Almagest

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Mercury conjunct Pluto

Mercury conjunct Pluto, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mercury conjunct Pluto is read as a mind capable of great focus, depth of thought and concentration: the tradition describes a serious, pensive and determined thinker, skeptical of superficiality and intellectually drawn to hidden or taboo subjects, whose communication can turn sarcastic or cutting when the surface explanation is not good enough. Between two charts, one person's Mercury conjunct another's Pluto is read as conversation that is probing and deep, the two people genuinely enjoying uncovering the underlying motivations and causes of a situation together; sources warn the Pluto person can also come to dominate the exchange, pushing the Mercury person to adopt their own beliefs in a way that can feel uncomfortable over time.

The story

A conjunction sets two bodies at, or close to, the same degree, with no real angular distance between them; Ptolemy's own chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs measures the opposition, trine, square and sextile by the number of degrees separating two positions, yet Wikipedia's summary counts the conjunction among the five traditional major aspects sometimes called Ptolemaic, and reports that conjunctions are said to be the most powerful aspects, because they mutually intensify the effects of the involved planets. Hermes carries one office among the Greeks that suits this pairing exactly: psychopomp, the guide who leads the souls of the dead down to Hades's own kingdom, a role his Roman counterpart Mercury keeps as well, leading newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Fused with Pluto, the messenger's usual business, carrying words between parties who could otherwise not reach each other, is turned toward the underworld itself, a mind willing to go down into what is buried and bring back, if not the dead themselves, then at least an honest account of what it found there.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mercury:Pluto:conjunction.