Significance of Transiting Pluto

The nature of Pluto is similar to that of the Hindu god Shiva, the creator and the destroyer. Pluto usually begins by breaking down a structure; then it creates a new one in it's place. The entire cycle of death, destruction and renovation is accompanied by tremendous powers, for Pluto is not a mild or even very subtle planetary influence. You can always see it's effects very clearly- ranging from machines breaking down and needing repair, to full scale destruction and death. Decay at one level or another, followed by new life from the old is the typical Plutonian process.

Characteristically Plutonian people are those who seek to change, transform and take control of everything around them. Often a Pluto transit signify the arrival of a person who transforms your life, either for good or for evil. Or it can symbolize an event or circumstance that has the same effect.

Pluto also rules those energies inside you that lead inexorably to change. It rules the death and regeneration of the self, as old aspects of your life pass away and are replaced by new ones that could not otherwise have come into being. Pluto does not signify death in the literal sense; instead it refers to a metaphorical death, something that ceases to be.

The energies of the planet that Pluto is transiting become a source of change and transformation in your life. You may get involved in serious power struggles with others about changes in the areas of your life associated with that planet.

As Pluto transits your houses, it signifies the areas of your life that are due for radical transformation. In the area ruled by the transited house, structures in your life have built up to the point that it is no longer possible to patch up whatever is wrong. It is time for a full-scale reconstruction, preceded if necessary by destruction of the old change-resistant patterns.

It is extremely important that you recognize the inevitability of Plutonian change, which is built into the very structure of things and cannot be prevented. And you should not try to prevent it, because it is a necessary stage in your evolution. All that you will do is force the energies to build up until they are explosive. Then the inevitable changes come about disastrously.

Not only should you go along with the Plutonian energy by letting go of whatever must depart, you should also assist the rebuilding process that follows, for this is the equally inevitable consequence of the Plutonian breakdown.

Pluto also has to do with secretive and subversive elements of society. A Pluto transit may bring such elements into your life, although it is often quite dangerous to allow this, so beware.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 1st House

At this time you will gradually reshape many aspects of your personality, and you will have the opportunity to get in touch with the forces that have shaped you and made you what you are. Getting in touch with yourself in this manner is especially helpful because it gives you greater control over the unconscious drives that in the past have surfaced in subconsciously directed urges, compulsions and irrational impulses. You will also gain greater control over the ways in which you project your personality to others, which will make your relationships more rewarding.

However, en route to this desirable goal of self-improvement, you will have to meet certain challenges in order to make anything good come out of this period.

First, you will find energies rising within you that want to control everything and everyone around, which could make relationships with others exceedingly difficult, if you are not careful. Now you have the chance to be either a positive or a negative force for change in the world around you, but you will almost certainly be a negative force if you don't make the effort to understand yourself. You will be the vehicle for blind and irrational ego forces, the result of infantile and primitive urges that you haven't dealt with as an adult. These forces are not directed toward what is best for you. But if you understand yourself well, you will be able to bring about a complete rebirth of energy and effectiveness in your life.

Fortunately, under the influence of this transit you will be more and more driven to seek out the inner dimensions of life. You will be attracted to the mysteries and hidden aspects of life, which will make you very interested in your own and other people's inner workings. This same interest may lead into the study of astrology, yoga and other occult or spiritual doctrines whose purpose is the total regeneration of the self.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 2nd House

During the next several years your values will undergo a complete metamorphosis, which will affect both your personal possessions on the material plane and your sense of values on the psychological level.

The process may include major changes in your financial picture over the next several years. The most upsetting aspect of this change is that quite frequently it begins with a breakdown phase, in which you may have to get along with much less in the way of resources. In a business, for example, circumstances beyond your control might lessen your volume of business, or you might have difficulty borrowing money. You might have to change the source of your income, resulting in less income during the changeover. If you own property, you might have to invest considerable money in repairs or modernization. Your material base, no matter what it is now, will change enough that it will be hard to count upon your accustomed income.

You are by no means doomed to poverty, however. This is a temporary phase that will pass as soon as the breakdown phase of this transit is finished. If you try to hold on to the possessions or sources of income you are used to, you will only slow down the process and delay the beginning of the new phase.

