Pluto Transits & The Root Of Your Psychological Patterns

woman smokingMy early morning client had a really interesting chart.  She’s down low and simultaneously, high-flying. She’s open and closed and she embodies several other dichotomies.

Stick a Pluto transit to the angles of a chart like this and it’s going to be a hellacious party trying to sort what’s happening.

Sometimes, a Pluto transit seems a period of time you have to endure and survive.  But sometimes it’s like digging for treasure and trash. The latter is probably the case for this gal as it’s all “education” in the big picture.

In writing for her, I was reminded of some core principles which may help other. One was something I learned from my grandfather when I was a kid: you’re not supposed to get in the way of someone trying to live their life.  It’s a boundary thing – it’s their life to live.

It doesn’t mean you can’t tell you friend or loved one, you think they are making the wrong choice. You can and your probably should – but how many times?  The person is going to do what they’re going to do and hey! Maybe this bad path is the only way they can get the piece they need. So it’s incumbent on you to get our of their way… according to my grandfather.

If you live this way, I don’t see any reason to be concerned.  You’ve cared enough to offer your counsel,  If it’s refused, you show respect for the other person and their autonomy by leaving them to make their choice. But what if you don’t do this?  What if you go back and back and back and keep bothering this other person, to live your way.

I am not talking about the client, anymore. I’m just talking.

So if you’re compelled to go back repeatedly to bother someone about their life, at some point you cross a line.  While the other person may have a problem, your own problem looms large.  Your problem being that you want to run other people’s lives.

It doesn’t matter if you feel it’s for their own good.  You’re over the line and the person you’re trying to fix or repair or stop or whatever, is eventually going to become annoyed with you or worse.  Here’s my example:

You smoke.
I tell you that’s bad for you.
You acknowledge this and continue to smoke.
I come over to your house every day to speak with you about your smoking…

Soon, what I’m doing is worse than what you’re doing so why am I doing it?

Why am I doing this? That’s the burning question. What is it that is driving me to behave this way?

Chances are there’s more than one reason. There’s the reason laying on the surface. There may be several superficial reasons I can point to but will this heal me? Probably not.  Odds are high, my subconscious is driving me.

If  this is an area I prefer to avoid, I’m probably in for a good deal of pain.  Digging can be painful as well, but at least I’ll be getting somewhere. It’s like a stench, really. Or a tooth that is rooting. Eventually, you’re going to have to deal with it by excavating the entire tooth and it’s root in order for healing to occur.

I thought this might help someone. What do you think?

Photo by Ali Hajian on Unsplash

47 thoughts on “Pluto Transits & The Root Of Your Psychological Patterns”

  1. Avatar
    Hildegarde's Noviciate

    Fantastic advice. For a lot of people. I used to try to give advice to the people I deeply love.
    I try not to pass judgement but, for a Virgo, it can be tough. Because we tend to use logic in our advice. And are staggered that people continue to do what they do.
    But I have since learned your grandfather is right.
    The situation may lead to heartbreak ..maybe tragedy(hopefully not).
    I think if you truly love and care, you make yourself available to the person(at a little distance if it’s painful) if you can while they lick their wounds. Without judgement.(there but for the grace of God…)
    I’m thinking Sometimes a person needs to go through the school of hard knocks to learn their lesson. If you love them you can maybe just make sure they don’t at least slip through the “no turning back”cracks so they have a chance to recover and bounce back. Even then, there’s only so much you can do and maybe letting go is all you can do. Wish them the best. May that next person they meet will be just what they need.
    Pluto can be both brutal and beautiful.
    I tend think of it as sometimes the planet of reckoning. If you don’t address something, Pluto makes you eventually.
    Pluto will be transiting my 5th house in 2024. That’s
    good for my son I think.
    I wonder if there are any books out there to help with Pluto transits.

    1. I don’t think there are good books on this. One reason is because the subject is so vast and deep. You’re lucky to get a few good paragraphs. This is why I started chronicling my Pluto transit experience. To fill the void. But now, search won’t send people here. A lot of info is suppressed.

