Pluto reenters Aquarius conjunct the Sun

Pluto is shifting from Capricorn to Aquarius and the news is littered with scandals coming to light- the dirt is being stirred up from the depths. Some knew all about these stories already, but for others, it is shocking and new. There is genuine anger at the injustices perpetrated often at first in the name of doing good or by institutions,  governments and corporations.

This movement is major and cathartic for a reason, though Pluto dipped his toe into Aquarius last year and we got a taste of with the massive obsession with AI that was boosted and promoted everywhere. Everyone loves the convenience of AI, but consider how it will transform the point at which the human mind and the machine mind start to share an organ- the brain. The ability to tell truth from falsehood has already been  diluted to the point of obscurity due to Neptune being in Pisces since 2011. But this trend towards the cyborg human is further muddied and the slippage is very telling, moving fast, and possibly being exploited by the big tech companies.

Yuval Noah Harari declared that humans are ‘hackable animals’ and bio-hacking using graphene technology is now on the cards. We will have to keep a sharp eye on how that develops if we want to retain any sovereignty. In fact, it calls for us to redefine what being ‘human’ really means and what it does not. It might not include becoming a hybrid.

The Sun and Pluto conjunction happens every year – not so remarkable, yet always intense- but this is different as it is pointing to so many things. The Sun at 0° of Aquarius and Pluto at 29° 59′ of Capricorn so it has a bit of business to to finish off. Then early morning of the 21st Pluto also enters Aquarius.

It’s such  powerful conjunction and stirs up deep feelings. But it is trine to the Moon which just left Taurus and entered Gemini, so this ‘moment’ is rich with potential, and moment useful for those inclined to do astrological magic, perhaps especially for those who wish to wield  those darker powers against others?  Who knows, but like any power, it is neutral, and can be directed towards beneficial results too.

Pluto will spend nine months in Aquarius until 2nd Sept then dip back into Capricorn until the 19^th November. That phase will the be the last reprise, the final percussion blast in the monumental symphony. It will wrap up all the narratives from its time in Capricorn and from then on we’ll fully be in the Pluto in Aquarius era for 20 years.

Pluto is the dark and mysterious one. Not everyone agrees on his valency, even his status as a planet, and what that means in a chart, but he’s otherwise known as Hades, king of Hell, in his Greek form. He ruled the Hell realm and was envious of his brother Jupiter but this realm is essentially the ‘underworld’ and all that is ‘hidden’ like the occult.

For that reason, he’s also associated with Plouton the minerals found underground and so with wealth and money – so there could be a few pointers here about how to make genuine wealth. It turns out even money guru Napoleon Hill and his Think and Grow Rich (1937) had many previous businesses that were in fact fraudulent. He was not what he claimed but was good at his own PR.

Hopefully, most people don’t need warnings to be wary of the deceit of money and ‘manifestation’ gurus. They also operate in hidden and clandestine ways as another aspect of Pluto was that he was gifted with a magic helmet that allowed him to be ‘invisible’. Francis Bacon, the philosopher, not the painter, said of it that it “maketh the politic man go invisible, is secrecy in the counsel, and celerity in the execution.”  Big money operates under the cloak of darkness and invisibility and perhaps it is time for this old template to change.

Pluto symbolises the unconscious psyche and that’s why he affects us all at the collective level so much too as that’s the layer underneath where all the archetypes live. Think of Pluto as a marker of the zeitgeist- we don’t often notice its machinations until it’s completely done with a sign and we are in a completely different place. It might not have a personal impact on you. It depends where it is in your natal chart, and if we already have a strong Plutonic signature. But we’ll be dragged along with the trends, and because of everyone else feeling the change in perception.

It helps to know your archetypes. I am glad I did a thorough study of archetypes starting back in 2016 because without that understanding, all that has happened over the past three years would be so open to misinterpretation. But seen through the eyes of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, as Heroes’ journeys, or the long process of individuation, it can start to make sense. So the archetype of Pluto is of deep transformation- of personal alchemy. It asks us to value our intuition more and to go through the painful ritual initiation, not to avoid it. We have been forged in the fire and come out stronger because it didn’t kill us.

There is all this intensity around Pluto and the Sun, illuminating life purpose and hidden motives. It can  plunge us into a deep inner space. For some this might be challenging and could trigger sensitivities, fears or even a breakdown of faith or trust in the system?  But it brings psychological acuity too, a sharper mind, more depth of thought. We can process a lot more and to a more profound level.

Pluto operates best in a the trance like doing Yoga Nidra, or just being still and allowing the mind to settle which can be transformative as what surfaces is the stuff we know we must deal with. That could be  loneliness, isolation, horror, envy, resentment, anger, hatred, polarisation, victimisation, and all these feelings usually come with a heap of projection blaming others. That’s unless we spot the shadow elements and decide to say- No, I’m not going to do it that way anymore and I’m going to channel this energy into something new.

