WHO IS IN CONTROL OF THE WORLD? Pluto Stations Direct in Aquarius - The Devil, the Underworld and Our Journey Back to Power

WHO IS IN CONTROL OF THE WORLD?

Pluto Stations Direct in Aquarius - The Devil, the Underworld and Our Journey Back to Power

Counselling Confidence – Hypnosis & Astrology | October 2026

AUDIO DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS ARTICLE

Who is in Control of the World?

That's a question more and more people seem to be asking every day.

And when we begin to break it down, we find ourselves wandering through some very interesting landscapes indeed. Landscapes populated by corporations, institutions, belief systems, gods, devils, kings, queens and, eventually, ourselves. Because perhaps the most extraordinary discovery we can make about Control is that we are all participating in its creation.

Even when we believe we have none.

Pluto stations direct at precisely 1:02 pm Brisbane time (AEST, UTC+10), which is 2:02 pm in Sydney.

At the station, the Moon is at 13°09′ Sagittarius, out of bounds and participating in a remarkable Grand Fire Trine with Saturn at approximately 10° Aries and Mars at approximately 9° Leo. These are not faint whispers in the background of our astrological story.

This is Fire, fuelled by Power, preparing to move.

And Pluto? Pluto is standing almost motionless. But motionless when turning is not a stop, it is a concentration of powerful motion. The concentration can be more powerful than movement. And Pluto is no lightweight. Pluto represents extraordinary Power. The Power that moves beneath the visible world, that builds empires and dismantles them, that destroys what can no longer contain Life, and allows something else to be born.

Pluto is the Lord of the Underworld.

And one of his great domains is obsessive Control.

So today, before we ask who controls the world, I would like us to explore our own relationship with Control. Because we all need to know that we control something. This is perfectly normal. Indeed, it is necessary. But what happens when our need for Control becomes so powerful that it begins controlling us?

When the solution becomes the prison

Let's say you've been working on a project for a while. This project means a great deal to you. You've invested time, effort and perhaps considerable frustration into making it work. Then, one day, someone arrives with the key to a problem that has been challenging you. Suddenly, everything makes sense. It worked! You can move ahead and complete your project.

But something interesting sometimes happens at precisely this point.

We mistake one solution for THE solution. What worked once becomes the way things must always work. And before long, the structure that allowed us to move forward becomes the structure that prevents us from growing. This happens with procedures. With businesses. With governments. With communities. With personal relationships.

And perhaps most powerfully, it happens with Belief Systems.

What began as a solution becomes an ideology.

And the ideology becomes something we must defend.

Even when defending it means sacrificing the very freedom that made the original discovery possible.

Saturn, Neptune and Pluto - Creating the Belief System

Astrologically, Saturn rules structure and systems. Saturn gathers the pieces together, establishes boundaries, creates procedures and makes things workable. But what about Belief? That's a more nebulous landscape, isn't it? Here we meet Neptune. Neptune takes us into the invisible world of visions, spiritual longing, dreams, imagination. Neptune helps us experience something that we may not yet be able to define. Saturn can then give that experience form. And together they can create something beautiful. A philosophy. A community. A spiritual teaching. A way of organising society. A structure through which an ideal can be expressed and shared.

But what happens when that Belief becomes obsessive?

Ah! Here comes Pluto. And now we have something quite different. Imagine you have been feeling alone. You discover a community where people gather. They welcome you warmly. They smile at you. They listen to your story. They tell you that you belong. And what a wonderful feeling that is! A sense of Belonging can satisfy several of our needs at once, and different ones for different people. You might find connection, meaning and perhaps even a renewed sense of purpose.

But gradually you discover that the community operates according to a particular Belief System. There are rules. Certain ideas must be accepted. Certain questions are unwelcome. And if you don't adhere to the Belief System, you may lose the very community that gave you such a wonderful sense of belonging. So now your need for Belonging is becoming entwined with your need for Safety and your need for Control.

You begin defending the Belief System because it appears to protect something precious. And perhaps you start encouraging others to join. After all, it worked for you!

At the extreme end of this spectrum, we find cults and coercive communities that separate members from friends, family and other sources of support. What began as an invitation to belong becomes a demand for obedience.

And Pluto has revealed the shadow inside the beautiful structure. Because it must. Because Astrology works for us.

Of course, not every community functions this way. Some are genuinely welcoming and allow their members to question, disagree and grow. But notice the essential difference. And ask whether even a beautifully intentioned group might not be unhealthy for you, now, at this time in your Life? Even if it might be good for others?

