I have Pluto on the brain as I usually do these days. It’s been squaring my natal Aries sun for several years and will be dancing with my Aquarius ascendant for a decade. If you were born between 1984 and 1995, your natal Pluto is in Scorpio—a heavy, karmic placement for an already heavy, karmic planet. My natal Pluto looms at 0° of Scorpio in the 8th house, a triple dose of Plutonian weight that bears upon themes of mystery, death, sex, occulted/forbidden knowledge, and transformation.
A harsh Pluto placement in a chart doesn’t necessarily inflict a lifetime of terrible experiences. But it may grant an overwhelming desire to explore hidden, taboo subjects and in turn cause strained relationships with others/family/society. It may also indicate that this is a lifetime of unpacking and healing dark emotions from painful experiences in past lives, early childhood and/or ancestral trauma. Many of us in the Pluto in Scorpio generation are on this path, which can be strange and unsettling to older generations, who may understandably freak out when horrors are exposed and examined under the light.
Ultimately, Pluto is about realizing that there is no escape from fear, pain and death, except in understanding and accepting them open-hearted. There is healing, but this healing is insight and wisdom in the darkness, not ascension to a higher plane where we are magically untouchable. Even highly evolved beings and angelics reckon with darkness using love: the unflinching embrace and acceptance of everything that is unloveable—true Plutonic transformation. Maybe from down here, it’s not quite achievable. But we can try, especially if it’s part of our incarnational destiny.
“The poet must not avert his eyes.” – Werner Herzog
(Deck: Starcodes Astro Oracle by Heather Roan Robbins)
