Under the bridge astrology

Category: Major transits

  • Walking with the fates – A Pluto transit survival guide

    Walking with the fates – A Pluto transit survival guide

    I often mention Pluto in my readings because I know how important and transformative a Pluto transit can be.

    Pluto is fate. He comes in and can often change everything, he pulls us up at the roots, he pulls the rug away from underneath our feet, he’s the forest fire that clears away the dead wood so new green shoots can grow.

    A Pluto transit is often a process of deep transformation, of death and rebirth.

    Some of us will have had more experiences with Pluto than others. The dwarf planet moves slowly through the skies and can stay in a sign for many decades. Those with many placements in Sagittarius or Capricorn – or the two opposite signs, Gemini and Cancer – would have felt Pluto’s power since the mid 1990s.

    The meaning of Pluto in astrology

    Pluto was named after the Roman God of the Underworld and often a Pluto transit, which lasts on and off for around three years, can feel like a descent into his realm.

    But, as we learn how to work with the energies of the transit and with what Pluto is trying to teach us, we start to climb back up, into the light.

    Pluto is power and a Pluto transit can also bring power, fame and empowerment your way. Pluto can lift you up if you’re down, because at its core Pluto is transformation.

    One example of this is Taylor Swift, who had Pluto on her Sun as she began working and performing in Nashville in 2004 and 2005. Pluto lifted her up and brought her onto a predestined path – and someone as successful as her will often channel and represent something in the time or in the collective. Since the early 2000s Pluto has crossed or opposed almost all of the important placements in her chart and brought her mega-fame and wealth.

    As someone born in December in the 1980s Pluto has also crossed or opposed most of the placements in my birth chart. For me the process brought self-knowledge and a slowly unfolding process around how to use storytelling in a helpful and healing way.

    Pluto transits can affect us in many different ways. By working with the planet these periods can be both empowering and bring healing.

    1. Figure out how Pluto will affect your natal chart

    Go to a website like astro.com and find the Extended Chart Selection. Type in your birth details and in the section called Chart Types choose Natal Chart and Transits.

    Then look at your Birth Chart and locate your natal Pluto, the symbol looks a bit like the letter “P”.

    Look up the sign and the house for your natal Pluto. This can tell you, among other things, a bit about the generational experiences that might play out through your life and in which area (house) those experiences might fall. I’ve written more about the generational nature of Pluto in a post about the Pluto square Pluto transit, which all of us will have in our mid-life.

    Your natal Pluto can also give an idea of the flavour your Pluto transits might have. A Pluto in Scorpio in the second house might be confronted with themes around security, safety and finances. A Pluto in Libra in the 5th house might have experiences around relationships, love-affairs and infidelity – or channel that placement into becoming a successful artist.

    The next step when looking at your chart is to find out where Pluto is now. Locate the “P” for Pluto amongst the green symbols circling around the birth chart. That’s where Pluto is in the skies at the moment.

    Which house is he in? And is he aspecting any of the planets in your natal chart? Is he on top of a placement, or perhaps opposite one? Other aspects to look out for are squares, where Pluto sits at a 90 degree angle to a placement in your chart, or a trine where he is at a 120 degree angle. Squares can feel a bit abrasive, trines are often supportive and positive.

    The conjunction (Pluto on top of a placement) or opposition (opposite a placement) are often the transits you will feel the most.

    The easiest way to start figuring out the astrological story is to do some research around the house transiting Pluto (the green symbol) is in. And if you’re having an opposition, square or trine – look up that house too. Those houses will speak of the areas of your life Pluto will be working on.

    Then look up the personal planet that is being aspected. That’s the part of you that will be asked to transform. Pluto on your natal Mercury could mean studying a new subject or your worldview changing somehow. Pluto on your Venus might mean that your relationships, how you love and how you’re loved, will go through a process of transformation. Pluto in your Ascendant might mean that the way you’re perceived in the world and the way you yourself present yourself to others will change.

    Finally look up the signs involved in the story. Pluto is in Aquarius now, the eccentric and egalitarian water-bearer. Over the next twenty years people with placements in the fixed signs Aquarius, Leo, Scorpio and Taurus will be exposed to the power of Pluto.

    2. Let go

    Pluto often asks us to let go of something. And sometimes he takes something away from us. The earlier in the transit you can figure out what it is you’re supposed to let go of the easier the ride might be. The more you cling on to the past or to an old version of yourself the harder Pluto might make you work. So figure out what it is you’re supposed to evolve away from and let go.

    When Pluto transited my Sun in my late teens I suddenly knew I had to walk away from a dysfunctional relationship that was causing both me and my first boyfriend pain. With Pluto there is sometimes this inner knowing that you don’t really have a choice anymore – I knew I was done with the relationship and there was no going back. A wall had been raised between what was becoming the past and my future.

