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.