One structure supports human beings in expressing themselves. Another requires human beings to surrender themselves in order to maintain the structure.

Saturn is necessary. Without Structure, Neptune's beautiful visions might remain too nebulous to grasp. But when Pluto powers up our attachment to the Structure itself, the original vision can become obscured. And that's when the System may begin feeding upon the people who created it. But Power is also good. Your relationship to Power can be viewed through your relationship to Control. Your control over others and others’ control over you.

Control and Power - the extraordinary relationship

Now we come to the question at the heart of our story. What is Control? And what is Power? Are they the same? I suggest we cannot properly understand one without investigating the other. Control is one of the ways through which Power manifests. Our ability to make decisions, direct our energies, establish structures, protect ourselves and influence outcomes is an expression of Power. And we all need some experience of this.

The need for Control is not a human failing. It is part of how we participate in Life. But Power can be expressed through a healthy relationship with Control, or an unhealthy one. And sometimes the difference is difficult to recognise.

Let's imagine you are high up in the chain of command of a large organisation. You have people answering to you. You make decisions that affect their lives. You have status and responsibility. You appear to have a great deal of Control. But above you sits another person. And above that person perhaps another. Each level operates within conditions established elsewhere.

What happens when those conditions become too heavy?

What happens when they become immoral?

Does the authority you exercise over those below you genuinely satisfy your need for Control if you must continually surrender your values to those above?

And what happens if your position of Power satisfies your need for Status while undermining your needs for Safety, Intimacy, Meaning or personal integrity?

Here we discover something fascinating about our human needs. They are not independent little compartments. They work together, sometimes balancing one another, sometimes competing for our attention. If one need becomes excessively dominant, other important needs may go unmet. And those unmet needs will eventually seek expression. Sometimes without our conscious awareness.

A person who feels powerless at work may become controlling at home.

A person who fears abandonment may attempt to control a partner.

An institution that fears losing its authority may introduce more rules, more surveillance and more demands for obedience.

And the more insecure the system becomes, the more Control it may seek.

So perhaps our journey into healthy Power begins when we recognise the relationship between all our needs and stop sacrificing our deeper humanity to maintain one form of Control.

We do not need to abandon Control. We need Control! We just need to become conscious of how we use it, what it costs us and what we are creating with it. Or, paradoxically, the more Control we garner the less we have, if we don’t ask these questions of ourselves.

Pluto in Capricorn - The Power structures we inherited

Pluto's long journey through Capricorn gave us a remarkable opportunity to observe the relationship between people and the systems that govern their lives. Capricorn is Saturn's territory. Corporations, hierarchies, governments, institutions, structures of authority, laws, responsibilities and the machinery of collective organisation all belong within its symbolic landscape. Pluto travelled through this territory and exposed the darker possibilities inherent in structures that concentrate Power. We watched corporate institutions grow in influence. We saw the consequences of decisions made far above the people affected by them.

We became increasingly aware of how institutions and corporate entities can acquire an apparent existence separate from the human beings who create and maintain them.

A corporation may be treated legally as a person.

But what happens when the interests of that corporate person are elevated above the wellbeing of actual people?

Who is in Control?

The directors?
The shareholders?
The employees?
The customers?
The regulators?
Or the Belief System that every participant has been persuaded to maintain?

And what happens when the people at the top of the hierarchy discover that they, too, are governed by the system?

This is one of Pluto's most penetrating questions.

Perhaps the greatest concentrations of Control do not reside solely in individuals. Perhaps they also reside in the ideologies and structures that determine what individuals believe they must do.

Many of us experienced profound changes during Pluto's passage through Capricorn. Think particularly about the period around 22° Capricorn, when the Saturn–Pluto conjunction of January 2020 brought these themes into extraordinary focus.

What changed in your life?
What did you discover about authority?
What structures were removed, challenged or transformed?
What did you learn about your own capacity to survive, adapt and rebuild?
Was there a pandemic of ‘learned helplessness’ Pluto forced us to recognize then?

No matter what happened, I suggest those experiences contained seeds that can now develop during Pluto's journey through Aquarius.

Because without the revelations of Pluto in Capricorn, how could we recognise the challenges of Pluto in Aquarius?

Pluto in Aquarius - The Phoenix, the Dove and the new Systems

And now Pluto has entered Aquarius. Not for a brief visit. For approximately twenty years. Aquarius is traditionally ruled by Saturn, with Uranus recognised as its modern ruler. So Pluto has not abandoned Saturn's Systems. Not at all! He has simply moved into another of Saturn's houses. And what a different house this is!