    2. The evolutionary astrologers’ take on it is interesting. Jeffry wolf green wrote a book called “Pluto: the evolutionary journey of the soul”..which puts the natal pluto (so not transits as such) in the context of past lives, and how it relates to the nodes. I had pluto transit my 1st house stellium (sun, moon, mars, merc, nep…) in my early 20’s.. it was intense. Galvanising though somehow.

  2. Interesting. It’s MUCH easier to ‘read’ someone else than it is to ‘read’ yourself.
    Thankfully this Pluto transit through my 4th house has allowed, encouraged and supported both retrospect and introspection.
    In short I stomped all around on my creamy Oreo cookie center.
    I mucked it up digging, learning, understanding and growing from it all.
    It cleared the way for much self awareness and self love. Insecurities which once were part of my middle name have been exposed and minimized to the point that as long as I remind myself how much I love me it’ll be cool.
    I considered the various traumas of my youth.
    I noted as bad as some of things which occurred with me were the things (often desperate lies or delusions) I told myself so I could just make it to another day were far worse.
    To the point I had physically manifested disease processes – i.e. neck cancer with a golf ball sized tumor.
    But I delved n I dug n I stomped on all the protected, most painful memories and have grown free of their burden.
    It’s a daunting task not for the faint of heart.
    But if you wanna move past the ‘shit’ (Pluto) of life you’re gonna have sig through it to find your ‘gold’ or plutonium. Lol.

    1. You are a goddess! I aspire to this but seem unable so far to stomp on the childhood memories and especially cherish the things I tell myself just how make it through another day. I so want to, so thanks for stating those two things so clearly and letting me know it can be done.

      1. Well thank you kindly.
        Remember freedom ain’t free – not quite anyway.
        But this cost I think is worth it.
        By the way I guess I’m a god as I’m male

  3. I have natal Pluto in Scorpio. Pluto is currently transiting my Capricorn ascendant. The old me is dead.
    I shaved my hair and I want to get a new piercing and tattoo

  4. Keep in mind that I am also having my first Saturn return. I got catfished by two different people that know absolutely nothing about me or my life and they both came back at the worst moment in my life to reveal their real identies. They are both married to men with children and they are all swingers together. One of the females that catfished me bought a mansion right next door to my sister in my hometown to live in with her husband and child. I left the state and I’m completely fucking disappointed

          1. Be Yourself! God, It is a learning to be oneself, been there! This is exactly your life! And Saturn is a friend! Hope i understand your feeling. Be Your Own Boss!

      1. I left the state because I refuse to be involved or interfere. It’s all drama and problems. It’s not my place and I’ve erased myself from the equation because there is no solution. It’s all broken and can’t be fixed. Tupac said it best when he said to leave the broken pieces and move the fuck on

        1. Tupac Shakur and I both have 8th house Jupiter, he had a 11th house mars, I have a 11th house Pluto and we both have 2nd house Saturn

  5. My Virgo mercury, retrograde Venus, mars stellium has overanalyzed the hell out of this. I’m changing everything and my life is my life. The people that catfished me are living their life and I’m not a part of it. I won’t interfere and I see that my 8th house showing somebody hurt husband being the reason for my death. I’ll stay far away from those married women

    1. They can live happily ever after and they chose what they wanted and they didn’t choose me. That’s fine because there is something better for me

  6. in 2013 pluto transited my sun and ascendant, they are both the same degree in capricorn. that was fun. there are huge benefits to having your sun and ascendant exactly conjuct. pluto transits arent one of them.

  7. If ever there was a life lesson called “Let go and let God” it was the one delivered to me by Pluto transiting my tenth house and squaring natal Pluto in the seventh. He busted me out of the jail of a 21 year marriage to a mysogynist psychological abuser. Then along came a Neptune man as Neptune squared my natal Neptune and metaphorically, I ran off with the gypsies. Terrifying. New life, finished my education, career job, then trained as a therapist, took up art, now teaching art to disability and seniors…the list goes on. Did I want to leave? Hell no. Too frightened and timid. It was all arranged by that wrecking ball Pluto. Reputation in tatters (tenth house) but a new life of FREEDOM…thanks Pluto!!