At another level, your whole attitude toward property may change completely. You may come around to the view that physical property is not so important to you. Metaphysical and moral values may become more important, so that you no longer seek to acquire material possessions. Considering how little control we have over the material universe, it is a little ridiculous that we put so much stock in it, thereby putting a large part of our lives at the mercy of fate, so to speak. Only our inner values are within our total control.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 3rd House

Everyday contacts, everyday communications and conversations take on a much heavier tone while Pluto transits this house. Elements of your everyday life that you normally take for granted- neighbors, immediate relatives, daily business and other such routine matters- now become fraught with significance. You may be forced to examine your everyday actions as you have never done before. Great changes are taking place in you, triggered by circumstances in your immediate environment. Situations that you have been contending with for years and have come to regard as a permanent part of your life may now reach the crisis point. You will be forced to do something about them now, and indeed you should. This is the beginning of a period of deep psychological change and inner regeneration that will continue for many years and reach another phase when Pluto enters your fourth house.

It will be necessary to examine your everyday beliefs, for the ideas that you have held to be true without question may be undermining your life in some subtle way that will now come out into the open. It is not a good idea to take anything for granted during this time, because repressed psychological tensions will inevitably surface. You will find it very difficult to keep problems buried, and it will become even more difficult as time goes on. Expect a period of acute self-questioning for the next several years. However, you should not assume that you are wrong about everything. Not taking things for granted does not mean that you have been wrong about them. It only means that you have become so used to them that they no longer register in your life, and it is time to become aware of them again. To be aware is to experience, which makes life much more interesting in the long run, although it may be rather upsetting at first.

Do not settle for superficial explanations, although it is unlikely that you will. You should try to get as close as possible to the inner workings of elements in your life. You may become interested in psychology, yoga and occult studies, although in this phase you will probably study them as intellectual disciplines rather than apply them to yourself as living experience. That will come when Pluto enters the fourth house.

Changes of scene and traveling over short distances may trigger off important changes that will have far-reaching effects. Wherever you go, strive to gain a new perspective that will enable you to understand your everyday world a little more deeply.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 4th House

The tremendous psychological changes of the last several years with Pluto transiting your natal third house continue now as Pluto enters the fourth house. But now the effects become much deeper, more internal and personal. Your inner psyche, your home, your family and the other most personal areas of your life will be affected.

On the psychological level, you may have to deal at last with certain problems that you have been living with since childhood. In fact, many issues from childhood will reemerge now, as you begin to understand their consequences to you as an adult. You will no longer be satisfied to just live with them. You want change, and you will be able to change at the most fundamental levels now. The irrational compulsions and inappropriate childish behavior that most of us indulge in under certain conditions will be called into the light and examined. This is generally an excellent period to undergo hypnotherapy or a similar process if you feel that it might be useful. However, this is not to say that it will be necessary. Even without psychotherapy you will undergo tremendous imward changes.

On a more exterior level your home life may change tremendously. There can be a number of possible causes for this, including a change of residence; changes within the house, such as extensive repair or remodeling; changes within your family, such as divorce, death or other separations; or a tremendous change in the nature of your family relationships.

Your relationship with your parents are likely to change a great deal. If you have been overly dependent upon them for any reason, you may find it necessary to break away from them. You may have a rather serious power struggle with your parents under this transit, if they try to hold on to you as if you were still a child. But the changes within your family or between you and your parents need not be negative by any means. All that can be said for sure is that they will certainly be significant and that when this transit is over a new order will begin.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 5th House

The impact of this transit can have many consequences, because the fifth house rules several areas of your life. It relates on one hand to recreation and amusement in the literal sense of the word, and on the other hand to children, who are a recreation of the self in another sense.

If you have children, this is likely to be a fateful period in your life with them. The precise nature of this fatefulness is not easy to pin down, but it isn't necessarily bad. But your relationships with your children are now entering a phase in which everything you do with them will have a powerful effect on them later. So it is important to be careful and to use common sense when dealing with your children.

Specifically, this transit can relate to periods of tension between you and your children as you attempt to apply too much pressure upon them- or vice versa- to change in some way; in other words, a power struggle with your children. If there are severe afflictions to planets in this house and if other transits warrent it, this can also be a dangerous period for your children. Suffice to say that during this time it would not be a good idea to take unnecessary risks with your children's health.

