits you have provided to succeed in their own lives. The demands of your career may intrude on your romantic interests, but that is how you established your priorities. You have the power to accomplish your objectives and to decide how abundant or austere life will be for those who are under your care.

You have the great privilege and awesome responsibility of helping to determine how social conditions will evolve. Don't forget those who helped you when you needed it. One good turn deserves another; and you will have many opportunities to repay the favors you received when you needed them.

Pluto in 10th House: Extremely single-minded in doing what they want to do, those with Pluto in the tenth will let nothing stand in their way once they have decided what they want to do and be. Sometimes this shows as a firm determination not to do what others want them to do, particularly in youth, before they know what it is they want. It is hard for them to know what they want in youth because it is often something very unique that rises out of the socio-economic-psychological nature of the times. No failures, however crushing; no sidetracks, however tortuous and time-consuming; no handicaps, however, crippling, can deter them from their ultimate goal once they have determined what it is. Their will grips onto the image of themselves in a certain role; and nothing, not even their own good sense, can change it. Their imagination builds castles in the air that they must drive themselves to make real.

They are far-seeing, both back into the past and ahead into the future; and this can set them apart from their fellows and make them appear peculiar to others with more ordinary or immediate goals. There is apt to be quite a bit of loneliness along the way until they find others who understand; and even when they do, the demands of their fate often require that they part company.

This often testifies to a difficult start in life; the early loss of one or both parents, or similar external circumstances that shatter the peace and calm of the family and set them on their own, psychologically if not physically, at an early age. They are rarely seekers of power for its own sake, tending to be shy and constrained in front of groups; but they may seek it as a means to their own personal ends. They are capable of disregarding any and all ordinary demands placed on them by society, but are also capable of working nonstop around the clock for years toward their own personal goals, putting up with situations that would deter most others, if they feel that it will ultimately lead to their destiny.

It is a partial testimony to a long, healthy life, particularly when their goal is one that cannot be reached in one lifetime, as though they can't take time out for sickness or death. If fate or fortune allows them to achieve their goal fairly early, they may die young. If there are oppositions to Pluto from the fourth, from the Sun, Mars, or Pluto's dispositor, they may die before their goal has been reached, or before they have found out what it is; but this is usually more due to the psychological stress of being so unique and lonely than to frustration over barriers in their path. They have magnificent imagination, almost a sixth sense about the nature of reality, that enables them to grasp the possibilities inherent in whatever it is that interests them. They have passionate love natures. Their lives may be filled with unique love affairs which may be long and drawn out. They may have to overcome barriers to possess their beloved; and this may go into old age, or happen more than once.

Pluto in 10th House: Collective responsibility: Collective responsibility is like the water around the fish, ever present but never seen. Much of your life may be spent searching for ways to make it visible, to find a successful form for your longing to grow up. On occasion, you'll find yourself in a situation where all your power is called forth. When this happens, let it come. Allow ego concerns to be washed away in a flood of communion with larger issues. You are the troops held in reserve, to be used only when the battle reaches its peak and the outcome is in doubt. Then you're called forth to save the day, hurled into the fray, a cavalry change, a secret weapon, an ace up the sleeve. Your challenge is to be prepared.

Professional ambition: Ambition is powerful but complex. You may wander about for long periods, aware of intense ambition but unable to find suitable expression. Or you may be thrust into a position of authority in a profession for which you did not consciously prepare. Also, you may abruptly change professions at critical points in your life. It can appear that you've burned your bridges behind you. You'll know, however, that you are still being faithful to an inner calling, that you simply had to destroy old forms in search of better avenues of expression. Negatively, you can be ruthless, secretive, and underhanded in ambition, and you must guard against the tendency to become despotic. These tactics may bring you great power, but they sow the seeds for destruction of your reputation, something you could overlook. Your challenge is to use power rather than abuse it.

Missions and messages: Your life shows that there are deeper energies coursing through our personalities, deeper than we know or can control. We learn from your life about being driven by an emotion, obsessed by an image, compelled by an idea. We see the power latent in every human being, and we remember the importance of releasing that power in ways that transform us for the better. We see the presence of profound goodness and horrible evil, and we learn about the necessity of making conscious choices to consecrate our lives to the good in ourselves, even as we must acknowledge and occasionally succumb to the dark. Finally, we see in you evidence that life can change totally. We remember that we can rid ourselves of what is no longer vital to begin again, fresh and new.

‘Outer-link' parent: Your father may have been a powerful force in the community. He may have ruled with an iron hand, brooking no challenges to his authority. Or he might have been distant, driven by work and professional responsibilities. In any event, you didn't know him well, and possibly not at all. He could have changed in a fundamental way, becoming a different person as you moved through your childhood. Your imprints with him are a mystery to you. There are huge chunks of your background still buried. You need to unearth your father once you reach adulthood, to excavate your memories, and even late in life you may still have major realizations about the man and his effect on you.

Authority: You're very sensitive to the issue of control over others, and their control over you. Your personal authority has great emotional depth; and others are polarized: either drawn hypnotically to obey completely or likely to resist with their full power. Either way, your effect is potent. Understand that this power is real, even if it's invisible to you. Unconscious power can indeed corrupt the best of us, so work diligently to purify your motives, open your emotions, and monitor your behavior.

Pluto in 10th House: In the tradition... ...the tenth house is often named 'The House of Honor'. An astrologer of five hundred years ago might receive an enquiry, "Am I in good odour with the Duke of Burgundy?" That mediaeval astrologer would then rightly consult the condition of the client's tenth house and provide an answer: "Nay, he aims to behead ye, and your firstborn besides”. The specifics of the foregoing dialogue are marked indelibly with the spirit of a bygone culture, but let's translate it into modern terms. At a cocktail party, two people meet and begin the eternal process of sizing each other up. Here's one question almost guaranteed to appear: "By the way, what do you do for a living?" Read: 'what is your status?'. Translate back into the mediaeval lexicon: 'are you in good odor with the Duke?'. Translate again: 'where are you in the tribal hierarchy?'.We humans are intensely social creatures. And society is always structured and hierarchical to some degree. From the 'ruling élite' down to the 'cool kids at school', we observe the tendency of our species to establish pecking orders. There is much that is emotionally and philosophically difficult about this reality; and my purpose here is not to condemn or defend it, merely to say that concern with status is part of the human picture and that astrology describes it through tenth house symbolism.

But astrology goes further. While status and reputation are inextricably bound to the tenth house, and 'career' is one of the central ways in which we establish those valuations for ourselves, much more is at stake here. Doing something for the human community, publicly representing some principle or ideal, are also tenth house concerns. Navigated consciously, this house provides a sense of mission or destiny in one's life. Personally, I encode the tenth house as one's 'Cosmic Job Description' ¬your 'job' as the Great Spirit would define it. If the IRS agrees, so much the better. Then you've accomplished one of the great coups of conscious tenth house work: you've figured how to get paid for doing your spiritual work. What if you were born with Pluto here? Your High Destiny: Truth hurts: the reality of that notion is hard to escape. Certainly, we human beings are fond of rationalization and denial. But there's another observation to sit next to the first one: avoiding the truth hurts even worse. That pair of ideas summarizes much of what we need to understand about Pluto in general.

Truth-avoidance is a popular sport not only on the level of individual psychology. Communities and nations practice it blithely as well. In cynical moments I sometimes think our electoral process boils down to a talent contest in that regard. We might say the same for what often happens in churches.

Lies catch up with us sooner or later, whether we're individuals or countries. And then we go down in flames reading inspirational literature, or we deal bravely with what is actually real. For a community or a nation to follow the higher road, it requires leadership. It requires a courageous man or woman to speak out clearly about popular lies and their costs - and to define a better way. Such a person may or may not be 'charismatic'; he or she may or may not radiate self-confidence and authority. The message matters more than the messenger at such times. And the community that person addresses may be a town or a nation, or more commonly a segment of the population. basically, the tenth house terrain begins where your personal relationships end, and extends from there out toward the horizons of the global village: it may or may not, in other words, involve what we commonly call 'fame'. But it always involves touching the lives of people whom we do not really know on a personal level. And for you, your high destiny involves touching that larger community in a Plutonian way: representing some fierce truth, and fighting the trench wars for its communal realization.

Your Distorting Wound: Since you were small, you have felt (correctly!) that you were born 'to do something big and important'. Pluto, at its best, is concerned only with those activities which are capable of imparting a palpable sense of meaning and purpose to life, and which fill us with fiery intensity. Anything less is boring and empty. It is this pattern of motive and ideal that shapes your healthiest perspective on career. How well-supported was ambition at that scale when you were small? Your wound lies in this region. As always, life's dark side can touch us a multitude of ways, and not everyone with the same configuration will have the same story - or at least the symmetry will not always be immediately apparent. Let's consider some wounding scenarios: Maybe one or both of your parents suffered deadening kinds of work, and could not imagine any alternatives. Their attitudes conveyed to you, unconsciously or overtly, an image of the 'Big World' as a jungle in which mere survival was the best for which one could hope.

A variation: maybe parents or other significant role models in your youth were truly limited in their ability to find rewarding, spirit-charging careers due to social prejudice, political dislocations, or economic troubles. Still, the same attitude of limitation and impossibility would be transmitted to you. Perhaps you were born female in a culture displaying a distinct shortage of imagination regarding 'a woman's place'. Built into that reality is an unconscious, systematic disempowering of a girl-child's self-confidence regarding career. After a generation of feminist activism, these are familiar thoughts, but they still sometimes wield considerable potency in shaping women's images of their place in the big world. Perhaps you were born male in a culture displaying a distinct shortage of imagination regarding 'a man's place'. This is discussed less than the feminists' perspective, but it's every bit as powerful ¬and limiting - a force. The pressure on men blindly to achieve conventional status is enormous. We are taught to experience pride or shame in proportion to our accrual of power and / or money. To what extent could such concerns have robbed you of space for the fuller expression of individuality and creativity in terms of your work? Underlying all these wounding scenarios is a dark Plutonian image of the Community as an inhospitable place, resistant to the expression of anything truly exciting or individual, and affording at best a struggle to remain alive.

Let's carry our analysis of the Wound a step further. Kids in general don't know much about the realities of the world. When we ask children what they want to be when they grow up, we take their answers with a grain of salt. What child would say, 'An insurance salesman'? (But the real world has more than a few contented insurance salespeople, I suspect.) While there are sometimes fascinating exception, a pretty good rule of thumb is that a child's answer will at best provide a kind of veiled metaphor - the little boy, for example, who will become an aeronautical engineer may say 'Astronaut!'. His nose is pointing in the right direction, and his soul guides him by offering grandiose exaggerations of the life he will actually create. It's a delicate mechanism, even a sacred one. With your Plutonian tenth house, you truly do have a high destiny... and in youth the unconscious mind would tend to produce exaggerated metaphors of even that. Thus: 'When I grow up I will be a famous movie star'. Or even: 'When I grow up I will save the world’. Loving adults may have felt that they needed to 'help' you adjust to the real world by 'grounding' you. Unwittingly they sabotaged the grand mechanism by which your deep Self was preparing foundations in your imagination for the realization of what you were actually born to do. What is at stake here is simple to say: for the realization of certain adult destinies, a degree of ungrounded grandiosity in youth is a psychological prerequisite.

