Mars and Pluto in Aspect

The technical picture

Mars

personal, classically malefic

Pluto

outer

Angles possible

Conjunction 0 degrees, Sextile 60 degrees, Square 90 degrees, Trine 120 degrees, Opposition 180 degrees

The core tension

The defining quality is concentration. Where an ordinary Mars spends its energy in the moment, this one banks it, waits, and commits completely when it moves. That produces remarkable staying power and a capacity for work that is close to relentless. It also produces a person who is difficult to stop once started, including when stopping would be the better decision. Power is the honest subject: this contact notices it, dislikes being on the wrong end of it, and has to decide what to do with that. Crisis brings out competence instead of panic, and a good deal of what this combination is for only becomes visible when something goes badly wrong.

Conjunction (0 degrees, same degree)

The force gets banked, not spent. People with this contact are calm in emergencies to a degree others find unsettling, and their effort has a quality of inevitability about it: whatever is being pursued tends to happen eventually. Physical strength or endurance is often notable. Competition is taken seriously enough that losing genuinely stings. The difficulty is that stored energy has to go somewhere, and without a worthy target it turns inward as brooding or fastens onto an obstacle and will not release it. Control is the standing temptation, in the specific sense of managing a situation from underneath instead of stating the position plainly.

Sextile (60 degrees, a sixth of the circle)

The intensity is available and does not run the show. A person with this contact can bring real force when a situation calls for it and lives at ordinary pressure the rest of the time. Others sense the reserve and tend to rely on it. The risk is underuse, since a capacity this substantial can wait years for something serious enough to require it.

Square (90 degrees, a quarter of the circle)

The will grinds against itself. Effort meets internal resistance, releases under pressure, and the release carries considerably more force than the situation warranted. Frustration is the standing weather and it accumulates quietly. Power struggles recur, at work and at home, and there is usually an early experience of being on the wrong end of one that the whole pattern is still answering. What develops, given a couple of decades and some honest attention, is self-command of a kind the easy angles never require, and the ability to hold enormous force without discharging it at whoever is nearest.

Trine (120 degrees, a third of the circle)

Force and depth cooperate. A person with this contact has considerable resilience available without drama, recovers from things that would end other people's projects, and tends to be the one still standing at the end. It works quietly. Its limitation is that a strength this reliable is rarely measured, and the person may have no idea where their actual limit is because nothing has ever found it.

Opposition (180 degrees, half the circle)

The power struggle happens with somebody. Rivals, adversaries and partners who hold something you need, and conflicts that go deeper and last longer than the circumstances appear to justify. This is the angle most likely to produce a confrontation that changed the direction of a life. The pattern repeats while the struggle is understood as being about the other person, and changes when someone examines their own half of it, which is usually the half that would not let go.

Working with it

Discharge the force in smaller increments and closer to the moment, because the stored version costs everyone more. Watch for the moment you start steering a situation rather than saying what you want from it. Let a settled period be a result instead of something to test. And give the concentration a target that deserves it, because sustained force at this level changes things and it will find something to work on whether or not you choose.

Questions to sit with

• What has gone unsaid long enough to have turned into something else?
• What are you steering that you could simply ask for?
• What would you do with this much force if you chose the target deliberately?

Related

More Mars

• Sun and Mars
• Moon and Mars
• Mercury and Mars
• Venus and Mars
• Mars and Jupiter
• Mars and Saturn
• Mars and Uranus
• Mars and Neptune

More Pluto

• Sun and Pluto
• Moon and Pluto
• Mercury and Pluto
• Venus and Pluto
• Jupiter and Pluto
• Saturn and Pluto
• Uranus and Pluto
• Neptune and Pluto

Start here

• How to read a birth chart