This page is about all Saturn-Pluto aspects, like Saturn Conjunct Pluto, Saturn Opposite Pluto, Saturn Trine Pluto, Saturn Square Pluto, Saturn Sextile Pluto, Saturn Inconjunct Pluto. Hard aspects like conjunctions, squares, and oppositions tend to be more difficult than soft aspects like trines or sextiles. The closer the orb, the more intense the aspect.
We have a page about Saturn. I also highly recommend Liz Greene’s book Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, which is the basis for a lot of my thoughts on Saturn.
About Saturn-Pluto
Lessons
- releasing attachment through pain and loss
- destruction of the self-protective ego and unconscious defense mechanisms
- finding a balanced path of growth that avoids extremes
Challenges
- obsession
- rage
- immense frustration
- self-destructive choices that feel out of your control
- separation or loss of what is deeply cherished or most desired
- immense emotional pain
- a feeling of fatedness
- intense independence precluding help
- depression
- loneliness
- despair
- incessant self-probing
- or overcompensating by living a shallow existence devoid of what is truly desired
- unexpected tragedies or shocks
- loss of meaning
- experiences that shatter the personality structure
- “death and rebirth” experiences of psychological breakdown or “rock bottom” moments leading to peak experiences revealing new levels of awareness and insight
Mastery
- mastery over your emotional nature
- deep self-knowledge
- profound inner freedom
- shedding of the ego and transformation of consciousness
- great inner power
- understanding the collective unconscious
- becoming an agent of healing and wholeness for others
About the Saturn Growth Journey
Saturn in our natal chart represents a place where we can feel limited, painfully inadequate, fearful, or experience delays. But there is a purpose behind Saturn’s seemingly negative effect on our life: Saturn wants us to grow up, take responsibility, and develop our inner authority. If we are willing to face ourselves and do the work to overcome our fears, we develop the strength and power we wanted all along.
The Saturn journey involves a coupling of need and fear. There can be shyness, stiff awkwardness, and/or emotional coldness and a sense of inadequacy in an area where we badly want to feel confident and capable. And we just don’t. Where others experience ease, we struggle. Where others find things obvious, we have to painstakingly puzzle things out. Where others dance, we stumble. That’s just the way Saturn feels.
If we can’t face our pain, we can end up projecting our unowned negative qualities onto others, or trying to satisfy emotional needs with physical ones and replacing inner work with outer achievement. We look outside ourselves for what we need to develop within ourselves.
Eventually, we realize there is no shortcut. The only way to our goal is to just do the work, by ourselves, for as long as it takes.