Your Navigational Error: Would you stroll across a sunlit meadow for a million dollars? Not to put thoughts in your head, but I feel a high degree of confidence in my ability to predict your answer. What if the meadow contained nine deadly buried land mines? Now your answer enters more distinctly into the realm of individuality. My guess is that some of you would abruptly change your minds about the stroll, while others would start balancing the joyful prospect of the cash against the probabilities of more cataclysmic eventualities. Let’s add a third condition: there is a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex pursuing you. Across the meadow lies your only escape. Suddenly taking your chances with those land mines has more appeal. Before we add a fourth condition, let's sit with the image for a moment. There you are, nervously light-footing it across the sunny grass, torn between the scrutiny of each footfall and jittery over-the-shoulder considerations of our Jurassic friend. Are you appreciating the sheer beauty of the meadow? Are you mentally designing the dream-home you might build there with the million bucks? (Do you even remember the million bucks?) Probably not. Under that kind of pressure, more aesthetic, creative interests recede into the background. Our fourth condition: the dinosaur is a fake, one of Spielberg's clever illusions. There are no buried land mines; it was a lie. Your behavior in the meadow makes sense, but only on the basis of the information you believe. If we stopped you and said, 'You know, when you get that money, I'm seeing a Frank Lloyd Wright design up there on that rise-', you'd look at us as though we were utterly mad. You would be perfectly convinced that you were behaving in the only possible way, given the threatening realities. The illusory realities.

Your Navigational Error lies in imagining too many land mines and hungry dinosaurs. You could fear the world too much, and thereby rob yourself - and the community - of the fruits of your destiny. For the community, those fruits mean some kind of healing, leadership, or inspiration. And for you, they mean Plutonian heat, intensity, and vision in your life. The human world is inherently dangerous and negative in many ways; what you might leave out of the equations is the full realization of your own power to cope with those obstacles. And that distorts your sense of the scope of your possibilities here. If you succumb, you may find yourself in a career or social position you find shamefully out-of-kilter with your own values. The bleaker Plutonian possibility here lies in still finding yourself wielding the social power we associate with this planet, but swept along in a current of events that leave you working for the 'bad guys', perhaps in a glitzy role. If you are brave enough to admit that to yourself, you feel cynicism, shame, and helplessness. If you're not brave enough to admit it, you'll become a tyrant in that role as you unconsciously attempt to justify your own poor choice with the sheer volume of your voice.

Some individuals who have had such prior-life experiences will go through cycles of pessimism, depression, bitterness, spitefulness and jealousy of those who are in positions of authority in this life. They may be unable to define or accept the limits of their social capacity and be unable to follow the prescribed ways and means of actualizing what capacity they do have. Guilt can occur through the inner awareness of their failure to utilize their potential; or guilt can be projected outward if they blame the stifled conditions of their lives on society or on others in general.

In truth, the responsibility for such conditions is their own. Often, the parents reinforce their guilt because they judge their children's shortcomings against their own standards of conduct. On a more positive level, those who have mastered the lessons of self-determination, self-discipline and the ways and means that a society prescribes to realize ambition, capacity and social function have held meaningful social positions in other lives. Because they have learned these lessons before, these individuals can actualize the social function for which they are evolutionarily and karmically destined with little effort. The roles that they have played and can play, large or small, commonly have a positive and transformative impact either within their specific area of work or within society as a whole. Those who have learned to conduct themselves in relation to transcultural and timeless standards of conduct, or have at least determined to attempt to conduct themselves in this way, can play roles that inspire others to improve their own lives. This impact can be small or large depending on the evolutionary and karmic signature of the individual. In certain cases, this impact has transcended the borders of the individual's native country and touched others in other lands.

Those individuals who have made an effort to learn the required evolutionary and karmic lessons in the past will express natural leadership qualities at whatever evolutionary level they have evolved to. They will be the embodiment of self-determination, and can act as role-models for others who wish to motivate themselves in the same way. These individuals will understand that they are responsible for their own actions, and will not use devious means of achieving their ambitions. Commonly, they will feel an intense contempt and dislike for those who resort to devious ways of realizing their goals, and are not afraid to confront those who do use these tactics. The Tenth House Pluto person thus exposes others to their motivations that make them operate as they do. In so doing, he or she has the potential to influence others toward a higher standard of conduct.

These individuals have commonly had a parent or parents who support, encourage and understand what they must do with their lives. Sometimes one parent is supportive and the other is not. Sometimes the one that isn't eventually comes around to see that the path that the individual must travel is right for him or her, even if it does not conform to the parent's wishes. In addition, the Tenth House and Capricorn are the archetypes through which we all come face to face with our own mortality, and with time and space itself. These archetypes produce the awareness that we have a certain time span in which to fulfill our destinies. Consequently, Tenth House Pluto individuals feel this awareness more acutely than those who do not have Pluto in this house or sign.

This awareness enforces lessons of social and emotional maturity; to grow up and get on with it. It must occur to enforce the awareness of timing in our lives, and that the structural organization of reality at whatever level or application changes or evolves over and through time. The rise and fall of nations, seasonal change, and the evolving nature and structure of an individual's reality all reflect this fact. This awareness, with the necessary reflection, allows for structural change. This change will occur with respect to that which is outmoded or crystallized so that growth at any level of reality can occur. If negatively expressed in an individual, this awareness produces a sense of futility and pessimism: 'What's the point?'. Positively, it produces the motivations required to accomplish what the individual is here to do.

As with the Fourth House, Tenth House Pluto individuals, in almost all cases, have switched gender in their most recent prior lives; sometimes the current life is the first experience in the opposite gender in many lifetimes. This usually signals that a state of imbalance has been reached and further evolutionary growth could not occur through the gender that came before. Thus, for evolutionary purposes, they have switched genders to promote balance and further growth. The resulting hormonal shift of the gender switch can create a variety of emotional moods and feelings that are difficult for the individual to relate to, let alone control. These emotions seem to have a life of their own. The evolutionary need is to become aware of the source or trigger producing the moods and emotions rather than being a victim of them. In this way self-knowledge will grow - what are these feelings telling me about myself? The polarity point is the Fourth House. The evolutionary intent is that the individual learn to develop internal security, identity completion and a personal fulfillment that is not bound up or linked to the need for success or social position. These individuals are learning how to see themselves without the trappings and security that their social function or career provides.

Beyond this, they are learning emotional lessons. One avenue through which these emotional lessons will occur is in family situations. This can involve either one or both parents, the marriage partner or children or both. The Tenth House Pluto individuals commonly experience emotional shocks delivered to them by one or both parents, their children or a spouse. These shocks force deep self-examination. The loss of a parent can produce this effect, for example. Judgmental parents who do not understand the child's individuality can force the person in upon him- or herself. The karmic reason for these conditions in the individual's life is to force self-examination on an inner emotional basis. This process must occur so that they can understand the nature and basis of their emotions and to create a sense of internal security that is not linked to external conditions. In addition, it requires that the individual discover the inner dynamics that create this karmic necessity. If the individual can accept the responsibility for these life conditions, self-knowledge will result.

The family difficulties that these individuals may experience through their own children can force them to examine themselves as never before. They may have 'problem' children, or very aware children who produce internal confrontations that force the individual to look at what he or she does and why he or she does it.

Under other evolutionary and karmic circumstances, the Tenth House Pluto individual as a parent may neglect his or her children because of career obligations, and may never really get to know them. Consequently, the children never really know the parent. The resulting gulf produces guilt that again forces self-examination. In all cases, such emotional shocks and confrontations compel these individuals to examine who and what they are and to examine the reasons and dynamics that have determined their emotional, intellectual, spiritual or physical behavior. They must reflect on how they have identified themselves and what constitutes their security on an emotional level.

Often, the 'right' career or social position for the Tenth House Pluto individual is denied or karmically blocked in this life to enforce these same lessons. In other cases, this denial will occur because of prior abuses of power. Being held down in this way enforces the same lessons. Or the individual may be born into a special class or inherited social position. Others, because of prior-life efforts, will succeed in obtaining a position of relative prominence early on in this life. Yet many will lose the position in some way or fall from grace. Some simply will tire of their social position and break away from it. The evolutionary intent fosters examination in order to discover how identification with career or social position has created an emotional security base. These individuals will necessarily reflect upon their internal dynamics in such a way as to become aware of how they determine their reality, self-image and security. This reflection provides the opportunity to change outmoded or crystallized patterns in identity association. In this way, these individuals will learn how to reorganize themselves and create a new self-image that is not dependent upon career or social function. They will learn to accept responsibility for their own actions and the conditions of their lives and reality. In this way they can progressively learn to internalize their security needs and eventually develop an attitude that if everything is taken from them, they will still be okay. The more these lessons are realized, the faster potential blocks to a meaningful career will be removed. Their need for social recognition and power can then be met effortlessly through whatever social function their evolutionary and karmic capacity requires.

As these lessons are put in motion, these individuals can achieve a balance wherein their 'down' or private time meshes with their external duties and responsibilities. They will learn that the values and beliefs that condition their ideas about what life is and how it should be lived are purely subjective; their judgments apply only to themselves in relation to their own standards of conduct. Consequently, they will learn not to judge negatively the values and beliefs of others. They will learn to accept responsibility of their own lives, and the duties and obligations that accompany them. In so doing, they can motivate and inspire others in the same way. Through self-determination they will be able to realize their goals and ambitions in honest and non-manipulative ways and encourage others to do the same. If they have children, they will learn to become responsible parents who are intensely productive and giving, even if the child is a 'problem' child.

Common characteristics of Pluto in the Tenth House include: cycles of emotional withdrawal, need for social recognition and power, good organizers unless interfered with by other factors, natural leaders, deep and penetrating understanding of how 'systems' work, being ambitious, being serious, being pragmatic, being anxiety-prone, being given to cycles of depression, being autocratic, and being hypocritical.

Pluto in 10th House: Pluto's position on the highest point of the birth chart signifies that its transformative power is directed mostly to work, career and social position. Because of Pluto's demanding nature, career expectations may be very high, even megalomaniac. The individual expects that he will reach some exceptional goals, and often does realize them. Parental expectations about the career of the child may be in a central position. Perhaps they demand too much of the child, possibly to realize something they themselves didn't do. Parently ambitions may be a heavy burden on the child, who feels pressured to do something grandiose in the eyes of the parents. Parental ambitions are felt in the unconscious of the child as: "I must be somebody", "I must have power or a high social position", "Life depends on social position". Sometimes the attitude is much more negative: "I oppose all authorities", or "I fear people in power”.

