The Transformational Leader: What Pluto Reveals About Your Power, Triggers & Purpose (Pattern 1 of 4 from the Astrology Guidebook)

Why you trigger people (and why that's not a problem): If you’ve ever felt like your presence alone stirs up reactions in others, this episode will help you make sense of why.

In this powerful breakdown of Pattern #1 from the Astrology Patterns Guidebook, Michelle dives deep into the Pluto-Sun/Moon aspect, a placement that shows up again and again in sensitive, visionary leaders who are wired for transformation.

You’ll discover:

• What this pattern reveals about your soul-level leadership gifts
• Why your intensity isn’t “too much”, it’s the mirror
• The unconscious survival responses that distort your perspective (and how to shift them)
• How to step out of control-mode and into coherent leadership
• And why this pattern is designed to help you thrive during massive collective change

If you’ve ever felt like a walking catalyst, this one’s for you.

✨ Grab the free guidebook to follow along and see if this pattern is in your chart: https://michelledowker.thrivecart.com/astrology-guidebook/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Astrology and Alien Patterns
• 6:15 Discovering Transformational Leadership Through Astrology
• 9:55 Common Astrological Patterns in Sensitive Leaders
• 14:35 Pattern One: The Transformational Leader
• 20:15 Control vs Flow in Leadership
• 26:05 Pluto's Influence on Sun and Moon
• 31:15 Navigating Global Change as a Transformational Leader
• 35:13 Conclusion and Preview of Next Episode

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:05

Hello and welcome back. I'm so glad you're here for another episode. So in the last episode, I gave you a bit of an introduction on all the science that I've been accumulating over the past few months, and now there's some other things that I've been accumulating as well, outside of what I could find in the scientific research. One of these things is based on astrology, and you may or may not be in the camp of agreeing with the accuracy of astrology. For me, what I find is that astrology is a really amazing way to understand the patterns of why you're here, what your strengths are, what your gifts are, what your challenges are. I like to look at this through the lens of evolutionary astrology. So this isn't about looking at your horoscope and trying to figure out your future. It's more about understanding how you're built, where you came from, what's your life path and what's your purpose, what's the main strengths that you carry carry and the gifts for you to actually leverage in your life, in your work. So the reason why I say all this is because for the past few years, I've been looking at astrology for myself and I started looking at my clients' astrology charts. What had spurred me to start to look at astrology for myself and for my clients, was the discovery of something called alien patterns. That does not mean that I came from outer space.

Speaker 1: 2:40

Alien patterns is a concept that was first brought up by Edwin Steinbrecher in the 70s. He wrote a book called the Inner Guide Meditation, and in this book he spoke about these alien patterns. The reason why he called them such is because that when somebody has these patterns, that they tend to feel different than the people around them, almost like they feel like they're an alien or they're alienated from other people. I haphazardly had stumbled across this concept of alien patterns when I came across something that was talking about the planet Pluto and what happens when it's conjunct or very, very close to your sun or your moon, and that caught my attention because my Pluto is exact my moon by eight seconds, which is even closer than degrees or minutes, and my sun is very close, conjunct, within seven degrees.

Speaker 1: 3:42

And so when I discovered this, I had to learn more, because it seemed to explain so much about myself and why I grew up feeling so different from the people around me, and so I started to do a search for astrologers who understood alien patterns, and I found one. His name is DK Bernard. He's amazing, lovely, lovely soul. He's amazing, lovely, lovely soul and I went on a six month journey with him for him to help me understand my alien patterns, to understand alien patterns in general, and he helped me start to put together an understanding of these patterns and some other patterns that I was starting to notice in my client's charts. So DK confirmed to me that alien patterns are not a common thing. He sees in his practice that maybe around 20% of the population have alien patterns. And then, with these other patterns that I started noticing in my client's charts that kept showing up over and over and over again, I asked him and I started to do some research elsewhere and discovered that these particular patterns are not considered common in the general population. However, almost all of my clients had these patterns, and so that made me wonder what's going on here, what do these patterns represent and why do they keep showing up in my clients when it's shown that they're not common patterns in the general population? Now, of course, as you know, my ideal client base, like me, are highly sensitive people, most likely neurodivergent. We tend to feel different than the people around us because of how we're wired, which I touched upon in the last episode and I'll go into more detail in the future about how exactly our neurobiology is different from the general population according to the research, and so the patterns that I started to see in these astrology charts kind of gave me another level of confirmation about these patterns that I see in my clients. That actually goes along with the details that I discovered in the scientific research.

