Born as the planet Pluto rose in the east, you are strongly identified with it and serve symbolically as its ambassador and representative of its vibration on earth. Thus you act as an agent of change, evolution, and personal transformation in your environment. Your sense of who you are is constantly undergoing such transformation as well, and your life is filled with drastic endings and sudden new beginnings.

In this incarnation you are learning to master and control the emotions and the primitive drives within you that, left unconscious, control and direct human life. You are shining light into your depths to become more conscious of who you are as an individual. This is your hero's journey; you're alone in this process, and therefore have a great need for seclusion. Don't mistake your need for self-mastery and control for your obvious ability to control others.

You are embarking on a new evolutionary cycle, and feel as if you have a special destiny to fulfill. You also feel that it's necessary to have the freedom and independence for any and all experiences that might enable you to discover and know something about yourself that you didn't know before. It could be waiting around any corner at any moment, and you must be free enough to have or to be had by the experience entirely. Since much of this process is instinctual, it is important to become conscious of obsessive behavior in this regard, as well as of projecting your anger and frustration upon those who appear to be restricting you.

An inherent leader, you're intense, magnetic, strong willed, have a penetrating gaze and defy arbitrary authority. Although you have a very strong physical body, you project an obvious sense of vulnerability. You're hard to get to know deeply, and are passionate, insistent, and direct.
One of Pluto's symbols is the legendary Phoenix bird, reborn once a century out of the flames of its funeral pyre. Your personality is under a similar, constant evolutionary pressure to die and be reborn. If this process is blocked or avoided, tremendous pressure is built up within you that must be released at all cost. Because of this and a tendency to compulsive and obsessive behavior, a non-analytic, emotionally or physically based psychotherapy can be an excellent release and form of growth for you. Once you learn to balance and integrate your own internal energies, you could make an excellent psychotherapist yourself if you were so inclined.

IF Pluto is in your twelfth house AND within 4° of your Ascendant (check the orb in the header), THEN its expression through your first house is at least as strong as through your twelfth; if its orb is less than 2°, it should be read as though it were in the first house and not in the twelfth at all!

This Pluto-conjunct-ascendant-reading page and the entire website are excerpted from You and the Universe, a handmade, individualized fine art book on astrology, mythology and astronomy through which the recipient's complete astrological reading is woven.