Pluto in the 1st House/Aries (3)

Pluto in the 1st House/Aries

Pluto in the 1st house or Aries symbolizes the beginning of a whole new cycle. Fresh from the ocean of Pisces, the potential for new being emerges through Aries, and as such there is a natural sense of possibility, an instinctual sense of purpose or destiny. With Pluto symbolizing the evolutionary desire of the soul we can see that in the 1st house or Aries the deepest impulse is towards independent experience, the freedom to perpetually grow and express one’s will. This desire will be felt primarily on an instinctual level, as an inner pulse driving the person forward. Consequently there may be little or no conscious understanding of these dynamics.


As the ruler of this first archetype (Aries and the 1st house), Mars represents the instinctual will, the expression of desire, the gut response to others and to life.

With Pluto ruling Scorpio, the eighth archetype, there is a natural quincunx (150° aspect) between Scorpio and Aries. This is indicative of the potential conflict or inner crisis between the soul desire or attachment in Scorpio and the instinctual desire for perpetual expansion in Aries. The quincunx between these archetypes is indicative of the potential for increased crisis between the soul and ego based on their differing attractions. The evolutionary purpose for Pluto in Aries/1st house is the search for self, for the fulfillment of one’s individual potential. This purpose is actualized through the attractions of the instinctual body toward immediate experience.

The Aries impulse demands freedom, novelty, and the unchecked expression of desire, whereas Pluto relates to the deepest unconscious security. The need for security, which is often experienced through familiarity and repetition, stands in marked contrast to the martial will that wishes to push into ever new territory. Pluto represents the core of our impulse to seek meaning, the part of us that asks “why?” This differs innately from the purely instinctual expression of the will in Aries. The conflict arises in the Pluto in Aries person because Aries is not self-referential, while Pluto/Scorpio is.

In his book The Act of Will, Roberto Assagioli, the Italian founder of Psychosynthesis, underscores the primacy of the will in life as critical to our evolution.4 In addition he makes the point that there are many different components to the will – that the will is not a singular expression. It is important then to ask, “Who is will-ing at this precise moment?”

Assagioli concludes that there are many different parts that make up our experience of self and calls these sub-personalities. These diverse parts of the overall personality may take on a life of their own if they are not ordered by a central principle, which he labels the individuality or “I.” This “I” is in a constant dialogue with the soul or Higher Self, an on-going relationship that he named the I/Self Axis.

That the will has many different expressions or sub-personalities is an idea that is also embedded within the framework of the twelve archetypes of the Zodiac. The will evolves by a progression through all twelve archetypes. In the first stage of the evolution, in Aries, there is a purely instinctual, self-orientation. In Taurus there is the foundation of inner values; in Gemini, the establishment of language and conceptualization of the world, and so on. By the time we get to Scorpio we experience the will in a highly intensified form; compressed and internalized in order to focus on the inner meaning of experience. The conflict between the Aries and Scorpio styles of expressions of the will suggest the possibility of a core identity crisis within the Aries/1st house Pluto individual as they struggle with the perpetual impulse toward the new alongside a growing need to understand what is happening to them. One is a constant reaching out, the other the need to reflect on what has already been in order to understand it.

At its best the Pluto/Scorpio process is like a well of deep clear water refreshing the individual with meaning. But the need for the familiar can become like stagnant water and the individual can feel trapped, stifled and purposeless. Such a state will lead the Pluto in Aries/1st house person to one of two possible expressions of martial anger – explosion or implosion. The Pluto in Aries/1st house person will rage against another (or against the self) in defense of the on-going need to break beyond pre-existing limitations. This expressed rage can be very destructive. If the anger is instead repressed (as signified by other factors in the chart, for example a strong Saturn influence) then it can become the source of cyclical and deep depression.

These feelings of anger, internalized frustration and/or depression can potentially lead this person to a breakdown of their instinctually narcissistic focus. The loss of identity precludes their capacity to grasp what they want because they simply are not clear enough about what that is. This limitation can lead them the need to initiate relationship, to reach out to others. This need is expressed by the polarity point (the opposite) of the 1st house Pluto which is the 7th house or Libra. The individual turns towards others for that which is new, in the hope that shared experience will take them beyond their current impasse.

Since Pluto in Aries/1st house individuals are highly magnetic and have a strong sense of purpose they tend to attract others who can match that. Often these people will support the individual in rediscovering the sense of adventure that they need so strongly in order to feel alive. Others to whom they are attracted by virtue of their strong physical or psychological charisma will shock and inspire them into a new path or direction.

The Pluto in Aries/1st house individual is often instinctively drawn towards certain people just as they are repelled by others, but all of these relationships originate on an intense physical/sexual level, or a strong animal magnetism. Some of these relationships are sexual, others are not; yet the intensity of the attraction will be apparent. At times these individuals may experience the paradox of attraction and repulsion co-existing towards the same person. This can happen if what they are attracted to calls into question their nature or their path. Often such relationships play out in extremis. For example, the individual may totally fall for someone, completely obsessed with everything about the object of their desire, hanging on every word and feeling as though this person exists just for them.

