The Planetary Archetype of Pluto
Arguably the most powerful and consequential planet in the astrological pantheon, Pluto, is departing the earthy, industrious sign of Capricorn after a 16-year stint and entering the airy, humanitarian sign of Aquarius on November 17, 2024, where it will be until 2044.
Pluto’s previous sojourn through Aquarius ended in 1798, and Pluto will not return to the sign of Aquarius again until the year 2254, facts which indicate the vast scope of this distant planet’s reach and depth. The people of 1798 would be bewildered by today’s Earth, and we simply could not conceive what Earth would be like in 230 years. The disorientations of such time travel reflect the transpersonal nature of Pluto and the other two outer planets, Uranus and Neptune, who embody cosmic patterns of experience that transcend entirely our individuality and exceed our everyday expectations of how reality is or can be.
Pluto’s scale is massive, and its force and impact are monumental. Pluto represents the experience of rebirth, expressing life’s primal desire to survive, exist, and persist. It has obsessive and compulsive qualities, and Pluto is hidden from view yet operating in one’s life to significant effect. It is the underworld itself, which, as a psychological domain, is largely misunderstood in industrialized societies. The transpersonal experience of the underworld is seen as something to be avoided and medicated away rather than respected, included, and supported in appropriate ways.
Pluto represents what gets repressed in the quest for “the good” or “being good,” which is a particularly tricky feature of human consciousness and tendencies. Pluto takes us into very tender territory, and learning to work with the influence of outer planetary alignments is necessarily humbling. It invites us to step closer to our wholeness and into the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth.
Pluto in Aquarius Throughout History
To consider what an incoming astrological transit might bring, it is helpful to cast our vision back in history for previous archetypal correlations. Pluto's many historical examples in Aquarius correspond to the transformation of beliefs about the source of truth and the control of knowledge and information. For instance, Copernicus published his heliocentric theory of the solar system in 1543 during Pluto in Aquarius, which led to the separation of the human religious impulse from science. The gradual segregation of humanity’s different ways of knowing, in service of increasing power and control, ripples out into many more consequences that industrialized societies are still grappling with today, such as a mistrust of intuition and the bodily senses in assessing truth.
The most recent passage of Pluto through Aquarius, 1777 to 1798, brought additional significant astronomical and technological developments, such as the discovery of the planet Uranus with an improved telescope in 1781, breaking the barrier of sight to reveal something beyond the seven visible planets. The Scientific Revolution also emerged in this period, as the cultural process of separating religion and science continued. At the same time, the American and French Revolutions for modern democratic governance overthrew the idea of the divine rule of monarchs. They advanced a new idea of self-governance of the people, for the people, and by the people.
Aquarius is a sign of the masses, of humanity's collective, and at the same time, it is also a sign of the eccentric, unique individual. Just as with the idea of democracy, Aquarius contains the paradox that there is no collective without the individual, and our innumerable individual triumphs, joys, foibles, sufferings, and celebrations of life comprise the process of evolution and enact the collective level experience.
Both Pluto’s and Aquarius’ relationship to the collective level of experience relates to facets of the modern process of industrialization. Aquarius relates to new inventions and technological developments, which Pluto magnifies on a massive collective scale. The Industrial Revolution, which is the conversion of manufacturing to a machine basis and away from making items by hand, experienced rapid advances in the 1777 to 1798 period, such as the invention of the steam engine, the fully automated flour mill, and interchangeable parts for an early version of assembly line work.
Not only do such significant developments displace and rearrange the masses economically and geographically in the impersonal way that Pluto operates, but they also create the conditions for larger and larger populations or masses of people until humanity has become its potent geological force. Where Pluto symbolizes the natural world, we can expect the impact of the collective of the human species to be noticeably amplified while Pluto travels through Aquarius.
Pluto in Aquarius in Present Trends
Technology + Governance
The idea of a Fourth Industrial Revolution is currently under discussion. It is characterized as a fusion of technologies that blurs the lines between the physical, biological, and digital spheres. It suggests that Pluto's current passage through Aquarius will include questions around “Who has the body?” and “What is a body?” Perhaps equal measures utopian and dystopian, the descriptions of a proposed Fourth Industrial Revolution bear all the Plutonian hallmarks of seeking control and ever greater power for humanity to exercise.
Along those lines, Pluto’s time in Aquarius includes the development and ramifications of artificial intelligence, decentralized banking and finance, and blockchain technologies. These have profound potential for abuse in the pursuit of power, prestige, and control, and as Pluto’s typical mode suggests, we can expect struggles around implementation, access, and knowledge.
With every lurch in new and innovative directions, resistance occurs. Pluto says everything wants to live, even that which has served its purpose and no longer fits in a very changed environment. This is part of the archetypal Plutonic power struggle, and judging from history, we can expect some far-reaching decisions on the question of what it means to be human—an idealistic Aquarian preoccupation—along with consequential reactions against some of those decisions.
Will authoritarian forms of commerce or government that anonymize and treat people as interchangeable units serve modern ideas of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful? Or will the relatively recent impulse towards self-governance and the ideals of democracy, or some evolution of those ideals, persist and assert itself? We see both trends in previous cycles of Pluto in Aquarius, and these questions are already being asked with increasing urgency worldwide.
Other-Than-Human Beings, Psi + Psychedelics
Pluto carries ambivalence, representing forces that operate beyond our comprehension, with mysterious roots and often distant consequences. Aquarius has been associated in pop culture with extraterrestrial lifeforms, particularly given the fact that people with a strong Aquarius tint to their chart tend to see far into the future and beyond conventional ideas or understanding. With surprising admissions already emerging from the U.S. government, Pluto in Aquarius favors disclosing information about extraterrestrial beings and contact with them.