  8. Pluto’s been transiting my Sun, Mars, and Mercury for years…It’s been a rough period, but also brought my family together, and gave me some experiences that were probably necessary for karmic reasons…I don’t think Pluto inflicts mayhem randomly….

  9. Pluto transits, transformation of being,
    a permanent change.
    People may see transits as temporary
    conditions we get over,
    but influences of life’s experiences
    make us something new.
    The challenge and the gift is
    to embrace the changing, dance with it,
    not static “beings” but amazing ever-becomings.

    Pluto Transit

    like a hurricane
    like a natural disaster
    wind and rain laying waste to my life.
    tossed, torn, left astray and a stranger
    in the way, or at least not the norm.
    a sad wastrel left adrift in the storm.
    sing my wanderers’ song tonight.
    let the wind carry my fading melody
    off onto wind-whipped ports of call.
    my breath’s been carried out to sea
    nothing left to become of me
    once the hurricane has passed into the day
    the foggy, rainy day . . .
    I gaze upon the ragged sea.

    https://windsongmyths.wordpress.com/2020/10/04/pluto/

  10. The rotting tooth and root metaphor provided such an “A-ha” moment. Although Pluto transits often coincide with an external issue or problem (seemingly brought on or caused by the Pluto transit), which then becomes an external preoccupation or obsession, I’ve come to recognize and accept that the problem is really internal. The more I focus and fixate externally, the more the tooth rots. Pluto transits require internal reconstruction, transformation, and fortitude. And surrender. Period.

  11. Teehee … (sorry, couldn’t help it, as this is me in all the ugly glory)

    THIS is what I’ve been doing for the most of my life, while Pluto smashed into most of my natal planets on his transit from his birth position during the past 40 years.

    And then again while he smashed into my progressed planets in Capricorn, my natal 12th house.
    In my progressed chart, Capricorn is my 9th house, so I’ve learned quite a bit about the soul I came with! And had to use the garbage in the development of wisdom. My learning and teaching experience has been gruesome, slowburning and like a bone screwer… Which is, kinda fitting in Cap,if you think about it.

    There is an old English word for a surgeon called “The Sawbones”. It was used for the poor/layman during the 1800s and the 1900s.
    That’s what Pluto is doing. Sawing your bones off, and replace them with the new ones!

    Honestly, it really coins Pluto in Capricorn. I am thinking about the surgery you were going through, Elsa. It’s quite LITERALLY “a sawbones tale”, eh?

    I was that nagging b*tch because I was afraid of the other person dying from me. It wasn’t about them. So, I finally stopped doing it from January this year, and at last the other person saw a reason to see a doctor. He is now having his lungs assessed. I suspect it’s long COVID – before we even knew there was something called COVID, as he has been suffering since December 2019……..

    1. I had a welcome giggle at your bone bits, for it has been big in my mind over the last day or so in sitting with pluto! And your comment bought another thought; not just bone, but *marrow*. Look how people develop donor traits with transplants [moreso than any other part] – it changes you in, and to the core.

      But bone magic is serious shit! I’ve said before, catholics know their stuff with relics 😉 When they say ‘built on the bones of my/their ancestors’ it’s likely literal, burnt bones makes the best mortar [and china]. Then we’ve got ash; the lye, emulsifier and alkaniser. But this seems a fire blend, maybe this pluto is more earth?

      and Sawbones would be the posterchild for Pluto Aq [imv]! Death becomes egalitarian – memento mori mark II! remember the body snatchers’ huge market; all those buyers were the new medical anatomical frenzy. At what cost? As was our scientific advances from german scientists after WWII. How much are we prepared to forego, in order to know? [bit of a segue here sorry]

      but I say welcome, as I’ve really got to be careful what I read first of morning, as prior to this was weeping upon learning that Yeats was buried in a mass grave ;( So! bones for the win <3

      1. Oh my, I *knew* there was someone out there who would resonate with the sawbones thingy! LOL, yes, it is kinda remarkable how this all fits into one giant symbolism after another. Maybe you are right, the bones makes for an excellent transit analogy for a 12th house Pluto transit like the one I’ve had…

        I mean, bone dust? Catholic Church? Pisces is (I’ve heard) an astrological symbol of the Catholic Church, and 12thh house is very Piscean energy. So, there’s that, and also with the brick and mortar, ash is one leftover product when you burn something and Pluto is all about the Phoenix flames.

