Pluto retrograde in the natal chart
I have written a post about the social-transpersonal planets and what they mean for an individual who have them retrograde in the natal chart here.
In this post Iām exploring Pluto Rx a bit further.
Generally speaking it is Pluto energy that is being felt if you feel emotionally drained or violated after interactions with certain people or visiting certain places or experiencing certain events. He is always present, but some people only ever awaken to him when crisis strikes ā when thereās loss, sickness, threat, violation, destruction happening in a very obvious way. In actuality, death is happening every day of our lives. Pluto is the invisible and undetected power that governs our souls. He is the power that underlies our decisions and actions on a soul level. Pluto is essentially a binding forceā you have felt his presence when you couldnāt break free from toxicity, when you felt trapped in a certain pattern (internal or external), when you felt violated (by external or internal forces), forced to succumb, forced to live through something painful and destructive. You have also felt him when you were freed from the influence of certain people, substances or obsessions. He is ruthless and merciless because he is death in one form or another. The power of Pluto is not personal ā no individual owns it or possesses it more than another. When thereās identification with this absolute force it can wreck havoc in our lives ā making us feel invincible and able to coerce and manipulate life energies in our favor. Identification with Pluto can cause hubris, abuse of power and excessive confidence. Projection/externalization of Pluto can cause feelings of powerlessness and subsequent victimhood or victimization. In a sense, everyone yearns for this kind of power because it is magnetizing and full of life. It has the ability to resurrect as well as to kill. From a perspective of being dis-entangled with form ā Pluto is completely benign. He frees life that has become stuck in inferior-unworthy or expired form.
People who have Pluto direct in their charts feel this power within them and exercise it directly. They can impose their energy on the environmentĀ and the people they interact with. They draw energy to themselves like magnets, not consciously, but naturally ā Pluto acts like a vortex that sucks life in and pushes it back out. Obviously, some people are more magnetic than others and it would be reflected by the specific chart placement and contacts Pluto makes to personal planets. Nonetheless, all individuals with Pluto direct have the ability to draw energy in, to take something from the outside that sustains them on a psychic level. All this happens automatically. For people with Pluto direct, the impulse to feed off of other peopleās life energy comes naturally. Interaction is an opportunity to establish impact and dominance (whether this is conscious or not depends). Typically, people tend to think of dominance and submission in black and white terms when they are really one and the same. They are two sides of the same coin. Thereās not really a power imbalance between the two, the dominance could not happen without the submission and vice versa. In all relationships thereās a dance of dominance and submission ā everyone knows on some level (although it might be heavily suppressed) that thereās no such thing as ultimate power and that what is done in terms of power to another being is also happening to the person wielding the power. There is no real separation.
For people with Pluto Rx in their charts, it is not natural to take energy from the environment ā to draw energy to the self in order to feed the soul. As with all planets in retrograde, the energy is turned inwardly and takes on another dimension. Some sources Iāve come across states that Pluto Rx creates difficulty with wielding oneās own power, a heightened inner sensitivity to obstacles and a difficulty acknowledging and moving through traumatic experiences. It also tends to make people less aware of their own desire for power and more paranoid that theyāre being manipulated, taken advantage of and betrayed. This seem to be true in my own experience of meeting people with Pluto Rx ā they are more aware of the invisible workings of power, how forces can get into their minds and control them from within. They are very guarded on an inner level as opposed to being openly protective and domineering on the outside. In fact, these people are likely to be concerned that if they show their power, the extent of it and its true nature ā this will be to their disadvantage. It is particularly rewarding to compare people with Pluto in the first house because Pluto is a part of the outwardly displayed persona and will show up in an obvious way. By doing this Iāve observed and sensed the typical guardedness with both people, but I donāt feel drained around the retrograde Pluto as I can with Pluto direct. Thereās power to both people, but in different ways. With Pluto direct I feel like if I were to overstep a boundary, that I would have somewhat of a psychic attack on my hands. The open disdain and invisible resentment would āpokeā at me energetically. With Pluto Rx, if I overstepped a boundary they would react internally by taking control of their own reaction ā they would turn inwardly and build intensity until it would burst some time afterwards, seemingly ārandomlyā and without connection to the situation at hand.
Pluto Rx people are prone to shrink from confrontation with the more intense aspects of reality because they have a hard time accessing their own power. The inner fear of collapsing psychologically and emotionally is more real for them than for people with Pluto direct. In the case of the people with Pluto direct, they usually expect to be able to spot when power is being exercised and trust their own ability to regenerate after being bruised and broken, if it were to come to that. People with Pluto direct expect Pluto to show up in a straightforward way (although this energy in itself is hardly straight forward in its manifestations). People with Pluto Rx fear that they wonāt be able to recover from the traumas of life because they canāt trust Pluto to work for them in a way that makes sense. This is something that has bothered me tremendously with having Pluto in Rx in my own chart. The inner ordeals I go through doesnāt seem to be recognized as such from the outside ā I live with them constantly and Iām only seen as āsensitiveā never thick-skinned or powerful when I know that the things I go through internally are real and considerable difficult. I have to ability to feel powerful and recognize my inner strength and resilience, but itās not translated into external existence. Retrogrades are said to be more intimately experienced by the individual and I believe this is true. Some state that they are experienced on a more āspiritualā level, which I guess could be an accurate way of putting it, if spiritual means āintangibleā experience and subtler dimensions. Some would simply say that the planetary principle is ālackingā from the individual ā which is to say that it is rendered useless and ineffectual.
