Pluto a few degrees before a house cusp

[serban_p]

Hello everybody,

I've been struggling with the following problem: at the time when I discovered EA, I was using Placidus as a house system and my Pluto, although technically in the first house, was about 5 degrees from the second house cusp (using, as I've said, the Placidus house system). Furthermore, I believed that the cusp is not necessarily the absolute beginning of a house, but rather the most sensitive part of a house (more specifically, that the influence of a house starts a few degrees before the cusp, is strongest on the cusp and slowly fades away until the last degrees of that house, where it progressively gives way to the influence of the energy associated with the next house). For lack of a better choice of words, I believed that the beginning and ending of a house are not abrupt and sudden changes in the energy associated with that house, but rather a smoother transition process between neighboring houses.

With these ideas in mind, I considered that my natal Pluto's influence would be felt in the 2nd house (or rather, more in the 2nd house than in the 1st house), given its actual position a few degrees from the 2nd house cusp.

It was with this approach in mind that I discovered Jeffrey Wolf Green's Pluto book and EA. When I got hold of the book I went straight to the description of Pluto in the 2nd house and it was one of those AHA moments because I could totally relate to what I was reading. It was an enlightening experience and I felt fortunate to have found such an useful tool to help me find the answers to some questions that had been tormenting me for quite a while.

When I read and re-read Pluto I, I tried to see whether I could also relate to the description of Pluto in the 1st house and I found that I could do so only to a significantly lesser extent than to the description of Pluto in the 2nd house (with the latter description remaining to this day startling accurate for me). To put it in other words, the description of Pluto in the 1st does not seem completely strange to me, but if someone had asked me to choose which description I thought would better represent me I would have said: "definitely Pluto in 2nd"

However, as I found out from this message board, Porphyry is the preferred system for EA. Since this has been addressed elsewhere, I will not bring up again the question of why this is the preferred system and whether we can still use other systems (Placidus in particular) as well.

However, my question is whether in EA the influence of a house can be felt before the actual cusp of that house, so that Pluto (or any other planet for that matter) can be interpreted as being in the proceeding house, although it is technically a few degrees before the cusp"¦ and if so, how far back can we go using this reasoning?

I am hoping to find an answer to this question since with Porphyry my Pluto would fall 9 degrees before the 2nd, but I still cannot relate to the description of Pluto in the 1st the way I can relate to Pluto in the 2nd. I mean, with Scorpio on my 2nd house cusp, I can understand that the influence I am feeling might be that of the sign ruling the 2nd house, not necessarily that of Pluto, but I am still left with not being able to relate to Pluto in the 1st.

I am not sure if this is relevant to my question, but my natal Pluto is at 28 degrees Libra.

Any thoughts, suggestions or advice in terms of further reading would be most appreciated.

Serban

P.S. As this is my first posting, please kindly let me know whether I have somehow unintentionally failed to comply with any rules of the message board. More specifically, I hope that the answer to my question might be of relevance to other people too. Should this not be the case, I apologize.

[Steve]

Hi Serban

I am taking your question as asking for general EA information rather than specific assistance with interpreting your own chart.  As such it is OK with our guidelines.

The things to consider first are:
1)  is your birth time accurate?  The ascendant changes one degree every four minutes.  If you birthtime was off by 30 or 40 minutes that could put your pluto in a different house.

2) You have to look at what the rest of your chart looks like.  I see that when Pluto was at 28 Libra the nodes were not in Taurus/Scorpio, but as a general rule you would consider that.  Does the person have 4 Taurus planets, or 3 planets in the second house squaring a bunch of other planets?  Any of those will give a Taurus feel to the whole chart.

The issue is the Soul (Pluto) relates to the deepest part of our nature.  Many people are not attuned to the deepest parts of their nature and thus could feel more at home in personality qualities of their nature.  