Capricorn builds the mountain, establishes its hierarchy and determines how everything is to function. Aquarius looks across the landscape and begins discovering entirely new ways of connecting all the pieces. Aquarius is concerned with networks, communities, ideas, innovation and the structures through which collective Life might evolve. Saturn still wants those structures to work. But Uranus has a habit of arriving with rather extraordinary surprises as all the people become aware of our individual roles and the extent of Power we each wield, which none of us can avoid. Sorry. Power ain’t going nowhere from you! You are here. You chose to BE. You are powerful. You have a choice to how you will yield your Power, but you can’t get rid of it. You can’t give it away, even if you think you have.

Uranus sees possibilities that established thinking has not yet accommodated.

And Pluto? Pluto is going to examine the Power operating through every new arrangement we create. We may develop extraordinary technologies. We may create new institutions, systems of communication and methods of collective organisation. We may discover possibilities that would have appeared unimaginable only a generation, or a year ago!

But one question will keep returning.

Who controls these Systems, and what are they designed to serve?

Because Pluto can power something up to extraordinary proportions. And if the ideology behind that something is unbalanced, the consequences can become extraordinary too.

Here is the Phoenix, rising from the ashes of what has been destroyed.
Here is the Dove of Spirit, suggesting something more peaceful and beautiful might emerge.
Here is Saturn attempting to organise the new landscape.
And here is Uranus arriving with another astonishing discovery that sends everyone back to the drawing board!

Do these epic stories ever cease?

Not for a while, guys!

Because we are living through a period when many established ideas about authority, community and the organisation of society are being challenged. And we are not merely spectators. Every single one of us participates in the systems we create. Every purchase, every belief, every agreement, every relationship, every act of obedience and every courageous refusal contributes something to the world in which we live. Which brings us to one of my favourite symbols when we dare to enter the domains of our own Power.

The Devil.

The Devil - An ideological monster of our own creation

Look at the Devil card in the Tarot. There is a powerful figure enthroned above two chained human beings. A figure that appears to command their existence. But the chains are particularly interesting. In the familiar Rider–Waite–Smith image, they are loose. What does that suggest? Perhaps that some of our chains are maintained not only by an external authority, but by what we have come to believe about that authority.

Now, I am not suggesting that genuine oppression, abuse or exploitation are imaginary. These things happen, and their victims do not create or deserve them. I'm talking about the symbolic monster we feed when we elevate an ideology above our humanity.

The Devil, in this interpretation, is an Ideological Being, co-created and maintained through the Power we surrender to it.

It acquires an apparent life of its own. It demands loyalty. It demands sacrifice. It tells us that obedience is virtue and questioning is dangerous. And in its most destructive manifestations, even the innocent become expendable to its insatiable demand for continuation.

What began as a system intended to serve human needs becomes a system demanding that human needs be sacrificed to it.

The Devil must be fed. But who created him? That question takes us into an extraordinary historical and mythological landscape. Ancient cultures knew horned and wild figures associated with nature, fertility, animals and the untamed forces of life. The Greek Pan is one such figure. Pan belonged to the fields, the forests, the mountains and the living natural world. His appearance later shared elements with the visual language of the Christian Devil, although the historical development of that figure involved many different traditions. And isn't that interesting? A being associated with the vitality of nature becomes, in later imagination, entangled with images of temptation and evil.

I sometimes wonder how many of our monsters were given their costumes by those who feared what they represented.

Perhaps somewhere in the long journey of ancient Mediterranean beliefs, monastic imagery, religious authority and inherited mythology, we began converting aspects of our own nature into enemies. And then built enormous systems to protect us from the monsters we had imagined. In my symbolic reading, the Devil is an ideological monster that grows whenever human beings surrender their own spiritual and moral authority to a system claiming exclusive ownership of truth. And the more we feed that monster, the more powerful it becomes. This does not mean that every religion is destructive. Far from it. Many religious and spiritual traditions contain magnificent teachings about compassion, responsibility, service and the sacredness of human life.

But I would distinguish between a belief system whose teachings reveal the beauty and Power within each of us, and one that demands our submission to an external hierarchy as the price of belonging. The former can encourage us to grow. The latter may reduce us to instruments of the System.

And Pluto is particularly interested in showing us where that distinction has become obscured.

Who is your Devil?

