The Moon—symbol of your inner world, your emotions, your gooey bits—is locking eyes with Pluto, lord of the underworld, ruler of transformation, death, and resurrection. And what does that mean for you? Well, when the progressed Moon aspects Pluto, you may feel overwhelmed by emotions you didn’t even know you were capable of. Jealousy? Oh yes. Obsession? Probably. A sudden need to control or a fear of being controlled? It’s time to get honest. To get raw. To get real with yourself in ways that might rattle the hinges of your very soul. During this period, you may feel as though you’re being drawn into the shadows— being invited to explore the unexplored realms of your own psyche. Things you’ve perhaps tucked away with a polite “Not now” or “Too much, thanks” begin to bubble up. Emotions that defy rationality, desires that feel powerful, fears that have no obvious origin but grip you nonetheless—these all begin to rise. The surface world, with its niceties, no longer feels sufficient to contain your truth.

Everything you’ve tried to bury—old wounds, unmet needs, longings you couldn’t name—begin to arise. It can feel like grief, even if you can’t point to a specific loss. It can feel like rage, though you might struggle to explain what you’re angry about. There’s a sense of being cracked open. And there’s no guarantee of comfort here. That’s the deal with Pluto—it’s not interested in surface-level healing or quick fixes. We must go deeper. It’s the part of you that wants to burn away everything false so that what remains is only what cannot be destroyed.

If the Moon is your emotional barometer, then Pluto is the volcanic pressure building underneath the crust. And now, they’re intensely, intimately, perhaps even violently—calling forth a kind of emotional honesty that can’t be ignored. Relationships may take on a more precarious tone. You may find yourself becoming more vulnerable, more possessive, more deeply attached—or equally, more repulsed by falseness, by superficiality, by anything that doesn’t reflect the depth you’re now craving. It’s not uncommon during this transit to discover that what you thought you wanted was only a mask, a pale imitation of what you truly hunger for.

Why would anyone want to swim in the darker waters of their emotional ocean? Why not stay on the sunlit surface, bobbing about and pretending that the deep doesn’t exist?  Well, those deeper, darker emotional needs—the ones we label as “unacceptable” or “too much” or “not very spiritual”—they don’t vanish because we ignore them. They bring their influence into our choices, our relationships, our fears. We may convince ourselves we’re doing fine, that we’re over our heartbreak, that we don’t really want power or passion or to be seen in all our messy glory. But those needs… they wait. And they find ways to emerge, often through sabotage or longing or inexplicable ache. To get in touch with those parts isn’t to wallow or become consumed by them. It’s to acknowledge them as real. As human. As part of the contradictory experience of being alive. Jealousy, for example, is a signal. It shows us where we feel insecure, where we fear losing something we value deeply. Rage is often a cry from a part of ourselves that has felt ignored, violated, or powerless. Sexual intensity is the urge to merge, to dissolve the boundaries between self and other, to feel something that reaches beyond the mundane. But it’s frightening. Because these feelings threaten our sense of control. They destabilize the tidy identity we’ve constructed: the “reasonable one,” the “spiritual one,” the “chill one who’s totally fine, honestly.” These darker needs suggest that underneath our social masks lies something wild, untamed, and inconveniently honest. And confronting that—really sitting with it—requires the courage to admit that we are not always the people we pretend to be. That there’s more to us. That we are vast.

The fear comes not always from the content of the emotions, but from the implications. If I acknowledge this jealousy, does it mean I’m a bad person? If I admit I want more power, does that make me manipulative? If I feel deep grief, does that mean I’m broken? But no. It means you’re whole. You’re beginning to see yourself not as a curated collection of pleasant traits, but as a human with shadows and light all mixed together. By facing those frightening emotional truths, they lose some of their terror. The monster under the bed is never quite as big when you turn on the light. These needs, once acknowledged, can be honored, redirected, even alchemized. They become sources of insight, empathy, and creativity. You begin to understand others more deeply because you’ve dared to understand yourself.

The darkness isn’t the opposite of the light—it’s the womb of it. It’s where transformation begins. And only by going there can we begin to reclaim the full range of our human experience. Not to be ruled by it—but to be real within it.

Projecting Demons (And Wondering Why Everyone Seems Possessed)

The demons we spot in others are often curled up inside our own psyches. When the progressed Moon aligns with Pluto, the god of the underworld, you’re ushered into the shadows. And once you’re inside, peering around the dim-lit corners of your inner world, something rather startling happens. You begin to see the human experience not as a tidy morality tale of good versus evil, but as a far more ferociously honest story.

You may have had naive beliefs—developed over years, possibly lifetimes. Beliefs about what is right, what is pure, what is human nature at its best. And then, during this period, something or someone enters your life and doesn’t play by those rules. Someone acts out. Someone manipulates, obsesses, demands, explodes with feeling. And you, initially, may feel repulsed or victimized. How could someone behave like that? But then comes the quieter, more disturbing insight. The little voice that says, “Wait… is that not also me?” That perhaps the chaos and passion, the neediness or the power games you see “out there” are merely reflections—exaggerated, dramatized perhaps—but still connected to some inner realm that’s been politely disguised within you.