An interest in such topics, as well as psi phenomena (such as extrasensory perception), parapsychology, and the actual existence of all sorts of other than human beings, both seen and unseen, is already gaining more popularity, particularly as the growing use of psychedelic plants and compounds dissolves the consensus reality that both Pluto and Aquarius have no trouble challenging. Thus, Pluto in Aquarius favors such non-ordinary experiences, which are becoming more acceptable to talk about. As more individuals have a direct experience of the intelligence of other than human beings through psychedelic experiences, the broader historical question of the source of truth and the value of various ways of knowing is amplified.
Important Dates in the 2020s for Pluto in Aquarius
None of the archetypal potentials of this astrological influence are likely to happen overnight. Pluto’s slow movement reflects the depth of impact and the wide spread of its consequences across space-time. The historical examples cited above are also tied to the more frequently occurring alignments between the planets, which can provide a valuable map for cultural history and our vital participation in making that history.
Uranus Enters Gemini, Neptune Enters Aries, Pluto Enters Aquarius
2025 looks to be a crossroads year on the collective level and the beginning of new eras for so many individuals. All transpersonal outer planets—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—are shifting into new zodiac signs in 2025. By 2026, all three will move through those new signs without retrograde into previous signs. Pluto enters Aquarius for keeps on November 17, 2024, Neptune first enters Aries on March 30, 2025, and Uranus makes its first ingress to Gemini on July 7, 2025. This indicates a strong tonal change, as more considerable cosmic influences push into extroverted signs, suggesting that much of what was previously covert will be more overt.
Uranus Trine Pluto + Sextile Neptune
There will be relatively few dynamic aspects to Pluto from outer planets while Pluto is in Aquarius. Still, they are incredibly potent, carving the collective spirit of the times into the anima mundi, or Soul of the World. Revolutionary trickster Uranus is making a long trine aspect to Pluto, at its greatest potency from August 2023 to May 2030, and peaking in influence from 2026 through 2028. This soft aspect between the archetypal combination that brings social upheaval and radical breakthroughs has correlated to high times for the upper classes. It tends to transmit a gentler disquiet with social norms than the more challenging square aspect of Uranus and Pluto that we experienced from 2007 to 2020. The radical new perspective of Uranus is also making a soft sextile to mystical Neptune from August 2023 to June 2029, providing support for integrating and grounding the spiritual expansion and experimentation of the 1990s brought forth by the previous Uranus conjunction to Neptune. The sextile between these two supports the seeker’s spiritual revelations and the quest for more perfect unions.
Saturn Conjunct Neptune
For the shorter 3- and 4-year outer planetary aspects of these 20 years, their manifestation will be heavily influenced by events within the ongoing Saturn-Neptune conjunction (February 2024 to May 2027) and the later tense square aspect between Saturn and Pluto (May 2027 - May 2030). Collectively, the Saturn-Neptune archetypal complex brings a capacity to discern the truth beyond the surface appearance. There is an eye for shadow, of seeing and speaking the unspeakable or the hidden. Many mystics have this combination, with Saturn as material reality and Neptune as spiritual reality, coming together to form a holistic and manifold vision of what is real. Saturn-Neptune can also present a very skeptical perspective that has trouble accepting life's non-rational and immaterial Neptunian dimensions, asking for hard proof of phenomena that do not reveal themselves under the Saturnian mode of examination.
On the more challenging end of the spectrum, Saturn-Neptune corresponds to a heightened awareness of inner and outer boundaries, disease, outbreaks, and a heightened perception of vulnerability to invisible invasions. A free-floating (Neptune) and undefinable fear (Saturn) can permeate the collective atmosphere. This planetary combo also correlates to water-based disasters, the experience or realization of toxicity, and tsunamis. These can be times of collective disillusionment and gaining a better grasp on reality by seeing through illusions of consensus reality.
Saturn Square Pluto
Rolling into Saturn square Pluto around May 2027 until May 2030 will recall the most recent alignment of these two heavy hitters who conjoined from October 2018 to December 2021. Saturn-Pluto brings contraction and constraints, like a cosmic birth canal. When Pluto's evolutionary vitality and persistent power meet Saturn, it meets its limits. The question will arise: How can Pluto’s striving to survive and persist be oriented to Saturn’s demands, limits, and problems? This is likely to be a sobering period of time for unduly idealistic orientations to technological advances and often correlates to periods of history when groups of people came together to overcome daunting odds or achieved something monumental together. Saturn-Pluto can be thought of as the Great (Pluto) Work (Saturn) and correlates to the vital needs of the material plane, but Pluto in Aquarius' influence indicates an essential role for our ideas, our minds, and the conceptual in how we respond to and shape material reality and relationships.
The Quest for Wholeness
This current cycle of Pluto in Aquarius, which first peeked its head in on March 2023 and now continues through June 2044, will contain surprises for everyone, whether we might feel optimistic or foreboding about the future. Particularly in astrological correlations involving Pluto, many crucial events and experiences cannot be foreseen since various players can work out of public sight or major events unfold many years without widespread knowledge. The importance or significance of even widely known events may not be recognized until years later. This is the nature of a transpersonal process like Pluto, which reaches into dimensions far beyond human concepts.
Our concepts about ourselves, the world, and our progress or evolution typically strive for coherence and completeness. Yet, Pluto’s connection to the birth/death/rebirth mystery reminds us that for every gain, something is lost. Aquarius is so focused on the future, aspirations, and ideals that it is easy to overlook the loss side of the equations of transformation or progress.
Our ability to admit, consider, and be with the wholeness of consequences—the loss and the undesirable, as much as the positive and desirable—reflects the sincerity of our acknowledgment of Pluto’s power and provides the possibility of its integration. Only then might we be able to reflect honestly on the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, power, and connection:
To what end?
What are we truly achieving?
