ASTROLOGY ARTICLES BY JON

Personal Empowerment and Pluto Transits

Throughout so much of life we just cruise along, happy go lucky, conveniently ignoring the unsavory aspects of ourselves and our lives; and then, transiting Pluto comes along, hits an important planet or point in our natal chart, and BAM! our whole perspective on life is changed. Death, rebirth, breakdown and transformation are words often used to describe Pluto transits and it's true. Hard Pluto transits always involve some pain, but these are also the times when real growth takes place and transformation and personal empowerment occurs.

Because of Pluto's extreme nature, I often describe Pluto transits as, "The best of times and the worst of times, at the same time." They are typically an emotional roller coaster ride. If you study the charts of famous people almost invariably you will find that when those people first came into prominence or when they reached the pinnacle of their career there was a hard Pluto transit active, usually to their natal Sun, Moon or one of the angles that coincided with their rise to fame. If you read their bios, you will often see that the period of time coincided with, or was preceded by, a hard truth or a loss of some kind: perhaps a difficult rejection, divorce, or even a death. Crises that broke them down and changed their perspective, but ultimately led to personal empowerment.

I happen to be in the middle of a hard Pluto transit (conjunct my natal Mars and square my natal Midheaven) as I write this, but it is really difficult to accurately access these things when you're smack dab in the middle of it. Right now it just feels like I'm trekking through an emotional swamp, but as of yet I have to say there hasn't been the extreme developments and transformation that you sometimes get with Pluto transits. It will probably take several years to comprehend what this period meant in terms of my overall growth and like I said I still have a ways to go before this transit is through with me.

Let's flashback to a past Pluto transit of mine to get a feel for how they work. Three days after 9/11, when Pluto was applying conjunction to my Ascendant (and exactly semi-square my Sun), a friend called me out of the blue and offered me a job. Three days after that, to my total shock and surprise, I found myself working as a surveyor in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay on a little island called Smith Island. The only way on or off the island was a 45 minute boat ride. I got the worst case of poison oak in the history of the world. Then I spent that winter in Scranton, PA doing a creek survey, and if you have ever been to Scranton in January, you know it has a very Plutonian vibe to it, like hell frozen over (laughing). Pluto transits often take you for an unfathomable ride to places you never even considered before; and since Pluto is the Lord of the Underworld, the ride often involves contact with the darker elements of life.

The other extreme was that I was making decent money so I would party like crazy on the weekends and take trips to Vegas and it was a really fun time, until the fun times caught up with me and I got fired, hit rock bottom, and wound up back at my parent's house in North Carolina. I have to mention that the transiting Pluto-Saturn opposition occurred right on my Ascendant-Descendant axis making my life very unpleasant for a while.

And that's when I discovered astrology.

Erin Sullivan describes Pluto transits as "truths waiting to be revealed." People often go into therapy or start studying subjects like astrology because they are in pain and they want to get to the bottom of things. So by the end of that Pluto transit over my Ascendant, I was completely stripped of my old way of life and my old friends and was forced to go underground (Pluto) and take a long hard look at myself. One chapter of my life had ended irrevocably and completely, and I had to start writing a new one. And even though that hurt me deeply at the time, it ultimately led to a much greater awareness and my personal empowerment.

One interesting thing that I have to note, because it's very typical of Pluto transits, is that I moved in with a roommate (John Noto) up in the DC area on the first pass of Pluto over my Ascendant (exact to the day) and then we lived together for a year and some money issues arose at the end (mostly because I lost my job) so we were not on the best of terms when the lease ran out and we went our separate ways. And then a few months ago, a whole five years later at the first pass of Pluto square my Midheaven, I unintentionally got his address from a mutual friend and found out that he lived really close to me here in North Carolina. So I got in contact with him and went right over and saw him that weekend and we picked up again without missing a beat. Pluto transits often bring things and people back into your life that you could have sworn were gone forever.

I think the lesson here is that positively Pluto transits can ultimately lead to a grand change in perspective, a more conscious existence and personal empowerment. There is always some pain involved because Pluto strips away the negative attachments that are holding us back; but if we look at Pluto transits as "truths waiting to be revealed," we just have to believe that those truths, no matter how painful at first, will ultimately make us stronger more conscious human beings. You have to have faith!