Welcome to my Astro Advice Column! If you subscribe to my Astro-Kats or Star Kids Club groups you are able to ask me questions about astrology for this advice column.


Pluto in the first House ? Help!!

—YourHuncho


Hey YourHuncho! Hope you’re doing well and living okay.

You know, this is an interesting question. As I’m sure you know, the outer planets can be controversial. They’re so new and modern. There are many similarities between them. It’s hard to differentiate between an Uranus and Pluto transit.

There are a lot of things that are associated with having Pluto in the first house. Some of them can seem pretty dramatic—destruction of self, transformation, coming out of the closet, ego death, etc.

It’s worth it to keep in mind that a lot of the more dramatic readings of the outer planets are created in a historical context that really glamorized progress. Early evolutionary astrology had a lot to do with social darwinism. There was even this idea that some people are Neptunians, Uranians, or Plutonians and that these people were more evolved than regular old people. Attached to that idea is the idea that you become more evolved as you go through more and more crises and change. It’s like the superman ethos.

Pluto is really just a generational planet. We never experience a Pluto return in our human lives lived at a human scale. There are other things that survive a Pluto return. Most commonly, we refer to nation-states but there are trees that live over 200 years as well and mountains. There are dragons.

The scale at which Pluto moves is momentous to us. This is why Pluto is the most fear-mongered-about planet out there. It moves so, so slowly.

Funny enough, because of this hugeness, there is also a peculiar silence in how Pluto moves through the chart.

I have often talked to people who don’t feel like anything at all has happened at all when Pluto ingresses to a house. I have talked to people who don’t realize Pluto’s affects until years after they have occurred. It moves that fucking slow.

What does that mean? It means that, if you go through a Pluto transit in the first house, then you’re going to be experiencing it for a while—anywhere between 12-30 years to be exact. It also means that, if you have Pluto in the first house natally, then everyone in your generation who shares your rising sign will also have Pluto in the first house.

So! You never go through Pluto transits alone! That is part of their nature!

Pluto is about generational, social change. We all have Pluto somewhere and we’ll all experience Pluto transits somewhere. The way I like to look at these outer planets is basically just like how we read inner ones. In the same way that we wouldn’t necessarily know how to apply a three year old’s Saturn to them because we just haven’t seen enough about what might shape their age group as Saturn will mostly like just be in the next sign over, we might not have enough information about what Pluto in the natal chart means until the first opening square.

In the same way that we can only begin to find information about Jupiter at age three and Saturn at age seven, we only just begin to discover Pluto in middle age.

Whatever Pluto’s opening square will mean for you, you won’t experience it alone. How it impacts your first house may be personal but the implications will be shared by your peer group. If you’re an older millennial or younger gen x and have Pluto in Libra, you’re going through your Pluto square right now and have been for over a decade. You might have noticed that a lot of the cultural context around relationships have shifted and that you’re appreciating these changes.

We have no idea what Pluto in Aquarius will bring for the Pluto in Scorpio generation. We have no idea what Pluto in Pisces will mean for the Pluto in Sagittarius generation nor what Pluto in Aries could feel like for the Pluto in Capricorn generation.

That’s okay. We’re just too young to know what growing fast enough to see the world change colors means for us. Most likely, there will be some things that we have to experience on our own but, very likely, there will be almost nothing we experience that someone else can’t empathize with.

So, if you haven’t experienced your Pluto square yet (and I do know that you haven’t since you didn’t post anonymously hehe), don’t worry too much about it. If you already have or are currently experiencing Pluto making a square to your natal Pluto, congratulations. You can take a look at the decade or decades of life you lived during the square period to get to know your Pluto more.

Don’t worry about Pluto more than you worry about other things. It’s about social change, which is terrifying but also exhilarating. Just keep living and life will show you what Pluto is about.