PLUTO in AQUARIUS – 2023-2044

Finally, Pluto, (the planet disqualified as such by astronomers, for Astrology it retains its full name and power), changes signs after traveling through Capricorn since 2008. It will be strolling between 1 degree of Aquarius and 29 degrees of Capricorn, more or less until November 2024. This will be its transition process to the last Air sign:

It enters Aquarius on March 23, 2023

Retrogrades back to Capricorn on June 11, 2023

Re-enters Aquarius on January 21, 2024

Retrogrades back to Capricorn on September 1, 2024

Re-enters Aquarius, this time to stay, on November 19, 2024

Briefly enters Pisces on March 9, 2043

Retrogrades back to Aquarius on August 31, 2043

Finally enters Pisces to stay in this sign on January 19, 2044

Due to its intensely oval orbit (about 248 years) around the Sun, like many of the planets or dwarf planets beyond Neptune, the duration of Pluto in the signs varies dramatically in each sign. It spent about 12 years in Libra and Scorpio (between 1971 and 1995), but it takes over 31 years to travel through the sign of its detriment, Taurus (the last time between 1852 and 1883), something that most of us who are alive will never experience, except for today’s teenagers, since the next time will be in 2098. It has been changing signs in its fastest mode, but now it begins to slow down in its journey through the zodiac and this time it will spend 20 years in this sign of the Water Bearer until it gradually approaches its slowest point in Taurus and Gemini, practically in the next century. Therefore, the sign through which this little “dwarf planet” moves marks an entire generation. For example, I belong to the Pluto in Leo generation, where it was between 1939-1957, and therefore I will experience the opposition of Pluto to itself in 2037, coinciding with the return of Uranus (hopefully!) at the age of 84. Something that excites me a lot. Those born in the early 80’s are experiencing the first square to their natal position of Pluto.

It was a very young Percival Lowell who searched for a planet beyond Neptune between 1905 and 1916, but Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930, by American astronomer Clyde William Tombaugh (1906-1997) from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and he found it in the sign of Cancer. Pluto is smaller than Earth, and for the last 30 years, Pluto has actually been within Neptune’s orbit, but now it is moving away, and in 2107 it will be almost 50 times farther from the Sun than Earth.

Pluto, as the highest octave of Mars, represents psychic, evolutionary, instinctual energy, an almost pre-human collective memory of our evolution on this planet. Pluto is the Roman name for the Greek god of death and the underworld, Hades, so it is related to death and renewal, regeneration, evolution, and transformation. Pluto is also correlated with the discovery of nuclear energy.

Looking back, long before we humans discovered it in 1930 and became aware of this energy and archetype, it was already part of the suburbs of our solar system, though invisible to our eyes. As it takes Pluto about two and a half centuries to make a complete orbit around the Sun or the Zodiac, we can look back in time to see what was happening during its last passage through Aquarius. As we know, times will never be the same as the past because not only do we evolve (although sometimes it may not be noticeable), but we also discover new dimensions of our consciousness, and moreover, the Sky is never the same.

But… During its passage through Aquarius between 1532 – 1553, the Spanish arrived in Peru for example, with the Bible in hand, educating the natives based on the Roman Catholic Apostolic religion, and eliminating everything they did not understand and feared. In search of gold, they found silver, and in the process, they practically destroyed the Inca culture, not only with gunfire but also with the viruses of the common cold and measles, among others.

At the same time, Henry VIII sent the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church packing, creating the Church of England to be able to marry Anne Boleyn (whom he later ordered to be beheaded for treason), and thus send Catherine of Aragon home. Around that time, precisely in September 1533, the future Queen Elizabeth I was born, who would later reign for almost 40 years and, of course, was born with Pluto in Aquarius in her 1st house, square her Moon in Taurus, and opposing the Saturn-Uranus conjunction in her 7th house; she never married.

The most recent transit of Pluto through Aquarius was in 1777 – 1797 while Uranus was in Gemini and Neptune was leaving Virgo to enter Libra.

The United States declared its independence from England in 1776 under Pluto in Capricorn, but the Revolutionary War lasted until 1783. In that transition from Capricorn to Aquarius (like today), the Constitution of the United States was established in 1787.

Meanwhile, the French Revolution began in 1789 with the overthrow of the monarchy, the assassination of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the abolition of the feudal system, and the declaration of the “Rights of Man.”

With the Industrial Revolution, steam power revolutionized transportation and the textile industry. Today, it is Artificial Intelligence that will transform our lives.

Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, and John Michell published his theory of black holes in 1784.

In 1782, the first hot air balloon flight by the Montgolfier brothers took place, and the metric system was developed during the French Revolution and formally defined in 1795.

In 1796, the first successful smallpox vaccine was developed.

Lavoisier discovered the composition of air in 1778.

On the other hand, in Asia, China began to expand to become the Empire it is today, in a complete cycle of Pluto.

But what does this new passage of Pluto through Aquarius bring us?

Firstly, this Aquarian energy began in 1998 when Uranus and Neptune met in Aquarius, forming a wide conjunction with about 8 degrees of orb. From 2003, Uranus entered Pisces, and Neptune continued in Aquarius, positioning them in mutual reception, meaning Uranus was in the sign ruled by Neptune and vice versa, Neptune in the sign ruled by Uranus, reinforcing the Aquarius (technology) – Pisces (shared by all, globally) combination. In December 2020, we had the great Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction, which as we know, concluded and began three cycles, one of 20 years, another of 200 years, and one of 800 years. This conjunction truly detonated and opened the great portal to Aquarius and everything it is bringing to our lives and will continue to do so in the coming years of Pluto in Aquarius.

What is already indisputable is that machines are surpassing us by far, to unimaginable extremes. Nowadays, with ChatGPT and DALL-E or BingChat, we can have conversations, create projects, paintings, videos, write essays, poetry, in less than a minute through these platforms that only grow richer minute by minute as we use them, created by Artificial Intelligence. This brings us a real challenge regarding Education, and the need to transform it so that our students don’t get bored, due to the fact that what is still tought in schools and colleges over several years can be obtained from machines in minutes. Brings to our attention the issue of academic integrity. Who remembers the archaic multiplication tables? Calculators have been doing it for years. Who sits down to calculate an astrological chart? The machine does it in less than a minute. The human brain takes about 25 years to develop to a university level, and the machine only takes a year and a half. The more we use it, the more data it accumulates, the faster and more precisely it works. While they still have accuracy limitations, as we use them, they will be corrected, as that is something they already do: self-correct. If you correct them, they thank you and proceed to correct themselves. Isn’t it scary? Well, the truth is that if you’re not scared, it’s because you don’t understand these programs.

As Alan Watts said: “If you think you understand the impact of AI, you don’t understand, and you haven’t been instructed enough. If you know you don’t understand, then you really understand.”

When Prometheus stole Fire from the Gods to give it to us, mere mortals, we made an incredible quantum leap into a new era. Yet he got badly punished by the Gods. Now Prometheus brings us Artificial Intelligence, but I wonder if he is very happy about it. Humans will always use these tools for progress and Good, but also for Evil. It is our nature. Deception, manipulation, misinformation, all of this will be on our work table with the possibilities that these technologies and AI offers us. Prometheus was punished by Zeus, for stealing Fire; these young people, these modern Prometheus who bring us AI, will also be punished?. Who will impose the punishment?

An absolutely important aspect of Pluto’s entry into Aquarius is that from the moment it enters this sign on March 23rd, it will already be forming a T-square to the Nodal angle, that is, to the South and North Nodes of the Moon. The Nodes are already moving through the end of their journey through Taurus-Scorpio, but since these move clockwise, when they enter a sign, they do so at the last degrees and leave it at the first degrees. Therefore, from now on, they will be between 0 and 5 degrees of Taurus, and as Pluto moves through 0 and 1 degrees of Aquarius, the Nodes will be at 0 and 1 degrees of Taurus. This will be exact on August 5th at 28º Aries-Libra (the Nodes) and 28º Capricorn (Pluto). So between April and November, this aspect will be very powerful.

In the past…

• In 1534 and 1776 when Pluto left Capricorn to enter Aquarius, the Nodes were aligned with this transition at the end of Cancer-Capricorn, entering Leo-Aquarius when coinciding with Pluto.