It is true that Pluto near a house cusp (within a few degrees) is going to pick up some of the flavor of the adjacent house, whether it is two degrees into a house (in which case the Soul has spent a lot of time with the archetype of the previous house in recent Soul memory, thus it will feel familiar) or if it is at the end of a house, it will start feeling the pull, the allure, of what is not yet at hand yet is coming on the horizon.

We never, in EA, interpret a Pluto position as being in an adjacent house.  The position of Pluto is the position of Pluto.  In my own case, under Placidus I have Pluto in the 9th house.  Under Porphyry I have Pluto ten minutes (a sixth of one degree) before the 9th house cusp, in the 8th house.  Anyone who knows me would likely see me as an 8th house Pluto even though I have Sag tendencies (there are other 9th house and Sag symbols in my chart that add to the Sag effect).  The point is, the placement of Pluto is where it is, for the Soul's own reasons.  And, you can't declare yourself in the next house just because you identify with it.  It is what it is.  You can't decide you are in the 6th grade when you are in the 5th grade, just because you want to be a 6th grader.  If you go to the 6th grade class they will send you back to the 5th grade, because that is, at this time, where you naturally belong.  

Now if you still strongly identify with the 2nd house, and you don't have Taurus or 2nd house steliums, I suggest you double check the possibility of your birth time being off.  And if it turns out your birth time is accurate, you might ponder more deeply the 1st house Pluto archetypes and if you are repressing portions of your nature.  (I will NEVER tell someone that because their chart says this, that you must be this way, and the fact that you don't feel that way means you are denying or repressing something. The way you feel is the bottom line reality for you.  The issue is, EA is extremely accurate.  So if you simply do not identify with 1st house Pluto and you feel you are not repressing aspects of your nature, I'd really consider the accuracy of your birth time).
Steve

[Linda]

Hi Serban,

Welcome to the message board.

I see that you've received the right answer from Steve.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

Venus, the ruler of your Pluto 28 deg Libra, naturally rules two signs:  Libra and Taurus.  Libra refers to relating to others in all our relationships that are "outside" of ourselves;  while Taurus refers to our "inner" relationship to ourselves and to our inner needs.  This could be one of the reasons why you resonate with the 2nd house to some degree.  

Another point to consider is that your 2nd house cusp, Scorpio, is ruled by Pluto itself.  So your 2nd house cusp is dynamically connected to your 1st house Pluto placement.  

We had been discussing in another thread (Scorpio archetype) how Pluto is basically unconscious and how the Moon and the Nodes make the Soul's intentions conscious (see link).  Perhaps check out your Moon and Nodes.

https://forum.schoolofevolutionaryastrology.com/index.php/topic,334.msg5611.html#msg5611

Hope this helps.

[Dhyana]

Hi there,

I just wanted to add that when I initially read the description of Pluto in the 7th, which is the natal placement of my Pluto, I could relate to it to some degree, but I resonated more so with the descriptions of Pluto in the 12th, or the 8th.

Knowing that Pluto is very unconscious to most, I was willing to open more and more, to see the hidden and subtle ways I may be doing the Pluto 7th. It's funny because what I see now, as I was recently telling Ari, is that it (pluto 7th) was running so automatic, I didnt even consider it --let alone, questioning it--

--the complusion to relate 1 to 1, or to compare myself in relation to others, or see myself as if others were looking at me--and/or relying on others opinions and input at every turn, obsessing about my marriage, etc. etc. These things were so automatic, and so normal to me, I felt everyone must live like this-- I never even suspected it. Ha!

--So when I read the Pluto in the 7th again, I had to really drop into the core motivation of this life --and really open to seeing this archetype in myself at such a naked CORE level. I also had to read between the lines in Pluto 1 book chapters on Libra and Pluto in the 7th house-- like feel out the most subtle energy of what was being read. (hope that made sense).

And it was like --omg, yes! --now i see!!! it was like one of those moments when you find your glasses right on top of your head after you have been looking all over for them.

Well, that's my experience. Hope it was useful.

