Now Pluto is conjunct your ascendant; so what is the ascendant? It is the point in your chart through which you emerge into the world, the point where all your planetary energies must emerge if they are to be seen or to be manifest at all. It is the window to your soul. It is also—astrologically speaking—the most individuated part of you, as it is the fastest moving and changing of all the astrological symbols.

Born as the planet Pluto rose in the east, you are strongly identified with it and symbolically serve as its ambassador and the 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 are 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.

As mentioned above, 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, non-analytic, emotionally or physically based psychotherapies are appropriate modalities of release and growth for you. Once you learn to balance and integrate your own internal energies, you could make an excellent psychotherapist yourself, were you so inclined.

Now since the ascendant is where all your planetary energies emerge into the world, let’s look at the sign on the ascendant, Virgo, and the house tenanted (the sixth) by the ruler of that sign (Mercury) for the experiences necessary in developing your self-awareness and your individual self-expression. At <birth time> on <birth date>, Virgo was rising in the east over <birthplace>. Whereas the “ascendant point” I referred to earlier in my discussion of Pluto was one degree (out of 30) of Virgo tenanted by the planet Pluto, now I will be discussing the entire 30° sector of the zodiac on the eastern horizon when and where you were born: namely, the sign Virgo. Astrologically, your rising sign is the cusp or beginning of the first house, the mask you wear in relating to and projecting yourself into the world. The first house rules physical appearance, body type, conscious self-image, and how others see and experience you. It’s the window through which you view the world, and through which others receive their first impressions of you. And the particular tint on the glass of that window is the sign on the cusp of your first house, known as your rising sign or ascendant. Your rising sign colors and modifies all energy that passes into and out of your being. In fact, all of your personality functions (planetary energies) must eventually emerge through and be colored by your first house cusp if they are to emerge at all. So your rising sign characterizes how you interface with and project yourself into the world.