I obviously didn’t realise it at the time because I hated her guts but the first person to teach me about reincarnation was Margaret Thatcher.

Not directly of course. If ever there was a being that made you pray for the traditional notion of hell it was the Prime Minister who tried to turn her own country into a living one.

My all time favourite cartoon published after the witch’s death depicts her arriving in hell demanding to know why “ this pit hasn’t been closed “. 

In those dark days of the 1980s the only solace for lefties like myself was in programmes like Spitting Image or astrology explaining it all.

And Thatcher introduced me to the sheer power of Pluto.

Since that fateful day in May 1979 when Pluto’s conjunction to her Sun, inflicted a decade of such unremitting pain and destruction on the UK that it has never recovered, I resolved to follow the movements of this tiny outsider at the remote edge of the solar system. 

And this website contains over 600 articles acknowledging its power. 

For forty of those years, whilst accepting the basic principle of reincarnation as the one spiritual version of life that most fits with astrology, I could not honestly say that it was a personal experience, just a belief and I was very sceptical of other astrologers willingness to find specific evidence of it in people’s charts.

Until it happened to me.

By and large our lives follow a path where each step we take leads to the next one and whether we can really say it’s progress or not at least we can see causality and some kind of pattern. 

Even the changes that Uranus brings about are fairly easy to spot due to our getting fed up with Saturn’s restrictions.

Not so Pluto. It’s transformations seem to be entirely unconnected to anything that had gone before. And if we insist on viewing them simply from the perspective of this life alone they totally are.

Pluto does not follow the orbital plane of the other planets. It’s tilted at an angle of 17 degrees to the ecliptic so it has the appearance of sitting apart from the other planets as if simply observing what happens to us on the earthly plane in this life.

But when it decides to get involved it swoops down and smashes through the ecliptic and out to the other side.

Its involvement in our lives works in a similar fashion.

It’s major transits are few and far between, only 1 or 2 to each placement in a lifetime. 

But if Pluto decides that the life being lived does not fit in with the overall pattern of our past and future ones, it suddenly dips in and blasts the old one out of existence.

Over half a century of researching astrology I have come to see that the most challenging of all transits are Pluto’s to the Moon.

Pluto to the Sun would often be a bigger turning point in the person’s life but this one is very much tied to their own major life direction, the one they are destined to pursue and this transit will often mark a period of peak achievement as its conjunction with her Sun did for Margaret Thatcher when she was elected as UK Prime Minister in 1979.

The Moon is a different matter. It rules our subconscious, our habit patterns, our feelings and our need for security and to connect with others.

The Sun is that which is essential in us, the Moon is that which changes.

The Sun is our sense of our path, our direction in life, the Moon is where we feel most uncertain.

The Sun is what we are, the Moon is what we need.

If Pluto blows up our life’s path, the Sun can find another one.

If Pluto exterminates our lunar support base, we are literally at sea and in fear of drowning.

I experienced transit Pluto conjunct my Moon 5 years after its was on my Sun.

My solar experience was intense but very positive. This was the period when I undertook the Capricorn Astrology Research Project

Because it was such an important turning point in my life, I expected the transit to my Moon to be something similar so I was much less prepared for the shock of it than I otherwise might have been.

When I look back on it now I see how these two transits were linked.

Capricorn stellium people are usually very focused on their own path to the point where they can be quite blinkered and unable to see and also relatively uninterested in what is happening around them.

With my Pluto / Sun transit I focused so much on my research that I took my eye off all the other balls in my life.

When Pluto reached my Moon it took advantage of that negligence and kicked them all into touch.

Pluto’s transit over my Capricorn Moon brought about such a total and absolute revolution where I was thrown out of most of what up to that point I had quaintly called my life.

Although my Moon is in my 12th house, Pluto’s transit caused me to lose my home, marriage and career and financial and emotional security.

Pluto’s transits, no matter how destructive, always have a new world in mind. But there is no room for that new world unless the old one is burnt to the ground.

But you can’t see that new world when you’re in the middle of a Pluto transit, even if you’re an astrologer. 

If you could, it wouldn’t work so powerfully. You have to literally have everything stripped away because unless you are really taken to rock bottom and lose everything you had and are, you can’t be born again.

My brother was very supportive and often reminded me that I was the astrologer who always told my clients ( himself included ) that Pluto transits happened for a reason.

I couldn’t see it, I thought at 63, the Universe had written me off and only had one final bleak chapter left for me.

Pluto had devastated three of my angular houses ( 4th, 7th and 10th ). The shock of it had even caused me to abandon astrology and stop researching, writing articles and doing readings.

Once Pluto left my Moon, I realised that the only way I could save the one house left to me ( my 1st ) was to focus more on doing astrology readings. So I got back on Twitter after a 2 year absence.

And it was there that Karen found me. 

I have Venus conjunct Saturn in Scorpio in my 9th house. 

Saturn being so strong in my chart as my Sun, Moon and Ascendant ruler, I figured long ago that I was to be denied what most people call love to force me to find ways of loving myself through spiritual discipline and astrological understanding.

I was reconciled to this state of affairs and had managed to achieve a decent result in those areas. I now see that Saturn does not deny things, it just delays them. It puts them on hold until you have done all your homework.

My Venus is also square a 7th house Pluto.

After Pluto’s transit to my Moon destroyed everything, I had it sextile to my Venus when Karen found me and I was instantly propelled to the other side of the world to lead my best ever life.

I always had a sense of some couples synastry being so powerful that they had to come together as soul mates for a particular shared life purpose. 

I have many examples of this on my database. 

Being an astrology / statistics nerd who takes great delight in informing other astrologers when they need to know that their stunning insights would have come up by chance alone anyway, I decided to check how unique these connections are. 