Speaker 1: 6:14

Over the past few months, when I went radio silent to dive into the research and put together all the pieces of the puzzle that I had been collecting over the years, while a great deal of what I was doing was consolidating the scientific research into this bigger picture that I'm sharing with you now. I was also looking at all the commonalities and patterns that I was seeing over and over and over again in my clients, especially those that are not considered common in the general population, and I have a soft spot for astrology and human design. It's helped me better understand myself and I find that it helps my clients better understand themselves, how they function, how they think the most optimal way for them to make decisions for themselves and connect to their own intuition and connect to their inner flow, and so I organized all the things that I've been collecting in terms of the patterns, and I've come up with a group of astrology patterns that I commonly see in my clients that I don't see in the general population, as well as some human design patterns that I tend to see in my clients that are not considered common in the general population. Today I'm going to talk about the astrology and not the human design, because during those three months that I was involved in all of this research, I ended up putting together a guidebook, and in this guidebook, I took the top four of the common astrology patterns that I was seeing over and over and over again, so that you can check to see if you have these patterns, understand what they mean, understand the strengths, the gifts, the purpose and the challenges that come with these patterns because all of them have strengths, gifts and challenges and how to use that information to leverage your vantage success in your leadership, in your work, in your life. So I'm sharing this with you now to give you a little bit of an overview about why I created this.

Speaker 1: 8:27

I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of what's in the guidebook and you can access this guidebook for yourself Right now, in Q1 of 2025,. This guidebook is free. I don't know if it will be free in the future. For now, you can access it at no cost, and the link to do that is in the show notes. So this guidebook contains, like I mentioned, four different patterns, and with each of the patterns, I put a name to the type of leadership that you most likely resonate with and that's your strength according to the astrological pattern. So I'm going to go over each of the patterns quickly and maybe give you another level of depth that isn't in the guidebook to better help you understand what these patterns are about. Today's episode, I'm only covering pattern number one because I went really in depth with it and it took a lot longer than I had expected in terms of talking about this pattern. And so, just so you know, pattern number one is going to be talked about today, and then I'm going to talk about the rest of the patterns in the next episode.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Pattern number one in the guidebook I've termed the transformational leader, and that's because when you have this pattern, you have this natural ability and natural desire to transform. There's a tendency within you to always want to be growing and evolving and transforming within yourself, and just by being in the presence of other people, you have this natural ability to instigate transformation in them if they're ready. That's the caveat. So if somebody is open and willing and looking for change and growth and evolution and transformation, you have this inherent capacity to be able to guide them to do that. And the more that you start within yourself and honor your own inner need for transformation and follow it and do that, the bigger your strength and gift is to be able to do that for others.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Now the thing is, if somebody is not looking for that, they don't want to change, they don't want to look at themselves you might actually trigger them because you naturally show them what needs to change, and that might not even be by saying anything. Just your presence shows them within themselves, maybe, what's not aligned, what might need improving, what might need changing. You kind of act like a mirror, and when they see themselves and they don't want to see it that's when they can get triggered. That's when they can start to feel uncomfortable. That's when you might notice that they are afraid of you or they avoid you or they project. They might project criticism, they might oppose you, they might ridicule you, they might reject you. And what's really happening here is that there's this underlying energetic pull for them to maybe address something within themselves that they don't want to, and it's so much easier to just deflect that and put it back onto you. This can feel overwhelming, to just deflect that and put it back onto you. This can feel overwhelming. It can feel overwhelming for them, especially if they're not ready. It can feel overwhelming for you if you're not ready for transformation. And it can also feel overwhelming for you to experience their projections, to experience their reactions if they're feeling uncomfortable.

Speaker 1: 12:05

And those are the challenges of this particular pattern. I'm going to tell you what the pattern is in a minute. And the other challenge is that if you have this pattern, like I mentioned, you're wired to want to grow, evolve, transform and you can see the highest potential in other people and you can see likely things that other people can't, and you might want them to see what you're seeing and you might want them to follow along with a transformation that is so inherent and important to you. And another challenge with that is that you might want to control the journey, process and transformation of other people. You might want to convince them of something they're not ready to look at and that can make you frustrated. If they don't want to change, if they don't want to follow, if they can't see your point of view, and if you're not aware of this dynamic, it might cause you to instinctively try to control even more, try to control yourself, try to control more, try to control yourself, try to control them, try to control what's happening around you, and when you do that, it just amplifies the overwhelm and it takes you out of your flow. When you try to control anything, it takes you out of flow state, it takes you out of alignment when you're trying to control and force.

