What's a Plutonian?

People have often asked me what makes someone Plutonian. I have a simple answer: 2 or more aspects of Pluto to personal planets and/or to an angle like the Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven, or Imum Coeli. That makes Pluto an undeniable part of your expression and how you relate to others. We don’t typically include aspects between Pluto and other outer planets since they would be more applicable to whole nations and generations. For example, Pluto sextile Neptune began in 1950 and won’t be over until 2032. Yes, Pluto is quite small and has a very long, irregular orbit, taking 248 years to complete his journey around the sun. Yet, this slow little planet packs an amazing punch and, when he aspects your personal planets or angles, he brings a darkness, depth, and intensity that seems to ooze out of your pores.

So, how do Pluto aspects like these manifest in a person? Pluto is our will and power, both personal and impersonal. By personal, I mean when focused on one’s self and by impersonal, when focused on others and the whole. The conflict that Pluto seems to bring is in the seeming opposition between more selfish desires and more altruistic aspirations. Pluto’s expressions, when related to each of the personal planets, have many potential permutations, ranging from the purely selfish to the selfless. Those with a predominance of Pluto aspects will tend to feel things more deeply, on either side of the spectrum, and hence will tend to react more intensely than non-Plutonian types. Pluto aspects to the moon, for example, often correlate with manic-depressive tendencies or the native may have had a mother who suffered as such. The emotions and their unconscious ebbing and flowing would be a primary area of life to work out one’s relationship with power.

We live in an interdependent and relativistic universe and for power to be expressed, there must be power over something. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Therefore, from the personal angle, we tend to see Plutonians on both sides of the power spectrum, between the powerful and the powerless. I’ve heard many assumptions about Plutonian people being disproportionately represented among abusers. However, I’ve seen even more Plutonian clients who have survived abuse themselves. It seems that from this angle, power seems to be unconsciously taken or given without consent.

We have famous abusers like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey here with heavy Plutonian aspects, and we also have famous survivors like Evan Rachel Wood and Amanda Bynes. Many of us learn about power through wielding it, yes, but we also become aware of the subtler sides of power through experiencing powerlessness. Feeling powerless can help us to recognize the responsibility that comes with having power. That is because in those moments of powerlessness, we often come to realize that we are not islands and that we depend on every other being for our existence. This is a practical awareness of interdependence.

Those who have wrestled with their own sense of self and identity sometimes break into a freer sphere of living, where the choice becomes subtler and is not so much between what is good and what is bad, but which good is better for all of us? This is where we find our Plutonian avatars who defined a generation or a movement on behalf of humanity. We have Martin Luther King Jr. who gave his life for racial justice. We have Angela Davis, the revolutionary who struggled her whole life for the rights of black people and women everywhere. Maya Angelou, the famous author who wrote “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” is incredibly Plutonian and you can read it in her words. She helped to shape racial discourse and bring tough subjects like sexual assault into the mainstream conversation. Eugene V. Debs, the labor activist and socialist candidate who gave his life to advance the interests of working people everywhere, also had a chart full of Pluto aspects. These are people whose own power was aligned with the power of the oppressed. They expressed power on behalf of the powerless to those who selfishly wielded power for narrow interests.

And yet, those developed Plutonians who demonstrated compassion aren’t mystical magical beings. They were flesh and blood people like you and me, who grappled with their own humanity and with their own selfish desires. Dr. King was surveilled by the FBI and found to have engaged in regular infidelity. These were amazing humans, but they were human nonetheless and that’s what Plutonians like us need to remember. You never know when fate is going to test your resolve and your capacity for love and compassion. If you’ve committed in anyway to finding out what is real, then you will almost certainly be put through the wringer. This experience isn’t limited to Plutonian people either, it’s the common responsibility for those who’ve set their feet upon the way of self-realization. It’s everyone’s birthright. It’s YOUR birthright.

Plutonians of course can be destructive, moody, violent, play the victim, and obsess about everything, but they can also be powerful forces for healing and understanding. Aleister Crowley used to say that proper spiritual discipline led one to “do their own true will.” What he meant was our Dharma, duty, or our reason for being here in physical existence. Therefore, Pluto participates in an unusual and distinct step in human development where our little personal wills and selfish desires start to feel at odds with the greater needs and urgency of the whole, perhaps dimly sensed in the gradual unfoldment of the universe. William Blake once wrote, “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom; for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.” The Pluto experience gives us the pain of excess of all kinds, whether it is too much poverty or too much wealth. It also leads us gradually though to the condition where we do not clutch external objects to define ourselves anymore. Rather, the experience is ever reminding us, sometimes very harshly, to let go.