Last time we explored Pluto in Aquarius through the houses with some examples of what to expect and how your life might change during the transit. To give a feel for how Pluto works as he moves around the birth chart, I thought it might be interesting to share some of my notes on the transits I’ve experienced so far.

Pluto takes about 248 years to move through the whole zodiac so he spends a long time in each sign and house in your chart. That also means he only gets about halfway around the chart during your lifetime, depending on how long you live, and there’ll be some houses that he never reaches. My natal Pluto is in Virgo in the 8th house and Pluto is currently transiting my 12th house. Here’s the chart:

With Pluto in the 8th house there’s a need to transform your psyche and how you relate to the mysteries of life and death, as well as shared resources, inheritance, taxes and debts. For me, this is connected with the way I think and communicate because Pluto is closely conjunct Mercury in the 8th and trine Saturn in the 3rd house.

Pluto transited my 8th house from birth until I was 15, moving from Virgo into Libra in 1971–72 and into Scorpio in 1983–84. This covers the whole of my childhood and into the maelstrom of adolescence. Inevitably, I can’t remember much from the early years and my experience would have been influenced by my parents and what they were going through at the time.

It’s worth mentioning that I was born with a heart defect and had an operation when I was about 18 months old (more on that here). This turned out to be a traumatic experience that had a profound effect on my psyche, a kind of death–rebirth process that I was unable to understand at the time. That would come later following a breakdown in my early 20s when Pluto was transiting my 9th house.

When Pluto transits the 9th house there’s a need to transform your beliefs about the meaning of life and deepen your view of the world through religion, philosophy, travel and education. For me this transit happened from age 15 to 28, with Pluto in Scorpio until 1995 when he entered Sagittarius near the end of the transit. It coincided with me finishing high school and going to college where I had a breakdown that overturned my whole identity.

During this transit, I left home and my world opened up and I met lots of people from different backgrounds while studying at music college and doing gigs. Music was the centre of my life and the only thing that made sense to me. I had no religion and no interest in spirituality.

That began to change when doubts about what I was doing forced me to question who I was. My psyche began to crack and out of the depths came a confusing mix of unhealed wounds and visionary insights into reality that turned me inside out. The breakdown coincided with the progressed Sun conjunct natal Pluto, as well as Saturn transiting my 12th house and Pluto moving into opposition with natal Saturn in the 3rd house.

For a little while, I believed I was going insane, but then realised there was a deeper part of myself that knew what to do. I began to read voraciously on psychology and philosophy and astrology and this transformed my beliefs, turning me from an atheist into an agnostic. Learning to meditate deepened this process and helped me to slowly rebuild confidence in myself.

The wounds of my childhood would take many more years to heal – I’m still working on some of them now! – but by the end of this transit I had almost become a different person. I returned to college for a second time so I could pursue my dream of becoming a sound engineer (more on that here), and succeeded as Pluto entered Sagittarius and approached my Midheaven.

I managed to get a job in a small project studio recording local bands but there wasn’t enough work to pay the bills. So by the end of the transit, I needed to branch out and get a ‘proper’ job. As Pluto crossed my Midheaven, I did a course in admin and started getting crappy part-time jobs in offices and was feeling pretty grumpy about the whole thing.

When Pluto transits the 10th house there’s a need to transform your career, vocation and how you relate to authority, in yourself and others. It can be a time of great success or you can discover more about yourself and find your true purpose. For me this transit happened from age 28 to 35 while Pluto was in Sagittarius. It coincided with my search for a decent job and ended with me taking up writing as a hobby, but it also overturned my identity and beliefs – again!

At the start of this transit I was frustrated with work and moving from job to job, looking for a full-time position that was worth doing. During my Saturn return at age 29–30 I was stuck in a job that was making me ill because the bosses were expecting me to be someone I wasn’t – i.e. a gregarious receptionist full of chit-chat and prattle. My instincts had warned me not to take the job but I ignored them and ended up stressed and miserable.

I walked out of that job without any idea of what would come next, finally trusting myself and believing that something good would turn up. A few months later I got a job at a local council shuffling paper around a desk. It was crap but my savings were about to run out so I didn’t have any choice. But then another job at the council came up for a sound engineer – amazing! – to record a talking newspaper and other information for blind and partially sighted people in the area.