Speaker 1: 13:30

This is a piece of survival mode, like we've talked about in the last episode, about how you might be in survival mode, including with your unconscious conditioning and how you see the world. And when you're in this mode, there can be this inherent need to try to control and push and force and make things happen the way that you see them or the way you think that they should unfold, including how things happen for you and including how things happen for other people and or the level of change and growth that they're willing to do, and also the level of expectation that you have on other people of what they're willing to see, what they're willing to do, how they're going to show up for you. And when we grasp onto the need for control and to push, we hold onto expectations of how other people should be, how we should be, how things should be, then that causes struggle, it causes suffering and that can be explained through the Buddhist concept of the Four Noble Truths, which I'll talk about in another podcast episode. However, I'll just point out here the Four Noble Truths.

Speaker 1: 14:39

The first noble truth is the fact that in life, suffering exists. The second noble truth is that this cause of suffering is attachment, craving, desire, control, expectation, needing to have things happen in a certain way, having expectations of how things should be, how we should be, how other people should be, how people will respond to us, how life unfolds. There's more to this and I'll expand on that in another episode. But to know in general, when you have this pattern, you might have the need to control other people and how they respond and how your life unfolds, how their life unfolds and how they will take the information that you give them or the support that you give them, and whether or not they will take it to actually change or transform and, if you grasp onto that, to try to control the outcome that causes suffering. And then the third noble truth is is that the solution to relieve the suffering is to release the grasp onto control, to release the expectations, to let go of the desire and the need to force control, to have it be a certain way, and I know that's easier said than done. However, it absolutely is possible. If you've already looked at this piece of the puzzle, you know the difference that it makes when you can learn how to let go of that need for control and let go of the shoulds and let go of how things should be and accept what is it's liberating. And if you know, you know. And if you don't know yet, now you know it's a really important key to your own inner liberation.

Speaker 1: 16:28

Okay, so, with that particular pattern, this particular pattern, number one that I'm talking about right now, the transformational leader, as I mentioned, your challenges are that you might feel overwhelmed by this pattern, by the depth and intensity of this pattern and the intensity of how it can impact other people, and also that there can be this tendency to grasp onto the control and that can cause more suffering, letting go of that need for control and instead being a guide, leading by example, using your influence to empower and inspire others rather than imposing your vision and I mean this is a really great leadership tip for anybody right? Lead by example, don't force. Don't force people to do what they're not ready for. Don't try to impose your vision on others that aren't ready for it. Rather, be the change that you wish to see, and those who want that change will follow, and that's how you can lead them. The other piece to this is try not to grasp too tightly onto your own personal vision and get so over-focused on your perspective that you are no longer open to picking up on other people's perspectives, because, as humans, we don't know everything. None of us do. However, each of us provides a unique perspective and each person's perspective can help you to widen your own so that you can create a wider and stronger vantage point, which is so important in leadership. And if you're a sensitive, gifted or neurodivergent person, you're actually wired to be able to see this bigger picture and wider perspective and have this wider vantage point.

Speaker 1: 18:16

However, if you're operating from survival mode, it's like looking through a peephole in a door, and if you're looking through that peephole because remember the last podcast episode I told you about. When you're in survival mode, it acts like a filter and you're only filtering for survival. Filtering for survival is like looking through this peephole in a door, and when you look through that peephole, the perspective is narrow, it's blurry and the picture's distorted. And that's exactly what happens when you're looking through a lens of survival Versus. Once you can recalibrate your unconscious mind and your filters, you can start to calibrate yourself to success mode where you're thriving, and when that happens, it's like opening the door, so that you're no longer looking through the peephole. You open the door and you can see the full panoramic view and it's clear. And this is seeing the wider perspective and this is widening your vantage point.

Speaker 1: 19:18

Like I always say, what helps you to survive is not what helps you to thrive, and so the perspective that you look through to survive is not what's going to help you to thrive. And so what's really important, if you do have this pattern of the transformational leader, is to make sure that you remain open to other perspectives. You can see a lot and you can see the depth that most people can't. However, if you are still operating from survival mode, it's going to look distorted, like looking through that peephole. It's going to be narrower and it's going to look distorted, like looking through that peephole. It's going to be narrower and it's going to be more rigid. And it's really important in order to align with this pattern is to make sure you're not trying to control anybody else, not trying to impose your vision, and keep your perspective open to considering other ways of looking at things. And that's also important, because widening your perspective and seeing what else is possible is going to help you with your own personal inner evolution, which is part of this pattern, because you are a transformational leader. It always starts with you first. In order to do that, when you have this pattern, you need to go deep. So what is this pattern for the transformational leader?