    When the transit was over I had left my boyfriend, my old circle of friends and my hometown. I had graduated high school and I moved to a big city several hours away to go to university. My life changed completely.

    Shamanic healer and spiritual guide Tansy Alexandra, who has also had many significant Pluto experiences in her life, speaks of how Pluto teaches us to step more fully into who we are. Pluto’s transits achieve this by making us let go of old stories around who we thought we should be and what we thought we should do with our lives.

    She puts it beautifully when she says Pluto has brought her: “an understanding of who I am, where I am, and in what existence/experience I am in, which makes what I thought I wanted appear as something of a diversion from what I truly needed and fundamentally wanted in this life”. 

    That is the power of Pluto, he teaches us about what the fates want from us. And the earlier in the transit we can take a deep breath and let go of the old. To shake off our old skin and bravely step up to what is asked of us, the easier the transit will be.

    And that’s where Pluto can show us his other side. He can empower us and lift us up.

    3. Ask for help if you need it

    Sometimes it isn’t possible to work through a Pluto transit on your own. Especially as what the planet asks of you is often a deep and profound transformation. I wish I would have known this when Pluto opposed my Moon. This was the most difficult Pluto transit for me – and from listening to my clients’ experiences I know that Pluto opposite Moon, more so than any other Pluto transits, can be very challenging.

    The Moon is our inner emotional nature, it’s also a point of emotional safety. To have the planet of transformation, the Lord of the Underworld, opposite that tender spot in our chart can feel like a free fall.

    For me it meant that all my coping mechanisms and places of safety were stripped away and I had to find new ways to feel safe.

    Up until that point I had been a confident and extremely self-reliant person. I thought I could take on almost anything and for a long time I had told myself a story of not needing anyone – that relying on other people was somehow a weakness.

    Then Pluto opposed my Moon and brought me many different experiences that took away that confidence and self-reliance.

    I started having panic attacks. For a while I felt like I was walking with death beside me and what was asked of me was to learn how to live with the knowledge that everything can be taken away from you.

    At the time, before I knew this was a Pluto transit, I described those three years as walking into a dark valley, walking through the darkness, and then climbing back up again – which is exactly what a Pluto transit can feel like.

    With hindsight I know that it would have been helpful to seek out healers and helpers at this point in time. Pluto was in my 12th house of the subconscious and spirit opposing my Moon in the 6th house of health, service and worry. Energy work, bodywork and shamanic work – even prayer – would all have been extremely good tools to use had I known it at the time.

    But I didn’t. Instead what that Pluto transit brought me was a budding knowledge that it’s OK to ask for help, that I can’t walk through life alone, that I am and need to be vulnerable.

    We all fall down sometimes, that’s just how life is for most people. And we can’t always do it all on our own. We live in a society where we’re not supposed to show weakness or fear or vulnerability. That makes it so much harder to deal with some elements of a Pluto transit. These can be moments when we do fall down and accepting that is also part of the process, as is being able to ask for help and to let our loved ones know that we aren’t OK. And that’s often where the healing starts.

    Photo by Elly Endeavours on Unsplash and the rest from the British Library on Flickr.

  • The astrology of turning 40 – dealing with your first Pluto square Pluto

    The astrology of turning 40 – dealing with your first Pluto square Pluto

    Pluto squares itself around the time when we turn 40. Something that will activate a generational imprint in our birth chart and can bring themes of the collective into our lives.

    Many cultures don’t have initiation rites in a traditional sense any more. But we do have several thresholds to cross as we journey from childhood into adulthood and then old age – thresholds that can be tracked astrologically.

    Between the age of 27 to 30 we experience our Saturn return, when transiting Saturn returns to its place in the birth chart. It’s a time to leave childhood behind, to grow up and take responsibility for our actions and lives. Its exact expression will depend on who you are and where Saturn can be found in your birth chart.

    Then we have Pluto square Pluto around the age of 40 (and also Neptune square Neptune and a bit later the Uranus opposition). These all fall slightly differently depending on when you were born – but they are often described as the mid-life crisis transits.

    First Pluto will shake things up then Neptune might make everything a bit foggy, then Uranus comes in and tells us to break free. Or so the story goes.

    Healing stories of Pluto square Pluto

    A few weeks ago I had the privilege to assist during an astrological workshop run by my friend Amy Bird. With her Leo Sun in the 4th house, Gemini rising and Capricorn moon in the 9th she is a natural and gifted teacher who by being her joyful self conjures up a hearth fire where women feel at home and safe enough to share their stories and bare their scars. What a powerful place that can be.

