Pluto enters Aquarius

Pluto entering the sign of Aquarius is this year’s headline news, and for good reason. It’s not every day that Pluto enters a new sign. Should we survive to ripe old age (and depending upon the sign of one’s natal Pluto) we would be lucky to see six such ingresses in our lifetime. It’s no trivial transit. 

 

Today, Pluto exits the sign of Capricorn, where it has been posted up since 2008. It’s former passage neatly coincided with the Great Recession and its resulting economic fallout, which necessitated a reexamination of institutional power dynamics in the subsequent years. Pluto is the planet of transformation and regeneration. It presages destruction for the sake of reinvention, death for the sake of rebirth. Much like volcanos, its most “cataclysmic” effects are not the result of happenstance, but of pressure compounding glacially over time, climaxing in terrific fashion. Following a volcanic eruption, the landscape is forever changed. There is no going back to the way things were before. This is the function of Pluto on the culture (perceptibly). It is also the function of Pluto on the mind (psychologically).

 

The last time Pluto made a first foray into Aquarius was April 4, 1777, and it lingered there for just shy of two months before retrograding back into Capricorn until late January 1778. It then remained in the sign of the water bearer until late December, 1798. It’s stay corresponded to the Age of Revolution, which saw the shift from monarchies to representative governments, as well as the Industrial Revolution, with its sweeping technological developments. This tracks to topics in contemporary discourse (consider the spike in AI-related ethics discussions dominating the news cycle since last summer). Aquarius is the sign of the rebel and revolutionary. That history remembers Pluto’s stint in this terrain as especially indicative of “revolution” is no coincidence.