Origin 1930
The glyph of Pluto stored here is the monogram of the letters P and L, adopted after the discovery of 1930 and chosen because those letters both begin the name Pluto and are the initials of Percival Lowell, whose observatory conducted the search and at which Clyde Tombaugh found the object. A second symbol, a bident surmounted by an orb, is also in use and was taken up by astrologers and later by NASA, gaining ground after the reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. The monogram is thus a dedication rather than a picture, and its derivation, unusually, is fully documented. Astrologically Pluto marks the underworld god whose name it bears: death and regeneration, buried power, compulsion, purging, and whatever is hidden, forbidden or transformed under pressure, and its long slow orbit is read as marking generational rather than personal change.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginDiscovered in the United States; adopted into Western astrology. 2 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseAstrology continues to treat it as a planet 3 Contested or Appropriated Modern UseIn 2006 astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet 3 Form
Type of SymbolAstral figure: sun, moon or planet 1 Geometric FormA monogram of the letters P and L. 1 Learn More
A Modern Planet
Pluto was long counted the ninth planet and is treated in modern astrology as an outer body associated with Scorpio and with themes of depth and transformation. In 2006 it was reclassified by astronomers as a dwarf planet, a change astrology has not followed. Its name, like its glyph, was chosen quickly after discovery: an eleven-year-old English schoolgirl, Venetia Burney, is credited with first suggesting Pluto, for the Roman god of the underworld, and the name was adopted within months, a far faster process than the drawn-out naming dispute that had followed Neptune's discovery eight decades earlier.
The glyph settled almost as quickly, built directly from the new name rather than from any classical precedent, since no ancient tradition had a sign waiting to be revived for a body unknown to antiquity. Astrologers have generally treated the 2006 astronomical reclassification as a matter for astronomers rather than for practice, continuing to track Pluto's position and assign it the same interpretive weight it carried while still formally a planet, a divergence that mirrors how earlier reclassifications, such as the nineteenth-century demotion of Ceres from planet to asteroid, likewise left astrological usage largely unaffected even as astronomical categories shifted underneath it.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Pluto, Deities This source names Pluto directly: "The glyph of Pluto stored here is the monogram of the letters P and L, adopted after the discovery of 1930 and chosen because those letters both begin the name Pluto and are the initials of Percival..."
Symbol Of
Pluto, Planets The symbol's own cited description identifies its glyph as that of this planet.
Sources
1. A History of Western Astrology
Nicholas Campion, Continuum, 2009On the adoption of the modern planets in astrologyView the Source 2. Astronomy
Andrew Fraknoi, David Morrison, and Sidney C. Wolff (OpenStax), OpenStax, Rice University, 2016View the Source 3. Resolution B5, Definition of a Planet in the Solar System, 26th General Assembly
International Astronomical Union, International Astronomical Union, 2006Resolution B5: Pluto reclassified as a dwarf planet (2006)View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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