Now let's bring this closer to home. What is the ideology to which you have surrendered some part of your Power? Perhaps it is the belief that you must always be successful, but in ways that are pre-ordained for you, rather than truly comprehending what success actually means and whose definition is helpful or otherwise. Perhaps it is the belief that you cannot survive without a particular person. Perhaps it is the belief that you are responsible for everyone else's happiness. Perhaps it is the idea that you must obey a family expectation, a workplace culture or a social convention even when it conflicts with your deepest values. Or perhaps you have been fighting an institution for so long that your opposition to it has become another form of imprisonment.

Sometimes we become so preoccupied with defeating the thing that controls us that we allow it to determine the direction of our entire lives.

And there is Pluto again. Powering up the very thing we are trying to escape. This is why I find the Devil card so extraordinary. It asks us to recognise the ideological chains we may have helped maintain, even without realising it. And it invites us to consider something rather unsettling.

Are we feeding the very Power System we complain about?

Not always willingly. Not always knowingly. And certainly not always with equal responsibility. But enough to make the question worth asking. Because if we can recognise how our own beliefs, habits and decisions contribute to a system, perhaps we can also begin to recognise where we have the Power to change our participation. And that is an extraordinary discovery.

Saturn and Neptune in Aries - The next 35 years

Now, while Pluto prepares to move direct in Aquarius, Saturn and Neptune are together in Aries, having begun another great cycle earlier this year. Their conjunction opened a new period of approximately 35–36 years. And what an extraordinary time for this to occur! Saturn, the builder of Systems, has met Neptune, the planet of dreams, visions and the nebulous dimensions of our human experience. But this time they have met at the beginning of Aries. The beginning of the zodiac at zero degrees. The initiator. Ruled by Mars. Aries does not contemplate possibilities. Aries wants to act. It wants to try something. It wants to discover what can be done. So here we have Saturn and Neptune beginning a new cycle in a sign whose first instinct is to initiate.

And Pluto in Aquarius is asking us to reconsider the Power Systems through which those initiatives will be expressed.

Can you see the possibilities?

And the dangers?

We can create wonderful new structures that emerge from an expanded vision of what human beings can accomplish together.

Or we can take the same old patterns of domination and obedience and simply dress them in more sophisticated technology.

The choice matters.

Because the System we build tomorrow will shape the opportunities available to those who come after us. And this is precisely why our individual relationship with Control is so important.

The Grand Fire Trine - The Moon is out of bounds!

Now let's return to the sky at Pluto's station. Mars is in Leo, at approximately 9°. Saturn is in Aries, at approximately 10°. And the Moon is at 13°09′ Sagittarius. Here is our Grand Fire Trine. Mars and Saturn are within approximately one degree of their trine, while the Moon remains within just over three degrees of Saturn and just over four degrees of Mars. The Moon's trines to both planets have been activated earlier on the same day, and the entire Fire configuration remains very much part of the station picture. But there is something else.

The Moon is out of bounds.

How wonderfully appropriate! The Moon, representing our instinctive and emotional experience, has moved beyond the Sun's ordinary declination boundaries. She isn’t concerned with her expected Identity here. She is free to BE who she is and she is triggering a Pluto Mars Trine while Pluto is at its most powerful! Whatever you thought impossible before give it another go tomorrow! Lady Moon is doing this in Sagittarius so don’t be concerned if some of your arrows don’t hit the exact mark! One just might! A closer look into your own unique chart will tell you more about this.

Sagittarius wants to understand the meaning of things. It wants to explore beyond the familiar. Adventure is its key word. It wants to know what lies across the next horizon. And here she is, shining her light across this extraordinary Fire configuration as Pluto stands preparing to move forward again. Mars in Leo supplies courage, creative impetus and the willingness to act. Saturn in Aries offers the opportunity to give that action structure and direction. Saturn may not jump to attention for us tomorrow, because he’ll take it and do Saturn, which take a bit longer. He’ll take your arrow’s bulls eye and then he will take his time to manifest it properly. He might run it through a few tests first. You might experience these in the coming weeks.

And the Moon in Sagittarius asks us to consider what our actions really mean. But don’t dwell on this. You’ve already done most of the work by now. This whole year has been extraordinary for you and for the rest of us!

What are we be inspired to Create?

And are we brave enough to step beyond the structures that have previously defined what we believed was possible?

Because remember, Fire is not simply about excitement. Fire brings the impetus to act upon what we recognise as true. And perhaps the greatest challenge is discovering what is genuinely true for us, rather than what we have been taught we must believe.

