The generational curse you are here to break: your natal Pluto

Pluto in Sag- Pluto in Virgo: unveiling the darkness throughout generations

I love the way I phrased this headline because nothing implies more than this that every soul has indeed signed up for a specific dark night of the soul journey - and the fact that there is a whole generation coming in with you along is just the perfect reminder we need to know that we were never alone in this journey.

Pluto, the planet of dark alchemy, healing, and transformation, is a generational planet. It stays in each sign for roughly fifteen-twenty years. So, while how and where you experience this alchemical process will shift based on which house you have this planet in, the journey is collective. Example: a Pluto in Scorpio generation, largely millennials, has collectively experienced transformation around their sexuality and addictions. But a Pluto in Sag generation, the Gen Z has more transformational experiences around their belief systems, spirituality, and learning. This explains why the lens with which both generations look at life are quite different. Their assignment is different. It is indeed very fun to explore the collective energy and connect where the generation was at large during each time.

As Pluto changes its signs from Capricorn to Aquarius, I felt this is the perfect time to understand and get to know our generation’s power.

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Now, now, I wrote this draft back in the winters of 2024. I lost the zest to complete this piece, but this week, Pluto showed up for me in big ways and got me to tuck it out of my drafts. It was a week of Pluto in Aquarius squaring Sun in Taurus as well as Pluto opposing Mars in Leo.

I shared on it on my Instagram here.

shivaanibaghel

A post shared by @shivaanibaghel

It’s the kind of way in which it has been tugging on me since quite some time now, but I’ve always brushed it aside. But something happened this week on a Scorpio moon and I decided to face that underlying intensity I have been brushing off again and again.

Why do certain interactions feel so intense?

What does expressing myself in my personal connections give me anxiety like a tiger was chasing me?

Why every time I press publish, I need some time to soothe myself and collect myself together - even when I have been publishing since I was 22 - exactly 10 years at this point?

Why does my scorpio sister, whom I love the most and spend literally all my day with, trigger me in unexplainable, unpredictable, random ways?

I am in my 9th house profection year, meaning this year’s theme is centred around my 9th house. So while I was focused on Taurus energy that rules my 9th house, what’s unfolding is the healing that is coming through my 3rd house Scorpio. This is so interesting to uncover how whenever I work with one sign, its polarity always shows up with the healing medicine for it.

This uncovering of my 3rd house Scorpio is what has led to me writing this article. I feel like I am on the journey to healing my voice and everything that has blocked or pressured my voice in this season as I anchor deeper into the energy of sharing, teaching, and publishing my knowledge and wisdom freely. Yes, that taurus-scorpio axis - that’s the vibe.

Now, I have Pluto here. I do not have a very strong Plutonian influence on my personality, so it never hit me to look at this way. Now, however, I am realizing how much it does impact me. My Pluto placement is in the house of my environment, my daily interactions, my communication, and in its very own sign Scorpio. Lately, my life has been bombarded with Scorpio energy. You know you’re in for a transformation when Scorpio comes into your life - right? I feel 10x of it. I don’t know why it took me so long to understand the Scorpio alchemy that my life has been. When a Scorpio triggers you, they are triggering the Plutonic parts of you. Go girl, look at your Pluto, look at your Scorpio house.

I also realized in my chart (and I say realized instead of read because it’s one thing to read your placements and it’s one thing to REALIZE them) how Pluto aspects both my Sun and mercury in 7th house Pisces. Gosh! Ofcourse, my communication has always felt so intense, especially with people close to me. I mean, publicly I am perceived as this light-hearted, girl next-door who god knows why talks about this scorpio occult stuff — but only people close to me get to taste my intensity and know where it’s all coming from. (You, you guys, are so lucky xoxo ;)). I also took a 7 feminine archetype quiz this week and no brownie points for guessing, I got The Maiden (Persephone) archetype to be my main archetype. (Totally recommend the book ‘Goddesses in Everywoman’). So much of my experience is centred around balancing the light feminine and the dark feminine. Pluto brings out that darkness that none of us are ready to own or face, until one day, it brings us down to our knees. Pretty much, the way it did for Persephone.