This doesn’t mean you become what you behold. It doesn’t mean your moral compass must snap in two. But it does mean you are being asked to deepen your compassion—not in the saccharine, performative way, but in the gut-level recognition that all humans wrestle with primal drives. That to be human is not to be tidy—it is to be alive in the mess of it all. And sometimes, what we condemn in others is precisely what we’ve disowned in ourselves.

During this period, you may question what you believe about goodness, about boundaries, about control. You may wonder how to reconcile your spiritual ideals with the visceral truths of being human—hunger, lust, fear, jealousy, pain. And this is exactly where the transformation occurs. What’s being offered here is not a collapse of your inner world, but an expansion of it. A chance to include more of the human condition in your emotional landscape, not less. You are not becoming darker—you are becoming truer. Less naive, perhaps, but more capable of compassion, forgiveness, and genuine connection. Because only once we recognize our own depths can we begin to meet others in theirs—not as saviors, not as judges, but as fellow wanderers through this rich and riotous experience of being human.

So if someone appears during this time, cracking open your sense of control or shaking your emotional foundations—see them not only as a challenge, but as a mirror. And if you find yourself recoiling in horror or shame, gently remind yourself: this too is part of me.

Blame: The Gateway Drug to Avoiding Growth

Blame is easier than self-reflection, and projection is the shadow’s favorite disguise. When you’re caught in the throes of jealousy or power struggles during a Moon-Pluto progression, it can feel absolutely convincing that the storm is someone else’s doing. That they are the manipulator, the possessor, the one who’s being irrational or intrusive or emotionally volatile. And to be fair, they might be. But here’s the problem—Pluto doesn’t care much for blame games. Pluto is less interested in who’s “right” and far more curious about what’s being mirrored.

The emotional upheaval you’re experiencing may not be exclusively theirs. The jealousy that seems to emanate from your partner might be brushing up against your own deep-rooted fears of abandonment, inadequacy, or dependency. The manipulative game-playing of a rival might actually reflect your own unacknowledged desire to control, to win, to matter more. These are not admissions of guilt—they’re invitations to grow. To become intimate with parts of yourself you’ve kept behind glass marked Do Not Disturb.

It is what makes this time so delicately treacherous? What’s entering your life “from without” carries the signature of your own internal emotional realm. You meet people who seem to act out your disowned emotions. Lovers who stir up your possessiveness. Friends who trigger your competitiveness. Colleagues who make you question your worth or your power. And your first impulse might be to point the finger outward—because it feels safer, cleaner, more manageable that way.

But if you’re willing to pause in that uncomfortable heat—if you can say, “Alright, what in me is resonating with this?”—then you begin to reclaim the power Pluto is trying to hand you. Not power over others, mind you. Power within yourself. The kind that comes from owning your emotions, your desires, your shadows—not to be ruled by them, but to understand and integrate them.

You don’t have to shame yourself for feeling things society deems “ugly” or “inappropriate.” You’re embracing your full humanity. Understanding that jealousy has nothing to do with pettiness—it’s the fear of loss. A hunger for control often masks a deeper terror of chaos. These feelings don’t make you bad. They make you honest. And honesty, however rough around the edges, is the first step toward liberation. If someone in your life seems to be acting out a melodrama of emotional turbulence, don’t just ask what they’re doing to you. Ask what they’re showing about you. Not because it’s all your fault—but because life, under Pluto’s realm, is a living mirror. And what you see reflected now might be the key to a version of yourself that’s more integrated, more self-aware, and infinitely more capable of true intimacy.

Let’s Go Back to Where It Began (But This Time, With Eyes Open)

When the progressed Moon aspects Pluto, the soul says, “Let’s go back to where it all began. Let’s see what you were taught—before you even had words—about love, power, and safety.” What you’re feeling now may not be new at all. Perhaps your family taught that love must be earned. That to be vulnerable is dangerous. That control is safer than trust. You may have watched your caregivers use emotional power—withdrawal as punishment, affection as currency, truth held hostage to the need to maintain a façade. And what was modelled then becomes what you unconsciously reenact now.

So here you are, possibly finding yourself in situations that stir a deep, inarticulate anxiety. Power struggles erupt out of nowhere. You feel manipulated, or you catch yourself manipulating. You want closeness, but recoil when it’s offered. These patterns might seem irrational, but they are familiar.