Now let's follow Mars. Mars is in Leo at the time of Pluto’s Station tomorrow. Leo is ruled by the Sun. And the Sun is in Libra. Venus' sign.

Ah!

Here we go again.

Back to Venus! Sorry guys but it seems all roads lead to Venus, not Rome. Not surprising given she is a personal planet always there reminding us of our true values.

And what an extraordinary place we find her.

Persephone - The Queen of the Underworld

Venus is retrograde in Scorpio. And in the symbolic landscape of our story, she is travelling deep into the Underworld. The realm of Hades. That Devil. The territory of Pluto. And here I want to bring in one of the most powerful myths we have inherited.

Persephone.

Persephone, daughter of Demeter - was abducted into the Underworld by Hades. She did not begin her journey by choosing to abandon the world above. She was abducted. Taken from the living landscape in which she had known herself. The Belief System she was born into and perhaps without questioning it, until Hades had another idea.

And her mother, Demeter, grieved so profoundly that the fertility of the Earth was affected. The world itself seemed to wither. The myth tells us of an agreement through which Persephone would spend part of the year in the Underworld and part above it, with her mother. And because of the pomegranate seeds she had eaten in the realm below, her connection with the Underworld could not simply be erased.

But Persephone did not remain merely a figure of loss.

She became Queen of the Underworld. I said Queen of the Underworld guys! That’s a whole realm! Psychologically, that’s our Psyche! Everything about us we are still yet to discover! Go Persephone!

Think about the Power contained within that transformation.

A young woman taken against her will into a terrifying kingdom becomes a sovereign figure, a Queen no less, within that very realm. Now, I'm not suggesting that abduction or suffering makes us powerful or is somehow necessary for growth. Because if we remain captive we don’t get to be Queens and Kings. The violence of the original story matters. But myth can reveal possibilities beyond the events through which its characters first arrive at their destinies.

And so I want us to imagine Persephone at the moment she recognises her own authority. She has seen the Underworld. She knows its darkness. (Uranus awakened us.) She has encountered the forces that govern it. But now she is no longer simply the person who was taken there. She is its Queen.

And what does a Queen do? She rules. She makes decisions. She exercises Control. She knows her Power.

The very realm that once represented her captivity has become a place in which her authority must be recognised.

And isn't that an extraordinary story for Venus retrograde in Scorpio during a Pluto station?

Venus and Persephone are distinct mythological figures, of course. But in our astrological imagination, Venus can carry Persephone's story into the present moment.

Venus represents our values. What we love. What we treasure. What gives our lives pleasure, beauty, attachment and meaning. And Scorpio takes these things into the depths, where superficial explanations no longer satisfy. Who controls our relationships? Who determines our worth? Who decides what we must sacrifice to feel loved or to belong?

And what happens when we discover that the thing we feared losing was not the source of our Power after all?

Now we are getting somewhere!

Hades is looking at us

Imagine that we have descended into the Underworld with Persephone. Everything familiar has disappeared. The symbols by which we recognised ourselves in the world above no longer mean quite the same thing here. Our titles have no significance. Our possessions are of little use. Our social standing cannot protect us. And perhaps, for the first time, we are obliged to encounter ourselves without the comforting structures through which we previously understood our identity. We look around. And there is Hades. Or the Devil, whatever that is to you. The great Lord of the Underworld. The thoughts that haunt us until we recognize our power. The figure whose name has become so closely associated with death and darkness that we instinctively fear him.

But what if we look into his eyes and discover something unexpected? What if there is no hatred there? What if he is not asking us to submit? What if he is waiting for us to recognise something? Perhaps the throne is not merely his. Perhaps there is a throne here for Persephone.

And perhaps the extraordinary discovery is that the Power we believed had been taken from us is now waiting to be recognised and exercised consciously.

We came into the Underworld believing ourselves powerless. We believed the darkness belonged to someone else. We believed the one who governed that landscape possessed all the authority. And now the Queen is standing before us - in the mirror. The very woman who was abducted has become a sovereign presence. She knows the Underworld because she has lived within it. She has encountered its Power. And she understands something that those who have never descended may struggle to comprehend. The Underworld is not merely a place of endings. It is also the place from which something can be reborn.

This is the terrible and magnificent territory of Pluto.

Death and rebirth.

Destruction and regeneration.

The ashes.

The Phoenix.

And perhaps, eventually, the Dove of Spirit.