So, today, let’s do what Pluto and Pluto at that, in my 3rd house, does best - bring out the hidden underlying generational curses that you and I are here to break as a part of our plutonic assignment. This article is Pluto in signs.

I am covering Sag-Virgo as that pretty much covers my existing audience. I’d urge you to not only read your own Pluto sign but also read that of others’ to understand how other generations impact you.

Pluto in Sagittarius

If you were born between 1995-2008, you belong to the Pluto in Sag generation who is on a mission to transform their pain into purpose through freedom and optimism. Thank you for existing because if you didn’t, millennials would have died drowning in obsession and darkness. You bring the much-needed fire, joy and creativity to alchemize the density that exists on this plane. You are constantly learning as well as teaching others to question the norm, to throw out dogmatic principles, identify fake teachers and to leap into unfamiliar and enriching timelines. You show us a way out. You show us infinite possibilities. You have this ‘new’ energy, considering how we literally entered a new millennium with Pluto in Sagittarius. You urge us to expand our vocabulary (yo guyz, you arrived with the texting lingos!), expand our beliefs through cross cultural exchange (hi world wide web - the internet!), as well as expand the faith beyond religion.

Global events like 9/11 were catalyst of mass awakenings. Many new age spiritual and self help teachers like Deepak Chopra, Oprah, Gabrielle Bernstein in the west showed up in bigger ways at this time and quickly became very popular. The Secret was published in 2006! Faith was now being explored beyond religion. The world slowly started witnessing a new way to heal and explore indigenous practices. Knowledge became extremely accessible with Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia and Google coming into existence in the early 2000s. In fact, travel became easier and much accessible with cheaper flights.

So naturally, you are wired to look for the next new invention and invitation. And that can be chaotic and lead to burn outs and being consistently dissatisfied. While you are showing the world how ‘new’ beliefs, new practices, new lifestyle, new places can enthrall us and take us to a whole new paradigm - you are also planting seeds of always chasing the next high. And that can be so exhausting!

Most of your generation is teaching us how to transform the pain through these new age practices - but what’s missing is the grounding. Perhaps, that’s a wound of your own. I have a north node Sagittarius in my 4th house and one of the downside of it is how ungrounded I feel with my roots. Imagine a generation that has seen so much growth, expansion, and advancements the moment they stepped onto this plane. It’s the feeling of always searching, never arriving. The thing about exploring varied and diverse beliefs, thought processes, and cultures is that what is even ‘the truth’ anymore? It gives flaky - in the words of Gen Z. There is also the inability to ground your faith since a lot of you feel like religion has betrayed you. So when you’re hit by the lowest lows, it adds on to the feeling of rootlessness, and it feels like there is no one to hold you.

You are constantly learning that the greater truth is always changing, shifting, and evolving. When you refuse to “find out truth” unlike the pluto in scorpio generation, you experience a beautiful sense of freedom - which is exactly what you crave. You are nomore searching for a destination, but exploring for the bliss and joy of it. You learn that you are enough and you have enough with where you are - even when there are green(er) pastures outside. You live in the moment, then.

A journal prompt for Pluto in Sag - How do I keep myself busy in constant searching denying myself the peace that I deserve?

Pluto in Scorpio

A plutonic generation lasts for 15-20 years. I belong to ‘Pluto in Scorpio’ generation that spanned from 1983-1995. Everyone born between those dates has their natal pluto in scorpio and echoes the energy of death - symbolizing how literally the 20th century was dying. Their collective assignment is to break generational curses through revealing the darkest secrets of the underworld, exploring occult and taboo subjects like sex, addiction, money, and death. HIV Aids was a big global subject during the time this generation was born in the 80s and 90s and conversations around LGBTQ started swirling around for the first time. The pop-culture at the time was at its most sexually and violently charged. (The music in the 90s can put anyone to shame!). This generation’s work is very centred around integrating shadows that has been deemed as darkness. They are here to transform and alchemize collective pain into purpose - and they are here to teach many of us how to do it. This is largely the millennials who are now on the other side of 30 and are probably the first ones to advocate for mental and emotional health in a way that no generation has ever before. They are very used to seeing things collapse and build again and so they carry this potent scorpio energy of death and rebirth.