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I have come across sources that state that people with Pluto Rx can be extremely effectual during crises ā not in terms of āpowering through and survivingā but in terms of staying calm and cultivating inner resilience instead of taking the reigns and forcefully steering toward oneās own death because of the need to stay in control externally. There are benefits to sitting tight and building intensity in some situations, although the withholding could also be self-destructive. The meanness and āevilā that can sometimes show up with people who have Pluto direct when their power has been threatened is not something that will show up in Pluto Rx people. They donāt ārevengeā in the same way and would never openly admit to their need for control ā to take ārevengeā is in some sense due to weakness and a display of emotional enslavement. Pluto Rxās inner familiarity with the plutonic forces and independence in violation and regeneration makes it so that they donāt take or draw energy from the outside. They isolate their inner process of destruction and rebirth. This might cause people on the outside to wonder if thereās any survival urge in these people, if they can take by force when it is ānecessaryā. There is in fact a very strong will to survive with Pluto Rx, itās simply an inner process ā an inner fight ā rather than an outer one, and possibly a delayed response to threat which can be violently imploding. The āenemyā is always around, luring in the shadows, waiting to grab these people by the neck, metaphorically speaking. This doesnāt seem to be the case for people with Pluto direct to the same extent. They know of power, they take it for granted. But, this also means that they are less intimate with it, less insightful of how it works.
The marked difference with people with Pluto Rx/direct Iāve encountered is that thereās no complaint of being āpreyed uponā energetically by the people with Pluto directā¦ This is very interesting to take note of because it would indicate that Pluto Rx have a harder time accessing their own psychic-emotional power and use it actively instead of passively. Pluto Rx people seem to be on guard in order to avoid and protect themselves as opposed to going in and asserting their own influence. Curiously, Pluto Rx people seem to assume that they are less powerful than others because they can only reflect on their strength in hindsight. They are certainly not ālackingā, from my observation, not on a soul level ā but the lack of āproofā in everyday life can cause feelings of powerlessness.
In order to illustrate a bit better, letās look at some examples of people with Pluto Rx vs. Pluto direct in the 1st house of Self. This is the house that represents peopleās persona and physical presence. The famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio has Pluto (direct) in Libra in his 1st house. He has quite a magnetic presence to him and one can tell that he has a strong effect on other people. He is a bit of a smooth talking devil, quite charming and socially pleasant as is typical of Libra ā yet he has that Pluto intensity to him as well. He knows that he is powerful and influential ā you can tell from the way he presents himself that he has a lot of confidence. Maryl Streep is another great example of Pluto (direct) in Leo in the 1st house. She is the ultimate diva, quite protruding and demanding in her presence ā she needs to be seen as special. Sheās perfectly suited for playing powerful female characters that are rude, entitled and domineering. She is certainly no stranger to power and influence. To contrast these two people, letās bring our minds to the actress RenĆ©e Zellweger who has Pluto Rx in Virgo in her 1st house. She doesnāt come off as overbearing or intimidating in her presence ā sheās humble which is typical of Virgo, uncomfortable getting too much attention and is dedicated to her āworkā and process of making a project complete rather than the abstract glamour of movie-making (she also has a Sun-Saturn conjunction, which contributes to the self-deprecating streak in her). Another good example is the actress Jessica Lange who has Pluto Rx in Leo in her 1st house. She is much more āhiddenā in her body language than Maryl Streep who has the same placement but Pluto direct. They both have the same Leonine glow to them, but it seems to me when watching them that Lange is building intensity rather than projecting it. Both RenĆ©e and Jessicaās vulnerability is quite obviousā they both have an attractive strength that stems from their lack of outward energetic projection. Paradoxically, their obvious vulnerability is fascinating and addictive. It makes people curious.
What needs to be said about Pluto Rx however is that people having it in their natal charts tend to invite attack. This doesnāt have to be physical attack (it rarely is), but psychic attack or energetic/emotional attack. Whatever phrasing you prefer. Because of a more obvious vulnerability (and a more hidden strength), thereās a tendency to become a magnet for energies that are not beneficial to the integrity of oneās own energy field. I have found (as I have Pluto Rx myself), that thereās a necessity to learn how to work with these energies in order to not be drowned by them and stuck in a perpetual loop of psychic depletion. Thereās a necessity to learn to feed off of toxicity, however unpleasant this sounds. Energy is energy ā whatever form it comes in and it can be transmuted if worked with properly. Thereās essentially a need to become an adept alchemist with Pluto Rx in order to harness power. While people with Pluto direct donāt need to learn this because it happens naturally, people with Pluto Rx are given the opportunity to truly understand the workings and processes of Pluto because it doesnāt come naturally. Thereās no step-by-step formula for how to go about this, but the most important thing would be to acknowledge the darkness inside and outside and actively invite it. It might feel a bit like āchoosing deathā, but the thing with Pluto Rx is that those who have it have to be ruthless and unwavering because this is the true nature of Pluto in its direct expression. There can be no doubt because then thereās a loss of power (and I mean this in the psychic sense). This is why, if you have Pluto Rx, you will feel stronger with time if you apply yourself actively to improving your way of harnessing your energies. When Pluto is retrograde in the sky (like it is right now) you might find that thereās easier to work on this.
As stated in the beginning, Pluto is not a personal planet and is more of a force that works through us than being āpart of usā. For this reason, it is less likely that people who donāt have Pluto aspecting any personal planets will be aware of this force. If Pluto is aspecting personal planets, however minor the aspect, the native is personally linked to this evolutionary death-survival force and has to grapple with its energies one way or another. Some are intimately connected to the lord of the underworld and will have to be personally confronted with the very foundations of life and the struggle that it means to be alive ā the brutality of it, but also the riches that come from awakening and freeing stagnant energies. New life can only come to the fore through pressure and threat to the old.