    We were a mixed group – different ages, different experiences, different lives. And we were exploring how to find purpose in the birth chart. It was only natural to go to those big, generational turning points in life.

    I’m about to leave my thirties behind and I’m coming up to my first Pluto square Pluto transit. At the workshop everyone else had crossed this particular threshold. And hearing their stories impressed upon me how pivotal this time can be for many of us.

    The meaning of different Pluto generations

    Pluto stays in a sign between 12 and 30 years (the difference is down to his elliptical orbit) and the genertional nature of Pluto is a lovely reminder that we are part of a collective. We are born into a particular time and the nature of that time will play out through us and our lives.

    The generation with Pluto in Libra, born between 1972 and 1984, might find that stories and themes around relationships and finding balance are coming up in their lives. They were born to a generation of parents where the woman was able to be other things than a mother, where divorce and new kinds of family set ups started to become more normalised and accepted. They might also have seen their parents having to, or choosing to, work very hard and in some cases look for a different way to live or a different set of values.

    Pluto in Virgo (1957 to 1972) might have had themes around health, work and service playing out through their lives. They would have been born into a time when the giddy relief felt after the war had already become embedded in the baby boomer generation (Pluto in Leo, 1939 to 1958).

    The lucky Pluto in Leo generation has lived through an era where in many parts of the world house prices kept rising, jobs were for life and there was an underlying sense of stability and that things kept getting better.

    Individual stories might of course bring forth different experiences of this, but many of those born with Pluto in Leo were, or are now, able to enjoy a comfortable retirement with the help of the wealth that has been built up during their lives. They are learning how to shine, how to take up space.

    Things weren’t as easy for the following cohort. Pluto in Virgo had to work harder and probably also felt like it had to work hard. This is the rat-race generation, the health conscious generation, the trying to do everything right generation.

    My own cohort is the Pluto in Scorpio generation, born between 1983 and 1995. This is a generation that has popularised astrology, that is turning to mysticism and magic, in order to understand themselves and other people and make sense of the world. This cohort has also made it acceptable to talk about mental health – it’s a generation that is aware of the darker themes in life.

    As young adults or teenagers we experienced a global financial crisis, suddenly the upwardly mobile path was taken away. Then, as many of us were starting a family or had young families, the pandemic hit. So there is a generational theme of learning how to deal with loss, trauma and uncertainty, that deeply transformational nature of Scorpio. We were also the first generation to grow up with the internet – connected to and merging with the collective and its unconscious urges and drives.

    Pluto square Pluto brings the collective into our own story

    At the workshop the collective themes of Pluto could be seen in the stories that were shared. Two women with Pluto in Virgo talked about being pregnant around their Pluto square Pluto and then learning about healing in order to help their child. During the transit they were called to working with, in one case healing minds, and in the other healing bodies, both of which are expressions of Virgo.

    I’ve heard other friends speak of how the Pluto square Pluto transit was a time when they started to do some serious inner work or were set on their spiritual path, when the fates pushed them towards the next phase of their lives. Both are now successfully helping others by working with different healing modalities.

    As I’m waiting for this part of my own Pluto story to unfold I’m also thinking about how we can use the story of the birth chart and its transits in an empowered way – like my friends and the women in the workshop.

    Working proactively with transits with the help astrology

    In an episode of the Astrology podcast fertility astrologer Nicola Smuts Allsop talks about dealing with transits proactively and how she worked with a tricky one in her own life.

    She had an upcoming potentially difficult transit to her ASC/DC axis – the self and the other – and knew there was a risk of her marriage breaking down. She talks about working with the energies of the transit and events fate had brought into her life – she moved abroad and lived separately from her husband for a while. And her marriage survived.

    She uses this story to explain how she helps her clients work with the energies in their own birth chart and with the energy of a transit in a constructive way.

    It’s a fascinating take on astrology and one I’ve come across before, but her way of explaining it made a lot sense to me. She talks about among other things recommending that some of her clients with challenging Saturn/Neptune aspects take up analogue photography in order to express those energies in a helpful and healthy way.

    The point is that we can sometimes take the fates by the hand. By using ritual, by doing, it is possible to find new and different and exciting expressions of the energies and themes playing out through us and in our lives. And the beauty of astrology is that it gives us a hint of what might be coming up and how to work with it. It also places our own lives and selves into a much larger narrative.

    Pluto square Pluto is an opportunity to work with a big generational transit. And to see how our lives fit into the story of the time and the cohort we’re born into.

    I’m inspired by the women who have used this transit to work on themselves and used that knowledge to help others.

    All images from the fantastic British Library Database on Flickr.