I mean they have witnessed the gigantic surge of economy after colonization and with the global recession, the crash too. They were in their formative years or teenage years when 9/11 crash happened right in front of their eyes. It was the first time something that catastrophic was broadcasted so publicly and the terror was felt in every heart, nomatter if someone was in the US or not. In fact, that was a time when ‘terrorism’ roared up. Did that word even exist before? We had wars before, famines before, but an unexpected and out of nowhere terrorism attack? Nope! The motive of these attacks was not to colonize or occupy a land. The agenda was pretty much a mystery in itself and well, it was to spread ‘terror’. I still remember the terror I felt listening to the news in my living room about terrorists taking The Taj hotel at Bombay in hostage, doing an open shoot out at a coffee shop (!!) or planting a bomb in my beloved thrift market at Sarojini in New Delhi. It was a common theme for our cities to get on red alert preparing for the next terrorist attack, when I was growing up. I think as I write this, it’s the first time I am honouring this as a part of pluto in scorpio experience. It’s the first time I am probably seeing it as an adult how traumatizing that is for a young mind, and how frightened one can be about their future and their environment with that information being blasted on our radios and televisions at all times.

Update: This very week while I wrote these words, we witnessed a terrorist attack in Kashmir valley against Hindu tourists who innocently took a holiday to escape their mundane struggles and take a breath of beauty and bliss. This is heartbreaking. It triggers grief, sadness and anxiety in me. It is a thorough reminder of what ‘terror’ feels like in my body when i hear a news like that.

With the current Pluto transits, nothing speaks Plutonic energy like this. In 1990, when Pluto was in Scorpio, a mass exodus was triggered in the Kashmir valley and Hindus in Kashmir were forced to leave their ancestral homes and flee for their life. Life for these Kashmiri Pandits was never the same as they not just had to start from scratch but also struggle with the trauma of loss, identity rupture, death, terror, displacement, and so much more. I read a book on it once, penned by Rahul Pandita, called ‘Our Moon Had Blood Clots’. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. It’s painful and triggering to witness how an indigenous community can be wiped off from their land, and not in some far off history chapter, but as recently as the 90s. As a Hindu by religion, I am realizing how the fear is breathing and alive in our veins. How threatening it is to live in a world being a minority where your culture and ancestral lineage HAS been colonized, enslaved, displaced, and traumatized too many times before . How terrifying it is to witness events like this right here in this moment.

This is why one of the collective fear of this generation is ‘death' and they can actually struggle with this underlying death anxiety. They might also suffer and carry wounds around their sexuality. Betrayal, secrets and religious fundamentalism can be core themes. Any of this can be starkly prominent in their life if Pluto makes aspects with their personal planets in their natal chart - think, sun, moon, venus, mars, mercury. No wonder, Pluto in Scorpio has grown up skeptical and mistrusting. It’s hard for this generation to trust or to not think of hidden agendas and motives. We are wired to ‘find out’ the truth. We have seen people and situations being more than what meets the eye. We live with survival instincts. And when that kicks in, we resort to control to establish our power. We have learnt that when we are not powerful, we are destroyed - or abused.

But there comes a point when this survival energy starts working against you, the very things you desire to experience in life, and ofcourse, your own nervous system.

What is the state of our nervous system, millennials? What danger are we constantly looking out for? Do we trust anyone out there completely? Are we always looking at our backs? Has our bandwidth shrunk so much that we don’t even have space for love, hope, or joy anymore?

SO much of our healing lies in learning to trust again and to heal our nervous system, reminding it of safety in this moment, even when the next seems uncertain. Validate your pain because gosh, it has been painful, okay? The presence of Pluto in Scorpio in your chart in itself validates your pain. You don’t need to obsess about your painful episodes and spiral with them. Your darkness can be an alchemy potion - don’t run away from it. Embrace your dark parts, FEEL through them, and that’s where you will show the world, and your own generation, how there can be no light without dark. Release the shame and guilt that you carry in your darkness - you’re not alone. An entire generation is walking with you on this path of freeing your entire lineage (past, present and future) of the darkness that it has carried in its blood. Do more than survival - thrive. Expand your bandwidth - make space in your body. Let go. Heal your plutonic anxiety - step outside fight and flight. Not everything needs to controlled, or can be controlled. Lean into a higher spiritual truth.

