The Cosmic 2 x 4

The cover of Guadalcanal Diary's 1987 album "2x4"

I spend a lot of my consulting time with people who are going through heavy Pluto transits, and I hear the same thing over and over again:

Why does it have to SUCK so much?!

Let’s face it, a lot of major Pluto transits just plain suck. If it’s squaring off with something in your chart, you may feel like beating your head against a brick wall would be less painful. If Pluto’s crossing a planet or an angle, you might feel like you’re having your guts ripped out at times. Sounds like an exaggeration? Maybe, unless you’ve been there… then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Pluto is like the backhoe of planets. It digs up all the terrible garbage you’ve been avoiding, everything you’ve buried under layers of avoidance and habit and distraction, and brings it right back up to the top where you can’t help but deal with it. Pluto knows you have lessons to learn from all that baggage, and it knows you’ll be better off when you learn them. It moves through the chart slowly and patiently, but when your time has arrived to learn a certain lesson, you can be damned sure that Pluto takes it job of teaching you very seriously…This is where the 2×4 part comes in. This is why Pluto transits get a reputation for total disaster.

When Pluto arrives at a planet or an angle, it’s time to learn something. It will tap you on the shoulder to get your attention and get you moving in the right direction. It will give you a nudge. If that doesn’t work, it will give you a shove to try to get you engaged. And if that doesn’t work, if you’re still not paying attention or, god forbid, you turn around and start running the other way, Pluto gets out the beatdown stick. There it is, that cosmic 2×4, because only the most stubborn of souls will continue to turn the other way when they’re getting a full measure of Plutonian “attention”.

If you decide to run, Pluto will follow you.

One gentleman I talked to earlier this year was in the throes of Pluto transiting his ascendant. He and his wife were separated, his work life was up in the air, his relationship with his children had suffered, and he was terribly depressed. But as he fought on, he began to realize that his drinking was connected to of a lot of these problems. Not because he was an alcoholic- he wasn’t, actually- but because his desire to escape from his smaller problems ballooned until he was forced to deal with it everywhere he went. Once he realize that his need to escape was at the center of his crisis, and met it head-on instead of continuing to run, it began to pass.

Hard stuff is… well, hard. It’s human nature to avoid it- that’s why we all have so much baggage. We deal with it, little by little, some parts more than others, some parts not at all if we can help it. But the only way to successfully weather a Pluto transit is to turn and walk straight into it. Feel the grief from that loss. Feel the fear that you’ll be alone. Feel your fear that everything is changing. Feel your fear that nothing will ever change.

It’s hard. It hurts. It’s not fair, not at all. It’s torturous at times. But it’s the best thing you can do for yourself. If you try to get away, you’ll have to do it again, and the next time it will be even harder, until you’ve learned that lesson, whatever it is. Why promise yourself even more turmoil down the road? Be a detective: learn what Pluto is trying to tell you, and keep following those clues so Pluto doesn’t have to get your attention in more dramatic ways. Let it catch your eye with the Nerf bat instead of the Louisville Slugger. I’m not going to lie: it may still get rough, but you’ll be better equipped to deal with the surprises.

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