Speaker 1: 20:37

This pattern number one in the guidebook is all about Pluto, particularly when Pluto is an aspect with your sun or your moon. So what does that mean? In evolutionary astrology, pluto is one of the most important planets. Pluto is all about transformation. It's about going into the underworld and having, like that, death, rebirth, rising up from the phoenix kind of experience, over and over and over and over again. In general, when Pluto is an aspect to any planet, there's going to be this sense of transformation going into the underworld so that you can come out the other side at a higher level, letting whatever's not working collapse and break apart so that you can come back together stronger. And when Pluto is an aspect to your sun or moon, this impacts your identity, it impacts your emotions, it impacts your entire experience, both for yourself and how you impact others.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Now, when I say that Pluto is an aspect, what does that mean? So if Pluto is either conjunct, opposite or square, conjunct means that it's right beside your sun or moon, usually within 10 to 15 degrees or less, like they're side by side. Opposition means that they're on opposite ends of your chart and usually, if you're looking at your chart, you're going to see a red line go from one down to the other on the opposite side of the circle, and and the other aspect is square, and so that means that Pluto is 90 degrees to your sun or your moon. There are other ways that Pluto can aspect your sun or moon, but these three are the most intense, the most powerful, which is why I've included these ones, because they are the most intense and they are the most common ones that I see with my clients. I myself have Pluto conjunct both my sun and my moon and, like I mentioned, pluto is eight seconds from my moon, so it's not even degrees, it's the same degree as my moon. It's that close and that creates something called a Hades moon, which I won't get into today. It's a whole other topic. However, if you have a Hades moon where your moon is conjunct Pluto, it's pretty darn intense and usually it means that there's probably a very intense and or difficult or challenging relationship with your mother. My mother has Pluto square her moon, and she has Pluto conjunct her sun. Lots of intensity there.

Speaker 1: 23:24

If you're already familiar with your astrology chart, you probably already know whether or not you have one of these placements of Pluto in aspect to your sun or moon. If you don already know whether or not you have one of these placements of Pluto in aspect to your sun or moon, if you don't know your astrology chart, when you download the guide, it's going to give you step-by-step instructions on how you can find your chart for free and how you can find out whether or not you have these placements. And if you don't have the time or patience to check, I do have an option available. I can do it for you, and all of that information is in the guide.

Speaker 1: 23:59

So pattern number one Pluto, and aspect your sun or moon makes you the transformational leader. You're here to inspire and guide others through deep transformation, starting with yourself. You have deep emotional depth and psychological insight which allows you to work on yourself and also connect with others deeply, and that is one of the pieces of the puzzle of how you actually create transformation on other people. And what's really important about this placement is it's so important for you to start with yourself first. As a leader, you go first.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Now likely if you're in my world, you've probably already started this process of developing more self-awareness, of personal development, of understanding your patterns. If you're listening to this and you haven't done that and you have this placement, the way to harness this placement and likely for you to get into a place where you are thriving. This type of work is necessary and if you have this placement, it's not a one and done thing. You likely already know you've got this deep inner urge to always learn, to always grow, to always evolve. You've probably had many evolutions of yourself in your life and you can't not the more that you can understand that this is actually part of who you are, the more that you can accept and understand when these moments come up right where you're sucked back into the underworld to break apart so you can come back together another level higher, that it's happening for you, not to you, and if you can understand this and you can understand why, that will help you to navigate all of it with so much more ease and strength and insight and come out the other side even higher, so that you can lead people even more powerfully.

Speaker 1: 26:01

And especially right now there's so much going on in the world. I touched upon it in the last podcast episode. There's some big changes happening. Social change theory talks about this in a few different ways, that we're in this process of collapse of certain old ways of doing things so that we can break apart and come back together at a higher level. And I mentioned about the fourth turning in the last episode. We're in a fourth turning. These turnings happen on average. A complete cycle happens on average 80 to 100 years. The last time we had a fourth turning was during the Great Depression and the Second World War and then we ended that cycle of collapse to step into a first turning after the war. We're in a fourth turning again, which means that old ways that are no longer working for us are collapsing, so that we can step into this next era, this next cycle, and come back together at a higher level than we were before and now. This is just a theory.

