Mars Opposing Pluto: The Most Common Stories I’ve Heard in Readings

Hi everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we are going to take a look at Mars's upcoming opposition to Pluto, and I'm going to talk about the Mars-Pluto archetype in terms of some of the most common stories that I have heard when transiting Pluto aspects of a person's natal Mars.

The reason that I think this is useful is because once you hear the kinds of stories that are the most common, from people experiencing this transit to their natal chart, we can extract from that a lot of lessons and themes that may be applicable with a mundane transit now, one of the key differences is going to be that sometimes when you have a natal transit of a slow-moving Pluto to the Mars position in your natal chart, it's going to be a lot longer and slower and slower and more process-oriented, and often the events will be more acute.

So it's a little different when we're dealing with a couple of days' worth of Mars opposing Pluto in the sky. But the themes are not dissimilar. There's actually a lot of connection between the kinds of stories that people live and experience with Pluto transiting their natal Mars and the kinds of things we see in a Mars-Pluto opposition in the sky. So I hope that this will be useful in helping us prepare for and think about the transit that is coming up, one of arguably the most intense and powerful, dynamic transits of 2024, so that's what we're going to do.

Today I'm going to tell you some of the most common stories that I have heard from my clients over many years of practice and many, many times of seeing this transit in Natal charts. All right, so that's our goal for today. Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. Someone recently said, you know, you shouldn't say, don't forget, because it's kind of negative. You should say, Remember to like and subscribe. So remember to like and subscribe. I think that kind of stuff makes a difference. Sure. Why not? We'll start doing remember, remember to remember to like and subscribe. If you're new to the channel, we're trying to get to 80,000 subscribers by the spring equinox.

You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on my website, nightlight astrology.com. Let's go over the website to see a couple of things to promote. First, a new series of live talks that we have just published is coming up. So, we just finished Myth of Astrological Compatibility for October's webinar. November, December, and January are now scheduled. Pluto and Aquarius. In November, we're going to look at AI aliens, New World orders, and all of the fun, juicy stuff that Pluto in Aquarius represents from an archetypal standpoint.

In December, we'll be looking at the sixth house, slavery, sickness, sacrifice, and service. What is the sixth house all about in ancient Hellenistic astrology? We're going to learn about that and how to make sense of the sixth chart in your own birth chart, the sixth house, I should say, in your own birth chart. And then, on January 16, I will be doing a talk on Saturn's conjunction with Neptune in Aries, which is coming up in 2025, and I've titled that one encounter at the edges of reality.

So those are all available for registration and purchase. If you can't attend live, you get the recording afterward. And then don't forget, if you go to our courses page, the first-year course, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic, begins November 16; there's an information video tagged on to today's content at the very end. If you stick around after I sign off, you can learn more about the program. Again, it starts November 16, and you will find at the very bottom that there is need-based tuition. This is something we do to make sure that the class is accessible for people who might need a little extra help to make the class happen.

So, if that's you and you can use a little extra assistance, please apply for tuition assistance. It's there to make sure that nobody's priced out of studying something sacred. We let you choose your price within a range of a flexible tuition scale, so that is coming up soon. And also, some people have sent us messages. If you are brand new to astrology and you're starting from absolute zero, then you might consider the beginner's course, which is a new recorded course that we have that gives you some introduction to astrology that you could take and then jump into the year one class, and that's if you're at absolute zero starting point. So, anyhow, thank you guys for listening. Let's go on now to the real-time clock, and let's take a look at this Mars-Pluto opposition that's forming in the sky here.

Let me say this happens to me from time to time. People who watch my show know that I do this all the time. I'm very forgetful when it comes to this. Okay, here we go. So we're going to see that. Here we are in the middle of the week, Tuesday, October 22, and Mars is now within about four degrees of the opposition to Pluto. So it's heating up. We're dealing with the Sun square Pluto today. We took a look at that yesterday. So, if you want more on the Sun square Pluto, look at yesterday's content. But let's watch as this plays out. If we speed this up by a couple of days, we're going to see if Pluto or Mars gets within that exact opposition range.