Can we emancipate the Devil?

Now I want to take our story one step further. Because we have Persephone, the Queen. We have Hades, the Lord of the Underworld. And we have that ideological Devil we encountered earlier. Hades and the Devil are not historically the same mythological figure. But in our symbolic journey, their landscapes meet wherever human beings have turned fear, darkness and the unknown into systems of authority.

So let us imagine that our Devil has also been imprisoned. Imprisoned within the terrible role humanity has assigned him. Perhaps he was once closer to the wild vitality of Pan, roaming the gardens, fields and forests without any obligation to represent humanity's darkest fears. But over centuries, he has been dressed in the costumes of evil. Made into a name. A symbol. A brand. A figure onto which generations have projected their fears, guilt and forbidden desires.

And gradually that image has acquired extraordinary Power.

Not because it possesses some independent right to rule us.

But because we have invested so much of our imagination, obedience and fear into maintaining it.

What an extraordinary ideological creation!

A monster made powerful by those who believe they must continually defend themselves against him.

And what would happen if we stopped feeding that monster?

What would happen if we began recognising the differences between genuine wrongdoing and the frightening symbols we have constructed around it?

We would still need to confront cruelty, corruption, exploitation and abuse.

Those things are real.

But perhaps we would no longer need to surrender our own Power to an ideological monster in order to recognise and oppose them.

And maybe, wouldn't this be wonderful, even the Devil could be emancipated.

Released from the role assigned to him.

Returned to the gardens.

Allowed once again to become part of the living natural world rather than the terrifying brand name of humanity's collective fears.

Perhaps somewhere in the ancient evolution of our myths, in a Mediterranean village or an Etruscan landscape, some element of that original vitality was transformed into something people were taught to dread. And perhaps Pluto's journey into the Underworld asks us to reclaim not only our own Power, but our understanding of the forces we have so often mistaken for our enemies. What if the thing we have been most frightened to confront is the very thing that reveals where we have surrendered our sovereignty? And what if the Queen of the Underworld has been waiting to show us how to reclaim it?

The Moon shines into Hell

Now return to our Fire Trine.

The Moon is in Sagittarius.

Out of bounds.

Mars is in Leo.

Saturn is in Aries.

And Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, is stationing direct.

I can almost see the Moon standing at the entrance to Hades, shining her light down into its depths. She is not following the familiar boundaries. She has wandered beyond them. And she is illuminating the landscape where Persephone now stands upon her throne.

What a magnificent image!

The Moon is showing us that we may be capable of experiencing ourselves beyond the boundaries we have previously accepted. She often goes ‘out of bounds’ to do just this. But this time, with Pluto Stationing to move direct again in Aquarius she’d outbounding us in and out and around Hell itself! And daring us to take our Power back!

Mars supplies the courage. Saturn provides the capacity to make something enduring of that courage. And Pluto supplies the Power to transform the structures that once appeared immovable. But the question remains.

What will we do with that Power?

Will we simply replace one form of domination with another? Will we recreate the same old Control Grid, perhaps with more sophisticated machinery? Or will we recognise that our individual need for Control can be satisfied in ways that do not require another person to surrender theirs?

Because this is the great promise I see in the combination of Pluto in Aquarius and Saturn–Neptune beginning a new cycle in Aries.

We can take what we have learned from our encounters with the Underworld and begin constructing something different. Not something without Structure. Not something without Power. But structures through which Power can be expressed more consciously, creatively and cooperatively. Where each person is encouraged to discover their own contribution. And where the System exists to serve the people rather than requiring people to surrender their humanity to serve the System.

Pluto's Station Through Your Rising Sign

Now let's bring this extraordinary story down to our individual charts.

Pluto is stationing at approximately 3° Aquarius. If you know your Rising Sign, you can begin by looking at the Whole Sign House occupied by Aquarius. This is the landscape in which Pluto is now asking you to investigate Control, Power and the possibilities of transformation. Of course, your natal chart will tell us much more, especially where Pluto is making close contact with your personal planets. But here is a beginning.

Aries Rising - 11th House: The Power of the Collective

Your Underworld lies amongst your friends, communities, alliances and collective ambitions.

Who determines the beliefs of the groups to which you belong?

Can you remain part of a community while retaining the authority to question its direction?

Perhaps Pluto is showing you where group identity has become more powerful than individual conscience.

Your throne of Power: Contributing to a collective vision without surrendering your capacity to think and choose for yourself.

