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It is a strange yet significant truth that even as we pass from childhood through adolescence and into maturity, the various ages of childhood remain alive – and sometimes not so well- deep inside us.

There comes a time for many of us, too long beleaguered by unresolved trauma, to look back, to reinvestigate our inner children. Because they are all there, indwelling, captured forever, more than just memories, reflections, concepts or ideas…and certainly more than sentimental fancy. The inner child is very much alive – and it wants out!

I believe that few of us survive our formative years without accumulating some degree of emotional damage. This is just the nature of life, and for many people that damage proves sufficiently limited and manageable that it doesn’t present any major problems. For others, of course, the damage is great indeed and they suffer from it every day. For still others, the memories may be forgotten but old experience continues to affect us, manifesting as compulsive behaviour patterns, negative and fearful attitudes, phobias and so forth. They hold us in their grip and cycle around until we are thoroughly weary of being controlled by them. Who’s pulling your strings? Is it some external force, or is that incessant four year-old locked up inside you, screaming and crying for love and attention?

Pluto is the most intense and challenging of the planetary engines of transformation. It represents the process of regeneration and rebirth, always presaged by the death of the old and outworn. As much as this energy is associated with the underworld and accordingly works in darkness and secrecy, it also tends to manifest as overt external situations that both prompt and reflect the inner dynamics. When this planet is found in the first house of Self in particular, it is common for early childhood to be especially difficult and intense. There is very often at least one significant defining trauma, a shocking event or moment that makes a huge impression and continues to reverberate through the psyche for many years.

Very frequently, this event and the circumstances that surround it result in an aspect of the self remaining enduringly fixated at this point. There is generally a very strong emotional charge associated with it. This scenario represents an entry point into the Plutonian underworld realm of the unconscious. It is as if the ground has given way beneath us and down we go!

The challenges and restructuring that Pluto requires are difficult at the best of times. For a young child, it is very often too much to take. Part – if not all – of the trauma remains unprocessed in the child’s energy, trapped like an air pocket, and it is likely to stay there until we are ready to gaze within. Only at this point can we start to move past the death aspect of the Pluto process, by listening to the child’s cries and allowing them to be heard and understood. We may require the help of a therapist or spiritual guide to wholly attend to the inner child, to heal its wounds and fully work through the energies. In so doing, we experience a personal rebirth – the ultimate gift of the first house Pluto.

We may learn more about the nature of the karma and lessons inherent in our traumatic experiences by studying the angular contacts Pluto makes to other planets on the natal chart. Pluto-Sun is especially associated with a rebirth in one’s fundamental sense of identity, which is generally the long-term effect of Pluto in the house of Self anyway. Pluto-Moon yields a deep emotional rebirth. But the original wound, the entry point into the depths, must fully heal to accomplish this work.

A client had Pluto in the first house conjunct the South Node of the Moon, suggesting an old attunement to this planet in terms of both an ancient pattern of trauma and powerlessness but also the potential for personal empowerment and regeneration. In turn Pluto formed a difficult angular contact to the Sun. The challenge was to resolve the old traumatic pattern and undergo a transformation in identity. The client’s mother was emotionally unavailable (Moon in Aquarius conjunct Saturn) and as a child he was closer to this father, who shared his Sun sign. However at the age of five the client’s father left home very suddenly, never to return. His mother subsequently suffered an emotional breakdown.

The client was enraged and distraught by the loss of his father in particular, suffering a gross lack of self-esteem and confidence as a result and growing up in isolation. It was only at the age of twenty nine (the Saturn Return watershed) that he was able to reconnect with his five year-old self and re-parent that energy. As a result he experienced a profound new lease of life and a depth of personal joy and esteem that had previously been denied. He was also able to heal his relationship with his mother at that time.

Through a prolonged entry into the underworld realm of terror and loss, he gave birth to a far greater strength and happiness than would otherwise have been possible. He had completed the Pluto journey from death to rebirth.

By Julian Middleton