The fifth is also the house of love affairs, that is, the early phase of a relationship between two people who enjoy being together, as opposed to a serious commitment (a seventh house relationship). With Pluto in the fifth house, a love affair is likely to be very heavy, very emotionally involved and intense. You are likely to regard your relationships as fated, which is not bad in itself, but it could distort your sense of proportion. Also be wary of a relationship in which you feel totally fascinated by someone whom you know is not good for you as a partner. Your subc may be playing tricks and getting you into something that you dont need. An existing love relationship will be very intense during this period and will go through a complete change. It is unlikely that arelationship in severe trouble will survive this period, but if it does it will last forever.

The fifth house also relates to creative self-expression, art and other forms of recreation in the more usual sense of the word. During this time you will attracted to activities that are very powerful and involving, that may even carry a risk of life, because you want to experience everything you do very intensely. Superficial experiences do not attract you at all.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 6th House

First, be very careful of your health under this transit. During these years you are likely to overstrain yourself physically and pay inadequate attention to your body's needs. Also, for years you may have had a physical condition that you haven't considered worth attending to, but now it may reach a critical point so that you have to do something about it. At it's most severe, this transit can produce a complete physical breakdown. But this is likely only if you completely ignore your health needs as mentioned above, so this problem can easily be avoided.

In fact this transit can also indicate complete physical regeneration. If you adopt a careful physical regimen now you can rebuild your body even if you have neglected it in previous years. It is a good time to take up yoga or a similar physical-spiritual body culture. This is also a good time to examine your diet and how your body reacts to it. If necessary, change your diet for one that is more suitable to your individual needs. Be careful of fad diets that assume everyone's needs to be identical or that are based solely on religious principles with little scientific backup. A poor diet can lead to physical breakdown at this time.

The sixth house also concerns your work, either at a job or wherever you perform duties on a day-to-day basis. Pluto's transit through this house is as likely to affect this part of your life as it is to affect your health. You can expect great changes in your work, possibly a complete change of job or even career. There may be a difficult period of tension, because Pluto creates tension with people in your job, particularly bosses. You may be compelled to look elsewhere for work even if you don't want to. If this kind of tension arises, it is probably best to get another job. You may change jobs frequently as you cast about for the proper situation. It may take several years to find it, but when Pluto gets near the end of this house, you probably will.

It is quite possible that you will get into a line of work that is Plutonian in nature, a job that involves tearing something down in order to build anew. Work that involves regenerative therapies, either physical or psychological, is Plutonian. Or your work may deal with secret or subversive elements of society or with secret projects.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 7th House

At this time either all of your relationships and partnerships will go through profound and significant transformations, or your life will be transformed through a close encounter with another person. The relationships affected include your marriage or other close love relationship, partnerships in business, encounters with enemies or with people with whom you consult (lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists and the like) and any other one-to-one relationships.

In a marriage or love affair, this transit signifies a profound change through or within the relationship. The two of you may reach a crisis that requires you to redefine the entire nature of your relationship. You may discover that long-hidden tensions within your relationship cannot remain that way and must be released now. A business partnership may go through a similar transformation. A marriage or business partnership that is not basically sound will probably not survive this transit.

Obviously, for most persons this is not a particularly good time to start a business partnership or marriage. The energies present in such a relationship may make it difficult for you to settle down into any kind of comfortable routine. In a marriage, particularly, you may be operating under unc compulsions that make it difficult to create a structure that is in your interests in the long run. Some people, however, need the emotional intensity in a relationship that this transit indicates. For such persons marriage at this time is quite all right.

Encounters with others, including professional consultants as listed above, may bring about significant changes in your life. Pluto transiting this house often signifies that you are looking for someone to aid you in transforming your life. This transit often coincides with psychotherapy. Just don't expect the therapist to do all the work for you.

It is important to avoid power struggles with enemies during this time, for they are likely to be extremely nasty and destructive, with no bar on dirty tactics. If you do become involved in such a tactic, expect your opponent to use every sneaky device in the book to thwart you. But it is not recommended that you reciprocate inkind. Aside from ethical considerations, you would not be very successful. This transit is much more likely to mean receiving underhanded treatment than giving it.