Regarding social position there is often a love-hate relationship with emotional involvement. Questions of authority and control are strong, and influence the destiny of the individual. Hatred toward controlling individuals inherited from childhood may lead to a powerful desire for control so that nobody will be able to control him anymore. The power complex is related to this aspect. The individual may not realize its mechanism and how it influences his choices and directions in life. He may admit that he has a peculiar attitude toward people who are in positions of authority. This power complex and all the causes underneath should be examined to avoid career complications. A subconscious power complex may lead to avoidance of all contact with authorities, so that professional self-realization becomes difficult.

Because Pluto leads easily to extremes, the individual often feels that social position is hard to get. He blames everybody else and society for that. It may seem that fate denies social position and status. Drastic changes happen sometimes. To improve the situation, it is important to find the roots of the problem and to find a personal motivation for work. Usually Pluto's position on the Midheaven signifies strong ambition and the ability to build a successful career. In fact, the attitude toward career may be rather obsessive. The individual has a tendency to identify himself with his career or social image. (Pluto is sometimes very symbiotic.)The collective nature of Pluto indicates that some individuals will have a large sphere of influence - a large audience with or without a transformative impact. Surprisingly, their role may be rather superficial.

In show business there are many influential people with this aspect. One of the most famous television show hosts in France has it, and he has kept his position for years. An influential position in show business today means a lot of power. That's why it is so appealing to many Pluto in the tenth house people. At best, professional life is related to secrets, revealing or digging up the unconscious. Working with nuclear energy is Plutonian but questionable. According to a French astrologer, Jean-Pierre Nicholas, the person may be 'hierophant of the unexplained'. This is a suitable planetary position for healers, therapists and those who function as channels for change. The individual's fate may include scandals and revelations, sometimes caused by evil practices, immoral actions and manipulation; but sometimes the person is not at fault.

See also: Pluto in the 10th House;

Pluto in the 10th House: Ammachi, Sri Aurobindo, Warren Beatty, Ingrid Bergman, Helena Blavatsky, Jim Carrey, Aleister Crowley, Sally Field, Uri Geller, Tenzin Gyatso, Hugh Hefner, Ernest Hemingway, Howard Hughes, Shirley McLaine, Arnold Palmer, Pablo Picasso, Karl Renz, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams, ChrisTr, Dheeraj, Donny, Gabriela, Ivy, JJ, Keith, Miriam, Paulo, Raga, Travis, Virginia

Pluto in the 11th House

As infants, we humans are extremely self-centered, truly believing that the world revolves around us. Mother is considered to be a part of us who nourishes us, rather than a separate entity who has accepted the responsibility of caring for baby. Initially, with this mother-child bond, we as infants can get whatever we want or need from her. All our wishes are fulfilled. However as we grow older, we have an urge to find out for ourselves what is in our environment, and this bond begins to rupture. Not only does this exploration cost us the bond we've had with mother, but also it costs the power and control that we have over her. No longer can we scream helplessly, at five or six years of age, over something that no longer represents any threat to us. Mother doesn't need to protect us from our infantile fears any longer, and we cannot honestly demand that she do this anymore.

The temptation that children have at this age is to become manipulative in a charming way, which is guaranteed to keep mother (or father) on a string, ready to fulfill every whim. At the same time, the child who is running the show feels able to pursue independence. Unfortunately, resentment can build up in the child, who after all still has to defer to the parents and other authority figures. Pluto in this house emphasizes this resentment over giving up the power of independence. Yet, children with this Pluto placement often search for the spotlight early in life. The responses of others, particularly the favorable responses, verify that the children are indeed independent and brilliant, which is something the inner self desires. These children learn early that they must weave their own magic, that they must learn the strategies of survival and know the right people. Often their parents set good examples of individuals struggling for personal freedom and self-sufficiency; although with Pluto in this house, the exact opposite may be true instead. Whatever the parents' level of accomplishment in this regard, the children learn the social techniques of survival in order to have a sense of security; a sense that no matter how awful a situation they may find themselves in, they will survive it if they are capable enough.

Given this Pluto house position, independence and survival can result in separation from love, especially the love of the parents. This gives a distorted image of what it means to love and be loved, and the child may then set up a lifetime pattern of searching for the sense of self-sufficiency with parental love and justification that was missing in childhood. This can even incline these people to nurture others by trying to improve the conditions in their lives. The child begins to imagine the grand scheme of things, desiring to take part in it and become a leader in it as well. As people with this Pluto placement move into their teenage years, they seem to aspire to even more grandiose fantasies about themselves. Yet, Plutonian extremes can manifest here too. These teens have a choice between establishing their stardom by rising through the rank and file of an organization (projected parental support), or forgoing any organization or system other than their own (the alienated lone wolf). This potential split in attitudes creates crises in the self-image that may take years to resolve. There can be Cinderella-like dreams and fantasies with this placement.

As these Pluto individuals reach adulthood, they may have intense emotional encounters with others. Friendship, that vital link to self-love, can have an undue influence on these people, because of their fear of rejection. Feelings of rejection can lead to alienation and periods of terrible loneliness. They can also lead to the simple expedient of rejecting the other person 'before she/ he rejects me'. This intense need to cover inner insecurities can earn the resentment of others, who will simply dismiss the individual as immature and selfish, and go on.

Selfishness does feel good to this person, for it temporarily enhances his or her self-concept. To get the positive feedback desired from others, this person will spend energy or money extravagantly on them, only to stop being so generous once the others are regarded as safely loyal. These people appear to refuse any compromises, earning them envy and creating intense love-hate relationships with their peers. In adolescence, the life goals and personal ideals change; and to identify them with a peer group can give them a sense of having a special destiny.

These people resent being helped by others, even though they may at times cry "Why did so-and-so get helped, when I didn't?". Help is seen as a form of love; and there is an extreme sense of vulnerability in being helped by someone else. It's better, these people believe, to be the one helping, rather than the one being helped. That way, they can stay in charge of all the acceptance and rejection that is going on. They may go so far as to feel that society owes them something, since society isn't currently recognizing them! An obvious example of this extreme are the able-bodied individuals living on welfare while complaining about the policies of the government which is currently feeding them.

This placement of Pluto is one of the most subtle, and one of the most difficult to deal with. These people are hidden egotists, trying to help humanity in order to win praise and status rewards. They work within the framework of a group which espouses a cause, and can grow into a leadership role when it is apparent to them that fewer people will call them on their egotistic façades or expose their social manipulativeness. They do want to help others; or more accurately, they wish to be seen helping others.

Even though these archetypes allow for growth opportunities, individually and collectively, many individuals fear change and fear being or feeling different. Other individuals with Pluto in the Eleventh House have reacted to the prior evolutionary by rejecting or rebelling against the need to be different. They will repress the inner impulse to throw off the past. The feeling of disconnectedness that this impulse produces promotes this reaction. Remember that Saturn, as well as Uranus, rules Aquarius.

All Eleventh House Pluto individuals will come into this life with a deep inner sense of being different from most people around them. This is because of the prior evolutionary intent to throw off the past, to disengage from it. This detachment is projected or linked to the external environment. For those who have rejected or rebelled against this inner need and feeling, the overwhelming need and compulsive desire to belong to a group of people will motivate them to the ends of the earth. In effect, this desire acts as emotional and psychological compensation to block or thwart the inner feeling of differentness and disengagement. These people attempt to align themselves with the prevailing social norms and laws of society. As long as everyone else is doing it, whatever 'it' is, they will do it too in order to belong to the group. Any social group creates 'norms' of behavior, and the overt or covert pressure to conform to those norms. Individuals reacting in this way have become compulsively and utterly dependent upon their peer group for a sense of personal fulfillment and meaning. Their individuality, their purpose, their values and beliefs are simple extensions of the 'norms' of their peer group.

Nevertheless, despite this compensation, these individuals still feel different. It is this feeling that to some extent promotes the necessary objectivity and detachment. No matter what the individual does in order to feel 'normal', to belong, he or she will still feel different. This feeling will promote the typical Plutonian question 'why?'. Relative to the free will that we all have, these individuals have been learning to make choices of whether to pursue that which is different in themselves regardless of where it may lead, or to deny or suppress that which is different regardless of the consequences. Some have taken a few tentative steps to break free, only to retract and try again. Others have taken quite a few steps and are finally under way towards pursuing and developing their socialized individuality in some way. Others remain completely locked into peer group control.

The third segment of individuals with Pluto in the Eleventh House have reacted to the prior life evolutionary impulse by rabidly defending the traditions of the past. These individuals have feared being different; have feared experimentation, new visions, new models, and new ways of doing things. Instead of disengaging and detaching from the past, these people have manifested a fixated death grip upon the past - a totally Saturnian reaction. The first segment of people manifested a Uranian response to this prior evolutionary intent. The second segment of people manifested both Uranian and Saturnian responses. This last group is Saturnian. Yet, even people who respond in this way will feel different because they will sense that 'time' is passing them by. These people are social dinosaurs. Individual and collective life is always growing, always in a state of becoming, of evolving. It is exactly this obvious process that these people fear because almost any change, any departure from tradition, is perceived as undermining or threatening the old order and stability of the way it used to be.

These individuals use the old order as a panacea to correct the perceived ills of the moment, and to project into the future 'the way' that it should be. Rather than allowing themselves to develop a new vision to apply to a changing world, they project an old, tired vision upon the future as the cure for the problems of today. This orientation reflects the fact that these individuals are inwardly suppressing, in a desperate way, the inner impulses to 'shed skins' from their own prior lives and the patterns of identity association that are based on them. They too will form social bonds or friendships with others of like mind. As individuals, and as a group, they can develop objectivity and detachment through the isolation of their subculture within the context of society. These individuals, and the subgroup, are different when compared to others who do not respond to their sociological ideas and identities.

Differing or interacting combinations of these distinct ways of responding to the Eleventh House or Aquarius archetypes give rise to all the possible subcultures within a society. In a negative expression of the Eleventh House archetype, one group or a combination of groups may attempt to influence, control, or eliminate another group for reasons of security and power. This effort reflects the egocentric desire for separateness and can promote narrow-mindedness and attachment rather than objectivity and detachment. An individual can react to another person in the same way for the same reasons. Positively expressed, group and individual differences will be tolerated, accepted and encouraged. Combinations of positive and negative reactions occur when the extreme fringe groups, whether ultra-liberal or ultra¬conservative, are perceived to threaten the stability and security of the entire group.

Clues found in the birth chart indicate which way an Eleventh House Pluto individual is likely to gravitate regarding group identification. If the weight of the whole chart suggests conformity and emphasis upon tradition, the individual will probably identify with the mainstream of society. If the chart suggests nonconformity, the individual will be likely to have few friends, and no particular group association; he or she may possibly be a group of one. In addition, we also need to consider the evolutionary condition of the individual. Those in the herd state will belong to more independent-minded groups. Spiritual state individuals will associate with spiritual groups. Linking evolutionary condition to the energy balance of the chart, i.e. introverted, conformity and so forth, will give a fairly good understanding of which subgroups within a society the individual will feel a kinship with. Some examples to illustrate this point would be: an introverted/ spiritual person would probably withdraw from any group interaction; an introverted / conformity type would be a silent follower of the mainstream peer group; an extroverted/ individuated type may be a leader for a splinter group, and so forth.