This was the worthwhile job I was waiting for and it started as Saturn crossed my IC and entered the 4th house, providing a new and solid foundation for my life that would last a decade. While I enjoyed the job and my colleagues were great, I began to get bored with the lack of real creativity at work. Something else was rumbling in the depths of my being and it wanted out.

During this time I was living with my long-term boyfriend – we had moved in together just after Pluto crossed my Midheaven and opposed the IC. I was also meditating but was still internally defended against the mystical/imaginative side of myself and scared of going mad again. This made me cranky and I sabotaged the relationship because I didn’t want to drag him down with me.

As Pluto approached the end of my 10th house, I doubled down on my spiritual practice, trying to understand what was stalking me from the depths. This triggered my first major satori and the revolution in my soul began (more on that here). It coincided with Neptune crossing my Ascendant and opposing my Moon, and Uranus trine my natal Jupiter and conjunct the north node in Pisces.

I realised that God wasn’t a fantasy or a made-up story and that I’d been wrong about everything my whole life. Suddenly I was plunged into a mini dark night of the soul as my perception of reality was torn apart. While I waited for things to start making sense again, Uranus opposed my natal Sun and my imagination went wild with ideas and stories. I began to write screenplays and a non-fiction version of what would become my first novel, Addled.

By this point my identity and beliefs had shifted and I saw myself as a reluctant mystic, still grappling with the ‘God’ question and resisting the inevitable, sitting on the agnostic fence. As Pluto entered my 11th house, I was also playing with the idea of becoming a writer.

When Pluto transits the 11th house there’s a need to transform your friendships and social networks and how you relate to society, as well as your hopes and aspirations for the future. For me this transit happened from age 35 to 44, starting with Pluto in Sagittarius and then Capricorn from 2008. It coincided with lots of writing and some early success, and then the slow disintegration of the rest of my life, probably due to other transits.

This transit began with me doing several screenwriting courses over a period of a few years where I wrote many scripts and met new friends. Some of us formed a writing group so we could support each other as we learned our craft, and inevitably, I ended up running it. Then in 2008 I won a screenwriting competition and the prize was to work with a script editor over three drafts (more on that here).

Despite some excellent feedback on the script, nobody would produce it, so I decided to try writing a novel instead. I started work on Addled in 2010, the same year I began blogging when Uranus was opposite my natal Mercury. Unfortunately, this period also coincided with some debilitating health problems that sapped my energy and my life began to unravel.

I disbanded the writing group because the members weren’t making an effort and were more interested in talking about writing than actually writing. It was frustrating and not worth the energy, which I didn’t have to spare. I was also made redundant from the recording job and thrown back onto the dole, giving me more time to write – a blessing in disguise.

I clung to my writing and continued despite the breakdown of my health because I was determined to hang on to at least one life-affirming thing as everything else was stripped away. The main transits responsible for the meltdown were Saturn transiting my 8th house, Uranus opposing natal Pluto, Pluto squaring natal Uranus and then squaring Chiron too, and Neptune opposing natal Mars – it was intense!

As Pluto approached the end of the 11th house, I went self-employed as a writer despite the fact that I wasn’t yet earning any money from my work. It was another leap of faith, taken when Uranus was opposite my natal Uranus, marking my official mid-life crisis! However, Neptune had also moved to oppose my natal Sun and I found myself unable to think coherently for long stretches of time. But I was able to publish my first novel about spiritual awakening just before Pluto slipped into my 12th house.

When Pluto transits the 12th house there’s a need to transform the depths of your psyche and hidden motivations and confront the consequences of the past so you can let go of anything that no longer works. For me this transit runs from age 44 to 60, starting with Pluto in Capricorn and now dipping into Aquarius. It started a few years ago in 2014–15 and has coincided with more health problems and changes to my identity and beliefs.

The most dramatic change came when I had an early menopause with all its associated baggage and health issues. It has undermined my energy levels, making writing hard at times, and is forcing me to take better care of myself, which is a good thing. This was brought into sharp focus recently when I broke my wrist in 2019 and was diagnosed with osteoporosis. I’m now officially a crone!

Aside from that, I’ve experienced a deepening of the dark night of the soul that feels like a permanent fixture in my psyche. Pluto is slowly deconstructing all my old dreams and assumptions but my faith appears to be growing stronger as a result, although I may just be crazy. 😂

More here: Astro Diary: Pluto transiting Capricorn in the 12th house

Images: Kneeling; Tape Machine; Typewriter

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