When Pluto Crosses Your Path: Career Crisis And Rebirth

By Renato: Around 2015, transiting Pluto began to oppose my Midheaven.

The Midheaven represents, among other things, our career, public reputation, and place in the world. And Pluto always signals a process where something must die so it can be reborn in a different form.

At the time, I was working as an IT manager and things started going downhill. I’d been at a large company for 20 years, but I hadn’t enjoyed my job for a long time. Though things weren’t going well, I tried to make the best of it. However, from 2015 onwards, a clear process of decline began: my relationship with my superior deteriorated, I became increasingly irrelevant in the company, and nothing I did seemed to work. The frustration and anger I felt were overwhelming, which only made matters worse.

Meanwhile, slow-moving Pluto edged closer and closer to its exact opposition to my Midheaven.

I tried to make changes, seeking opportunities in other departments within the company, but it was all in vain. Things dragged on and worsened. The discontent and internal pressure kept growing until, in January 2020, I suffered burnout so severe that I ended up in a hospital bed. At that point, Pluto was making an exact opposition to my Midheaven.

Then the pandemic arrived. Working from home turned out to be a blessing, as it allowed me to escape an environment I considered toxic—and, in many ways, it truly was. But Pluto never comes to simply play around. At the end of 2020, the dismissal finally came one morning, unexpectedly, by phone call—with Pluto’s opposition still exact.

This little story shows one of the many ways Pluto transits can manifest. As Robert Hand writes in Planets in Transit – Life Cycles for Living:

“Decay at one level or another, followed by a new life from the old, is the typical Plutonian process.”

It’s crucial to stay aware of planetary transits and progressions and plan for them. Back then, my knowledge of astrology was limited to the basics. I tried desperately to salvage something that was already dying, when in reality, Pluto was demanding a radical change—a transformation, an alchemy that would completely reshape my professional path. I learned this lesson in the hardest way possible.

Jung’s famous quote applies perfectly here:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Pluto always points to endings and new beginnings—to the need for profound change and alchemy in whatever sector of life it touches. If Pluto is affecting your health, it’s wise to undergo preventive medical exams and adopt healthier habits before a crisis arises. In your career, it may require a radical shift and the development of a Plan B, because you might not even remain in the same field where you currently work. In relationships, transformation will likely be necessary to avoid the complete collapse of a marriage or partnership.

Work with Pluto rather than resisting it. Otherwise, Pluto will enforce the transformation for you—and often in a way that leaves you feeling blindsided.
The signs always appear in advance through the process of decay I described. Stay alert to those signals, so you don’t later call it “fate.”

And how did my story end?

From being an IT manager with over 30 years of experience, I transformed into an astrologer, tarot reader, and psychoanalyst. Something in my life died, and something new was born in its place. All very Plutonian indeed.