Transiting Pluto conjunct Natal Mercury

In many respects this will be an educational time in your life. Your ideas and opinions on many issues may change radically from what they have been in the past. Or you may become involved in persuading others to adopt your views. In either case, all thought, communication and exchange with others will take on great significance and intensity.

Your concern for truth is deepened during this transit. You want to get to the bottom of any issue that concerns you, letting nothing stand in your way. Obviously this is a good transit for any kind of research or investigation, particularly if you are investigating something hidden or secret. Your perception is sharpened so that you can see the facts more clearly and take advantage of your knowledge.

Once you have thoroughly researched your position on any matter, you can tell others what you have learned. As mentioned above, this transit gives you the power to influence people and sway them to your point of view. However, if you try to convince people from a narrow egotistical position, not because of a real concern with the truth, you will provoke opposition to your ideas, which could defeat you. Plutonian energies are not easily harnessed to egotistical motives.

Even if you do not try to coerce others with your ideas, others may try to do so with you. Again you have to recognize whether their motives are egotistical or whether they really want to help you learn. Listen to those who want to help you, because they can show you much. The former type will force you to reexamine your own thinking and see where it is weak, but do not automatically surrender to someone else's ideas. Merely question your own.

At its best, this transit can bring you tremendous new understanding about life, if you are flexible enough to learn at all times, even when you are the teacher. Flexibility is very important, because the greatest danger of this transit is that without it you can be victimized by an obsession or fanatical ideal. Then you will find yourself in furious struggles with others who regard you as a threat that must be curbed.

Transiting Pluto sextile Natal Mercury

This transit is a good time for deep intellectual probing of ideas and beliefs. If you want to or must find out about something, this is an excellent time for it. Your mental powers are sharp and your perception is keen. Also you are in the right frame of mind for working with extreme thoroughness. You are not satisfied with superficial answers and will not be happy until you understand the whole truth.

This is also an excellent time to probe your own mind and see what makes it work. Your desire to explore the secret depths of everything applies even to your own self, so this is a very good time for self-inquiry.

Communications with others take on a heavier tone now. You value significant communication and are uninterested in superficial banter. Your everyday intercourse with the world around you becomes the vehicle for important discoveries that will eventually change your whole way of thinking. You will have a spirit of discovery rather than a feeling that everything is caving in around you, as often happens when you encounter ideas that seem to invalidate your former beliefs. Your burning desire to get at the truth makes every discovery interesting instead of alarming. v And as your depth of mind increases, so will your ability to influence other people. What you say will have greater weight with others. People will believe you because they know you have checked the facts thoroughly and speak with great conviction.

Ideas, concepts and philosophies that are inherently mysterious or that explain the world from an occult point of view are more attractive to you now. This is an excellent time to study occult philosophy, metaphysics or even psychology or psychiatry. Any discipline related to healing the mind will be beneficial at this time.

Transiting Pluto square Natal Mercury

This transit can represent a period in which your ideas about the world in general are challenged significantly. Or it can represent a time when your thinking is deepened tremendously, enabling you to deal with ideas that formerly would have been too deep. In this case you will probably try to persuade others of what you believe.

Your routine day-to-day interactions with the world- conversations, letters and other such exchanges- may develop into fairly intense encounters as you try to force your ideals upon others from a fanatical conviction of your own righteousness, or as others try to do the same with you. Once again the issue is knowing precisely what your limits are and what you really think. You also need to allow others' ideas to coexist with yours. It is not good either to automatically bow before someone else's opinions or to demand that others bow to yours. If your experiences seem to invalidate your earlier beliefs, do not try to delude yourself that this isn't so. Face the facts and try to find out what is really happening. This transit can be a learning experience in the most positive sense. While you may find that your internal intellectual structure has to change greatly, the change should be for the better.

On the other hand you may become attracted to new ideas that have very intense emotional overtones. Ideas that are deep and mysterious are very compelling to you now, and you want to plumb the depths of the universe. But the ideas you are attracted to may convey power in some way, as does the study of magic in the field of the occult. You may become conscious that knowledge is power, but you must be very careful how you use this power. Magic in particular, but all powerful knowledge in general can produce tragic consequences if not handled properly.

Also, when you are teaching others, avoid the temptation to mold them into your own image. Your purpose is to show people the way, not push them down it.

Transiting Pluto trine Natal Mercury

Like other Mercury-Pluto combinations, this transit will help you gain greater intellectual insights and enable you to learn a great deal about whatever you wish to study. At the same time your viewpoints will become deeper and more subtle so that you will really understand ideas that you had grasped only superficially. This is a good time to study a new subject, go to school or take courses on any subject. But you will be most attracted to subjects that explain phenomena in depth, especially the hidden aspects of things. Under this transit you may also meet someone who has a very powerful effect upon your consciousness, perhaps a friend who influences your thinking greatly or a guru figure who opens up the universe to you.

You can be taught under this transit, and you can also teach. Your words carry greater influence at this time because the depth of your perceptions is evident to others. And you should not limit your communication to direct conversations, you should use other media to teach as well. If you have any inclination to write, this is a good time to do it, especially on subjects such as psychotherapy or the occult.

Another aspect of this transit is that Pluto will make you more concerned with studies of hidden and secret things, such as psychology, magic or other occult traditions, or studies of what is hidden in the earth, such as mining, minerology or geology. You want to understand the forces under the surface that cause events to happen.

You will study any subject you choose in depth and with complete single-mindedness, so that you will be able to cover a new discipline completely in a short time. Under this transit you may acquire a new skill in a much shorter time than at other times in the past.

Transiting Pluto quincunx Natal Mercury

Transiting Pluto opposite Natal Mercury

During this transit communications with others may become quite difficult, if the reason for communicating is to coerce opinions and thinking rather than to inform. Such coercion provokes resistance and then a general breakdown of communication. You must let others be and let them think what they want. And if you are threatened by someone else's coercion, you will be obliged to stand up for your beliefs and fight for them if necessary. First of all, scrutinize your ideas thoroughly so that you know their strengths precisely and can't be caught unprepared in a conflict. And remember that there is nothing wrong with changing your stand if it proves necessary.

Avoid fanatical ideas, that is, opinions that you believe in absolutely and consider worthy of forcing on others. Under this transit you can become totally possessed by convictions that have very little real meaning but that you insist on forcing on others. Also avoid associating with people who are inclined to think this way, because they will force their views upon you. With this transit there is no point in asking for conflict; it will probably come anyway.

Obsessive thinking can take another course also. You may become so obsessed with working out an idea, which may be perfectly valid, that you can't get any peace until you have done so. This can lead to nervous exhaustion or even a nervous breakdown, if you are at all inclined to that. While you are able to do very hard mental work under this transit, you should be careful not to overstrain yourself. Research and other types of mental exploration, especially about occult beliefs or very obscure and hidden matters, are the most dangerous, because they can be very obsessive. Rather than avoiding such work altogether, however, it would be better to exercise restraint in working on them.