Pluto

What Pluto represents

Pluto’s territory is what happens beneath the surface: stubborn desires, old wounds, forces a person would rather ignore until the moment they can no longer be ignored. Wherever it sits in a chart, the person lives things completely or not at all. Its gift is depth, clear sight into what is hidden, the capacity for genuine transformation. Its excess is a grip on others, jealousy, the need to control everything so as never to be at someone else’s mercy.

Pluto was discovered in 1930. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union reclassified it as a dwarf planet, but astrology still reads it as a planet, with a symbolism built up over the course of the twentieth century. Modern astrology links it to Scorpio, a fixed water sign whose intensity and taste for secrecy it shares, while Mars is still regarded as the sign’s classical ruler. No exaltation or fall has won general agreement for Pluto.

Its rhythm in the sky

Pluto needs about two hundred and forty-eight years to complete the zodiac. Its orbit is highly eccentric, so it stays in a sign for anywhere from twelve to more than thirty years, depending on the stretch it is crossing. It is the slowest of the planets read in astrology and the most generational: its sign is shared with people born over one or several decades, and it mostly describes what a generation seeks to tear down, transform or rebuild.

Pluto is retrograde for a little over five months each year, so more than two people in five are born during one of these phases. Its sign says nothing individual, and its retrograde motion no more. Pluto speaks to one person in particular through its house, the area where life is lived most intensely, and through its aspects to the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars or an angle, which trace how that intensity runs through the character.

Pluto in a passionate bond

A prominent Pluto, linked to Venus, Mars, the Moon or an angle, describes a way of loving that is not content with the surface. Those who have one look for a bond that engages everything, where both truly know each other, including what each keeps hidden. They can stay present through crises and help the other to transform. Their excess is possessiveness, suspicion, power games or difficulty letting go of what has ended.

In synastry, Pluto matters through contact: when it reaches the other person’s personal planets or angles, it can create a magnetic pull, the sense of a life-changing encounter, and also struggles for influence, jealousy, a relationship from which both emerge transformed. People born a few years apart, however, usually have Pluto in the same sign, a generational marker that says little about their bond.

To go further

• Liz Greene, The Outer Planets and Their Cycles (1983)
• Howard Sasportas, The Gods of Change (1989)