That might lead towards research, serious reading, thinking, planning and making space for creativity of a new kind of action along with a new-found tolerance, acceptance and understanding of your tattered psyche. It means to realise that all humans have foibles- they’ve made mistakes- to forgive is not to exonerate, but just that some know how to work around those errors, and some just get stuck, so they end up spinning on the same point in their habitual projections. During one life people can genuinely change from point A to point B but once that new stage in life is reached, point A can never be retrieved again. That’s very Pluto.

During this time the synchronicities might be super charged with meaning- just trivial incidents in your environment take on a whole new significance. They always were  like this, but it is easier to spot them now and Pluto with the Sun brings penetrating insight and the psychological gaze. There could be strange phenomena happening- disturbances- or a sudden shift into seeing the universe in way that could not be seen before. In Colin Wilson’s book ‘The Occult’ (2015) he says that poets are the ones through which the universe speak. Paranormal experiences comes more naturally to them, and their minds are, like Robert Graves already in touch with the White Goddess, or a more lunar, off-beat perception: “It is important for us to feel that there is another kind of knowledge, quite different from the logical laws that govern everyday existence, strange realities beyond the walls that surround us.”

You might be thinking about death a lot, doing your will, and thinking what comes after me? Who will remember what traces of yourself you leave behind?  What is memory anyway and how soon it dissipates. You might think about loss and change, illness and suffering, and how we have transformed these darker elements of the self over the years but never realised all that we’ve learned and how far we’ve come plus all the people we left behind.

No one escapes this no matter how much positive spin and spiritual bypassing they attempt to do. It is very easy to see the people who have not done any work on themselves at all- and sadly,  it is often the ones who claim to be so developed and progressed, who understand all the truths, who have ‘seen through’ to the core of things, but are still completely blindsided by their own more unprocessed nature, or just never admitted it to themselves because they thought they were ‘nice’ people. People who don’t even see their own shadow but who are driven by hate and envy.

Whatever construct holds us together was only held loosely by threads of shared beliefs. Civilisation would be a good idea -if it existed as Ghandi said. It is not a given. Ditto democracy which is not as desirable as it seems. Some can see these problems clearly and know what to do, but some are only just starting out. And Pluto demands a sacrifice to go through hell and get out alive. People have to do the work or they just keep circling around in same toxic mess we’ve always been in normalising the abnormal.

But you also may be thinking about new life, children and babies and their future and thinking what will life be like for them in the coming years. Since Friday while out and about, I was suddenly surrounded by children, really young children chattering away on the bus, yelping, laughing, playing, twisting or on the pavements squirming in their prams- just being children and doing what children do- blithely unaware that politics is so poisonous. That’s the bliss of childhood.  It was a kind of augury that points to a whole heap of new possibilities of hope for the future. That shifts seeing the Death card to the Fool card in Tarot as we step into Aquarius. It really lightened my mood to see all these children. They are the ones who will carry the baton for us once we are gone.

I wasn’t even going to talk about Pluto at all.  I preferred to remain silent these days, but then I encountered this statement online and had to share it as it captures that feeling of deep change, when we move on from previous stages in life.

The Pluto Sun conjunction has a few interesting factors that could shift it towards more helpful energies. It is trine Trine to Chiron in Aries which is the empowerment wound, the existential threat, so it could illuminate feelings about that and help restore some confidence. Chiron moving to conjunct the North Node in Aries is also pointing to that we follow a new path of healing is indicated here that leads to a stronger more resilient self all readied up for the challenges to come from Pluto in Aquarius

Mars is still out of bounds until January 25th, so a bit of a wild card here. Traditional astrologers still use Mars as the ruler of Scorpio and Pluto can be considered the higher octave of Mars- it can be seen through more than one lens. Uranus is about to move forward too a couple of days later, so we can expect new and sudden insights to come through. This year is getting off to a phenomenal start. While the energies seem heavy, they load is lightened and supported by so many other beautiful aspects. .

I always keep an eye on asteroid Eros as he’s more of an indicator of what’s going on than you might think- a glorified Mars energy  representing vitality and inclined to be mischievous. He’s conjunct Neptune right now at 25° of Pisces, so what might that mean? Sex is utterly sublimated by any link to Neptune and Pisces, or the 12th House, but can also be deceptive, or drug-infested, and overly idealistic, but always imaginative, rich in visual imagery, like an infinite mirror in which you can lose yourself totally if not careful to stay grounded.

But Eros is also sextile to the Sun and Moon in a perfect balance, which stabilises it but it is also square to Venus which is near the Galactic Centre along with asteroid Varda- ‘queen of the stars’.

Eros just happens to be conjunct asteroid Karma too; and even Kama, the Indian Eros, is in Pisces too, just 10° away. It all adds the power to go way beyond the usual meanings to a more Mytho-Poetic level.

It is on this heightened level that we may fly through the electromagnetic flow of  Pluto in Aquarius more easily.