Starting about November 1, and then we see that build through the second and third, and the transit culminates on the third, and then Mars changes signs into Leo. So between now and the first couple of days of November, in other words, we are right in the midst of the building pressure of the Mars-Pluto opposition, easily one of the more dynamic transits of the year, especially considering that Pluto is at the 29th anaretic degree, that Mars is in its fall in cancer at the 29th anaretic degree, when they make this opposition a dramatic turning point, an explosive and dynamic encounter between Mars and Pluto, remember at those anaretic degrees, those 29th degrees, there's a lot of history and the culmination of a lot of things that are coming to a head.

Expressing at the 29th degree of Mars, Pluto, the opposition is very potent, and we're seeing things that are dramatic turning points, dramatic shifts in the storylines of our lives. We will also see that these events are often with Mars-Pluto at anaretic degrees more explosive and eruptive. There's a kind of volcanic force that is going to be experienced for many people as intrusive. It feels more like an invasive medical procedure or something like that. From an evolutionary standpoint, there's the feeling of a lot of pent-up energy being released at once.

In cardinal signs, we have a more dramatic, kind of pivotal turning point that also reflects the culmination of Pluto's entire stay in Capricorn. So it's quite dramatic. I suspect that we will see some pretty dramatic representations of this in the news and the collective, but also, personally, all the more so if you have planets or points in the last three degrees of Cardinal signs in particular.

Also important to mention is that Mars and Pluto will often have a more violent or forceful way of expressing themselves, which, for most people, is why we talk about this as a difficult transition. That doesn't mean that good things can't come from it, or that there, there isn't an evolutionary purpose behind everything in the universe. All two things can be true.

We can subjectively experience this as very difficult and trying, challenging, frustrating, forceful, eruptive, and even volcanic. And we can also still see, perhaps, see the purpose. Perhaps understand why something had to happen, maybe not at first. Sometimes, we don't know, or we can't have that kind of insight for a long time. Sometimes, things are just difficult, and they need to be difficult for a while.

Anyway, here are three of the most common stories that I have heard over 14 years of professional practice and many, many encounters with a transiting Pluto aspecting a natal Mars. The reason that I use this particular combination is because transiting Mars affecting natal Pluto is not usually as dramatic. I don't find myself talking about that with clients a lot, not nearly as much as I do transiting Pluto to Natal Mars. The slow movement of Pluto affecting Mars in a natal chart is often a big deal. There are three categories of stories that as I sat and reflected on it, that I was able to come up with, and I think that these are the kinds of stories that we shouldn't be surprised to see, maybe on a smaller level in our own lives, especially if these transits are not triggering things in our natal charts, but you could see some version of these stories or these themes. That's the point.

And again, if I had to make up something very quickly, I'd say, if you've got the cardinal signs in the angular houses, or if you have planets in late degrees of the cardinal signs, you might really feel this a lot more. But these are the most common stories I've heard about transiting Pluto and hitting Mars in a person's birth chart. So I think we can take something from these.

One very simple. It's a life-and-death crisis. Now, on the one hand, I mean this very literally, where people will have encounters with death, there will be death, or someone will die, or someone will pass, or someone will have a brush with their own mortality in a kind of life and death healing crisis, moment, physically, mentally and emotionally. And that would be the most acute version of this theme, a literal Life and Death crisis. And it doesn't have to be your own. It could be somebody else's. It could be somebody around you. It could be somebody in the family. But there will be themes of mortality and of, at the very least, the risk or feeling that death is close by. Let me give you an example.

My father is a 29-degree Capricorn rising, and under this transit, he will be having a knee replacement surgery. So I'm praying that my dad will be okay, but it's considered a risky surgery because of his history with blood clots in his leg, and so they're; obviously, it's not risky enough where they won't perform the surgery. They will, but you know, they've informed him that there's a there's a certain risk in doing a procedure like this, given his history of blood clots in the legs.

So, when that transit occurs, I will be contemplating a medical procedure that has the risk of death. I've had to do some paperwork for my dad in relation to the surgery and stuff like that. So right, you get what I mean. So that's a pretty small version of it, but it's interesting to me that that will be happening as that transit is perfecting. My dad doesn't follow astrology, and he doesn't know, oh, Pluto's on his ascendant, you know? Obviously, one of my general rules is that I don't interfere with people who are not asking me anything about astrology.