Pluto's sign will give us additional clues. For example, a person with Pluto in Virgo may feel intensely shy and intimidated by social groups. He or she may feel critical of the group he or she is connected with; and the group may be critical of him or her. This individual may succeed in finding another group that reflects his or her own ideas, and from the bunker of that group may hurl critical hand grenades at all other groups that are different. As an example, many people who belong to the punk rock group prevalent in society today have Pluto in Virgo. As a group, and as individuals, they tend to react in the way described.

In whatever condition we find Eleventh House Pluto individuals, all have had the evolutionary need to develop objectivity and detachment, to sever attachments that are preventing further growth, and to form group bondings with like-minded souls. In general, all have needed to deflect the impact of other groups or individuals in order to deepen the awareness of their own individuality. All have needed to link their individual purpose to a socialized purpose, a group purpose, and a socialized reason for being. Depending on evolutionary development and karmic dynamics, some Eleventh House Pluto individuals have had, and will have, the capacity to lead a group of people or an entire nation. Pluto's natural magnetism can attract others who perceive that the Eleventh House Pluto person had and has something powerful to offer.

Many of these people, based on prior development, possess an inherent ability to understand group needs, and to uncover the basics of group dynamics in order to understand all the individual roles and functions that constitute a group. Those who have leadership capacity and are 'future-oriented' can develop comprehensive social visions as to how a group of people or a society should change in order to progress and grow. They will experiment, try new ideas, and adjust as necessary. In certain cases, they will experiment with new ideas but then resist changing the blueprint even in the face of intense confrontation, thus bringing about their own downfall, or the downfall of their ideas. Others may attempt to affix old visions upon new situations. Such a leader may attract followers for a time, but because the ideas are old, a downfall is usually guaranteed. On another level, Pluto's natural repulsion can also create total isolation for some individuals with Pluto in the Eleventh House by an entire group or subgroup. We must look to the total nature of the individual's karmic signature and background in order to determine the evolutionary and karmic necessity for this situation.

The polarity point is the Fifth House. The evolutionary intent is one wherein the individual must learn how to take charge of his or her own destiny. These people must learn how to implement their ideas about themselves, that which they see as possible for their lives, the goals they want to accomplish, and the ideas pertaining to future possibilities. One of the most common symptoms that individuals with Pluto in the Eleventh House experience is thinking about the possibilities pertaining to their future which go unacted upon. Thus, the current evolutionary intent is teaching these people to translate these ideas into action through taking charge of their own destiny and shaping it along the lines that these thoughts are suggesting to them. In order to accomplish this, they must learn to minimize their security needs and patterns of depending on others to tell them that it is okay to do whatever it is that they want to do. They must also learn not to wait around until everyone else acts first, and not to wait for others to support their ideas regarding strategies for themselves and others.

Those who have been repelled by others or society, who have been forced to stand on the sidelines, must learn to develop their own individual purpose and link it to a socially relevant need. They cannot remain standing on the sidelines, hurling stones and insults at a system that is not behaving according to their desires. In general, these individuals must learn that their power lies in the fact that they are different, and that it is okay to be different. By learning how to act and implement, they can become effective leaders in any area in which they are evolutionarily and karmically destined to play. All individuals with Pluto in the Eleventh House have the inherent power to act as instruments of innovative and creative change in whatever area of life they choose. Even the rabid defenders of the past can exert a positive influence as stabilizing agents if changes are happening too quickly or are obviously off-course.

All of these individuals must learn how to detach, objectify, and sever their most cherished visions as to how things should be, when those ideas or visions are not appropriate to the situation at hand. Through environmental challenges or confrontations they must learn to objectify and impersonally change what must be changed. The potential trap is to remain detached in stoic defiance against those who do not agree with them - not to change.

All of these individuals can experience emotional shocks, disappointments, leavings and rejections through friendships. Having the rug pulled out from under their feet in this way occurs to enforce the lesson of taking charge of their own destinies. The severing of dependencies on others cannot help but to enforce this lesson. In addition, this kind of event will enforce the lesson as to what really constitutes a friend and what does not. In general, these people will only have, or be allowed, a few close friends at any one time in this life. In certain cycles, they may experience a total lack of friends. By learning these lessons, Eleventh House Pluto individuals can play a variety of socially meaningful roles. Their natural inventiveness and creativity can shine. The resulting metamorphosis will produce self-confident individuals who possess the power to understand objectively who and what they are, why they are the way that they are, and how best to actualize their own creative purpose within the context of a social need. In this understanding, these individuals can assume socially relevant and meaningful roles, roles that have the power and potential to transform the existing barriers that are restricting further growth and evolution in the area of life to which they have applied themselves. In the same way, these individuals can promote this understanding in other people, even in whole nations.

Common characteristics of those with Pluto in the Eleventh House include: behavior ranging from being extremely anti-social to following the crowd to rabidly defending tradition; an intrinsic feeling of being different; obsessive and compulsive thought patterns; being innovative, unique, creative, a good friend; cycles of utter detachment within cycles of intense focus upon themselves; potential for sudden and erratic behavior; being iconoclastic; being hard to really know or define correctly, aloof.

See also: Pluto in the 11th House;

Pluto in the 11th House: Woody Allen, George Bush, Sr., Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Tom Cruise, John Dillinger, Albert Einstein, Bill Hicks, Alfred Hitchcock, Nicole Kidman, Marilyn Monroe, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ayn Rand, Will Rogers, Peter Sellers, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Vincent van Gogh, Stevie Wonder, BenSt, Beth, BPoe, Clark, Dewitt, Ellen, Jen, Komala, Lina, Lorraine, Pete, Ricardo, Seligma, VinCal, VinCar

Pluto in the 12th House

Here we find the infant truly in touch with his or her magical powers. The intensity of experience is a delight and a passion. As the child grows, crawls, and then begins to walk and explore the environment, she / he has already discovered the ability to control things with thought or desire. Children with this Pluto placement can fantasize something and have it happen, without putting any physical effort into it. Pretty soon, however, the demands of socialization are made on these young mystics. They are encouraged to embrace the world view of their parents, an image in which they as children are helpless, powerless to do anything about their situation.

The intensity of these children's life experience is internal, and not seen by the parents for what it is, although they will undoubtedly feel it. This intensity makes the parents realize that controlling their children could very well be a difficult job. For this reason, they will often confront the power of the child with power of their own, on a psychic level. The child knows that she / he has a strong will, but must begin to accept the parental world view. Survival comes first, delaying the use of real power until later.

Unfortunately, later is when the power is needed again; but by then it's forgotten. These Plutonian children have sacrificed their power to the world view or attitudes and beliefs of the parents out of love for them, and for the sake of physical survival (such as food, warmth, etc.). The parents do not intend to sacrifice their child. They often have no idea what they are doing, except that they feel a need to train the child so that it can function well and coherently in society. The parents mean well, and assume their responsibilities with a sense of duty. As is often the case with Pluto twelfth house children's parents, they do the best they feel they can, despite their lack of inner vision. The children in turn realize their parents are only trying to help them learn practical things, and the child is willing to trust the parents' intention. When an individual is in touch with his or her magicality, it is obvious that the universe is made out of love and thoughts of love or desire. For the child to sacrifice its inner psyche will seem a fair exchange for the love and companionship of these two large and supportive people, the parents. The Pluto twelfth house child has traded his or her inner will and experience for the security of parental support, and has thus become dependent.

As these children grow up, they discover that other children have already given away their magicality too. They soon learn not to mention their astral flights or previous lifetimes to their fellow students or their parents. They become afraid that they will betray themselves by their actions, so they begin to repress this power of magical action. They will retreat from view as they attempt to push that inner intensity of life further and further from their conscious mind. They begin to repress any idea or feeling that is not compatible with prevailing views - which they have adopted by now. They look upon their own psyche as a dangerous beast that could get out of control, overwhelming them in that intensity of life and feeling they reveled in only a few years earlier.

This attempt to submerge the true nature of the self can continue into adulthood. With this comes a feeling that their inner selves are imprisoned, but they are afraid that if they were to release this self, they would not be able to function... that they would be physically weak and incapable of normal action. This can lead in some cases to an almost morbid preoccupation with their own inner problems, which often include poor health. The body is the victim in the conflict between the spiritual and the psychic, between the material and the spiritual. It is very difficult initially to see how the two can fit together. Yet, these individuals will often try to establish some connection for the sake of personal balance, between the left and right brain, between the logical / physical / linear and the irrational/ magical/ organic. This could involve the Pluto individuals in cults or other groups of people with strange, counter-culture attitudes. They could move between the extremes of drug-taking madmen and totally obsessed churchgoers.

What they are looking for, and are frequently unable to find, is a format or structure that can allow them to safely re-examine their inner selves. Unfortunately, society in general has no place for this connection between inner and outer, and dooms those who search for it to the 'fringe' of our culture. These people may then become psychics, astrologers, Tarot readers, I Ching readers, or simply bums and winos, often as a way of rebelling against the world view which they forgot they had adopted so many years ago. Others may maintain the world view at any price; and for them the price can be very heavy indeed. Mental and emotional disturbance may not be obvious in someone who does his or her social duty every day - work, sleep, eat, etc. ¬but this normal exterior may hide a fanatic. This type of fanatic can be religious or political, or anything else with a particular view that classifies him or her as right and everyone else as wrong.

The people who have this particular disposition are seldom the leaders of the conflicts that occur over these major differences of opinion. They are followers, hoping that by being one of a large group, their world view is safe. They find security in belonging to a category with many people in it, even if they don't actively participate in a specific or named group. They tend to have unexplained health problems having no obvious connection to the mental warps which their inner conflicts have given them. They make extreme attempts to avoid fear, by whatever escape routes they can find. Even though being ill is a sad situation, there may be a feeling of security or safety in being ill and having someone else to take care of them. Or they may try to escape through drugs, and become paranoid in the process, for their fear pursues them wherever they go to escape it.

Anxieties may be relegated to a worldwide scale, where they can see conspiracies behind all problems and imminent world disasters. They can often feel that they are the ultimate victims of society, that it does not want to hear about their revelations and is in fact trying to repress and subvert whatever they attempt to do or think. They imagine they have enemies everywhere, although they don't really know who they are. The antagonistic forces are simply referred to as 'they' or 'insiders' or 'secret intelligence', or whatever suits the mind's creative fantasy. They may try to postpone the confrontation they feel is coming in the world, but which is actually within their own consciousness. They may spend days on end reading escapist fiction, delaying the crisis of that awareness. When they superimpose their own reality on the world, they have lost their world view or their belief structures; and this compromise between the inner self's powers and the pragmatic nature of the world is destructive ¬so destructive that it can lead to the extreme and final option, suicide.

Obvious problems related to Pluto's presence in the twelfth house are, as already mentioned, chronic and unexplained health problems, drug or alcohol addiction, excessive escapism, unrealistic fantasies, self-destructive emotional attitudes such as paranoia that alienate the person, and an unwillingness to see any weaknesses or wrongs in themselves. They are often victims of society's rules, spending time in prison or being personally affected by social upheavals. With this placement, these individuals may organize small groups to protest threats to human rights, expressing individual and mass frustration in the process.