Peace,
Dhyana

[Dhyana]

And I also notice with people I work with too -- it takes a while for me to get them to even recognize the Pluto dynamic --sometimes I have to start with the SN and work my way backwards towards it,  or they will not even listen in regards to it. It's pretty wild, the denial I have observed in this respect. Sometimes, I have to build a lot of trust with the person first to even begin to touch on it. And other times, there isnt really yet a readiness to look. From my observation, it really lies in the deep wells of the unconscious indeed.

Deep Peace,
Dhyana

[Bradley J]

Serban,

Another warm welcome to you.
I wanted to add a couple thoughts to this.
My birth certificate said 9:13, but I am positive my birth was at 9:08. 
Why?  Because I watched transits for years.  Gosh darn it, when that Mars is squaring my ascendent, I sure do feel that.  It is a quicker moving transit, so each year you'll have at least two aspects which are conjunct, square or opposite your ascent.
I have certainly noticed there is a strong tendency to get cranky and irritable without a good physical outlet for all that Martian energy with these transits. 
Everyone is different, but for myself, it is at the point where if i stop looking at transits for great periods of time and then one day...what the heck, i must be having a mars transit.  is mars aspecting my such and such...
You get the picture.  Also, did not Saturn cross your ascent a few years back??  Did that one line up with the ascent you have??  Based on your age and pluto position, at some time the solar arc AC will conjunct that pluto...if you see it happening or happened but it is not correlating - then maybe the AC is wrong.
Blessings,
Bradley

[serban_p]

Hi everybody,

A warm thank you to everybody who replied. This has been tremendously helpful for me and will definitely give me some serious food for thought.

The reason why I worked up the courage to post my question in the first place was the fact that on the one hand I have a strong belief that EA can provide answers to questions that have long remained unanswered while on the other hand, I cannot deny how strongly I am feeling the Taurus archetype.

My birth time is at most 10 minutes off (I am pretty sure about that) which would not make any difference with respect to Pluto's position. I have NN Gemini in the 9th and SN Sagittarius in the 3rd. I do however have Libra Sun, Libra Ascendant AND Taurus Moon (with the Moon in opposition to Pluto) so maybe this might account for why I feel the Taurus influence so strongly.

The funny thing with the description of Pluto in the 1st is that it is not completely strange to me; it is just nowhere near as familiar as Pluto in the 2nd.

Thank you for clearing up the fact that EA never interprets Pluto as being in an adjacent house. Is this also the case for other planets as well, or just Pluto?

Considering the advice you have so kindly offered to me, the fact that I am pretty sure about the birth time and the fact that the description for Pluto in the 1st is not totally unfamiliar, I will take a long hard look at my inner motivations and try to shed some light on some deeper patterns that may be at work without me even being aware (assuming I am able to bring them within the grasp of my conscious mind).

As I was going through the message board archive I found an answer given by Jeffrey where he says that "in any chart, composite or otherwise, when pluto, or any planet, is within a degree or two of the proceeding cusp this correlates, in evolutionary terms, to an evolutionary culmination of the whole archetype of the house of the actual pluto, and relative to that culmination a new cycle of development is beginning... the proceeding house"

However, I am not sure I understand what he means by this as I cannot seem to make the right connection between the evolution of the Soul towards the polarity point of Pluto and the proceeding house. As far as I can understand, the polarity point applies in all cases, irrespective whether Pluto is at the beginning or near the end of the house it is in, unless there is a conjunction between NN and Pluto, in which case the polarity point does not apply.

So how does the proceeding house fit into this overall context? Could it be that the proceeding house is simply yet another chapter in the evolution of the Soul towards the polarity point?

Again many thanks for your advice and all the best!


Serban

[Steve]

Hi Serban

As you said, there is always a Pluto Polarity Point unless Pluto is conjunct the NN. 