This time, connected by a T-square, the dilemma we face is about our evolution as humans. The Lunar Nodes direct our gaze towards our evolution, just like Pluto. The latter speaks of the evolution of the human species, while the Nodes present us with the dilemma of whether we have learned from the past or not. This is a collective evolutionary process, but of course, if these degrees trigger something in your natal chart, this energy “descends” or personalizes in your life. On a personal level, it marks a period in your life where you struggle between letting go of the past, habits, relationships, beliefs, mentality, to embrace the new, possibly so new that it causes a lot of anxiety. At the collective level, it is obviously our leap towards a Humanity very different from everything we have known. Man will no longer be able to function without the machine, in a transition that still needs a lot of regulation, or a lot of Saturn, as we say in Astrology. Technology is here to stay, and we must learn to manage it in a way that does not destroy us in the process. This is a “cosmic leap” of dimensions never experienced before, where humans begin a relationship with machines that will make our first encounters with mobile phones and the internet seem like kindergarten. Dangerous? Yes. Magnificent? Also. The benefits are obvious, but we all know that human stupidity has no limits. Therefore, danger travels with us forever. How will we use this technology? And… will we have time to educate the educators (teachers and professors) to adapt to it and better guide their students? So… Just as Pluto in its connection with the Nodes, presents us with the idea of evolving and more than anything if we have learned from the past, so I wonder: have we really learned?

These are the challenges we have on the table as a species, not as a particular nation or ethnic group. Will we have the ability to inform ourselves and learn in time? The answers lie in the hands of the creators of these technologies, who are between 30 and 40 years old. The question of why create a technology that is potentially so dangerous? Let’s not forget that it was with Pluto about to enter Leo at the end of the 1930s when physicist Enrico Fermi first demonstrated that neutrons could split atoms, and in 1942 with Pluto recently entered Leo, Fermi achieved the first nuclear chain reaction. A transition exactly opposite to today’s. By the way, in 1943 the Nodes also aligned with Pluto in the early degrees of Leo. And what did we do? The atomic bomb. And in 1945, we tested it in Japan. Not only once but twice, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Artificial Intelligence, as magnificent as it may seem, and I count myself among its most fervent admirers and followers, confronts us with a profound dilemma, and that is that it can potentially end in disaster if we do not inform ourselves, if we do not step into the 21st century with consciousness. Above all, the most powerful antidote we have is precisely our humanity. As I heard somewhere, in a K-drama: “From the moment we stop asking ourselves why or for what purpose we exist, the romance of life dies.” What will protect us from all danger is our ability to continue questioning the reason for our existence, our spirituality, and our ability to appreciate the Beauty and Romance of Life. If we lose the Romance or our love for Beauty, then we will indeed be lost. Nature, the Goddess, and all the other gods, give us a planet, a home of immeasurable Beauty. The wisdom of Nature is also something that surpasses us and is difficult for us to understand. In it, everything finds its balance and its answer. It self-generates, RE-generates, evolves, and grows without wars or geopolitical discussions. If we don’t bother it, it recovers quickly, as we saw with the Covid lockdown. As Sam Altman (one of the creators of ChatGPT) says: “Covid showed us irrevocably that we (Humanity) can adapt to big changes much faster than we realize”.

These and many other questions are brought to us by Pluto in Aquarius. We enter an Air dimension, and we will have to get used to leaving the territory of the element of Earth (possessions, properties, cars, etc.) to enter a much deeper mental existential dilemma that can result in the struggle for the survival of our species. Will we be able to do it? As John Lennon (a Libra) said in the 70s: “Imagine, a world without possessions… I wonder if you can”…

Pluto (wealth, evolution) in Aquarius (group collaboration) brings us the possibility of finding a solution to the terrible financial imbalance in the world. It suggests a world where we can all collaborate to enrich ourselves in a more egalitarian way. Aquarius is indeed an Air sign, where the mental process takes priority over the physical and material, and where the group is more relevant than the individual. It is a sign ruled by Uranus and Saturn, so the social and transpersonal aspects become more relevant. Pluto tends to expose dirty laundry, secrets, irregularities, and dishonesty. In Capricorn from 2008 until now, it has made clear the corruption of those in power. Now it will do the same with everything related to Aquarius, including all this technology and those who control it. It will put an emphasis on friendship and collaboration not only on a personal level but also between countries and cultures as never before, so this may be the best gift that this transit of Pluto in the sign of the Water Bearer leaves us.

This transit of Pluto in Aquarius poses the question: What makes us human? Our curiosity, our ability to fall in love and dedicate ourselves to something or someone, protect and nurture what we love, all these things make us human. Embracing these qualities and using them to guide our actions in the age of technology and collaboration will be crucial in navigating the challenges brought by Pluto in Aquarius. By staying true to our humanity and promoting collaboration and equality, we can work towards a more balanced and just world, where technology serves as a tool for the betterment of all rather than a source of division, danger or extinction.

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