Taurus Rising - 10th House: The Power of Authority

Your Underworld is the public world of career, status, leadership and established authority.

What structures govern your professional life?

Have you acquired responsibility only to discover that your authority is conditional upon serving someone else's agenda?

Perhaps the challenge is to examine the ideology behind the institution you serve.

Your throne of Power: Exercising leadership without becoming captive to the hierarchy that grants it.

Gemini Rising - 9th House: The Power of Belief

Here is the landscape of philosophy, religion, education and the ideas through which you interpret existence.

What do you believe?

And why?

Perhaps Pluto is illuminating a belief system that once gave you meaning but has become too restrictive to accommodate your growing understanding.

The challenge is not necessarily to abandon belief.

It is to rediscover your Power to investigate.

Your throne of Power: Knowing that a belief can be precious without becoming a prison.

Cancer Rising - 8th House: The Power of Shared Resources

Your Underworld concerns the resources, obligations, intimacies and entanglements through which your life becomes bound to others.

Who controls the shared money?

Who determines the conditions of trust?

What happens when loyalty becomes dependency?

Pluto may reveal where your Power has been surrendered through financial or emotional arrangements that no longer serve you.

Your throne of Power: Creating agreements in which sharing does not require submission.

Leo Rising - 7th House: The Power of Relationship

Your Underworld is found in your partnerships and one-to-one relationships.

Who is in Control?

Is one person expected to make the decisions?

Does keeping the peace require someone to continually surrender their own wishes?

Perhaps Pluto is inviting you to recognise the extraordinary potential of two powerful people learning to cooperate rather than compete.

Your throne of Power: Discovering that another person's sovereignty need not threaten your own.

Virgo Rising - 6th House: The Power of Systems and Procedures

Your Underworld concerns work, service, daily routines and the systems that organise your everyday life.

And aren't systems fascinating!

You may discover that procedures originally designed to improve life have become increasingly demanding.

Perhaps perfection has become an ideology.

Perhaps productivity has become the Devil that must be continually fed.

Your throne of Power: Building systems that serve Life instead of sacrificing your life to the maintenance of systems.

Libra Rising - 5th House: The Power of Creation

Your Underworld lies in creativity, pleasure, romance, children and the personal expression of your unique gifts.

Who controls what you are permitted to enjoy?

Have you become so concerned with approval that you've surrendered your creative sovereignty?

Perhaps the Queen of the Underworld is inviting you to reclaim something joyful, passionate or deeply personal.

Your throne of Power: Allowing your creative life to emerge from your own values rather than the expectations of others.

Scorpio Rising - 4th House: The Power of Ancestry and Family

Pluto is moving through the deepest foundations of your chart.

Home.

Family.

Ancestry.

The inherited beliefs through which you first learned what Power and Control meant.

Perhaps some of those beliefs have been passed through generations without ever being questioned.

Who held authority in your childhood?

How was obedience rewarded?

What happened when someone disagreed?

Your throne of Power: Recognising which inherited structures deserve to be preserved and which you now have the authority to transform.

Sagittarius Rising - 3rd House: The Power of Thought and Communication

Your Underworld is the world of words, information, education, communication and the stories through which we make sense of everyday life.

Who determines what you hear?

What do you automatically believe?

What patterns of thinking have become so familiar that you no longer examine them?

Perhaps Pluto is revealing the extraordinary Power of language to influence both individuals and entire communities.

Your throne of Power: Becoming conscious of the ideas you accept, the words you use and the realities you help construct through them.

Capricorn Rising - 2nd House: The Power of Resources and Values

Pluto has left your 1st House and entered the landscape of money, possessions, resources and personal values.

What makes you feel secure?

Is wealth a means through which you exercise independence, or has acquiring and protecting it become an ideology in itself?

Perhaps Pluto is asking you to recognise that your true resources include much more than material possessions.

Your throne of Power: Using what you possess to support the life you value rather than allowing possessions to determine your life's direction.

Aquarius Rising - 1st House: The Power of Identity

Pluto is in your own sign, travelling through the 1st House of identity, embodiment and your approach to life.

This is personal.

Who are you?

Who told you who you were supposed to be?

How much of your identity has been created by your participation in systems that now seem inadequate to contain your emerging self?

Perhaps you are Persephone, discovering that the landscape in which you once felt powerless can become the very place where you recognise your sovereignty.

Your throne of Power: Becoming the conscious author of your own participation in Life.

Pisces Rising - 12th House: The Power of the Unconscious

Your Underworld is the 12th House.