So for those of you who wonder if I'd say, Well, do your surgery on a different day, or do it like this or that, I just trust the universe, and I let other people unless they're asking me, I don't offer unsolicited astrological opinions or advice. Now I think it's gonna be okay, but I do know that I'll probably be dealing with the fear of life and death on that day like that'll be a thing that's a small one. There are gradations of life and death crises. People will often feel as though the situation that they are in and the eruption of unconscious, material, and difficult or challenging circumstances that arise under a Pluto transit in annual Mars will make them feel as though they are in a life-and-death crisis.

You know that the theme of emergency and crisis and living through and surviving and feeling reborn from a life and death crisis is very Mars-Pluto, or Pluto transiting needle Mars. Let me give you another example.

My mother has a she has a Mars in Libra, and she was experiencing a a Pluto transit to her natal Mars, and this was back in God; I'm gonna forget now. See, it was 2020, 21, anyway. It was during COVID-19, and she had to be hospitalized in the ICU because her fight with COVID-19 took her to the point of needing to be in the ICU.

Her partner also got COVID-19 and was in the ICU for, I want to say, two weeks with the breathing help and everything. So during those two weeks, she recovered relatively quickly, and then he was in, you know, in peril for, like, two weeks. That was the peak of her Pluto-Mars experience. She described that experience afterward as a kind of clearing and cleansing on a really deep level, but not exactly easy, right?

Now, those are extreme stories, and I don't want to scare people, right? I'm trying to be real because, as an astrologer, it's important to talk about the kinds of things that tend to happen. But there are gradations of these exact same things.

For example, when you suddenly are without a job, or when you are in a transitional space between jobs and you're under the stress or pressure of having to find a job before your savings run out. Very Pluto Mars, there's a feeling of needing to survive a period of peril and uncertainty where you're living on the razor's edge of life.

This is the quintessential Mars-Pluto experience, and there is much at stake. Things are tentative and dangerous. There's a feeling of edginess, and of the need to tap into a primal instinct to survive and and wrestle with confrontational forces that it's not just smooth sailing, you know, it's your your your vessel is facing a, you know, a patch of big waves in a storm, and you're going to have to take the helm, and you are going to have to steer through and survive.

And you know what, 99% of the time, I have seen throughout my client practice that it is the rare exception that something does not survive. It is almost always the case that survival is the final outcome that we get through it, that we find a way that we dig down, that we locate some kind of deep inner resourcefulness, and that we survive, that we thrive, even because we had to dig down deep. But that doesn't take away from the kind of Mars-Pluto, which is a thriller, you know. It's a little bit of an edge-of-your-seat kind of transit.

Now, again, some people may notice this energy in the world around you, someone at work, or a friend, but it may not hit you so hard. It really does depend on where it's located in your natal chart. Often, again, the cardinal houses are a big deal. Planets in the late degrees of Cardinal signs, in this case, are a big deal, maybe the little bit of like the zero degrees to one degree of fixed signs, because it's Pluto's crossing over and hitting those at this time as well. So Mars will be, too. But yeah, a smaller version of Mars-Pluto is also just having to face or deal with something that is unexpectedly difficult and just right in your face, and it feels like a bit of a crisis because it interrupts you. You know, in cases like this, where did that come from? Right?

Number two, intense power struggles. I see this all the time over many years of doing astrological counseling; when Pluto and Mars get together, there are Titanic clashes of willpower, my will versus yours, your will versus your partner's something at work with a boss or struggling to locate your own inner sense of authority, your own inner sense of agency. I am not someone who is super fond of all of this talk that we see in New Age spirituality about sovereignty. I have talked in the past about why I think that word is a little precarious. You know, although I get the idea of personal empowerment, I listened to the show that I really started liking recently, a podcast called The. I just think it's called The Emerald.

But anyway, it's, it kind of feels like I found someone who thinks very similarly to me in some ways with respect to spirituality. So there's a lot I have in common with the host of the show and, but one of the things that he talked about is that there's, you know, our sense of individual power is only, is only as relevant as we are able to understand greater powers and forces that exist around us, you know. So it's like, what does personal power mean if you're not aware of how powerful the river that you live by is or the power of the ancestors or the power of nature or the planets or the gods and goddesses?

