The Midlife Transits
- Pluto Square Pluto -
In early 2021 I began what I would later learn was my first “midlife crisis” transit, when Pluto moved into a square with my natal Pluto.
The Pluto of the current moment, stayed in contact with the Pluto of the past (represented within me) for two years.
Now, at this point in my astrological studies, I knew enough to know that this was an important transit, but not enough to know what it would be like or how to prepare myself for it.
I also didn’t know that this was the first of many subsequent transits that would occur for everyone beginning in their late 30’s throughout their 40’s.
I suppose I must have signed up for some extra credit in the Pluto growth sector, because I’ve been moving through additional back to back Pluto transits since 2021.
How will you know when your Pluto square Pluto transit will happen?
An interesting thing about Pluto is that its orbit around the Sun is not circular, it’s elliptic, which means oval-shaped.
Having an elliptic orbit means that Pluto doesn’t stay in every zodiac sign for the exact same period of time. It spends more time in some signs and less time in others.
This means that some people will experience their Pluto square transit earlier or later in life than others, depending on what sign Pluto is occupying in your natal chart.
The Pluto square Pluto transit will happen for everyone at some point between 36 and 61 years old.
Here’s how to tell when you will have yours:
If your natal Pluto is in Leo, Virgo, or between 00° - 28° Libra you have already experienced this transit.
If your natal Pluto is at 29° Libra or between 00° - 02° Scorpio you are having this transit now.
If your natal Pluto is between 03° - 10° Scorpio you will be having this transit within the next five years.
And if your natal Pluto is between 11° - 29° Scorpio you have some time, and won’t experience this transit until sometime between 2030-2043.
So, what does this transit mean and what purpose does it serve us in our overall growth and evolutionary process?
Pluto is the planet of revelation and transformation.
If one thing is certain about our outermost planet, it’s that when activated, what once was hidden will now be revealed.
Pluto will ask us to navigate the subterranean realms of the Underworld and to do so with depth and clarity. We get pulled down into the depths and we have to face what meets us there. Pluto will ask that we do so with eyes wide open, which takes an enormous amount of energy, strength and courage.
But if we do so, the gifts that Pluto offers are profound. Things like an unshakeable sense of personal power, the reclamation of hidden or lost gifts, and the deepening of being able to trust your own instincts.
The Pluto square Pluto transit will expose or reveal a part of ourselves or our experience that is ready to be placed on the compost heap.
This planet symbolizes the transformation process. It is the life-death-rebirth cycle.
But in order to be reborn we first must be willing to die.
If we wish for transformation, we must first be willing to detach ourselves from the parts of us that we’ve identified with up until that point.
That detachment process can be difficult and it does have the potential to launch us into a period of a “dark night of the soul”.
This is because who we once thought we were is now decomposing. It’s breaking apart and disintegrating and that can be disorienting and often times will require us to move through the grieving process of the loss of that identity.
But something extraordinary happens during this decomposition process that we cannot see while we are in it.
Those released parts of our identity become the nutrients needed to fertilize the soil of our psyche. We become nutrient dense and from these Plutonian experiences, and we gain the ability to tap into the regenerative power of our soul.
What once cluttered our psyche has now been purged and cleared and we have the space to be able to redefine who we are.
This is the essence of soul growth.
What does this look like in real life?
Looking back toward 2021-2022, I had the unique opportunity to move through my Pluto square Pluto transit in tandem with a Pluto opposite Moon transit and a Pluto square Saturn transit. (See extra credit! lol)
Several things happened during this two year window that required me to release and allow parts of my identity to die and decompose.
I felt an overwhelming compulsion (a great Pluto word) to relinquish my intuitive healing practice and focus primarily on the mental health and wellbeing of my children (the Moon) in a world still very saturated in the pandemic. This process catapulted me into a dark night and I remember journaling for months about the loss of identity I felt in setting down my practice.
But in early 2021, I found Astrology University and began studying this craft seriously and with dedication. My vocation shifted and is now rooted in a practice that I truly love.
Pluto was activating my 6th house of health and it was during this transit that “what was hidden was revealed”. An increase of concerning physical symptoms spurred me to go through a lengthy and mentally/emotionally strenuous diagnostic process to try and find the cause of what ailed me.
That year, I discovered that I carry the genetic mutation that results in adult onset Muscular Dystrophy and the autoimmune disease Hashimoto’s. Another release of who I knew myself to be and a reorientation of who I wanted to be moving forward. But instead of feeling a loss of identity like I did when I closed my practice, I distinctly remember working extremely hard to NOT identify with these physical ailments.
Even now, I try hard to choose my verbiage wisely when talking about this part of my physical experience. Instead of saying “I have autoimmune and genetic disorders.” I try to say, “I live in a body alongside autoimmune and genetic disorders.” This specific choice of words helps me to not identify with these experiences.
I am not an autoimmune disease, but I do have to manage one.
Toward the end of these transits, I discovered that I’m technically a “carrier” of the MD gene mutation and that the majority of the symptoms I attributed to the Muscular Dystrophy were actually issues caused by the Hashimoto’s. (Another hidden truth, revealed.)
Pluto has asked me to learn, (sometimes I feel like for the very first time) how to truly take care of and support my body. How to not identify with it (or with what it does) but to remember that my identity comes from a different place. An unshakeable place.
The foundation of who I am and who I know myself to be is now unshakeable - even as I continually grow and change, shed and decompose old layers and grow new ones.
That is not something I could have said at any other time in my life.
And it was the Pluto square Pluto transit that ushered me through.
With love and rumination,
Kai de Lune
P.S. If you’re currently walking through your own Pluto square Pluto transit or if you will be in the future, I would love to be a guide for you as you traverse through the Underworld.