The people you encounter during these years who will effect your life so strongly are only mirrors of your inner psychic impulses. Stop attributing everything that happens to you- good or bad- to other people and begin to recognize that you trigger off these encounters by subtle unc cues. When you learn this you will receive the real understanding of your life that this transit can convey.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 8th House

In many ways, Pluto is at home with this transit, since it's symbolism is very closely related to that of the eighth house. Both relate to death and resurrection symbolically as well as literally.

During this transit the issues of major transformation- even death, rebirth and regeneration- will become more significant in your life than ever before. Although your own life is not in any great danger, there may be deaths of people around you that will have a very important effect upon you. Such a death may radically change your life circumstances in some way, or force a confrontation within you about the nature and meaning of your life. In general your concerns will become quite deep during this transit.

You may become involved in the occult or other teachings that relate to the issue of life and death. You will find it difficult to accept explanations that do not get to the very bottom of the matter and explore its innermost parts. This will be true for every question you ask, not only questions of your own life and death. You are seeking the answers to mysteries.

On an entirely different level, this transit can effect possessions and resources held jointly with others- a spouse's finances, for example, or corporate finances. A major change may occur in your life through one of these sources. This is not a good time to go into debt, because indebtedness will put you very much under someone else's control.

One possibility that combines both principal themes of this transit is that of an inheritance. However, for this to happen there should be other transits that reinforce this possibility, as well as indications in your natal chart.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 9th House

During the next several years your overall view of the world around you will change considerably, often because of crises in your life that demonstrate the invalidity of your former views. At the same time, however, it will be obvious that your ability to see and understand the world in depth and your wisdom in handling it will grow and deepen. There is no reason to fear this transit. At worst it is a maturing experience, but at best it will transform you into a far better human being. You should strive to learn everything you can from the experiences you have in this period, because the knowledge you gain will be extremely useful during the transit of Pluto through your tenth house, which follows this one. You needn't be in a hurry, however, because this transit will take several years.

Whatever your interests and concerns prior to this transit, you will turn now to more profound subjects, such as your relationship to the people around you and to the universe, as well as your role in the general scheme. You may turn to religion if it can give you the deep and intimate experience that you need at this time. Pluto brings knowledge, not through the mind but through the viscera. The mind cannot comprehend this knowledge, it must be an experience. Mystical and occult philosophies may attract you because of their direct appeal to the inner being.

But remember that your knowledge-bringing experiences now are extremely powerful, and you will take everything that comes as profound and powerful. You must avoid the danger of becoming fanatically obsessed by these experiences. Pluto always tends to produce obsessions, and during this time you may be inclined to cram everything you have learned down other people's throats. Your conviction will help you persuade others of what you have learned, but give them the chance to keep their own views as well.

Since the ninth house is concerned with your relationship to the larger social order, this transit can cause you to become involved in a group or movement that wants to transform society, but probably not in a revolutionary way. Pluto operates more slowly and effectively.

If you have difficult aspects in this house, Pluto may cause difficulties with the law if you are not careful. This would be likely to happen if, convinced of your own righteousness, you operate without considering the ideas of others. If you keep in mind the context of you actions and their appropriateness as far as society is concerned, you should have no trouble.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 10th House

This is a most important time in your life, for you will strive to achieve more now than you ever have before. You aim to make the greatest possible mark upon the world, and now is the time to do it, but only if you have truly found out who you are and what your life is about. If you haven't found out, now is the time to do so. Pluto gives you either the power to achieve your life goals or the insight to find out what they truly are. Consequently, if you are secure and knowing about yourself, you have the opportunity for great success, as long as you heed certain warnings. If you do not know your goals, you will probably change your path. You may change jobs rather often and spend several years apparently quite lost, while you find out what you are supposed to be doing.

However, let us return to your striving for success and self-realization. Pluto arouses your ambitions, the desire to take control and dominate. Its actions can be quite ruthless, like a force of nature that has no regard for human standards of morality and ethics. But people who act like this under the influence of Pluto are often quite tragic. Having thrown away their humanity, they discover that they can expect no quarter from others who unite to oppose them, and they are brought down. It is essential that you avoid wreaking havoc or even bending the standards of ethics with this transit, for Pluto's energies are too powerful to play games with. Play the game fairly and according to the rules, but continue to pursue your goals. Do not take shortcuts.