When the Pluto individuals realize that this inner versus outer conflict is getting them nowhere, they will begin to search for themselves with diligence. As they tune in more and more within themselves, they begin to find that the early repressions of inner feelings are no longer necessary, and they turn their attention towards the spiritual realm. As they begin to realize that they have created essentially their own reality, and start taking responsibility for it, their health and other problems begin to clear, and their anxieties about survival begin to wane.

Initially, they tend to hold onto or remember early childhood experiences as a key to finding their inner soul power. But as they search more deeply, they find that they can once again get in touch with that magicality through living in society as an adult. They then see the uselessness of destructive or paranoid attitudes, as well as the inebriating effect of them. At this time, the individual begins to balance and work toward eliminating the use of drugs or other mental/ emotional escapes. There is simply no need to escape any longer, since there is only the present, the here and now.

Information about the inner self takes on more importance at this time; and these Pluto people will search through such mystic systems as astrology for answers, rather than out of rebelliousness or as a way to express inner conflict. Although the inner arts do not have the true, ultimate answers, they are at least guides to the expansion of the self, which is the highest potential of this Pluto placement. Finally, the desire and passion for discovering the true inner self has been manifested! With a little patience, these people are able to tune into their own subconscious; and the inner psyche then begins to emerge into the light of day as it reaches the realm of the conscious mind. The self is rebuilt with self-love and a desire to find the true inner destiny. No longer will these individuals search beyond themselves for a look at the universe, for now they know that it is all within them! This concept is perhaps the greatest discovery possible with this placement. With it comes the power to vanquish the enemies within - fear, anger, self-destruction, guilt and inner conflict. The pathway becomes clear; and in order to make a decision, these people tap into the true inner self and therefore find the highest and best answers. (In fact, when an answer is needed, it will often appear as an inspirational flash.)At this point, these people are no longer afraid of losing control within themselves. Patiently they open up door after inner door, releasing their pent-up power a little at a time. They develop a timeless understanding of the higher nature of things, and operate from that perspective in their daily lives. They understand the struggles of the less fortunate, and are often willing to reach out and help them in some way. They are not afraid to see the ugly, mean and bitter side to themselves; and this enables them to forgive and release these negative qualities. Their discovery of themselves leads them back into the universal love principle that truly motivates them, helping them reach extraordinary levels of personal success.

When Pluto transits through the twelfth house, the people affected will have to examine their world view, as it is likely to come crashing down upon them if it doesn't supply the necessary inner connections, motivations and purpose. Old emotional garbage, old attitudes from childhood, are likely to re-emerge at this time and require work. The psyche will need restructuring, at the very least. Whatever is useless or interferes with one's capacity for strength and power must be ditched, must be abandoned.

Any karmic 'interest' will have to be paid at this time. That is, situations which required power and action, but which were postponed or ignored, will build up an emotional charge over time. The longer one ignores these feelings, the more the suppressed emotions grow in power, until finally they explode on the scene as a crisis. And that is just what happens, for the emotional backlog has been compounding itself daily. This is the interest accrued, and it must be dealt with at this time. For some people, this may manifest as an intense and sudden preoccupation with personal difficulties, and a feeling of loss of control. For others, it is a culmination of personal study and growth; and the searching becomes fruitful, as the subconscious begins to express itself directly through the controlling consciousness.

It is possible at this time for the motivations of the self to move from the inner to the outer plane, resulting in some kind of success for the person. More than that, personal understanding can lead to enlightenment. It's not a comfortable experience however, as the old blockages standing in the way of self-fulfillment rise up from the inner depths to emerge into consciousness. Yet, with every release, these individuals can feel lighter, freer to be themselves and find their true home within their true self. This is a very high psychic placement, with a magnificent underlying motivation to acquire knowledge. (Besides the eighth house, Pluto feels most at home in the twelfth.) Turning negatives into positives is a joyful, deliberate choice and process. If it seems to be a drag, then you really haven't touched your magical inner self yet. With Pluto in the twelfth house natally or by transit, you must avoid the trap of spiritual egotism, of believing that you have a special mission to the world. No, you don't! What you do have is a very profound mission to yourself. The world won't be interested in what you have to say until you have completed this search and discovery mission into your own inner self.

Since the process of inner learning can and usually does take at least a whole lifetime, realize right here and now that your ability to serve the world at large depends on how you serve your inner self, and most probably will not take on the grand scale you might imagine or hope for. Leave society out of your work, until you are solidly comfortable within yourself. Then you will begin to reach out a loving hand; and anyone who is magnetically attracted to the inner self that shines through you will come to bask in your presence. Do not, at any time, sacrifice yourself on the altar of universal service, until you actually have some enlightenment you can afford to give without depleting yourself. You are a channel, and any technique can work for you, once you have the right attitude. Before telling others to meditate, you have to gain mastery yourself - or else you're a fake! Once you understand this, you can develop greater and greater aspects of yourself, and thus get in touch with your inner realities. Read the negatives-to-positives listed at the end of each Pluto house description. Choose the ones that appeal to you and work with them, but touch upon them all. For your calling is to become complete, integrating all twelve aspects of the self within a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. Only then will you have accomplished your personal and spiritual synergy.

Pluto in 12th House: The position of Pluto in the 12th house can be a difficult one to handle correctly; this is because areas of the personality are hidden in the unconscious mind, and yet have a potent influence creating motivations and desires which condition your life and choices. Obviously, this applies to all Pluto placements to some extent, where the underlying impulses leading towards compulsive and repetitive action can be located in the sphere of the unconscious; but this 12th house position emphasizes such influences to the point where they can almost swamp the conscious personality. The possibility of this has to be guarded against by attempts to regenerate these impulses in the unconscious, by bringing them to the surface and integrating them into the conscious mind and personality. You will be internally preoccupied with your own mind and emotions, as though you are fascinated by the inner processes continually in motion; you can become morbidly obsessed with your own problems, and repeatedly circle above them, yet rarely facing them in an attempt to resolve and release such repetitive blockages.

Traditionally, the 12th house is associated with endings and the concept of karma (the law of cause and effect, action and reaction); and you are likely to suffer from feelings of guilt and patterns of self-persecution. In some ways, you will prefer to suffer as a form of expiation for unknown sins that you feel you have committed.

Certainly, you will find it difficult to come to terms fully with yourself, and to feel an inner harmony. This is made harder by the fact that you possess a psychic sensitivity to the hidden lives of others, registering their thoughts and feelings through your links with the unconscious mind. This may manifest as confusing and conflicting thoughts, feelings and impulses arising in yourself, which may well not be yours to begin with, but someone else's being received through your sensitivity.

Responding to the inner suffering of others, together with a personal sense of insecurity, can lead you to prefer more privacy and seclusion, to be free of the imposition of the social psychic atmosphere. If this process becomes understood, then a form of psychic protection could be used to minimize such intrusions; and you may find that a form of inner intuitive guidance could begin to guide your life and actions.

You may need to follow some form of path or spiritual belief which can bring some clarity into your conflicting emotional patterns; a transformation on that emotional level is essential for you, to become free of those neurotic and negative emotional guilt feelings. If that could be achieved, then your inner balance would correspondingly improve. Until such time, you will maintain a distance between yourself and others, and you may find difficulty in being able to co-operate with such a variety of personalities as you can find in the workplace. Within any intimate personal relationship, try to be as honest as possible, because in such a potentially supportive atmosphere, you may have the opportunity to allow aspects of yourself to arise from the unconscious and to deal with them through the transformatory filter of the relationship.

Pluto in 12th House: Repression of emotions can cause either self-destructive behavior or physical illness, since this is one of the health houses. Their illness can serve the purpose of allowing these people to stay secluded from a world that seems too powerful, too dangerous and untrustworthy. Illness can be a way to control others; and thus is also true of the emotional illnesses of the twelfth house. Have you ever had to tiptoe around someone who was severely depressed all the time, and felt controlled by his or her seeming fragility? Addiction, a twelfth-house ploy, can also be used to control emotions and keep others safely at bay.

These people may repress an urge-to-power and yet control in round-about ways they little understand. For instance, being the seemingly helpless victim also serves to conceal the power urge - have you ever 'rescued' some poor helpless soul who later took over your total life and all your energy? No doubt you learned that victimhood is powerful! (Please understand that there are legitimate victims, but here we are talking about the illegitimate ones, the ones who are forever drawn to these situations thinking that their suffering is some sort of moral victory.) Unconscious fascination with power can also lead to contacts with underground characters, negative psychism, and various unsavory scenes where power is used in a murky way. Healing submerged resentment can go a long way toward lifting this position out of its negative manifestations into the constructive. In the house of secrets, the deep, dark secret is ever the possibility; and revealing it in the right therapeutic places can release you from its power.

The constructive use of this placement is in its capacity to delve into the unconscious and heal deep-seated emotional problems. Thus, it is a frequent placement for those working in the field of mental health. Likewise, people who have suffered from an addiction and been able to stop have the most power to help other addicts. This is also a mediumistic or psychic position, and one where the study of dreams can be very useful. Spiritual healing is another strong possibility.

Pluto in 12th House: In the twelfth house, Piscean values are brought to light; that is to say, values of fusion, of the wave coming back to the ocean. The values of belonging to the whole are essential to this house. It is also a transcendental house.

The twelfth house demands a lot of understanding of the forces inherent in life, the invisible forces that are related to the wholeness of life. Extreme egoism and self-centeredness are especially harmful for the individual, even though we can say that they are harmful to anyone. The nature of the twelfth house is somewhat secretive; and the individual may strive for spirituality and silent secrets of life, perhaps revealed in a monastery. This striving may be unconscious, with the individual fusing himself with the larger whole by using alcohol or drugs as a means to reach this state. People who have problems with alcohol often have a strong twelfth house or strong Neptunian influence.

The wrong attitude with the twelfth house leads the individual to run away from the world and its conscious manifestations, and from worldly responsibilities. At times he may feel lonely and isolated; and partly this is very useful for him because in that way he may find a connection with the larger whole, with God. He digs up new things in solitude. This may be exaggerated. According to Jeff Green, these people exhaust themselves by isolating themselves and by escaping so that they feel themselves extremely weary. The feelings of meaninglessness are not uncommon. One of the best means of realization of the possibilities of this house is to have spiritual practices. The search for meaning in spirituality, in meditation and merging with the whole, gives important purpose for the individual. Meaningful service is equally important. Pluto’s position in the twelfth house may bring connections between the unconscious and obsession. In general, this position increases the power of the unconscious.