Karen and I both have Capricorn rising, our Ascendants are in the same degree, a mere 20 minutes apart. The chances of that happening are 600 / 1

Our Moons are exactly square each other, with an orb of 12 minutes giving a chance occurrence of 900 / 1. Even if we believe that the conjunction, opposition and both squares would be considered we are still looking at 225 / 1.

My Mars is 1.5 degrees away from her Venus – a chance of 120 / 1

Our Suns are also square although the orb here is just under 5 degrees which would be about 10 / 1.

Even without looking at other placements we are talking about a chance occurrence of over 160 million to one.

One important thing to consider when looking at couples with tight synastry is that as well as their connections bringing their life themes closely together, they have the same transits at the same time, which means their life experiences bind them together even more closely.

As our Moons are in such close aspect, when I had the Pluto conjunction, Karen was experiencing the square.

Even though at that point in our lives we were on opposite sides of the world and had never heard of each other we were experiencing very similar things.

Karen’s Moon is conjunct Saturn on her IC. Her Pluto transit caused her to lose her home, marriage and all the financial security that she thought she had.

She also had to deal with a succession of family health crises and was on her own in dealing with them.

She had two part time jobs, one was lost through redundancy, the other had been with a promise of it turning into a full time post which never materialised.

Pluto’s transit to our respective Moons had taken us both to rock bottom. We didn’t have anything else to lose apart from our own lives.

While Karen was going through this transit, her then astrologer told her that it would profoundly change her and she wouldn’t be the same person when she came out the other side as in what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

After coming through it, Karen came to the realisation that she was stronger than she ever thought she could be.

It obviously had to do that to both of us in order to create the conditions where it was possible for our souls to meet up once again.

Soon after meeting Karen online we both realised we had shared many previous lives and I had strong visions of these experiences going back as far as the 15th century. 

Needless to say I never had anything like those kind of insights in my life before.

Despite my being 13 years older than Karen, we both have natal Venus / Pluto aspects. I have the square, she has the opposition.

Both have a 9th house character. My Venus is in the 9th, Karen’s Pluto is in the 9th.

As we were both on opposite sides of the world and astrology brought us together its easy to see two 9th house themes working alongside each other.

Our Venuses are in trine aspect, mine in Scorpio, Karen’s in Pisces.

We met when transit Pluto was in sextile to both of them. It goes without saying this was the only time in our lives that could happen.

Karen’s Progressed Venus was trine her Pluto.

My Progressed Venus was quincunx ( 150 degrees ) my Pluto.

It was also conjunct my Ascendant and opposite my 7th house Jupiter and Uranus and square my 9th house Neptune.

Our synastry is staggering, our transits were not of this world.

But I now know that Pluto’s transits make no sense unless you see them from a soul’s perspective.

Tough as it may be at the time, we have to accept Pluto’s job is to annihilate everything that we have known in this life.

It does this in order to give us the chance to see that there is more to life than this one.

Karma is an interesting subject for astrologers. It underpins the whole of Vedic astrology.

However I feel that many of the received notions about it are misunderstood.

Karma is often seen from a negative, past related perspective. It is supposed to say that what you are experiencing now is a judgement on past behaviour.

Most Vedic astrologers don’t recognise Pluto and I have yet to meet one that truly understands its power. If they did they would perhaps say that its transits would give you the kicking that you deserve.

That may or may not be so. My take on it is that Pluto will give you the kicking you need.

I feel the same way about Saturn transits. They are not so much a judgement on what you have done over the preceding 30 years, they are just offering you an opportunity to see that the same behaviour would not be appropriate or helpful for the next 30.

The most important thing is that we separate astrology from old time organised religious attitudes and belief systems.

The Universe is not some Old Testament God dishing out punishments to the unbelievers. There is no fixed way, no right and wrong, no good and bad, no heaven and hell, there is just perpetual change.

Astrology is the Universe’s gift to us because it is constantly flagging up exactly what kind of change is occurring at any one moment.

We can of course choose to acknowledge that change and adjust to it in order to survive through it.

Or we can fight the inevitable and try desperately to hold onto what we already have. We will lose, of course we will. And we will suffer far more because of it.

My view of karma is that it’s not obsessed with the past and retribution for it. It’s actually not interested in the past at all. It’s entirely focused on the requirements of the moment.

Astrology is a series of signposts showing us how to better live in that moment and how to let go of the past and adjust to the requirements of the future.

If you have investment in the past, however morally good and right that association might seem to you, Pluto’s transits to your Moon will cause you to suffer great pain and loss.

If you are able to give up even your sense of who you think you are, Pluto’s transits to your Moon will allow you to have a glimpse of who you really are.

And ultimately, this is the most important thing there is.

One thing that fascinates me is that my Capricorn Moon is square to Margaret Thatcher’s Libra Sun and opposite her Pluto.

And when the transit Pluto was hitting her Sun back in 1979, it was going through my own 9th house and squaring my Moon.

This was a similar period when my life was turned upside down for the better but also very painfully at the time, comparable only to this recent conjunction. 

I emerged from that one with a completely new life and also a profound respect for the Buddhist view of it.

I still find it hard to acknowledge Margaret Thatcher as my first dharma teacher, but I have to accept that her method was much more Zen stick than carrot.

Pluto is a reaper but it’s methods are usually fairly grim. 

I often joked that writing so many articles paying homage to the power of Pluto’s transits was part of a deal that I made with it to avoid the harsher aspects of its scythe. 

As it turned out, this Pluto / Moon transit sliced me all the way to paradise. 

Posted on 22nd March 2023

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