Speaker 1: 27:08

However, it does seem to align quite well Astrologically. Right now, the planet Pluto is currently in the sign of Aquarius, and that change happened in November of 2024. And Pluto usually stays in a sign for approximately every 16 to 24 years, depending on the sign. Pluto is going to be in Aquarius for the next 20 years, and the last time Pluto was an Aquarius was 248 years ago, between 1778 and 1798. And if you think about that period of time, there's all kinds of revolutions going on in the world, especially with some really big, big, important countries like France, the United States, and that period of time is when the US constitution was written for the people, and Aquarius is the sign for the people, and Pluto essentially drives anything that's no longer working for the people to fall apart, so that we can rebuild back up again in a way that is more supportive for the people. So are you getting what I'm putting down in terms of this energy of Aquarius and what it's about. It can impact what's happening right now in our present day, like what is happening with Pluto and Aquarius, and I'm sure you can see the evidence of changes that are happening and things breaking down so that they can be built back up in a way that's more supportive for the people.

Speaker 1: 28:40

Now, unfortunately, the breakdown can be perceived as quite difficult at the beginning, because all the things that aren't working almost they have to come up to the surface to see them, and so we're seeing a lot of things going on, and, as with all things, this too shall change, and so the point I'm making here, that I want to make about what I'm bringing up, is the fact that right now, we are in a period of unprecedented change, and there's a lot of people where change is difficult, and there's a lot of people where change is difficult, confusing, uncertain, and when that happens, different people can respond in different ways, and I'll get to that in another podcast episode, because social change theory actually talks about the different types of common reactions people have when we are up against major change. Right, some people are going to revolt against it, some people are going to hang on for dear life, some people are going to get really anxious and burn out. Some people are going to adapt so that they can evolve, and you, with this placement, are built to be able to evolve with the changes that are going on around you and, as such, the more that you can harness this within yourself, the more you can be a leader in and a healer to help others who want to move through this as well. Not everybody's going to want your help, and that's okay. You're here to help the people who want it, and there are going to be change-resistant people.

Speaker 1: 30:17

It comes with the territory of humanity, and there is evidence out there that does show that the wider your vantage point, the more you're actually going to be able to successfully lead those who are change resistant, which is why it's so important for you not to hold on to a rigid mindset and not to hold on to a rigid perspective, and keep widening and widening and widening your perspective so that you can relate to those who are change resistant. You can relate to those who might be in a polarized, other perspective, other than what you understand to be true, and Carl Jung has said that in order to move through the biggest challenges of humanity and to prevent crisis and fracture of society, it's important that a certain percentage of the population be able to hold the tension of opposites, to be able to hold the perspectives of opposing views without collapsing, and to be able to hold it in order to stabilize both sides. Now, there's a lot more to it than that. I'll talk about it in another episode. As you can see, this pattern is deep.

Speaker 1: 31:31

If you have this pattern, you probably already sense that, and I want you to understand, with this pattern, that it is really important for you to own your depth, not to shy away from it, especially if you've been conditioned to believe that your depth is not acceptable, because I know that there's many of us who've received those messages which have conditioned our unconscious mind and our filters to be looking at life through a certain lens, a lens of survival, and that will be holding you back from your fullest potential, because what helps you to survive is not what helps you to thrive, and if you are a highly sensitive, gifted, neurodivergent person, you are wired to thrive when given the right conditions, starting with how your unconscious mind is programmed. And if your unconscious mind is programmed for survival, you are biologically wired to actually struggle. All of that to say if you have this placement, you need to own your depth. It's not just a nice to have, this is how you're wired and this is how you're going to amplify your leadership and your healing abilities, for both yourself and for other people. All right, I think I've said enough about that pattern.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Also, to note, with pattern number one, the transformational leader, more often than not, if your Pluto is conjunct your sun or moon, so it's like right beside your sun or moon, then you likely also have pattern number four, which is an alien pattern, and I'm going to get to that later. So that's kind of like double amplifies everything about this pattern and makes it even more intense and even more transformational and even more powerful. So that's it for pattern number one Pluto aspecting your sun or your moon. I also want to point out that you might have Pluto aspecting your sun or your moon in a different way. You could have trine, which is a triangle, and you usually see that as a blue line on your chart.

Speaker 1: 33:33

And then there are other aspects as well. I do find that those are less common in my client population and those patterns tend to have a little less intensity when it comes to the themes that I talked about today. However, you're still likely going to strongly relate to a lot of what I spoke about today. So that's it for pattern number one. As you can see, I went into depth with it, and so I've decided to make it one single episode. I'll be talking about the other patterns in the next episode, so I hope you'll join me for that. Thank you for being here.