PLUTO IN AQUARIUS. Jan 20, 2024 - Jan 20, 2044 (with a short break from Sept 2 - Nov 19, 2024)
No one alive has experienced Pluto in Aquarius. Since Pluto is the farthest planet away, it takes the longest time to circle the zodiac: about 225 years (it has a very irregular orbit, so it spends between 14 and 31 years in one sign). Only Neptune & Pluto take so long to return that it’s impossible for a person to experience what their energy is like in each sign in one lifetime. We can theorize about the effect of Pluto and draw accurate & illuminating conclusions from studying social and historical events that coincide with its movement, but an empirical experience of the planet, how it feels in each sign, is beyond us. In this way, there’s something less personal about Pluto, and more generational; if it has a conjunction or an aspect to another important planet or point in your chart, it has a much more pronounced effect on personality, but it still speaks to the way a person interfaces with titanic forces beyond their individual control, and how they personally relate to the zeitgeist & the larger culture around Plutonian themes like power, control, organized violence, fanaticism, and metamorphosis.
Because Pluto was discovered so recently, in 1930, much of its meaning comes from the historical context of that moment: namely the rise of fascism, the development of nuclear technology, and a peak of organized crime on a scale that rivaled state power. Another source is the synchronicity of the name given to it by astronomers: the god of the underworld who was feared and reviled, ruler of the subterranean realm of the shadow, where precious stones, metals, and petroleum are unearthed along with the corruption, greed, and violence they engender (the origin of the word Plutocracy). Finally, a handful of significations of other planets, signs, and houses were reassigned to Pluto: Mars’ rulership of violence, power, and war; Saturn’s associations with mortality, Satan, and control; Scorpio’s ties to the sex organs, obscured & subterranean things, and transformation; and the 8th house’s dominion over death, debt, and taboo.
I’m the most skeptical about these modern reassignments because there are already hundreds or even thousands of years of wisdom based on the traditional rulerships that we can draw from to illuminate these topics. Part of what I love about Hellenistic astrology is that most of the ideas precede Christian hegemony, so I try to think critically about the ideology behind modern associations. For example, the mythological figure of Pluto doesn’t have to do with fun sex, but with rape & violation. It’s conservative & harmful that orgies, for example, are assigned to Pluto by modern authors.
Though the planet may be a recent discovery, the staggering impact of Pluto is undeniable. Pluto seems to amplify the core energy of any planet it interacts with, taking events that would otherwise operate on the level of the personal & everyday and giving them colossal impact & multigenerational significance. It’s not a neutral magnification; Pluto drags the shadow side of that energy out of hiding, and reveals what has been suppressed & neglected.
The abduction of Persephone is one of the most central myths featuring Hades (the name the Greeks used for the underworld god before adopting Pluto sometime in the 4th century BCE) and it’s fundamental to understanding the astrological Pluto. Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (goddess of the harvest) was playing in a meadow when a crevasse split the earth open and Pluto rode out in his underworld chariot, kidnapped her, and dragged her to the underworld to be his queen. It turned out that Zeus had given Persephone away to his brother, a state-sanctioned rape, and when Demeter found out, in an act of revenge & blackmail, she withdrew life from all the plants of the earth, plunging the world into winter & famine. Eventually Zeus agreed that Hades must be forced to release her, but when Hermes arrived to free her, it was discovered she had already eaten the fruit of the underworld, a trangression which was supposed to bind her to that place forever. A compromise is reached between Demeter & Hades: for part of the year Persephone would be a goddess of the earth, growth, and abundance, while for the other part would reign as the queen of Hades, and Demeter would let everything on earth rot & die until her daughter returned again.
Pluto transits (to our charts or globally) are defined by the loss of personal agency. The earth rends open & forces beyond our control erupt outward to take over our lives, reveal things we’ve buried deep, or confront us with our unthinkable fears. Studying Pluto transits to the natal chart can be so revealing about what parts of ourselves & which of our experiences we try to suppress or reject.
On a larger scale, Pluto can tell us about our societal paranoias, guilts, and systems of power. So what should we expect from Pluto in Aquarius? Aquarius is traditionally ruled by Saturn, and it opposes the sun’s only sign, Leo. The light of the sun represents our individuality & self expression, and on a societal level leaders & kings. The revolutionary impulse of Aquarius originates in this opposition (more so than the modern idea that Aquarius is connected to Uranus); in contrast to solar individuality, Aquarius thinks societally, collectively, and structurally. Saturn loves the word “no” and even though many of us struggle with that during personal transits, politically rejection & resistance are fundamental to combating injustice & bringing about change. Pluto was last in Aquarius during the French & Haitian revolutions, events whose Plutonian extremism & Aquarian idealism marked a fundamental shift away from the model of solar Monarchy.
There’s some hope that Pluto in Aquarius could empower anti-colonial movements. The sun is imperial (think “the sun never sets on the British Empire”) and those who are colonized, exterminated, and enslaved are the shadow that Empire tries to suppress, control, exploit and eliminate.
Consider the first word in the Pluto section of the The Rulership Book: A Dictionary of Astrological Correspondences: abduction. Of course this refers to the kidnapping of Persephone, but alien abduction also comes to mind. Aquarius is tied to innovation, the scientific mind, and more recently eccentricity, all of which have contributed to Aquarius’ pop cultural association with aliens. So what is with our cultural obsession with extraterrestrials, and alien abductions or invasions? It’s transparently the shadow of colonial guilt: a group of human-like beings with an unfamiliar skin color arrive with technology we’ve never imagined and use their brutal military capabilities to kidnap, experiment on, and enslave everyone. There couldn’t be a more literal synopsis of colonialism. Colonizers & their beneficiaries live with a deep paranoia that someone might do to them what they did to the rest of the world, and so they’re haunted by the shadow of their own violence.
It doesn’t feel coincidental that Pluto begins its 20 years in Aquarius at a moment when mass migration has finally brought the devastating effects of colonialism & capitalism to the doorstep of those who are its cause. It doesn’t feel like coincidence that this is the moment when Israel, after 75 years of getting away with ethnic cleansing & genocide, has finally been exposed in all its brutality. We also can’t overlook the role that new technology has played in these revelations.
That said, I won’t be excessive in my optimism, especially when it comes to technological innovations. We can’t forget that Israel is literally using AI to autogenerate lists of innocent targets to assassinate. Pluto in Aquarius will inevitably expose the underside of AI, big data, and algorithmic social control. I go way more in-depth about this topic in my essay for COVEN Berlin High priests of Mass Data, or Surveillance is Just Astrology for White Men so check out the whole piece if you want to do a deeper dive. Aquarius can tend towards utopianism, and that’s especially dangerous when it comes to technology. Pluto in Aquarius is going to unveil the ways that innovations made by corporations & states are ultimately designed to strip us of independence and self-determination. As the essay says: “rather than constructing a predictive system for the purpose of social control, the Empire is constructing predictable subjects to achieve the same totalitarian end. They will be able to predict the future because they will be the authors of this future – the gods themselves.” But the only way to refuse these developments and conceive of other ways of living is to see them for what they are. Perhaps we need both the vision & stubbornness of Aquarius and the staggering force of Pluto to shatter the status quo and catalyze real radical transmutation.
