With composite Pluto in the second house, acquiring property can become a strong and overriding passion for two people. Robert Hand gives the psychology behind it rather than just the behaviour. It is as if the pair unconsciously regard the material world as the source of all power, and feel they must control it in order to keep control of their own lives.
He then names the reversal that follows. Too great a concern with acquiring possessions becomes a factor that controls their life, which costs them the very control they were seeking.
What This Placement Describes
Pluto in a composite chart rules death and regeneration, the clearing away of an old order so a new one can form, and Hand says its action is essential against stagnation. The transformations it brings are the ones that arise from the nature of what is being transformed, so its power comes from within rather than from outside. In a relationship it is very often experienced as power conflict, either between the two people or with the outside world.
The composite second house is values, what two people value and their relationship to what is valued. Hand describes it working on two connected levels. It shows the part value systems played in bringing the relationship together and whether disagreement over values is a source of conflict, and it also covers whatever finances and property the relationship has, though not every relationship has common property. He notes specifically that difficult aspects in the second house involving Pluto and Mars can make disagreement over values a major source of conflict. He adds the structural point that in a composite all finances are joint finances, because the two people cannot be told apart, so the second and eighth should both be consulted on financial questions.
How It Tends To Play Out
Hand is clear that the material reading is not the only one. This placement can indicate that the relationship enforces a strong sense of values in both people. Where they cannot agree on those values, the values become a source of conflict instead.
Either way, he says the relationship is quite likely to change their sense of values, and that fact by itself can cause conflict if the two cannot develop the flexibility needed to accommodate each other's value system. That is the transformation half of Pluto operating on second house material, and it happens whether or not property is involved.
Property can also enter the relationship in a third way. It may become a decisive factor restricting the movement or development of the two as a couple, or a controlling issue in their lives. Hand traces this back to the same root, an excessive concern with value systems, and gives the correction in one sentence. Learn to give material resources precisely the importance they deserve and no more. Pluto in the second house often makes these matters too important.
The Opposite House
The paired house rule comes out of the mechanics of the composite. Any pair of planets has two midpoints, the nearer is used, and the farther keeps some effect that grows as the two natal positions approach opposition. So a second house Pluto should also be read through the eighth, and where the two natal Plutos are near opposition, reading both is essential.
Here Hand has already asked for both houses to be read on any financial matter, so the two instructions agree. The composite eighth is joint resources and, more importantly, the house of major transformations. His Pluto in the eighth is in its own house, which he says simply makes its action more intense, bringing many major changes and periods of transformation and putting the innermost psychological drives out in the open. Read as an axis, the second is what the two hold and the eighth is what the holding does to them.
Hand gives no threshold for when the second reading takes over and no method for blending them. Both stand.
Where It Gets Difficult
The difficulty is the loop Hand describes at the start. Control sought through possessions turns into control exercised by possessions. Nothing about the intention is unusual, and the reversal is not punishment, it is simply what happens when the means become the point.
The second difficulty is that values are being rewritten while the relationship is running. Someone whose sense of what matters is shifting under them is not always able to say so, and if the two cannot give each other room while it happens, the change itself becomes the argument.
This is not a signature of greed or of loss. It marks the area where the relationship exerts and attracts the most force, and where it will transform what the two consider important. The house sets the issue. Whether the energy is experienced as difficult or easy is described by the aspects to Pluto, which Hand treats as a separate question.
Recommended Reading
Book links below are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
- Robert Hand, Planets in Composite: Analyzing Human Relationships (1975), chapter fourteen.
- Robert Hand, Planets in Composite: Analyzing Human Relationships (1975), chapter four, on the composite second house and the paired house rule.
Continue Learning
Next: Composite Chart Placements and How to Read a Composite Chart.