What a profound place for Pluto to travel!

Here we encounter the beliefs, memories, fears and subconscious patterns that can influence us without our conscious awareness.

Perhaps you have been participating in a private ideological system for years.

A belief that you are unworthy.

That you cannot say no.

That safety requires you to remain invisible.

Or that your own needs must always come last.

And perhaps Pluto is inviting you to discover how much of this has been operating beneath the surface.

Your throne of Power: Bringing the hidden patterns into consciousness so that they no longer exercise unquestioned Control over your life.

Reclaiming our Power - Without Recreating the Prison

Now that we've travelled through the Underworld, perhaps we can see our need for Control in a different light. Because I don't believe the answer is to surrender Control. Nor do I believe we should regard Power as something inherently dangerous. Power is part of Life. We exercise it when we make choices. When we create. When we establish boundaries. When we build structures. When we care for someone. When we recognise our own needs and accept responsibility for meeting them in ways that respect the needs of others.

The difficulty arises when our relationship with Control becomes unbalanced. When our need to control a situation outweighs our capacity to love. When our need for certainty overrules our curiosity. When our need for belonging persuades us to surrender our integrity. Or when our need for Status convinces us that the suffering of others is an acceptable price for maintaining our position. Then our Power begins serving the Devil we have created.

And perhaps the extraordinary opportunity of this Pluto station is to recognise where that has happened. Not only in the larger world. But within ourselves. Because how can we construct better systems if we carry the same unexamined patterns into everything we create?

Pluto in Capricorn showed us the consequences of allowing established Power structures to become more important than the lives they were meant to support.

Pluto in Aquarius offers us another landscape in which to experiment.

Saturn can help us build. Neptune can help us imagine. Uranus can help us discover possibilities beyond our previous understanding. Mars can give us courage. The Moon can illuminate what our instincts have been trying to tell us. And Pluto can provide the force through which something fundamental is transformed.

But it will be up to us to decide what we create.

The Queen Has Returned

I want to leave you with Persephone. Not the young woman who was taken into the darkness. But the Queen. The woman who has learned what exists in the Underworld. Who has encountered the terrifying figures that govern it. Who has discovered that darkness is not simply the absence of light, but a landscape in which things can be hidden, transformed and eventually revealed.

She knows Hades.
She knows the cost of surrendering her freedom.
She knows what it means to be separated from the world she loved.
And she knows that her life can never return to precisely what it was before.

But now she possesses something she did not previously possess. An understanding of Power born from having encountered its depths.

And perhaps this is the gift of Pluto.

We cannot always prevent difficult experiences.

We cannot control every event that changes our lives.

And we cannot always escape the consequences of systems created by others.

But we may discover within ourselves capacities that those experiences had previously left unexplored.

And sometimes, when we begin recognising those capacities, the landscape changes.

The monster no longer looks quite the same.

The chains become visible.

The throne that appeared to belong exclusively to someone else begins to reveal another possibility.

We recognise that we can make decisions.

We can choose what we will support.

We can question the beliefs we have inherited.

We can establish boundaries.

We can participate in creating something different.

And perhaps, in doing so, we begin emancipating not only ourselves, but the very monsters we have helped create.

Perhaps the Devil can return to his garden.

Perhaps Saturn can build structures that genuinely support human flourishing.

Perhaps Uranus can continue delighting us with possibilities that nobody has yet imagined.

And perhaps Pluto, having taken us through the ashes, can show us how to rise again.

Not as conquerors who must enslave others to prove our Power.

But as sovereign participants in a world we are continually co-creating.

Who is your Devil?

Where is your Hades?

Where have you surrendered your Power to a Belief System that once promised to protect you?

And perhaps most importantly:

Where is your Persephone, preparing to take her throne?

Because there she is.

Venus retrograde in Scorpio.

Deep in the Underworld.

No longer content to be defined by what has happened to her.

Preparing to recognise her own Power.

And isn't it interesting that no matter how far we travel into the great mysteries of Control, Systems, Ideologies and Power, we always seem to arrive back at Venus?

Hmmm.

Venus rules.

Counselling Confidence – Hypnosis & Astrology

Astrology reveals compassion as logical.

At Counselling Confidence, our weekly Meeting Your Needs gatherings explore how our essential human needs shape the way we think, feel and participate in life.

Our need for Control is one of those fundamental needs. Understanding it can help us recognise when our own Power is working for us - and when we may have unconsciously surrendered it to something else.