As always, the best way to get a bead on your overall transit picture is to clock the outer planets first. Identify where in your chart the heavy hitters are currently passing: especially Neptune and Pluto.
They’re always at work, somewhere, in the background of your life. Unless they’re bumping into a natal planet, or stationing — as Pluto is, this month; in which case they’re no longer in the background.
Then they’re in your face.
They don’t care what you think
These planets refer to the most life-altering issues you’re grappling with. But their messages are often misinterpreted, because they’re about your soul advancement, not your personality. Transpersonal transits are not here to validate how you see yourself.
Pluto, extra forceful right now because of its retrograde station on 5/4, wants to teach you things that may, in fact, fly in the face of your self-image. It may use your personality as a vessel, but it doesn’t care about your personal desires or what you imagine you need.
Audience with the dark god
Retrograde until October, Pluto may take fifteen years to travel through a given natal house, so you may have gotten used to its presence by now. In that arena of your life, there’s been a slow, steady devolution going on.
It tends to demand more of our attention when it ingresses — as it just did, into Aquarius — or stations in the sky, as it does early this month. We get to feel its power more directly.
It’s the difference between going to mass in the local church and going to Rome for an audience with the Pope.
Let something die
Use the first few days of May to get in touch with an issue that’s been festering. Look for some drama you’d prefer to avoid. Pluto symbolizes the inevitable process of breakdown/ renewal. Whatever house it’s passing through in your chart is where you need to allow something to die, so that you can move on.
Pluto is not causing the thing to die. It’s reminding you that it’s already dying. Dare to find the rot and let it go.
Ego battles
Mars, too, is part of this challenge. It’s separating from its opposition to Pluto, still strong during the first few days of this month, which helps us understand the deadly ego battles in the air lately. This is the last of three hits, this cycle, for this opposition. The first two were in November and January, when America’s political dramas were at their most ruthless.
These power plays don’t just play out on a collective scale, of course. They have their corollaries in our private lives. To avoid being sucked under, first of all we need to name what’s happening.
This isn’t really that hard. If you’re sniffing out something deeply unpleasant and/or or frighteningly profound, that’s where Pluto wants you to focus.
The next step in Pluto Work: try to see things from an energy perspective. Remember that everything has a life cycle: people, businesses, countries, relationships. They are all born and eventually die.
And when they’re in the process of dying, energy is released. Think of the heat rising up from a compost pile.
Let it happen
The key to a successful Mars-Pluto transit is to remember that the process of transformation (Pluto) isn’t under the control of the human ego, the mind or the feelings. If you’d rather have a profound growth experience than an ugly battle of dominance, use this month to practice seeing things transpersonally.
Otherwise, Pluto’s power tends to get hijacked by the ego (Mars). That’s when somebody — you or the other person — craves to control the situation. The problem is, this will backfire. The forces of creative destruction are now no longer creative. They’re just garden-variety destruction, dumb and brutal.
So pinpoint where the first few degrees of Leo and Aquarius fall in your chart. This is where Mars and Pluto are having it out. Once you’ve spotted where it’s happening on the event level, detach from the process. Identify what’s trying to decompose, and Natural Law will take care of the rest.
Rebirth will happen, without you lifting a finger.
Form meets formlessness
The other big news this month is the ingress on 5/24 of Saturn into Aries, just before the New Moon. This shift introduces a new approach to getting ourselves together (Saturn).
For the next two-and-a-half-years, the planet of cohesion will push its agenda in the sign of fiery leadership. Old-style machismo will come under scrutiny. Expected ways of expressing aggression (Aries) will be blocked — ideally, to be replaced by more mature approaches (Saturn).
By the end of the month, Saturn will be in the same sign as Neptune (see April’s SkyWatch), a conjunction that has the astro world buzzing. Exact to the degree this July — and to the minute of arc next February — the Saturn-Neptune coupling kicks off a world-changing cycle (discussed in detail in my webinar “In Charge But Not in Control II”.)
On an individual level, the transit is an unmissable opportunity for deep inner work. For the spiritually curious, it’s an invitation to dive into unprecedented consciousness change 
(discussed in my webinar, “Controlled Abandon.“)
Whether your focus is prosaic or esoteric, your best bet is to familiarize yourself with what department of your life is being targeted. Locate the house of your natal chart where the first couple of degrees of Aries fall. This will give clues to your mission, if — as the old TV show used to say — you choose to accept it.
