Pluto in Leo

There is at least one place you changed just by being in it, and you still like to go past it and look.

Plutonium

In 1941, as this generation began, scientists in California made an element never seen before, one of the first ever made by human hands, and named it after the newest planet: plutonium. Within four years it was the core of an atomic bomb. Raw power is the ground of Pluto, what can destroy and remake; Leo, which the Sun governs, stands for the self, the heart and the crown. Under this Pluto, a generation was born into the knowledge that human beings now held the power of the Sun in their hands.

The young take over

Its young lived through the baby boom, rock and roll, and a youth culture that had never existed before. They made adolescence a stage of life with its own music, clothes and rules, and they believed one person, by force of personality, could remake everything.

Leaders, performers and self-made figures of every kind came from these years, and so did a belief that personal expression was a kind of power.

Pride and power

Their strength is will and self-belief. They built careers, businesses and movements around their own vision, and they expected to be heard. Many became the confident, commanding figures who ran the world for decades.

Sharing the stage

Ego comes with so much self-belief. A generation that put the self at the centre could struggle to share the stage, to hand over power, or to hear that its time had passed.

Their families

Children of this generation remember strong personalities, big opinions and parents who seemed larger than life, and who insisted on being themselves at every age.

Your own stage

People have told you more than once that you take up a lot of space, and no apology has ever followed. You walk into a job on the first morning as if you were hired to run it, you tell the family story with yourself as the hero, and some days you were.

The confidence they passed on lets a person walk into any place as if they belong there, and plenty of their children still do exactly that.