Pluto Opposite Chiron: Power, Loss and the Wound Seen in Others

← Back to Aspects

With Pluto opposite Chiron, the two sat on opposite sides of the zodiac at birth, between 172° and 188° apart (the opposition's orb is 8°). Pluto is associated with power, intensity, loss and renewal. Chiron, in modern astrology, stands for an old sensitivity that tends to stay tender and that, worked with over time, can help a person understand others. Astrologers usually read oppositions through relationships and projection: what sits at one end is often first noticed in someone else.

Within 1920 to 2060 the opposition belongs to two groups of births: 1958 to 1972, centred on the early 1960s, and 2043 to 2044. Where it lands in a particular chart depends on the pair of houses it spans, if the birth time is known, and on any personal planet sitting near either end.

Common interpretations

Power met in others. One common reading describes repeatedly meeting intense or controlling figures, and through them recognising one's own relationship with power.

Loss and repair across the axis. Astrologers often describe one end as the place of upheaval and the other as the place of hurt, with growth coming from bringing the two together.

Projection worked through. Some readings suggest the old sensitivity first shows up as something seen in a partner, a family member or a group.

Strength that includes vulnerability. The direction commonly named is a kind of power that can admit weakness without being undone by it.

These are tendencies astrologers describe, not outcomes. How the axis works out depends on the whole chart and on what the person does with it.

Mostly a line of the 1960s

Across the sample, one Greenwich noon chart for each of the 51,501 dates from 1920 to 2060, Pluto opposite Chiron appears on 3,552 dates, 6.90%. In the 1960s it was in orb on 74.5% of dates. With 22.2% of its dates out of sign, it is the Pluto-Chiron angle most often spread across a sign boundary, most often with Pluto in Virgo against Chiron in Aquarius or Aries (546 of the 790 out-of-sign dates); the rest fall in 2043 and 2044.

The 1958 to 1972 span is made of 12 separate windows. The longest ran from 3 December 1961 to 11 May 1965 (1,256 dates) and holds seven of the 11 passes; two more fell in 1961 and two at the end of 1965. Before it the yearly windows grew from 69 dates in 1958 to 300 in 1961, and after it they shrank to 60 at the turn of 1971 and 1972. Chiron was then in the slow, far part of its orbit, moving about 4° a year against Pluto's 2°, so the separation changed by only about 2° a year. In 2043 Chiron moves about 15° a year, and the second run is a single window of 390 dates.

The cycle is lopsided in time as well. The first opposition pass came about 20 years after the 1941 conjunction; the first one after the 1999 conjunction comes about 44 years later, on 15 October 2043.

One R marker at most

In the whole sample there is no opposition date with Pluto and Chiron both retrograde. Pluto was retrograde without Chiron on 45.1% of them, Chiron without Pluto on 42.3%, and neither was retrograde on 12.6%. The reason lies with the Sun. In the sample Pluto shows retrograde only with the Sun at least 96.7° away, and Chiron only with the Sun at least 100.4° away. Because Pluto and Chiron are 172° to 188° apart, the Sun's two distances always total between 172° and 188°, too little to pass both thresholds at once. The planet table can therefore show an R beside one of them, or neither, but never both.

1961 to 1965: Virgo and Pisces, with Uranus joining Pluto

Uranus caught up with Pluto in Virgo during the central years of this opposition. Uranus was conjunct Pluto on 2,266 dates from 1962 to 1969, and 1,619 of them also have Pluto opposite Chiron; on 1,935 opposition dates Uranus was opposite Chiron as well. Neptune, in Scorpio and from 1970 in Sagittarius, sextiled Pluto on every one of the 3,162 opposition dates of 1958 to 1972 and trined Chiron on 2,786 of them, the long 1960s run described in Neptune trine Chiron. Some of the exact passes, as positioned at London noon:

• 24 April 1961: Pluto 5°40' Virgo, retrograde, and Chiron 5°40' Pisces (0.01°), with the North Node at 3°20' Virgo conjunct Pluto (2.33°).
• 15 August 1962: Pluto 9°14' Virgo and Chiron 9°16' Pisces, retrograde (0.04°). Jupiter at 9°46' Pisces, retrograde, sat on Chiron (0.50°) and opposed Pluto (0.54°), and Mercury at 8°11' Virgo was conjunct Pluto (1.04°).
• 9 October 1964: Pluto 15°05' Virgo and Chiron 15°07' Pisces, retrograde (0.02°), with Uranus at 12°38' Virgo conjunct Pluto (2.46°) and opposite Chiron (2.48°), and Neptune at 16°25' Scorpio sextile Pluto and trine Chiron (about 1.3°).
• 13 November 1965: Pluto 18°05' Virgo and Chiron 18°04' Pisces, retrograde (0.01°), with Uranus at 18°49' Virgo on Pluto (0.74°) and opposite Chiron (0.75°).

Virgo is ruled by Mercury. Pisces has Neptune as its modern ruler and Jupiter as its traditional ruler, which is one reason astrologers look at Neptune and Jupiter in these charts. See Pluto in Virgo and Uranus conjunct Pluto.

2043 and 2044, calculated ahead

The second run is a single window from 18 August 2043 to 10 September 2044, computed ahead with the calculator's own ephemeris. Passes fall on 15 October 2043 (Pluto 29°13' Aquarius, retrograde, Chiron 29°13' Leo, 0.00°, with Jupiter at 28°13' Sagittarius sextile Pluto and trine Chiron, both 1.00°), 4 February 2044 (Pluto 0°25' Pisces, Chiron 0°26' Virgo, retrograde, 0.01°) and 21 July 2044 (Pluto 2°15' Pisces, retrograde, Chiron 2°16' Virgo, 0.02°). On 4 February 2044 Saturn at 29°17' Scorpio squares both within about 1.1°, across a sign boundary; Saturn squares both ends on 191 opposition dates from December 2043 to June 2044, a T-square with Saturn at the apex. Leo is ruled by the Sun, and Aquarius has Uranus as its modern ruler and Saturn as its traditional ruler. See Pluto in Aquarius.

Seeing it in a chart

The free birth chart marks an opposition with a red dashed line crossing the wheel from ♇ to ⚷ (the red line without dashes is the square). In the planet table, Pluto and Chiron should be between 172° and 188° apart. Chiron, and with it this line, is left off charts for births before 1920 or after 2060.

When the birth time is left blank, the calculator places both bodies at local noon purely as a reference point; it does not treat noon as the time of birth. The distance between Pluto and Chiron never changed by more than 0.17° in one day, so the unknown hour could change the result on only about 0.4% of opposition dates (an estimate based on interpolating between the noon charts). For where an axis like this sits in a full reading, see how to read Chiron in your chart.

Read next

• Pluto conjunct Chiron, the meetings of 1941 and 1999 that frame the 1960s opposition
• Pluto trine Chiron, the angle that comes before and after each opposition run
• Uranus opposite Chiron, which ran alongside this opposition through most of the 1960s
• The full aspects library

If you want to explore how this axis could work in one particular chart, Ask the Astrologist can go through it with you.