Pluto in 12th House: With Pluto in the 12th, there is a pressing need to bring what's weak, hidden or undeveloped in the psyche into clearer focus. As with Pluto in the 8th, some people might be so frightened of being overwhelmed by the nature or intensity of their deeper drives and complexes that they exercise a tight control over these. However, very often it is not only 'neurotic' urges which are suppressed, but healthy, positive drives as well. The psychologist Andrew Maslow pointed out that many people not only evade what they deem is negative in themselves, but also block what is 'god-like' and laudable. He called this 'the Jonah Complex', the fear of our own greatness. From my experience, certain individuals with Pluto in the 12th defend themselves not just against the so-called 'lower' or carnal drives, but also against such positive impulses as the desire to develop their 'higher' possibilities more fully, or to realize more of their innate potentials. To paraphrase Maslow, they are afraid to become that which they glimpse in their most perfect moments. Why? The answer, in a nutshell, is death-anxiety. All change makes them highly anxious because it means the dissolution of what they already know themselves to be. Growth inevitably requires the breaking down of existing patterns or the letting go of what is familiar; and on some deep level they equate these kinds of changes with death itself. Part of them desperately yearns for growth and development, and yet another part mounts every campaign possible to ward off what they unconsciously feel is trying to kill them. Until they locate and make peace with their deep existential dread of non-being, they will keep displacing their fear onto whatever comes along which threatens to change them. Until they know they are afraid to die, they cannot fully live.

A basic tenet of Psychosynthesis reflects the meaning of a 12th house Pluto: that all the elements of the psyche -both dark and light - can be consciously recognized, experienced, accepted and integrated into awareness. Through dream analysis, introspection, therapy and various exercises and techniques, those with Pluto in the 12th can release the energy trapped in unconscious complexes and redirect it towards strengthening and building the whole of the personality, including their 'higher' intuitive and emotional faculties. Provided they can track down and deal with their death-anxiety, people with Pluto in the 12th are well equipped to search out what is weak, blocked, hidden or missing in the psyche. Indeed, what more appropriate place for them to exercise the innate investigative nature of Pluto than in the house of 'secret enemies' and 'behind-the-scenes activity'? And rather than waiting for angry and neglected parts of their own psyches to chase after them, they are well advised to go hunting for these first. In the 12th, the destructive energy associated with Pluto can be used to remove that which is obsolete and detrimental to new growth. Or destructive energy can be improperly displaced and unleashed outwardly in a treacherous way or dangerously turned against the self. The difficulty for those with Pluto in the 12th, however, is that they are not simply dealing with the personal unconscious, but dealing with the collective unconscious as well.

A contemporary medical model theorizes that noxious bacteria and viruses are always present in the physical system, but the healthy or strong person is able to defend himself or herself from these taking over. Similarly, stress is everywhere in society; but some people have a better ability than others to prevent it from getting into their systems. Those with Pluto in the 12th are more sensitive to what is dark, destructive or overwhelming in the atmosphere than someone with, let's say, a well-aspected Venus in the 12th. While Venus there may feel that 'love is in the air', what might Pluto sniff? Some of them may unconsciously be 'taken over' by what other people have repressed - sexual drives, anger, hostility, etc.. It is not unlikely for a child with this placement, for instance, to take on the role of family scapegoat or 'identified patient'. When tensions run too high at home, he is the one who gets sick or burns down the school. Starting a conflagration serves two purposes: it gives a concrete expression to the emotions he feels around him, and it serves to divert the parental unit from its own interpersonal problems. Those with Pluto in the 12th can make better sense of their actions and behavior if they view what they do and feel in relation to a larger scheme of things.

The 12th house represents the greater whole out of which we come and into which we are born. Pluto there has to contend with the less pleasant aspects of this inheritance -the collective shadow, that which society as a whole finds ugly or unacceptable. These people may be required to acknowledge, integrate, and, if possible, transmute the anger, hate, destructiveness and rage accumulated over centuries. In this sense, they are in charge of society's waste disposal unit. They either act out the collective's shadow and thereby release this pent-up energy, or gather it inside themselves and find some way to creatively transform and redirect it. Some people with Pluto in the 12th may work to transform outmoded institutions or campaign to change laws which are no longer functioning as they should. Often, and sometimes in mysterious and obscure ways, they facilitate changes on the level of the collective. Periodic withdrawals from life may be necessary in order to grapple with emotional complexes which have been awakened through social interactions. These people might be significantly affected through brushes with institutions, such as confinements in hospitals or prisons.

Pluto here gives the capacity to transform a crisis into something productive and useful, or make the most of even limited or restricted circumstances. Even if those with Pluto in the 12th cannot change an unfortunate situation, they can still choose what attitude they are going to hold towards it. They have the ability to learn from failure and defeat and to understand the necessity of one cycle or phase of existence ending in order that another can begin. In this respect, a 12th house Pluto recalls one of Nietzsche's sayings: 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger'. Even suffering and pain can have meaning if they make a person more whole.

Pluto in 12th House: This is a good place for Pluto, out of the way where it won't attract trouble, and above the horizon so it won't build up too much internal pressure. It brings the same single-minded devotion to the inner voice as it brings in the first house, but not the obstructions or the difficulties with making contact with the outer world. There is the same inability to follow the herd; but they are usually able to find an opening so that they can continue to pursue their own path, even from the beginning, frequently due to the assistance of a sympathetic parent or family. This position gives the ability to maintain a strict regimen of daily work or training without assistance, if necessary, though usually an appropriate coach, teacher, or mentor is found who can give instructions, guidance, or even just occasional advice. These people generally don't enjoy taking instruction, preferring to figure things out for themselves, though they are capable of taking orders if convinced that it's necessary. There is a soldier-like ability to maintain a rigorous or even painful schedule for long periods of time in order to accomplish some goal. Sometimes a means of livelihood will be chosen partly because it demands an ascetic lifestyle.

These reactive compulsions are not only desperate, but doomed to failure. They may work for a time, but in the end will dissolve into meaninglessness. Wandering in confusion, many of these individuals will magically experience a metamorphosis in which a new thought, realization, dimension of themselves, or a new way of relating to themselves and life emerges from the Soul. This process seems to occur of itself, and is not a product of the individual's egocentric mental process.

These new patterns and thoughts that emerge out of the Soul are actually 'inspired' by divine sources, although many of these people would not consciously acknowledge or identify it as such. The new situation is simply born of itself. Now clarity exists where there was confusion, integration where there was disintegration, belief where there was disbelief, relatedness where there was alienation. This process occurs to teach these individuals not only belief, but also the awareness that they are connected to a much larger living whole; the universal. They have been learning how to experience themselves as an individualized wave upon the sea. This process is, and has been, teaching them about the areas or dimensions within that are preventing and limiting their personal identification with the cosmic whole; to shift their centre of consciousness from the wave to the sea. This process is teaching these individuals, willingly or unwillingly, to plunge into the abyss of infinity, rather than remaining paralyzed upon the precipice, or turning backward to the light of the past.

In plunging into the abyss of infinity, Twelfth House Pluto individuals are learning the lesson of faith; that the fear of individual dissolution, or surrender to a higher power than themselves, is only a delusion of separating desires reflected through the ego. They have been learning faith by willingly or unwillingly plunging into the abyss of the cosmic sea and experiencing, on a cyclic basis, disintegration of whatever personal limitation needed to be dissolved because it was promoting a non-growth situation. Coming out of this plunge into the abyss, a metamorphosis will have occurred. This metamorphosis will produce a new realization, the discovery of a latent dynamic within the individual, or a parting of the mists of confusion that reveal the answers and new directions that he or she was seeking. The cycles of dissolving that lead to cycles of clarity symbolized by the plunges into and out of the abyss occur of themselves. The individual cannot control them with respect to his or her ego. These cycles occur through the direction of the person's Soul with respect to the intrinsic intent of the Twelfth House Pluto 'life lessons'. In this way, these individuals are learning faith. Faith is linked to the experiential awareness that somehow, or in some way, 'something' has made, and will make, the past and current difficulties all right. By experiencing revelations and realizations that seem to arrive spontaneously in their consciousness, these individuals will be experiencing, in their own ways, 'divine communion' or guidance.

Many individuals with Twelfth House Plutos have succeeded in repelling or denying the evolutionary impulse to merge or identify with the Source. Through denial, these individuals will create one fantasy or illusion after another in order to find the meaning that they are seeking. It is as if the dream or fantasy symbolizes the Ultimate Meaning. The denial force reflects the desire to separate from the Source. The actual nature of the dreams or fantasies is conditioned by the specific kinds of separating desires that these individuals have. Because all Twelfth House Pluto individuals are seeking a sense of ultimate meaning in their lives, these dreams and fantasies are given tremendous power. They are glamorized and distorted out of proportion. They become very real to these individuals, and are focused upon in a singular kind of way. They become potential experiences through which the individual will seek to discover him- or herself. These fantasies and dreams can become potential experiences for two reasons:

1. The desires inherent in Pluto translate into a personal will to actualize those desires. In the context of the Twelfth House, this process teaches the individual that he or she is a co-creator of reality in relationship to the Ultimate Source. The power to actualize these dreams and fantasies is thus linked to visualization and belief. If the individual believes in the dream or fantasy enough, the power of visualization and affirmation intrinsic to Pluto in the Twelfth House, it will come true.

2. The fantasies can teach the individual about the nature of his or her dream illusions and delusions. An important point to remember is that these dreams and fantasies can seem very real to these individuals either as they are creating them in their consciousness, or as they are actually being lived out. Even to an outside observer, the actualization of these separating-type dreams and fantasies that the Twelfth House Pluto individual creates will seem very real. An observer would be hard-pressed to see or understand that these 'realities' are actually based on illusions and dreams because the individual has succeeded in actualizing them: he or she is living them out. As such, they constitute the basis of the person's actual or concrete reality. They seem so real.

Most Twelfth House Pluto individuals have a difficult time recognizing the actual basis of their 'dream realities' because they are living them. They are hard to recognize because the motives and fears that create these desires and realities are quite unconscious. Yet, because these desires are separating by nature, and are not the result of a conscious direction that is based on an inner relationship with the Source, the realities that are created are destined to fail in some way. The dream balloon will pop, and reality will strike. These individuals then confront the fact that this 'reality' was only a dream, the fantasy only a fantasy, and that, in the end, they are left standing on the precipice alone, without meaning, contentment or inner peace.

The need in all Twelfth House Pluto individuals is to align their personal wills and desires with the will and desires of the Source. When this does not occur, then that which is created through separating and egocentric desires will collapse at some point. This emotional shock intends for the individual to realize the nature and basis of his or her dreams, illusions and fantasies.

The compulsive chasing of the dream can last many lifetimes, because the dreams and fantasies are limited only by the power of the individual's own imagination. At some point in the evolutionary process, however, these people will exhaust their separating and avoidance-oriented desires, and an ultimate weariness will descend upon them. Disillusioned, they will finally turn to the Source to face the abyss of infinity and seek a relationship to the Cosmic Whole. In this exhaustion of separating fantasies and desires that issue from a deluded imagination, all Twelfth House Pluto individuals will one day realize the old spiritual axiom that 'life is but a dream'. As the wave upon the sea must return to its source, the ocean, so too must all of us return to our Source. Once these individuals come to this realization, they will become divinely inspired as to the nature of their real identity, and can also become divinely inspired to fulfill some type of 'mission' on behalf of us all. This realization will occur as soon as the individual develops a conscious relationship with the Source so that his or her actions and desires are in direct conformity with how the Source wants to express itself through them.