So one of the things that happens is when this transit erupts with such dynamic force, Mars-Pluto does that, we can come back into touch with a more realistic sense or evaluation of where we stand and what to what effect or to what extent our choices may have an actual impact, and we also may remember the forces that are bigger than us. It's like, if you're in a boat, your little sailboat, and you're going along, everything's sunny, you know, everything you can fall under the illusion that you're in control of everything until a storm comes until the waves get big, and then you remember, oh gosh, you know, I do have control of this ship. I have some agency. I have to steer my vessel, but I'm also navigating forces that are just tremendous, and some humility and respect in the face of the vastness of the cosmos is necessary for us to develop a healthy understanding of our agency, our will.

You know, it's funny, how closely like, how closely humility and power live next to one another in the lives of people who I think are, like, truly remarkable in terms of what they're able to get done, what they're able to create. And yet these, these same people, are often very humble and very respectful of their limitations. You know, understanding Mars Pluto will put us in touch with the limits of our power, as well as the deep resources that we have that maybe we didn't know we had.

So these themes of powerment and disempowerment, the ego's relationship with power, healthy cultivation of power, respect for powers bigger than ourselves. These are all Mars-Pluto themes, and sometimes they, we learn these lessons through Titanic clashes of will or power struggles. That's one of the ways that Mars Pluto will express as a symbol.

Number three is sudden eruptions of Mars frustrations like, look, one of the things that can happen, and let's just be real about it, is that Mars and Pluto get together, and all of a sudden, there's just this eruption of frustrating, difficult, agitating, confrontational, conflicting, what feels like hostile energy, energy, I don't know. Whatever, hostile people, hostile spirits, hostile thoughts, hostile impulses, or impulses that are just a little hotter and harder to manage.

So, reactivity, impulsivity, eruptions like this, and things that come up just feel like they're trying to frustrate us or thwart us. Mars is a planet that is expressive of willpower, as well as all that thwarts our will and the need to persevere and overcome. These are all Mars archetypes, and so all of the transits that I have seen of, uh, Pluto to Mars in a natal chart, you'll see that there's a clash with the boss at work, an intense power struggle, locating a deeper sense of how effective we can be. Pluto transiting natal Mars, a respect for the limitations of our own authority and power. Pluto and Mars, and then all of a sudden, you meet a bully at work.

The eruption of Mars comes out of the unconscious space. Suddenly, you're dealing with a bully at work. Or suddenly, there is something that is impeding your progress, something you feel you have to overcome or wrestle with. There's a sense that what we're wrestling with is also divine. There's a very fated sense of the things that fade, a sense that comes with Mars-Pluto as this feels like something I am meant to struggle with, I am meant to clash with, I am meant to overcome.

And the expressions that we see in the collective often resemble that, culturally and collectively, this is a hero's struggle that must occur right now, or this is something, a confrontation or a clash that whose time has come. And that's amplified, of course, by the fact that these two planets are at the anaretic degrees of their signs. So it's a pretty epic transit. I'm trying to get ahead of it by giving you some things to think about as the transit is forming, not just at the moment that it's happening, because, as you can see, there's it would be problematic to talk about this on the day of.

It may be too late, but at that point in time, if there's anything we can do to just bring a little bit more of a relationship, a conscious intimacy, with the unfolding of these archetypal fields, these symbols. That's good. That's what we want. I think that helps. How much it helps? Who knows, but I think a lot; again, I'm referencing the Emerald podcast I've been listening to, and I just so appreciate the way he talks about animism; just right in line with the spirit and heart of my work and of some of my great mentors, like James Hillman. One of the things that I like to emphasize, as you all know, is that whatever we can do to be a participating, relational participant in the Animate Cosmos can do nothing but help. And really, I think that's the purpose of astrology.

Can we just have a more felt, intimate sense of our existence and experience, and that by looking at the symbols and by turning them, letting the light bounce off from the archetypal combinations of the planets in different ways, we're creating a different kind of psychic space in which to relate to the unfolding of experience. And I think that for me, that's always been something that's, I don't know it's keeps my cosmos enchanted, so to speak.

So anyway, that's it for today. Stick around after I sign off. You want to learn more about the ancient astrology program that begins in November. Don't forget, need based tuition is available for that. I hope you guys are having a great day, and we will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye.