Imagine the following:
You are hanging out with friends, and you are all deciding what you’ll have for dinner. Jake, who’s feeling particularly generous, announces he will pay for everyone, but insists that dinner must be at this Thai restaurant he’s been wanting to try.
You’re really, really, really hungry, but you hate Thai food. You want something else. Anything will do, anything at all, except Thai.
The whole group, though, is with Jake on this one. This is where they want to eat.
What do you do?
Do you push harder?
Do you manipulate them with arguments in your favour or, perhaps, tears and victimisation?
Do you stomp away in anger, announcing that you’ll find your food elsewhere?
Do you surrender to the will of the group to keep the harmony, even while quietly resenting them for it?
What do you do, beautiful soul?
Mars meets Pluto
Mars, the fiery planet associated with will, action, desire, assertion and pursuit, is currently opposing Pluto, the planet associated with power, compulsion, control, shadow, intensity and transformation.
The aspect becomes exact on the 3rd of October, at 3 degrees Leo and Aquarius, but its effects can linger for about a week afterwards, and a week prior.
An opposition occurs when two planets sit approximately 180 degrees apart from one another (or, in other words, opposite each other on the zodiac wheel). This can feel a bit like a tug-of-war between two opposing forces; both energies want expression, but each seems to interfere with what the other is trying to accomplish.
Almost like one is trying to do its own thing while the other stands there, chest puffed out, saying: “Now hold on a minute. What you are doing is interfering with what I am doing, and what I am doing is more important than what you are doing.”
With Mars and Pluto, that disagreement can become particularly intense. Mars wants to act. Pluto wants to expose where the real power lies.
Mars in Leo versus Pluto in Aquarius
In this case, Mars faces Pluto while moving through Leo.
Mars already describes our drive and our willingness to pursue what we want. In Leo, that will is painted gold with pride, creativity, courage, self-expression and the ego’s investment in being seen, respected, and recognised.
Mars in Leo is essentially the team captain: shoulders back, chest out, a confident grin on his face because he knows where he’s going and is ready to lead the parade.
Pluto, meanwhile, is moving through Aquarius.
Aquarius deals with groups, communities, networks, systems, ideologies and collective power. It can speak of decentralisation and revolution, but it can also describe the pressure exerted by the group itself: the rules of the system, the expectations of the community or an ideology that has become just as rigid as the authority it once opposed.
Pluto here brings questions of power, control, transformation and shadow into all these Aquarian matters.
Pluto in Aquarius is basically the revolutionary at the edge of the crowd, fist raised in the air, shouting that the whole system is corrupt and needs to come down.
In other words, Mars in Leo says: “I should lead.”
Pluto in Aquarius responds: “Why should anyone have that much power in the first place?”
When they face each other, we encounter dynamics of my will versus yours. My power versus yours. What I want versus the force standing in my way.
Individual power versus collective power.
And what happens when what you want is not the same as what everyone else wants.
There is another ingredient making this opposition particularly interesting: Leo and Aquarius are both fixed signs, and fixed signs hold their ground.
They sustain. They persist. They endure.
But in shadow, they can also dig their heels in long after doing so has stopped being useful. So when Mars is pushing forward and Pluto is intensifying whatever it touches, while neither side particularly wants to move, our desires can suddenly escalate from “I’d like this to happen” to “I FUCKING NEED THIS.”
Sometimes resistance makes us question our desire.
Sometimes, resistance makes us want something even more simply because something has dared to stand in our way.
Who do you become in those moments?
Power
To answer that question, you will need to dive deeply into your own relationship with power, and particularly how you use yours when you find yourself trying to force a specific outcome.
Don’t get me wrong, persistence is sometimes required to reach our goals.
Not always, though.
Sometimes, we’re not fighting because something is truly worth fighting for. Sometimes, we’re fighting because we are struggling to tolerate our own lack of control, particularly when the consequences matter.
There is also another side to this transit:
What happens when you are not the person applying the pressure?
What happens when somebody else’s power bears down on yours?
When somebody else wants something from you, and your will is the force standing in their way?
Consequences
I remember once facing a bit of a conundrum on a work trip: there was a business dinner I needed to attend. I had travelled to another country, in part, to attend it. However, I was not in a great place, mentally speaking, to fulfil that obligation just then. I explained this to my boss.
He responded with: “I am your boss, and I am telling you that you have to go.”
I didn’t feel that I had much power to assert my needs any further in that situation, so I went.
It was awful.
Not only could I not make myself be sociable, which resulted in me sulking in the corner for most of the evening, but he added insult to injury by taking everyone to a Korean barbecue restaurant.
I was vegan. The only thing I could eat on the menu was plain rice.
Looking back, I think this is an interesting example of the kind of tension Mars opposite Pluto can describe. Situations of this kind are complicated, because the “right thing to do” is not always easy to decode in the moment.
Was the right thing for me to do to stay at the hotel and protect my wellbeing, thus damaging my relationship with my boss?
Was it to “suck it up,” attend the dinner and fulfil what he considered a professional responsibility?
Was there another option I couldn’t see at the time?
Years later, I’m still not entirely sure.
What I do know is that there was no perfectly clean choice. Whatever I did, something was going to be sacrificed.
When two forces are pulling in opposite directions, integration does not always mean everybody gets exactly what they want.
Sometimes it means deciding consciously what you are willing to give up, and what you are not.
The invitation
It’s not all doom and gloom. I am a firm believer that every astrological transit is here to propel us forward in our quest for growth, one way or another.
Oppositions show us polarities.
They ask us to recognise both sides of the equation and understand how they interact, rather than unconsciously identifying with one while projecting the other onto somebody else.
Sometimes that creates compromise; other times, it creates negotiation.
Occasionally, it can help us recognise exactly where a boundary needs to exist.
Mars and Pluto are mighty forces indeed, but neither is the enemy.
They speak of different facets of our inner power. Mars gives us the courage to act, pursue, defend and assert. Pluto asks us to understand the deeper power dynamics operating underneath the surface, including the parts of ourselves that may become compulsive, controlling or obsessed with winning.
The invitation, as I see it, is to look into what happens to us when desire meets resistance.
Do we become more determined?
Do we get hell-bent on pursuing what we perceive as justice?
Are we prickled by pride?
Competitiveness? Fear?
Do we feel like we need to defend a boundary?
Or are we trying to ensure we can prove that we cannot be overpowered?
If we surrender, do we do so because it is genuinely the right choice, or because we are afraid of claiming our own power?
Of course, our motivations will change from situation to situation, which means this is an ongoing exercise that you should definitely be adding to your toolkit. Between the 3rd and the 10th of October, pay particular attention to any situation that brings these questions to the surface.
And pay attention, too, to whether your reaction seems bigger than the situation itself. Pluto has a way of digging beneath the immediate conflict and touching something deeper like old fears around powerlessness, rejection, control or humiliation that may extend far beyond what is actually happening in front of us.
What you need to keep in mind is that sovereignty is, in one way or another, about power.
But sovereignty is not the ability to control every outcome. It’s knowing what you want, what you value, what you are willing to fight for, what you are willing to lose, and how you choose to wield your power when the world refuses to bend around you.
Who do you become when you don’t get what you want?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, beautiful soul.
Much love!
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