        It’s really impressive how much symbolism and astrology play together, I admit!

  12. Very helpful. This is definitely me. On the surface (and probably under it as well) I genuinely want to help people. My chart sets me up to be a problem-solver so it’s in my nature but I’ve certainly come across the pain part of taking it too far. I have a lot of Neptune so it’s very difficult for me to see the boundaries.

    T Pluto is about to enter my 10th/4th axis and T Chiron is squaring from the 12th where I’m also having a nodal reversal.

    My home/family, job/career are in crisis and I feel like a disgusting piece of shit. Instead of doing what I normally do, I’ve begun to look at all that shit from other perspectives and am choosing, through the pain of the digging, to try other ways.

    This quote has been helping with all of this lately:

    “The most important spiritual growth doesn’t happen when you’re meditating or on a yoga mat. It happens in the midst of conflict… when you’re frustrated, angry or scared and you’re doing the same old thing, and then you suddenly realize that you have a choice to do it differently…”

    1. I find that if you can take in the opposite sign/house content/elements/discourse when experiencing these thøypes of things, it’s sometimes easier to make it a more balanced approach.

      I read somewhere that the Aries/Libra axis wasn’t about compromising all the time. It’s about utilizing what you have… e.g.: An orange.
      Aries would eat the whole piece, and then you have a peel to deal with for others.
      A Libra would cut the orange in two, but if you need the whole orange, you would be stuck too.

      So, what to do?
      Well, what do the two parties need each? Does one of them need the juice and some peel, and the other just the meat of the fruit? Or could we share it in a fashion after assessment of what the different needs are so that everyone is winning?

      It’s food for thought I guess?

  13. “The most important spiritual growth doesn’t happen when you’re meditating or on a yoga mat. It happens in the midst of conflict… when you’re frustrated, angry or scared and you’re doing the same old thing, and then you suddenly realize that you have a choice to do it differently…”

    Yes! This resonates.

  14. Another day. I got a small poem and drawing out yesterday.It helped.Vomiting out creative issue…
    Reading (again): The Gods of Change Pain, Crisis and the Transits of Uranus Neptune and Pluto.by (the late great) Howard Sasportas.
    l have just heard that a bomb has been dropped on a hospital in Gaza.I am wordless now.

  15. So helpful to have this pointed out Elsa. My partner smokes. We are both heavy fixed, his Taurus Aquarius butts up against my Leo Scorpio.
    It’s been the hardest thing for me. I want to be kind and supportive and yet hear myself being a blisteringly anxious harridan.
    Me shaming him only bolsters his need to smoke, & then hearing myself being haughty self righteousness shames me.

    There is a small voice telling me this is really important learning, and I love Samantha’s quote: “The most important spiritual growth doesn’t happen when you’re meditating or on a yoga mat. It happens in the midst of conflict… when you’re frustrated, angry or scared and you’re doing the same old thing, and then you suddenly realise that you have a choice to do it differently…”

  16. For me it was my father who teached me, by normal decent behaviour! He was a New Moon Gemini stellium with Venus in Cancer! Stellium trining Saturn in Libra! The world needs more of this!

  17. The biggest truth you just mentioned about Pluto transits is that sometimes we have to endure and survive. That’s exactly pluto transiting my 6th house. Having to endure too much unwanted things to survive.
    On the other hand Pluto can dig deep and transform.
    As to giving advice, it’s something to be avoided simply because one might unconsciously project.
    Pluto is also obsession and control. I wouldn’t want to impose my will on someone in the form of advice only to realise it was the wrong thing for that person.

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