Pluto Square: Midlife Transits
A Pluto square is a time that we are confronted with any shadows we haven’t dealt with, something that needs to transform in our lives. It is a time we have the opportunity to step into our personal power.
When I first began studying astrology, I was knee deep in my midlife transits. In fact, my life was so shaken up after my Uranus and Saturn Opposition, I started studying the midlife cycles in reverse order with the Chiron Return. That was back at the end of 2019, when I was looking for lifelines to help anchor me while I quit drinking. At the time, I joined an Astro Butterfly class where part of the class happened in participatory sharing via a Facebook group.
It was during this class that I learned to look at past aspects of a cycle as a way to understand the themes playing out in my life as symbolically represented by that planetary configuration. Because I was a baby astrologer who didn’t really understand my chart holistically, my understanding was limited. But simply learning this informed me more about the nature of astrology than anything else. Astrology in its essence is about the study of archetypes and cycles. In the most simplistic terms, it is a way to see how your patterns evolve over time. Just like the moon has its distinct phases, so do planetary bodies.
It was through that group that I learned about the major midlife transits and so began a personal journey through tracking my cycles. I even started a video series interviewing others who had either already experienced their midlife transits or were knee deep in them. As I retrace my steps, I take in the meaning of these cycles more deeply.
In evolutionary astrology, Pluto is symbolic of your soul’s journey from life to life. Your soul evolves through Pluto cycles. Evolution is slow, sometimes barely noticeable and other times intense and chaotic as symbolic of Pluto’s eccentric orbit. The long retrogrades of the Pluto cycle can feel like the two steps back we sometimes take with each step forward. The spiritual traditions speak to the journey as a spiral and Gurdjieff specifically calls this spiral an octave. To ascend, one must achieve a certain momentous push of force that takes you beyond the note.
This is what Jeffrey Wolf Green has to say about Pluto:
“Within the soul there exists two coexisting desires. One desire is for separate existence - to separate from that which created the Soul. The other desire is to return to the Source of creation. The interaction between these two apparently opposing desires instigates the drama of personal and collective evolution. The interaction of these desires determines what we think we need. That which we think we need determines the choices that we make. The choices that we make determine the actions that we initiate. The actions that we initiate determine the reality we experience. Actions lead to reactions which lead to other actions. Simply stated, this process is the basis of what is called karma. We reap what we sew. ‘Mankind is engaged in an eternal quest for that ‘something else’ he hopes will bring him happiness, complete and un-ending. For those individuals Souls who have sought and found God, the search is over, He is that something else’ Paramahansa Yogananda.”
One of the major midlife transits is the Pluto Square, but because Pluto’s orbit is so eccentric it can happen earlier in some people’s lives than others. Plutos transits through the signs near Libra relatively quickly, so my Pluto square happened early at age 37. A Pluto square is a time that we are confronted with any shadows we haven’t dealt with, something that needs to transform in our lives. It is a time we have the opportunity to step into our personal power. Depending on Pluto’s placement and configurations in your chart, you can be tested in areas of your life where the foundations may be weak. Pluto can often obliterate those areas that are weak so you are forced to rebuild on solid ground. It reminds me of the biblical parable about building your house on a rock vs. building it on sand.
As a person who was born when Pluto was transiting Libra, my generation had their squares happen as Pluto transited Capricorn, which is finally over (hallelujah!). Now it’s the Pluto-in-Scorpio generation who gets to have all the fun. 😂 The Pluto in Libra generation has been evolving through the polarity of extremes and relationship dynamics. I wonder how many of our generation have witnessed their extended families torn apart over the divisive identity politics these last 20 years? I’d love to hear about your experience. Drop me a comment.