There is also always a long standing past.  One of the core basics in life is that humans get attached to what they know.  It comes to represent what feels safe and secure to us.  That includes experiences that are quite dysfunctional - we get used to them and see them as normal, not dysfunctional, because the are the sorts of experiences many Souls have been having, over and over, for a long time.

It takes much longer than one lifetime to learn all of the lessons of a single Pluto house.  Jeffrey's words mean there have been a series of lives in which the Soul has been learning the lessons of that Pluto house.  Thus those lessons, and that orientation to looking at life, have become very familiar.  When Pluto is nearing the next house's cusp, that whole series of lives is drawing to a close.  That is what "culminating" means.  It implies that all necessary things - lessons, endings of outmoded habits and ways of looking at life, etc. - need to come to completion before the Soul can move on.  Usually we put off to the end the parts of things we like the least.  When an archetype is culminating the Soul will force itself to deal with all of that, through the medium of "you" - the personality. 

At the same time, the Soul in some ways has gotten tired of the present lessons as it has been engaged in them for a series of lives.  It feels, senses on the horizon, what is ahead. Something different and new.  It experiences that promise as release and it will yearn for it.  And yet, it is not there yet - it has to culminate what remains unfinished in the present Pluto house before it can truly move into that new.  (Attempting to jump ahead prematurely can be one of the causes of skipped steps). 

A good way to look at the Pluto Polarity Point is moving towards it facilitates the process of culminating the lessons in the current Pluto house.  There are reasons we have not yet completed those lessons.  They typically relate to getting bogged down, stuck, in familiar yet dysfunctional behaviors and patterns.  Moving towards the PPP helps break down this resistance, brings new input into how we are "doing" the natal Pluto placement, allowing us to culminate and then move on.

Everything in life contains evolutionary intentions and resistances to them.  It is not linear in that only the NN and PPP are where evolution occurs.  Life is in constant movement.  Its intentions are forward movement - growth.  The NN and PPP facilitate that forward movement - developing them will progressively untie the knots we have created, allowing the whole Soul and personality to more freely evolve with less resistance.  But there is also movement within a house, from beginning to end, over time - that too is evolution.
Steve

[bluesky]

Steve, I would like to ask a question about PPP - how do you intrepret a planet on that PPP, ie. an opposition to Pluto?

thanks to Serban for starting this thread, and for any feedback you can give to my question.

[Steve]

Steve, I would like to ask a question about PPP - how do you intrepret a planet on that PPP, ie. an opposition to Pluto?

thanks to Serban for starting this thread, and for any feedback you can give to my question.

Hi bluesky
Development of that planet, by house and sign, is a crucial part of the Soul's ongoing evolutionary process.  Its one of the most intense placements a planet can have.

Review what Jeffrey had to say about Mars opposing Pluto and how extreme that is.  Now substitute for the Mars archetypes that he described, the archetypes of the planet that is opposing Pluto.

One thing that can often occur with this placement is people and events in the outer reality will occur in intense Plutonian ways.  The person often sees this as external, as things that are happening to them.  They have forgotten that everything that occurs externally is an outpicturing of the Soul's internal reality.  Thus they can feel victimized, until they finally come to understand the evolutionary reasons these intense experiences have been necessary for the Soul's ongoing evolutionary needs. Then the lights start coming on.

[bluesky]

Hi Steve - would you say that, in the potential lack of awareness of external reality reflecting internal realty, the person may "own" one side of the opposition and project the other?

thanks again for the feedback, Steve, it is much appreciated.

[Steve]

would you say that, in the potential lack of awareness of external reality reflecting internal realty, the person may "own" one side of the opposition and project the other?

Sure, that is one way it could play out.  They would be projecting the parts they couldn't own.

[serban_p]

A good way to look at the Pluto Polarity Point is moving towards it facilitates the process of culminating the lessons in the current Pluto house.  There are reasons we have not yet completed those lessons.  They typically relate to getting bogged down, stuck, in familiar yet dysfunctional behaviors and patterns.  Moving towards the PPP helps break down this resistance, brings new input into how we are "doing" the natal Pluto placement, allowing us to culminate and then move on.