Pluto in Libra

Now let’s look at the generation before us - Pluto in Libra. Libra rules relationships and finances, and for the generation born before 1983, the shadows have birthed through these relationships. This generation was born between 1972 and1983. Think of the movies in 70s and early 80s - they all had themes of relationships ingrained. Divorces were introduced and took a rise in the west during this time. Libra is about justice and equality and so feminism found its root here as well. Judiciary action on equal pay and sex discrimination was introduced in this time (which is still a work in progress tbh). But books like The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963) and the bra burning movement in 1968 sparked movements, conversations and anchoring of these novice concepts in this era. You know how money mindset coaches talk about how new it is for women to deal with money - yep, it was 1974 when women could officially open bank accounts and get credit cards in their own name, sans husband or father.

The thing about these movements and revolutions is that it’s not always one sided.

A lot of people starting pushing back feminism because they believed it was the reason why family structures were getting destroyed. Which also means that people were actually discovering cracks in their traditional family structures where women started to question their roles in marriages, families and society as a whole - something that hasn’t happened in this way before. The gender roles and expectations started to really evolve in this time - and hence the generation that grew from here often find themselves torn between these roles and expectations. My mom and most of her peers and friends belong to this generation. When I look at them, they have followed the traditional expectations to the T and so there is a part of their life that is so lush and overflowing - but there is another part that feels like it’s completely untouched by its potential. When I look at women of this generation who refused to follow the traditional structures and expectations, I see this potential in magnanimous ways but I also see how alone, aloof and parched they felt for having to choose one of the two.

The Pluto in Libra generation reminds me of the movie - Smile Please Monalisa starring Julia Roberts as a protagonist who goes against the grain and urges women to believe that they can balance the two ways - but can they?

This generation has witnessed the death of their romantic fairy tale and it must have been painful to have chosen any of those two paths. Because of this however, they do understand the relevance of relationships (I sometimes bow down to my Libra mom’s wisdom on relationships) but sometimes, they can also fall in the pit of promoting codependency and powerlessness in relationships (a very poignant Libra shadow).

If you’re a Pluto in Libra, you get to ask yourself - how do I keep peace and harmony at the cost of my truth? And what has that costed me and my relationship to MY POWER?

In fact, if I think of it, most of the movies I have watched growing up were mostly produced by Libra pluto generation and they made a huge impact on the way my generation views marriage and relationships as dramatic, theatrical, and intense. This is clearly the landscape presented by a generation who experienced the most heart-wrenching pain in their connections and they got a literal platform to project it on a screen. (That’s quite a revelation for you to heal your relationship stories!). In fact, my favorite genre has been Eat Pray Love books that inspired women to breakfree from toxic relationships and prioritize self love.

What’s so interesting is that I had a heartbreak in my early twenties and I was fully convinced that this is my breakthrough moment to publish my heart-wrenching love story in a novel or write a film script around it. This is what I had read in interview pieces of every director, writer, author, and actor I followed. Ofcourse that never happened - and thank god for that. My pluto in scorpio instead pushed me to heal my heart, to integrate my shadows and to share words of healing wisdom instead of painful projections and unhealed biases.

Majority of pluto libra generation did not have access to the kind of tools and information that we have today on healing and that has left them utterly bitter and resentful in their relationships. This is the generation that is known for making distasteful jokes on relationships and marriages.

If you’ve a Pluto in Libra parent, you also get to ask yourself how your parent’s beliefs and pain around relationships have shaped yours - and if you’re following their script instead of your own?

Pluto in Virgo

People born between (1956–1972) belong to the Pluto in Virgo generation. Virgo rules health and routines and is a sign that works with details, efficiency and, precision. When Pluto relates to Virgo, it shows the shadow of this sign associated with perfectionism, not enoughness, hustling, criticizing, and illnesses. When Pluto moved through Virgo, it brought themes of purity, controlling image, policing sexuality, activating survival mechanisms, workholism, as well as medical and psychological control.