Resistance and denial to merging with the Source can be manifested as other 'symptoms' including denial that anything is wrong with themselves, and their lives. Compulsively they pretend that everything is OK. Even though their 'reality' may not be what it seems, with the blind strength of their Twelfth House Plutonian wills they try and make it OK whether it is or not. At some evolutionary and karmic point, the proverbial rose-colored glasses will break. Cracks in the tint now allow the glaring white light of truth to illuminate their actual reality and their life-situation. The cracks are induced through unconscious self-undermining activity, or through environmental confrontations in which the self-created reality undermines what they believed in. The shock of experiencing reality creates the necessary disbelief, disassociation, confusion, and alienation that enforces the awareness as to how the person was 'hung up'; of that which was actually unreal. These kinds of shocks enforce the awareness of why the individual was blocking, denying, being excessively naive, seeing what he or she wanted to see, or refusing to acknowledge that anything was amiss. This awareness usually occurs after a necessary amount of time is spent in not knowing why. One day, of itself, the necessary knowledge illuminates the individual's consciousness. When the magic of this clarity and understanding occurs, the individual is forced to consider that some other Power is operating in his or her life.

All Twelfth House Pluto people will come into this life with an ultimate, timeless sense of right and wrong. This ultimate sense of right and wrong is reflected in a standard of idealized conduct. This standard of idealized conduct manifests itself in varying states of conscious development within these individuals, depending on their evolutionary state. In most, it is sensed as a deep inner feeling of how things should or could be. This inner sense has developed because of the prior evolutionary intent to seek identification with a transcendental truth or reality. As a result of this prior evolutionary intent, all these individuals judge themselves, others, and life in general in reference to this idealized standard of conduct. When their own actions or the actions of others, or humanity's actions, do not reflect this standard, they will commonly judge themselves, others, or humanity in a negative way as measured against the ideal. Because of the dual desires in the Soul, the desire to return to the Source competes with all the separating desires that are manifested as dreams and fantasies of an escape or avoidance nature with respect to merging with the Source. Thus these individuals will, on a cyclic basis, judge themselves in relation to what they should have done, or should be doing. As a result, many exhibit an intense self-induced persecution because of their perceived inability to do the 'right' thing; to conform to the idealized standard of conduct whose ultimate root is based in the evolutionary need to merge with the Source.

Consequently, many will also persecute or judge others relative to their own weaknesses or shortcomings. Many have drawn lifetimes of persecution upon themselves in order to atone for their guilt for not doing the right thing. This condition serves as the basis of projection wherein they can judge and persecute others for not doing the right thing according to the Twelfth House Pluto individual's standard of idealized conduct. Some who have drawn lifetimes of persecution upon themselves will come into this life with an ultimate sense of victimization or martyrdom. They will feel that life is beyond control, or that they are at the mercy of forces beyond their control. Some of these 'victims' will compulsively avoid or escape reality through drugs, alcohol, or any avoidance-oriented activity. This prior life karmic condition usually reflects the fact that these individuals have desired to undermine and erode the illusion of power from an egocentric point of view. Many will have abused power from an egocentric point of view before - the 'god complex'. Thus the necessity for a few lifetimes of persecution and containment wherein their lives were at the mercy of forces apparently beyond their control. Those who have failed to realize the intent for these conditions, to align one's will with a Higher Will, have compulsively blamed or will compulsively blame everything and everyone to justify their negative and avoidance-oriented behavior. Some will remain locked in their own self-imposed prisons, quietly wasting away. Still others will be compulsive 'Florence Nightingales' who attempt to help everyone, whether they want this help or not. These types will shower indiscriminate mercy upon all, judging nothing, as if judging itself were to be avoided: to be treated as a 'wrong'. In reality, Pluto Twelfth House individuals have needed to learn what judgment really means, what it is, what it is not, and how to exercise proper judgment upon any aspect of life.

The lesson here has been and is to learn that 'ultimate' judgment is based upon intentions. Intentions reflect desires. Thus these individuals must learn to focus upon their desires in order to understand the connection to their intentions. If the desires for right behavior as related to their idealized standard of conduct are consistent and strong enough, the intention to act in that way will follow.

Similarly, Twelfth House Pluto individuals must learn to judge others according to their intentions. The inner judgment, which is based in their own actions, and how this judgment is projected on others in relation to their actions, is the important issue here. As Jesus said when the prostitute stood before the avenging crowd, 'Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone'. Of course, nobody could throw the stone. The crowd based their anger on an idealized standard of conduct. Yet, as Jesus pointed out, even though all of them had the desire conform to these standards themselves, none of them had perfectly done so. However, it was appropriate to inwardly judge the error in the prostitute's ways, as it was appropriate to judge the errors in their own ways against the standard of right conduct. It was not appropriate to hurl stones at the prostitute because of her error. It was not right because they were not free of error or sin themselves.

The inner judgment was necessary because the judgment itself promotes the vehicle to become more perfect in relation to the standard of right conduct. The key in this necessary judgment is to forgive oneself for the shortcomings or failings that occur, because very few of us are perfect. The intention and resolve to become perfect, to improve, is the ultimate standard upon which all of us must be judged by ourselves, others, and the Source. It is important to exercise this kind of judgment on ourselves. In the same way, Twelfth House Pluto individuals must utilize an ultimate standard of conduct in order to recognize the incorrect desires and behavior of others so they do not reflect, assume, or manifest the 'wrong' behavior of others through lack of necessary judgment and discrimination. Concerning others, these individuals must learn not to express judgments upon others unless asked. Unless asked, the best strategy is to mentally affirm change for them.

Some who have been karmically destined to play the role of a martyr or victim in order to realize their own lessons in judgment have left us with inspiring testimony to this kind of Twelfth House truth concerning judgment and forgiveness.

The evolutionary lesson in proper judgment is extremely important in another respect. Many Twelfth House Pluto individuals will have an irrational and abject fear of the unknown. Many will not be able to face themselves alone. The Soul for all Twelfth House Plutos is anchored in the universal or cosmic whole. While this is true for all of us, Twelfth House Pluto individuals are pulled into the Universal Source much more intensely than those with any other house position of Pluto: it is their emphasized and intensified 'bottom line'. Consequently, many will experience this pull as a deep inner vortex, like a black hole in the universe, that threatens to consume them in the abyss. Fearing dissolution and loss of control, they can manifest all forms of aberrant behavior. Acute paranoia, neurosis, schizophrenia and phobias are extreme manifestations. Less acute 'symptoms' are intense nightmares, sleep¬walking, fear of closing their eyes, feeling unable to be alone, always talking, intense escape or avoidance patterns (always having to be doing something until physical exhaustion overcomes them), and refusal or denial of anything they don't want to hear, touch, feel, experience, taste or smell.

Some with Pluto in the twelfth House can be the recipients of 'visitations' by other entities or energies. Or, they can experience feelings, emotions, moods, thoughts, or desires of 'unknown' origins.

Sometimes the origins are inner repressions that suddenly erupt to the surface; sometimes the origin is psychic absorption of the thoughts and emotions of others, and sometimes the origin is derived from 'promptings' of other-worldly forces or entities. All of these behavioral symptoms reflect the same evolutionary intent: to dissolve all the old barriers preventing a direct contact or relationship with the Universal Source, and to align with a transcendental belief system in order to foster this relationship. In worst case scenarios, the resistance to this process will produce insanity, possession, or total disintegration and fragmentation. In a few, it will manifest as the Jesus syndrome: individuals who are totally deluded and intoxicated by their own egos, and who consider themselves God. Judgment and discrimination are necessary so that these individuals learn to understand what is happening inside of them. This understanding can only occur through the desire to align with a transcendental belief system or structure in order to realize, and place in proper perspective, the cause behind the manifestation of any or all of these symptoms. In this way, they will learn how to sort out delusions, illusions and fictions versus revelation, truth and divine inspiration. The fear of the unknown will be replaced with the faith and trust to plunge into the abyss of the unknown, and to become resurrected or metamorphosed. In so doing, the fear that some of these individuals have of being dissolved into nothingness or nonexistence will evaporate.

With the bottom line anchored in the universal, some who have positively responded to the prior evolutionary intent will come into this life as natural psychics, channels or mediums. Others will plunge totally into the abyss of infinity with faith, and will have an almost exclusive focus upon the Source. A few in this group will have experienced absolute revelations as to the nature of creation. They will experience themselves as Cosmic Beings. Some have realized or felt that 'nothing else works' to such an extent that they have denied or will deny other aspects of themselves that need to be acknowledged and developed - not suppressed. Each individual is unique. Each chart will reveal the prior evolutionary and karmic background that has led to any or all of these conditions.

Others with Twelfth House Plutos will come into this life not understanding why they are here, the Earth being sensed as a foreign environment. These individuals have either spent many other lives elsewhere (other planets), or have spent a great deal of time out of body. A common problem of these types is a frustration at being unable to express to others how they feel and experience themselves. Some Twelfth House Pluto individuals have had a series of lifetimes of utter withdrawal from the world itself. This withdrawal could have occurred in monasteries, prisons, in the wilderness, and so forth. The prior intent was one of self-contemplation within the universal whole. Sometimes this withdrawal was enforced against the person's will through confinement, in order to enforce the same lesson. In cases of forced confinement, the element of karmic retribution must be considered and evaluated as to the reasons why.

All Twelfth House Pluto individuals will have a highly stimulated pineal gland. As Manly Hall points out in The Occult Anatomy of Man, this gland was called the 'occult gland' in other cultures and times. Located above the spinal column, in the middle of the brain, this gland secretes a naturally transcendent chemical substance called melatonin. Just as the ingestion of LSD, for example, will alter the state of consciousness, so too does the pineal gland through the secretion of melatonin. The pineal gland is stimulated by light entering the retina of the eyes. Because this gland is highly stimulated or active in these individuals, they can experience, on a cyclic basis, altered states of consciousness. This process is a naturally spiritualizing one. Yet for those who have not consciously desires to pursue and develop their spirituality, this process can produce the negative psychological symptoms mentioned above.

From a physiological point of view, melatonin produced from the pineal gland sensitizes the entire organism. By its sensitizing the brain (consciousness), the individual's neurological (electrical) impulses are sensitized or attuned to 'higher vibrations', impulses, or knowledge of a transcendental nature. This substance sensitizes through sharpening all our natural anatomical sensors to any stimulus: touch, taste, hearing, smell, and seeing. For example, a person may become more sensitive to impurities in food. If such individuals do not exercise caution, they can suffer problems in their pancreas (enzyme, insulin production), gall bladder, stomach, duodenum, liver, digestive tract, necessary levels of bacteria in the colon and intestines, endocrine system, and the strength of the astral or etheric body. Emotional, psychic, intellectual or physical stress can produce physiological and psychological problems, as can resistance to the evolutionary pull. If the individual is extremely denial-oriented or suppressed, the worst case scenarios promote cancer, tumors, boils, or abscesses.