This isn’t some neatly curated list of “typical issues”—no predetermined dramas. Your issues will be deeply personal, tailored by the mysterious hand of your own soul’s history. Whatever was pushed down, glossed over, or carefully folded into silence in years gone by—it stirs now. Not with logic, not with a warning, but with feeling. Pluto arrives like a storm in the middle of the night, tugging at the corners of old memories, shaking loose whatever’s been buried. And the Moon, so sensitive and soaked in memory, becomes the medium through which it all rises. It might not be the classic “family power struggle” or the textbook childhood wound. It might be that one offhand comment from a parent that shaped your entire view of worth. It might be the feeling of never being fully seen, or the way you learned to smile when you wanted to cry. Whatever it is, if it was unfinished—if it was shelved rather than integrated—it knocks now.

You might find yourself crying without knowing why, or erupting over something seemingly trivial, or experiencing a depth of longing or fear that seems disproportionate. But it’s not disproportionate to you. It’s proportionate to the thing you never got to process. The grief you never dared to grieve. The anger you weren’t allowed to express. The needs you learned to deny in order to survive or be loved. This is the beautiful, brutal honesty of Pluto-Moon territory. It says, “You are ready now.” Ready to feel your pain honestly. And in doing so, to stop dragging it forward like a ghost chain through all your relationships, your desires, your decisions. Whatever your background, however well you think you’ve dealt with it—if something still holds weight in the heart, it will likely stir now. Not to torment you, but to be released.

If your early environment played host to conflicts—whether overt or subtle—you may now find yourself caught in dynamics that feel unfair, confusing, or just infuriating. Perhaps you witnessed one parent dominate emotionally, while the other submitted or withdrew. Or maybe love itself came wrapped in control, so that now, as an adult, you associate desire with danger, or care with compromise. What Pluto does in this moment is unearth these subterranean realms.

You are being offered the chance to break the spell. To see the old stories clearly enough that they no longer write your future. To say, with compassion, “This is where I learned that love means control. This is where I first believed that to be safe, I must hide who I am.” And in recognizing that, you reclaim the power to rewrite it. You may cry, rage, regress. That’s alright. Healing is not a tidy ascent but a spiral back through the layers of what shaped you, so you can choose, consciously, what to keep and what to let fall away.

You Again? My Past in Disguise

You may look at your current relationship—or your longing for one, or your repeated struggles in connecting deeply—and start to see patterns. Not situational mishaps, but themes: always falling for unavailable people, needing control to feel safe, fearing abandonment even in the presence of love. These aren’t new problems. They’re reruns. Only now, with Pluto’s torch held to your soul’s diary, you begin to recognize them as part of a longer tale.

This is the strange power Pluto offers: the discomfort that leads to awakening. It doesn’t throw you into emotional turmoil and leave you there. It asks, “Will you dare to look at this honestly? Will you stop blaming fate or others long enough to ask what you are doing, feeling, repeating?” And if you do—if you summon the courage to face yourself without flinching—you are given an opportunity: to choose differently. Not perfectly. Not immediately. But consciously. You may begin to catch yourself mid-pattern, to pause before the knee-jerk reaction, to say, “This isn’t me—this is something I learned. And I can unlearn it.” You can start to write a new chapter. One not governed by fear or the need to repeat what was familiar.

The feeling of being trapped, shackled in some emotional cycle that seems to spin of its own accord is like a wheel carved by fate and greased by invisible hands. And what’s so disarming, so achingly frustrating, is that it doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels destined. Prewritten. But what’s really happening is this: you’re not trapped by destiny—you’re entangled in unconsciousness. Compulsive emotional patterns feel fated because they operate under the surface. They steer the ship while we believe we’re at the helm. And until the roots are seen—really seen, with the clarity that only pain or deep self-inquiry can offer—they will loop, repeat, replay… sometimes with different actors, but always the same emotional script.  During this time, you may find yourself in situations that reflect old wounds. You may react with intensity that surprises even you—rage, jealousy, desperation, deep sorrow. And in those moments, you might feel powerless. “Why am I like this? Why does this keep happening?” It’s the cry of someone brushing up against their own shadow because they’re close to waking up.

Some of these emotions may feel unattractive, unwelcome, even shameful. Who wants to admit they feel possessive, manipulative, needy, or vengeful? But they are part of being human—particularly human and hurt. And when Pluto invites these parts into the room, it’s not to shame you, but to integrate you. To help you see what drives you when you’re not watching. And in that seeing—there is freedom.

Not the freedom to control everything. But the freedom to understand. And from that understanding comes compassion. You begin to accept that some things in human nature cannot be changed. And weirdly, wonderfully, this acceptance is what brings change. Because once you’re no longer fighting your shadow, you can start to listen to it. You can say, “Alright, I see you. You’re afraid of being left, so you cling. You’re afraid of being unworthy, so you control. You’re afraid of being forgotten, so you rage.” And suddenly, what once felt fated becomes familiar. And what’s familiar can be worked with, held, healed. You are unearthing the truth of what drives you, and learning how to meet it with love rather than fear. You’re discovering that even the most painful patterns have origins, and once you trace them, you begin to untangle. Not all at once. Not forever. But enough to feel the looseness, the lightness, the choice returning.