If you experience the other side of this transit as altering your life direction, the important idea is not to get discouraged. You may undergo considerable changes during this transit, and you may even feel that you have become a different person, which is probably true. Take all the time you need to find the right course. If you hurry you will only get into another wrong place, and your life will be much less than it could have been, if you had taken enough time to find yourself.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 11th House

This will be a period of great changes in your long range goals and your hopes for the future. Also the kinds of people you have as friends will change. Activities that you once enjoyed may no longer appeal to you now. You may decide that many goals that you once would have pursued are not worth pursuing. Your ideals will change, which will be reflected in a change in the people whom you associate with and the groups or movements you identify with.

You will be looking for quite a different kind of friendship than you have had in the past. Formerly you may have been satisfied simply to spend time with people whom you felt at ease with, but now you seek out people who will provide very intense encounters, emotionally and otherwise. Some of these encounters may not be very pleasant, but that is because you are seeking to confront new dimensions of yourself through them. Friendships now have a purpose in your individual development; they are not the casual encounters that you are used to.

One friendship in particular may change your life at this time. You may meet someone who affects you so strongly that the entire course of your life is changed. But that is what you have been seeking, so this is all for the good. However, avoid associating with individuals just because they are powerful and persuasive. Your desire for intense experiences through others should not lead to friends who will guide your life into paths you shouldn't take. During this transit there is a danger that unc compulsions will take over and send you in some direction that you dont really want to go in. But it is equally possible that you will meet someone who can really act as a guide and teacher and send you in a direction that will help you grow.

You may become associated with a group or movement that wants to reform society in some way. Again you should avoid ruthless persons, because with Plutonian energies at work, they could be dangerous. However, if your present interest in positive reform is sincere, you may find others who have the same aims.

Shallow old friendships may end under this transit, and new ones may be formed. In the long run it does not matter, as long as you fulfill the fundamental purposes of this transit, which are transformation through your friendships and regeneration of your goals.

Transiting Pluto in the Natal 12th House

This transit has many ramifications. In many ways it prepares you for Pluto transiting your first house, in that it clears away old and hidden psychic garbage, which must happen prior to a complete rebuilding of the self.

First and most importantly, the effects of this transit are psychological. It is similar to Pluto's transit through the fourth house in that it brings up aspects of yourself that are deeply buried in your psyche and forces you to confront them. In our interaction with other people we try to hide, both from ourselves and from them, those aspects of ourselves that we have been taught not to approve of. Yet the energies of these hidden characteristics leak out in subversive ways.

They undercut our conscious intentions in such a way that we do ourselves in without understanding how or why. Pluto activates these patterns to the point that they can't be ignored. Unconsciously motivated actions can become extremely troublesome at this time. Although you intend to act one way in a particular situation, you suddenly find yourself acting quite differently. During this period it is extremely important to understand these unc energies and be willing to confront the aspects of yourself that you have been taught to believe are "bad." You cannot go on through adulthood with subconscious behavior patterns that are clearly childish. You may have to recall and relive the events of your childhood that arte affecting you now, and you should feel free to call in any kind of a therapist who seems able to reach inside of you.

This transit activates the hidden side of your nature and makes you understand and control it, but it also activates the hidden side of external elements of your life that you have not faced in the past. These may be relationships that have failed or actions and behavior that you are aware of but do not wish to discuss, even with yourself. The consequences of these actions may come back to haunt you now. You should face up to them honestly and acknowledge them, for only then will they cease to run your life. You may have alienated someone quite unconsciously and even quite blamelessly, who may try to work against you. Older astrology texts refer to such persons as "secret enemies," but usually they are not really unknown to you. It is just that you may have to confront your own feelings of guilt about them, and here again the only course is to bring these feelings out into the open. "Secret" enemies cannot work against you in the open, and if you are completely honest with them, they may have a change of heart toward you.

Whatever your situation, it will be necessary to confront all those hidden and unpleasant aspects of your life and your past. By avoiding them you have created a situation in which they control you. Only by facing them honestly and without guilt can you clear them away and prevent them from having any further influence over you. That is the task of this period in your life.