Everything in life contains evolutionary intentions and resistances to them.  It is not linear in that only the NN and PPP are where evolution occurs.  Life is in constant movement.  Its intentions are forward movement - growth.  The NN and PPP facilitate that forward movement - developing them will progressively untie the knots we have created, allowing the whole Soul and personality to more freely evolve with less resistance.  But there is also movement within a house, from beginning to end, over time - that too is evolution.

Thank you so much Steve! This is really helpful.

I wanted to clear one more thing about planets which are a few degrees from the next house cusp:

Thank you for clearing up the fact that EA never interprets Pluto as being in an adjacent house. Is this also the case for other planets as well, or just Pluto?

Many thanks once again.

All the best,

Serban

[Steve]

Hi Serban

Thank you for clearing up the fact that EA never interprets Pluto as being in an adjacent house. Is this also the case for other planets as well, or just Pluto?

That is the case for all planets.  When one has an accurate birthtime, the natal chart is a map of the present evolutionary condition and intentions of that Soul.  All planet locations in the chart are in essence selected by the Soul, Pluto, as they reflect (as in, indicate) where that Soul is at, where it left off in the previous life, where it intends to go in this life.  When a planet is near the beginning or end of a house it means that a new phase of evolution, relative to the archetypes of that planet and house, is at hand.  When it is near the beginning, that new phase has just begun.  When it is near the end it is approaching.

It all comes down to, we are where we are.  We are not where we wish to be, no matter how strongly we desire or even believe we are there.  We are where we are.  And it is through accepting and embracing where we are that we best speed up the process of becoming what we wish to be. 

Again, being near the end of something is not the same as having completed it, no matter how much we yearn to be done with it and on with the next thing.  The point to remember is we are where we are.  That is what the birth chart indicates.  Whether we want to believe what it is telling us is another matter altogether!
Steve

[serban_p]

Steve,

I've been going over what you said about Pluto being at the beginning of a house.

whether it is two degrees into a house (in which case the Soul has spent a lot of time with the archetype of the previous house in recent Soul memory, thus it will feel familiar)

When a planet is near the beginning or end of a house it means that a new phase of evolution, relative to the archetypes of that planet and house, is at hand.  When it is near the beginning, that new phase has just begun

So my question is this: if the Soul has spent a long time dealing with the matters of the previous house and presumably the experiences of the house it is in have not yet become deeply ingrained, why does the Soul already need to move towards the PPP, when Pluto has just entered the house it is currently in?

Is it maybe because although Pluto is at the beginning of a house this is not the absolute beginning of the Soul's experience with the matters associated with that house (given the Soul's presumably long evolutionary history) so that house is new only in terms of the experiences associated with it having recently become subject to an intensified evolutionary metamorphosis? In other words, is it correct to say that when Pluto is at the beginning of a house, this does not mean that the experiences of that house are new to the Soul, but rather that the intention to eliminate the separating desires associated with that house is relatively new in the Soul's evolutionary history (and thus moving towards the PPP would facilitate the Soul's evolution even though Pluto is at the beginning of the house)?

That would imply that patterns of behavior associated with the house where Pluto is now have developed over many previous lifetimes when maybe the Soul was working with other separating desires (ie matters associated with other houses) and the Soul has just recently (which explains Pluto's position at the beginning of the house) come to dealing with the matters of the house it is in?

For lack of a better choice of words, maybe such patterns of behavior (even if they have become outmoded) have taken a back seat to other priorities in the Soul's recent history (for the Soul's own reasons, as I understand that the Soul is not working on all its separating desires in one lifetime but is gradually exhausting them) and are now coming to the forefront of the Soul's evolution?

I don't know if that makes much sense or if I am again thinking about the evolutionary intent in linear terms.

All the best,

Serban