Pluto Retrograde

The Initiation of Power, Grief, and Return

“To descend into Avernus is easy. But to return... that is the work. That is the task.”
— Virgil, The Aeneid

Today, on May 5th, 2025, the veil parts.

Pluto—the dark alchemist of the zodiac—stations retrograde at the threshold of Capricorn and Aquarius. This retrograde will last until October 14th, 2025, drawing us into a five-month ritual of unraveling. But this is no ordinary backward glance. This is descent. Not into chaos, but into truth—buried truth, forbidden truth, truth that lives beneath the surface of your carefully constructed self.

This is the call to meet the shadow, not as an enemy, but as an estranged sibling.

Pluto retrograde does not speak in loud disruptions. It whispers in bone-memory. It reopens doors you thought you sealed, drawing you back to the scenes of your psychic betrayals—not to punish you, but to give you the power you abandoned there.

🌑 Death Is the Door. Not the End.

Unlike Mercury’s mischief or Saturn’s tests, Pluto doesn’t deal in lessons or revisions. It deals in rebirth through psychic death. It is not interested in what is pleasing—it is interested in what is real. During retrograde, Pluto unearths what we buried beneath our rituals of survival: the ungrieved grief, the repressed erotic instinct, the compulsions we mistake for identity, the hunger for power we’ve projected onto others.

It’s in these moments—when you feel undone, unravelled, and uncertain—that the true work begins.

This is not destruction. This is composting.
What dies now becomes soil for what you really are.

🜍 The Spiral Descent

Pluto will revisit the same few degrees of the zodiac several times through the year. You may experience the sensation of looping: revisiting old wounds, returning to memories you thought you were free from. This is not regression. It is refinement. The psyche is a spiral, not a straight line.

Each pass strips another layer of illusion.
Each return asks: Will you meet the truth this time, or will you run again?

The descent is sacred because it is slow. Quick revelations would shatter the ego. Pluto takes its time—peeling back your masks in ritual, one breath at a time, until only the essential remains.

🔥 If Pluto Is Touching Your Natal Planets…

For those who are currently experiencing a Pluto transit to a natal planet, this retrograde deepens the initiation.

Here is the rule of alchemical timing:

• When Pluto first touches your planet, it exposes the part of you that is not aligned with your soul’s truth. It may come through breakdowns, obsessions, losses, power struggles—whatever it takes to reveal where you are gripping what wants to die.

• When Pluto turns retrograde, it shows you the consequences of not surrendering. That which is false begins to erode. Structures collapse. Personas unravel. You begin to feel the weight of everything you've outgrown. The grief sharpens. The truth demands to be lived.

• And when Pluto goes direct again on October 14, 2025, it returns like a cosmic train through the station where your soul once hesitated. It does not slow down.
  Whatever still clings to life out of fear—not devotion—will fall away.
  This is not cruelty. This is grace. Mercy through extinction.

  So if you are in the grip of a Pluto square, conjunction, or opposition—know that you are not being punished. You are being stripped clean so that only the soul remains.

  This is what Liz Greene called Pluto’s demand for total psychic honesty. There is no pretending with Pluto. Only becoming.

This is not a season for speed. It is a pilgrimage into your own interior. During Pluto retrograde, you may feel your skin too tight, your thoughts obsessive, your dreams vivid with symbols and ghosts. Let them come. They are fragments of the Self, returned for remembrance.

Hold grief ceremonies. Not only for who you lost, but for the versions of you who died to keep others comfortable.

Write to the part of you you’re most afraid of. Ask it what it needs. Let it speak without censorship.

Light a black candle and stare into a mirror. Speak your unspoken truths to the image that emerges.

Lay your head on the altar of your ancestors. Ask them what pain you still carry for them. Offer it back.

Sleep with questions. Let your dreams answer. Record what arises in the night, and decode the symbols at dawn.

This is not performance. It is ritual. It is reverence for what most would turn away from. But not you.

Pluto retrograde ends on October 14, 2025. But do not expect a sudden ascent. Even Persephone did not sprint from Hades. She rose slowly, carrying seeds.

This retrograde is not something to survive.
It is something to become.

When it ends, something will have been reborn inside you. Perhaps quietly. Perhaps violently. But it will be true. And that truth will not ask for approval. It will not need validation. It will simply live—undeniable, sovereign, and whole.

Let yourself be undone.

Let the underworld take what is no longer yours.

Let yourself return—not as who you were, but as who you have always been beneath the forgetting.

And if you feel called to, come join us in Alchemy Queens Academy where we do just that: return to the sacred and divine both within and without.