From a prior-life point of view, all of these individuals have been learning how to balance their need for down-time with their need for external activity. This balance is critical. Too much of either can promote emotional distortions of all kinds, loss of perspective, loss of a centre of gravity, and psychic distortions. Because it has been so very easy for these individuals to lose touch with themselves, it has also been easy to lose awareness of the need for this balance; of when to retreat or seclude themselves and when not to.

Losing touch reflects the dissolution process, the over-identification with an aspect of themselves, or the chasing of one fantasy or dream temptation after another. The balance point or rhythm is ever-shifting, and never the same. This shifting occurs because these individuals have also been attempting to live in the eternal now, the moment, as it reflects the past and the future simultaneously. Thus, it has been and is important to develop an ongoing inner attunement or awareness as to the shifting nature of this rhythm for inner and outer activity, and to act accordingly. If these individuals try to follow this need as it occurs, then they have developed or will developed a consistent clarity or understanding at all levels of themselves, and their worldly activities, because they are in harmony with themselves and the universe. The Chinese philosophy of Taoism reflects this necessity in the concept called wu¬wei. Simply translated, it means non-action. If the individual develops a conscious awareness as to the need of any moment and acts accordingly, then his or her actions are in harmony with what is required in that moment. Thus, there is no action, because action implies acting upon the moment from an egocentric point of view.

The three most common reactions to this prior evolutionary intent, and the related karmic conditions that occur because of these reactions, can be simply stated as follows:

1. Some Twelfth House Pluto individuals will have rejected or repelled the evolutionary desire through the strength of their egos. Thus, turning their backs to the abyss, they have retreated to the light of the known world; the past. Latching onto something familiar, to tradition, they deny any larger force or source beyond themselves. They become intoxicated with their own egos. Karmically, this reaction will produce, on an ongoing or progressive basis, life situations or conditions of increasing powerlessness. Possible manifestations include physical disabilities, situations of confinement, or life circumstances wherein they are karmically blocked from being able to exercise any power at all.

2. Other individuals stand poised on the precipice, unable to move forward or backward more than a few steps either way. They commonly sense that there is a universe and Source to which they are connected, yet still are bound by compulsions and the fear of going too far into it. There usually is a subconscious resistance to submitting to a higher power than themselves. They are simultaneously attracted to and repulsed from developing a conscious relationship to this Power. Thus, they practice their own kind of nebulous spirituality. In some, the need to develop their spirituality is only acknowledged in moments of extreme crisis when all else fails. As soon as the crisis passes, so too does the need and focus upon their spiritual side. Commonly, these types of individuals will align themselves with work of a human service nature. Karmically, they will experience alienation, emotional difficulties or disruptions, work-related problems, psychic disturbances, cycles of utter meaninglessness, emptiness or futility, disillusionment, and divine discontent, in order to induce a more active development of the evolutionary intent. Some of these individuals will be highly creative icons who can transform our own vision as to the nature of the world. An amazing number of the world's most gifted actors, writers, and composers have had Pluto in the Twelfth House.

3. These individuals have faced the abyss and, with faith, taken the plunge. In this way they have allowed themselves to be dissolved from all the old barriers and egocentric limitations, and to be totally unconditioned from cultural or societal identifications. They have been reborn as an individual through whom the Source was, and is, expressing itself. In other words, the centre of the individual's consciousness has shifted from the wave to the ocean. Becoming at one with the Source, these individuals simply do the tasks and duties that they are asked or destined to do. Some will have very specialized 'missions' to perform on the behalf of all of us. Karmically, they are rapidly becoming freed from any further necessity to be on the Earth plane. At some point, they will not return to this plane unless they so desire, or are asked to do so by the direction of the Source and its agents.

Reactions one and three are not common. Reaction two is by far the most common. Of course, these three distinct reactions can intertwine as an individual ebbs and flows with the inner and outer conditions of life. Individual evolutionary and karmic conditions will help aid our comprehensive understanding as to how and why each individual has reacted, and is reacting, to this prior evolutionary intent. In general, then, all Twelfth House Pluto individuals have been attempting to learn how to expand the centre of their awareness to encompass the universal whole: to become Cosmic Wholeness, to see themselves and all others as extensions or reflections of the Source of Creation itself. In the Tenth House, the individual learned to be a cultural person with a national identity. In the Eleventh House, he or she learned to break free from this limitation and become an international or planetary individual. In the Twelfth House, he or she is learning to become a Universal or Cosmic individual. This process required of these individuals redefining themselves relative to time and space, culture, groups of like-minded Souls, or anything that conditioned their sense of separate and personal identity that did not accommodate their timeless and immortal identity in the Source, the Cosmic Sea. The need was to understand the individual part they were meant to play in their various lives, and to allow the Source to express Itself through that part. In this way, the individual must learn how to let go of everything that pertains to his or her past in order to prepare, once again, for a brand new evolutionary cycle. This new cycle will be represented by Pluto in the First House. All of us keep going around and around until the Twelfth House archetypal intent is fully realized. It is a process of refinement and progressive elimination of our separating desires, and the karma that these desires generate.

The polarity point is the Sixth House. The general evolutionary intent is for these individuals to develop specific and practical mental methods or techniques through which they learn how to analyze themselves. By developing these mental techniques, they will be able to understand how and why they work the way they work, and are the way that they are. In addition, they will progressively learn to see, experience, or witness how one part is linked or connected to another part, and how one part or condition influences the expression of every other part.

Relative to their need to connect themselves to a transcendental belief system, this polarity point now demands that they harness their natural meditational state through specific meditative techniques that will allow them to bring into a sharper and more experiential focus their living connection to the Source. Through these techniques and methods, they can examine with their conscious and rational mind the dynamics within their totality that need to be adjusted, changed, eliminated, or purified because of the blockage that these dynamics are creating.

In addition, the polarity point demands that these individuals commit themselves to some form of work of a practical and useful nature to others. The main theme that must be actualized is one of human service. In other words, they cannot remain in isolated and self-centered pursuits. The form that this work takes does not matter. As long as the theme of human service is met, the form is irrelevant. On the other hand, the type of work would reflect what the individual is here to do; it should not be just 'any' work. The individual's right work can be determined by his or her natural evolutionary and karmic condition.

In the East the concept of karma yoga reflects this evolutionary need. Karma yoga means that the individual must identify his or her 'right' work relative to his or her natural capacities and tendencies, karmic actions, and attunement to Divine Will. An individual who identifies his or her work in this way simply co-operates and fulfils that work requirement, allowing the Divine or Source to express itself through the work.

In this way, the work itself becomes a vehicle through which personal knowledge, self-realization, self-purification, devotion and humility are obtained. Work expressed in this way would also benefit all those who were affected by the work itself. What is important is the attitude towards one's work, no matter how grand or insignificant it may be from external standards of judgment. The specific form or kind of work is always in response to the needs of the whole at any point in time. Work is necessary because, of itself, it is a dynamic that promotes a focus through which these individuals can harness and channel the undefined energies of their Twelfth House Plutos.

When one is working, one is involved in an activity that promotes processing or focusing of oneself through that activity. Thus work serves as a mirror or lens in which these individuals can experience, witness, see or analyze all the emotions, moods, feelings, images, states of being, inner dynamics and component parts that surface into their consciousness because of the activity of work. In this way, these individuals can adjust, change, eliminate, or purify components or dynamics that are creating blockage, that are being misapplied or misunderstood, or that are delusive by nature. In addition, these individuals are learning lessons about reality as it is: not what they want to see, not what they blindly want to pretend is happening, not what they want to make reality into based on fantasy, delusions, or naiveté.

The development of this current evolutionary intent usually demands that these individuals experience cycles of crisis. Crisis brings situations to a head, into sharp relief. The nature and function of crisis is to force these individuals to deal with reality as it is: to see things just as they are, and the actual reasons that it is that way. Crisis can come to these people through the emotional, physical, intellectual, or spiritual bodies. Many will come into this life with subconscious desires or intentions to create crises for themselves.

Sometimes this need for crises can be quite compulsive and unconscious. In many cases, these individuals are not aware of this pattern, and do not understand why crises seem to be occurring. Some will assume the attitude of the victim. Others will resign themselves to their 'fate'. Some will compulsively create crises in the lives of others as they undermine the relationships that connect them to others. They undermine by subconsciously desiring to the foundation that binds them to others, or they undermine by criticism because they feel others should be punished just as they punish themselves for their own errors.

Of course, this type of activity only attracts criticism from those upon whom they project this behavior. Individuals who have abused power in the past, who have been overly intoxicated with their own egos, or who denied the prior evolutionary intent, will experience extreme limitations in relation to finding meaningful work that reflects their capacities. These people will experience reality as it is through the crisis of subservient and mundane work. They will feel as though a big hand is forcefully holding them back. This karmic effect will occur to induce humility, to enforce the awareness of forces greater than themselves. Some of these people will also experience physical problems or disabilities. This form of crisis also enforces analysis as to why this condition exists. Even in such a situation, these individuals are meant to assume some form of service-oriented work.

Some Twelfth House Pluto individuals will produce works of lasting value. These are individuals who have been and are 'divinely inspired' in some way, and will serve as examples for others to experience, in order to be helped or transformed in some way by the very nature of the work itself. Many of these types, however, need to learn when to take time off for themselves, as many become so dedicated to the work, so self-sacrificing, that they have no time for a life and identity outside their work. By ignoring the intrinsic Twelfth House Pluto need to balance work with rest and withdrawal, they can deplete or waste themselves. Some crisis will usually intervene to make these individuals pay attention to this need.

As these evolutionary lessons are put in motion, all Twelfth House Pluto individuals will metamorphose into the essence of humility. This will occur through the inverted pyramid effect wherein the totality of cosmic forces pours through the individual. These forces will reflect an inner illumination that can light the way for others. This effect can occur in all natural evolutionary conditions, and through any role that the individual is destined to play within the cosmic scheme of things. In its highest manifestations, these individuals can be the living embodiment of the Taoist principle of wu-wei; their actions will be in precise harmony with whatever is required of them at any moment in time.

Common characteristics of Pluto in the Twelfth House include: being deeply private, not what they seem to be as interpreted in others' eyes, deeply sensitive; taking things to heart; being amazingly shy at a core level; being ultra-emotional; although you may not know it, they can be extremely giving in a silent kind of way; having many deep and unresolved fears, an aura of dreaminess, and powerful dreams or never any dreams because of exhaustion; being naturally psychic.

See also: Pluto in the 12th House;

Pluto in the 12th House: Muhammad Ali, Lucille Ball, George Carlin, Madonna Ciccone, Salvadore Dali, Judy Garland, Art Garfunkel, William Randolph Hearst, Aldous Huxley, Steve Jobs, U.G. Krishnamurti, John Malkovich, Willie Nelson, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Dolly Parton, George Patton, John D. Rockefeller, Babe Ruth, O.J. Simpson, Donald Trump, AndyF, BenT, Carolyn, Eva, JBLight, Jeff, JulieD, JudyPl, Leen, Leif, Maitreyi, PapayaJ, Robert, Tyler