Virgo is an earth sign and is primarily linked to the tangible themes of health and body. Virgo is practical, but sustainable. Pluto in Virgo era taught us that development at the cost of human and environment health, integrity and, well-being is meaningless.

This era witnessed:

• introduction of birth pill, giving women rights to their body as well as inventing a way to control women’s reproductive system

• rise of institutional psychiatry, electroshock therapy, asylums, medical control of women’s reproductive rights, and the over-medicalization of emotions

• polio vaccines in the 50s with expanding public health system.

• minamata disease in Japan due to mercury explosion

• Cuyahoga River fire caused due to pollution in the USA

• mass industrialization deteriorating environmental conditions

• post world war II causing people to over work and labour to be exploited to survive the economy crisis in the 50s and 60s

• a rise of white collar jobs instead of manual labour

• Introducing Earth Day in the 70s (finally!)

• Civil rights movement in America calling out black labour exploitation

• Global broadcast of wars for the first time (Vietnam War) - impacting people’s mental health drastically with war images, news and videos in people’s dining rooms

The list goes on. In short, this time was an awakening for people to look at their health and well-being in a new light. The destruction of mundane peace, health, and environmental spaces stirred an awareness and consciousness of these subjects in people’s psyche. It created damage that lasted and passed as trauma into the generations to come - but that’s what Pluto does.

Pluto in Virgo has left a wound of never being enough - physically, emotionally and mentally. This era saw a rise of rigid expectations of how women should look like, how much men should work, how our emotions should be controlled and censored, how information should be consumed, etc. It has ruined our relationship to rest, to our body image, to our free-flowing emotions forever. It has taught us that our pain and emotion is invalid unless a (medical) system validates it. The work system has forever taken us farther from mother earth’s contact. It has left us thinking that development will cost environmental abuse -such a fine example of what definition of development the developed countries left the developing + under developed countries with. We live in a time when under-developed and developing countries are constantly blamed for their rising pollution levels and their developing practices - but who modeled it for them? With their limited resources, these countries now have to bear the responsibility for earth’s sustainable future and also their own economical development. This is just one example, but this is how Pluto works. It’s intergenerational healing. One generation creates a model for the next generation - but Virgo is telling us that that model and system is void if it is not sustainable.

Clearly, many of the systems from this era are void and unsustainable. Are we ready to heal what gets us attached to these systems, so much that we are unwilling to change and grow and create a new solution?

People with Pluto in Virgo battle with health anxiety, internalized shame and hyper control. They live with the constant guilt of not being enough, doing enough. Many of them are perhaps free of these systems, but they still struggle to get the system out of them. They are wired to hustle, over work, push themselves for results. They are here to learn that work can be in tune with their health, that development can be in sync with the well-being of earth. They are here to learn the harmony in this ecosystem. And hopefully, they will teach this world the same sentiment.

It’s also worth noting how Pluto in Virgo generation as parents could have had a very controlling influence on their Pluto in Scorpio or Sag kids. Both Pluto in Scorpio and Sagittarius struggle with the pragmatic approach that the Pluto in Virgo might impose. The good part was teaching their kids survival instincts, routines, and practicality. On the contrary, Pluto in Scorpio and Sag kids often teach their parents emotional confrontation, spiritual healing, trusting in the future, taking risks, and releasing shame and guilt.

A journal prompt for Pluto in Virgo - Where in your life do you equate being needed, productive, or helpful with being lovable? What would it mean to be loved just for existing?

A journal prompt for Pluto in Scorpio - How have you suppressed your spirituality and raw emotional expression because your Pluto in Virgo adults didn’t understand or respect it?

A journal prompt for Pluto in Sagittarius - How have you denied your wilderness and your free spirit nature to fit into the rigid boxes and expectations of your Pluto in Virgo adults?

I hope this finds you at the right time. If it resonates with your heart, share it with someone who might benefit from it. And as always, know that I deeply appreciate your comments, support and presence here <3

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