Pluto in Pisces speaks of a transformation of the imagination, of beliefs, and of the relationship to the invisible.
Transforming the imagination and beliefs: dissolving boundaries, at the risk of losing your bearings.
A sensitivity able to turn collective suffering into active compassion.
Getting lost in the haze, or fleeing what calls for a clear decision.
By Thomas Guilhot · updated
The last sign of the zodiac, Pisces is a mutable water sign, entrusted to Jupiter by the ancients and to Neptune by the moderns.
It symbolizes the imagination, compassion, the dissolving of boundaries. Pluto stayed there from about 1797–1798 to 1822–1823, with long back-and-forth crossings at the edges. Births during these twenty-five years shared this placement, and all of them now belong to history: you find it in the charts of figures from the Napoleonic era and the Restoration.
Astrologers who read history link this passage to nascent Romanticism, a renewed interest in dreams, mystery, and emotion, after the great revolutionary upheavals. Pluto in the sign of the ocean would symbolize a transformation through interiority: what cannot be seen would gain importance. The downside would be confusion, or flight into an imaginary world more comfortable than the real one. The writers and painters of this period were, in fact, very interested in night, the sea, and dreams.
The next stay will begin around March 2043 and run until about 2066–2068. For a person born then, the place in the chart where Pluto falls would show where this sensitivity would play out: inner life, if it is in the 12th house; the spiritual quest, in the 9th; help given to others day by day, if it occupies the 6th.
In relationships, this placement would evoke an almost mystical conception of the bond: fusion, devotion, idealization of the other, poems written at night.
The downside would be forgetting yourself, or confusing loving with saving. Since no current chart contains it, the reading applies to historical charts or to the coming generation; Venus and the Moon will always remain the first reference points for emotional life.
In career, Pluto in Pisces would evoke vocations turned toward art, support work, spirituality, or helping the most vulnerable.
The asset would be intuition and the ability to perceive other people’s emotions without their being spoken. The downside would be difficulty setting limits, or making a long-dreamed project concrete. The Midheaven and Neptune in a chart would show where this sensitivity would be expressed.
Every day, the placement would be read in the need for withdrawal and imagination: music, daydreaming, walks by the water, long hours of reading.
You would be sensitive to atmospheres and to the moods of those close to you, to the point of taking them on as your own. The downside would be letting yourself be overwhelmed, or putting off what bothers you. The rising sign and the Moon would strongly qualify this common tone.
Jupiter traditionally rules Pisces, Neptune is its modern ruler, and Venus is exalted there according to Ptolemy; Mercury loses its bearings there, in detriment and fall.
Pluto receives nothing there. Today the star of metamorphosis, plunged into the sign of dissolution, would be seen here: the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, between self and others, would be blurred.
Some authors have proposed placing Pluto’s exaltation there, others elsewhere; no proposal has unanimous support, and we keep none. Astrologers of cycles would see rather a period of spiritual and artistic renewal. These readings remain symbolic and say nothing about what this future generation will live.
Pluto has neither domicile, exaltation, detriment, nor fall here: the sign colors it without strengthening or hindering it.
Transpersonal planet. Discovered in 1930 (Clyde Tombaugh); a dwarf planet for the IAU since 2006, kept by astrology.
The profile of PlutoA water sign, mutable, ruled by Jupiter and Neptune (modern).
The Pisces signPluto has neither domicile, exaltation, detriment, nor fall here: the sign colors it without strengthening or hindering it.
Planetary dignitiesPluto in Pisces would evoke a transformation of the imagination, of beliefs, and of collective sensitivity. It concerned births from about 1798 to 1823 and will concern those from about 2044 to 2068. For an individual reading, the birth time would be indispensable: it alone allows the planet to be placed in one of the twelve houses and its angles to be measured.
According to our calculations, Pluto will cross into Pisces on March 9, 2043, return to Aquarius from September 2043 to January 2044, then stay in the sign until the spring of 2066. It will then make several back-and-forth crossings with Aries until February 2068. The previous stay dated from about 1797 to 1823.
No. Neptune rules Pisces for the moderns: it would be at home there and spends about fourteen years there, as from 2011 to 2026. Pluto has no dignity there and stays more than twenty years. The two placements share the sign’s color, imagination and compassion, but Pluto would add its logic of crisis and transformation.
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