Composite Pluto in the sixth house gives importance to duties and responsibilities, to work that has to be done. Robert Hand adds the piece that makes this specific to relationships. In a relationship, that work may be what the two people have to do in order to maintain the relationship itself.
He then says the actual effect varies, and gives two outcomes that run in opposite directions from the same starting point.
What This Placement Describes
Pluto in a composite chart is death and regeneration, the energy that clears away an order which has outlived its purpose so a new one can form. Hand says its power comes from within, since the transformations it rules arise out of the nature of whatever is being transformed. The house it occupies shows which area of the relationship is most likely to be transformed by the two being together, and which is most likely to produce crises.
The composite sixth house is the duties and responsibilities a relationship must fulfil. Hand handles it carefully. All relationships have obligations and in most cases they are not harmful. Duties become a problem only when they are the major element, leaving no room for the self expression the fifth house governs. Where the sixth is too strong, the two see the relationship as a duty to be met rather than something to be enjoyed, which is no great difficulty in a business relationship but can weaken a personal one over time. He notes that only where circumstances genuinely call for work to be done does a strong sixth house become an advantage, and that health, the other traditional meaning, has little relevance in a composite chart.
How It Tends To Play Out
The first outcome is drive. Pluto here can give the two a strong desire to get things done, and Hand describes it with a distinction worth keeping. It provides a kind of ambition, not to get ahead but rather to keep busy. In a personal relationship the two may feel they must work constantly to keep things moving, that the relationship will grow and develop only through continual effort.
The second outcome is the reverse. The continued necessity to get things done can strangle the relationship, with duty getting in the way of joyful self expression. Hand describes the feel of it precisely. The two may feel they always have to try very hard to make anything happen, and there is a continual sense of effort and struggle.
What decides between the two is not the placement. Hand says it depends largely on the individual attitudes toward responsibility, which is a rare instance of him pointing outside the composite chart inside a delineation. His conclusion is direct. Make the effort to fulfil each other's needs and the relationship will grow. It will also meet its greatest challenges, and he says those challenges are the basis of growth in a relationship rather than an obstacle to it.
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 sixth house Pluto should also be read through the twelfth, and where the two natal Plutos are near opposition, reading both is essential.
The composite twelfth house is repressed thought and the unconsciously motivated action that follows from it. Hand's Pluto in the twelfth exposes previously hidden psychological characteristics and requires strong inner transformation, and warns that Pluto's energies smoulder if not dealt with promptly. Read as an axis, the sixth is the work openly taken on and the twelfth is what goes unadmitted about taking it on, which matters here because a sense of continual struggle is exactly the kind of thing a couple can carry without ever saying.
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 that both outcomes look like effort. A couple working hard because the work is alive and a couple working hard because they cannot stop are doing the same thing from outside. What separates them is whether anything is enjoyed.
The second difficulty is that duty is a respectable place to hide. Where the sixth house dominates, a relationship can be busy and dutiful and never get around to the self expression Hand says every relationship has to leave room for.
He is careful not to make this a hard placement by definition. The challenges it brings are, in his account, the basis of growth. 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
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- 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 sixth house and the paired house rule.
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Next: Composite Chart Placements and How to Read a Composite Chart.