Conversely if someone turns them off these individuals may completely ignore everything they say or do, as if they simply did not exist. In those cases where attraction and repulsion co-exist (because what the 1st house Pluto person is attracted to in the other represents a threat to their existing security) the person may be in for an emotional roller-coaster ride whereby they cyclically are consumed by their attraction to the other only to later totally reject or ignore them.

Returning again to the quincunx aspect between Aries and Scorpio, we can understand that the conflict between the desire for the new and the desire to maintain security plays out externally in relationships. For example, if the person develops a strong sexual attraction to another person but they are already in a relationship, the dilemma is played out literally. Their desire to maintain security and stay in the current relationship is eclipsed by the desire to pursue the new object of their attraction.

Sometimes a more complex dynamic arises. The Pluto in Aries/1st house individual often initiates relationship when they have reached an impasse within themselves. Such relationships suffer with the paradox of the strong subconscious need for security alongside the ever present impulse toward the new. When the new relationship is just beginning, the other person embodies that new potential and becomes a portal through which the individual re-engages with their life path. But as the relationship progresses, by nature, the new person becomes familiar, thereby meeting the deep unconscious (Pluto-Scorpio) security needs. As such, the basis for the initial attraction – the freedom of the new – becomes completely transformed over time into the very quality that this person had been struggling with before meeting the other: the comfort of the familiar.

The word familiar itself expresses a resonance with the family. We learn what we are familiar with through our early childhood conditioning. Aries/Mars/1st house stands in archetypal conflict with the family conditioning as signified through the natural T-square from Aries to Cancer/Capricorn (and the 1st house to the 4th/10th houses). The instinctual will (Aries-Mars) stands in archetypal conflict with the early childhood ego formation (Cancer-Moon) and the conditioning structures of the family and society (Capricorn-Saturn). Simply put, the instinctual will does not like to be told what to do, either by mom and dad or by society. As Sigmund Freud’s concept of the super-ego explicates, at times the suppressive influence of the father-society (Saturn) and the emotional shadow of the mother-home (Moon) becomes the basis for neurosis because they can both suppress the instinctual sexuality and will (Mars). 5

Bringing this awareness into our analysis, to the extent that the experience of a new partner (who initially represented freedom) begins (through time and proximity) to represent the familiar, then the potential for all the conditioning impulses from childhood and the unresolved anger symbolized by the Mars-Pluto quincunx crisis can come to bear on the relationship. In extreme cases this is a process that culminates in acts of physical violence.

In one common scenario, the Pluto in Aries/1st house person unconsciously attracts a partner that has some fundamental flaw, thereby guaranteeing that the relationship will not last. In this way they leave the back door perpetually open for someone else. Why? So that their inner fear of imprisonment is never realized through excessive proximity to someone else. If the relationship does not last long enough, it will not trigger any family conditioning or feelings of entrapment. In this way the person maintains the ultimate freedom to explore their own will and desire unchecked.

Other scenarios involve a critical distortion of the 7th house/Libra polarity point, in that relationships will develop in which there is some kind of fundamental inequality between the partners. The Pluto in Aries/1st house person may be the dominant force, subconsciously attracting a weaker-willed individual to guarantee eventual separation. The weaker person’s neediness and security issues (Aries square to Cancer) are experienced as distracting them from their desire to be free to do what they want. Conversely they may attract a totally dominating partner, again guaranteeing a finite time limit on the relationship. Yet other 1st house Pluto individuals avoid relationships altogether in order to keep the subconscious fears at bay.

For many people with this placement, the lack of relationship, or the repetitive cycle of all-too-brief relationships can become a source of great disappointment and frustration, even though their own deeper subconscious fears are instrumental in maintaining that situation. The polarity point of Pluto in the 7th house or Libra reveals that the loner karma of the past is seeking to shift by way of experiencing the self-knowledge and growth that can occur through the mirror of meeting others face-to-face. In order to evolve past the point of what is already known, the soul needs others through which to experience feedback as to the nature of the self-consciousness that it has developed.

The critical factor in transcending the intimacy paradox lies in the nature of the partner who is chosen. If the couple can understand the early family or prior-life conditioning and make room from the subconscious fears of entrapment to be experienced in a meaningful context, then a place for healing is made within the partnership. If the partner can then be secure enough within themselves to allow the 1st house Pluto person to go off on their own and continue to experience their journey of self-discovery, then the relationship need not necessarily be experienced as restrictive. These are not simple dictates – they require dialogue, listening and compromise, all of which are Libra/7th house issues that the soul is seeking to develop and integrate.

Pluto in astrology (1)
Pluto in astrology (2) Pluto complex
Pluto in the 1st House/Aries (3)
Pluto in the 2nd House/ Taurus (4)
Pluto in the 3rd House/Gemini (5)
Pluto in the 4th House/ Cancer (6)