In March 2023, Pluto will enter Aquarius. When a slow-moving outer planet enters a new sign, it signals a shift in the collective. Pluto will spend 18 months going in and out of the sign before he enters for the duration. In the following year, 2025, Neptune will enter Aries and Uranus will enter Gemini. So there is a big shift in the collective coming up in the next few years. These currents can take a while to be observable, since they are underlying. But maybe not so this time, because Saturn, the planet that makes things happen, will be conjoining Neptune as he enters Aries (while aspecting both Pluto and Uranus.)
So that is the wider planetary context for Pluto’s Ingress into Aquarius. It can’t really be treated in isolation, though I will be picking out some trends that belong particularly to Pluto.
Pluto is Lord of the Underworld. He is also a god of riches: psychologically, the riches we find under a Pluto transit when we allow ourselves to be taken apart in his realm. The outer world is not so subtle. The element of choice does not seem to be there so much with collectives. It is more like astrology as fate. Though what will actually happen, the events themselves, are nearly impossible to predict. But we can get a sense of the shapes coming our way.
Pluto as god of riches describes the state of the economy. When he entered Capricorn in early 2008, there was a big stock-market fall, prefiguring the upcoming financial crisis, within a few days of his Ingress into the sign. Who says astrology doesn’t work? It doesn’t, however, work scientifically: each event is individual. The gods grant us a bit of their magic, and then slip away if we try to turn it into a repeatable test.
The chart for Pluto’s Ingress into Capricorn, set for what could be described as the capital of the world economy, New York, is powerful: Pluto and Venus conjunct the IC. Angular planets manifest strongly, they are the ones to look for in events charts. And this stellium shows well the crisis and upheaval in the economy that ensued, and the need for a paradigm shift.
Pluto's Ingress into Capricorn 25th Jan 2008 |
Up till 2008, the world had been in a period of free trade, globalisation and excess, described by expansive Pluto in Sagittarius. Under structured and grounded Capricorn, it was time to redress the imbalances: bring in some of the rules that had been cast aside and which led to the crisis; and in the case of America particularly, put up some necessary trade barriers between itself and the world’s other big economy, China. Pluto in Capricorn has also been a time when the new big driver of the world economy, the tech industry based around the internet, has become big business, which is very Capricornian. But also a period in which legislation began to be passed, turning the internet from its initial Sagittarian wild-west culture, into something operating in a regulated way, within the rules of society. But even now, for example, getting these international companies to pay their taxes is still only in its early stages, initiated towards the end of President Trump’s term in office. For all his glaring faults, Trump governed as a fearless businessman, and was the first to dare to take on both China and big tech, moves which the succeeding administration has not reversed. This was described for Trump personally by the transit of Pluto in Cap opposite his natal Venus, which rules his Taurean MC.
So now we have Pluto entering Aquarius. What might this mean economically? Each sign grows out of the preceding one. These signs are different in element and cardinality, and can seem like chalk and cheese. So maybe we tend to overlook their relationship in favour of signs that have more in common. In the present case, Capricorn is the sign that sets the rules of society, that asks us to master its traditions and become a functioning member within it. Aquarius, at its best, has earned the right to re-invent those rules, through spending the years necessary to master them first. Aquarius, in a sense at its worst, is just iconoclastic, without understanding the value of tradition. Even then, however, it usually has a point. The young rebel is this type of Aquarian.
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America declared Independence from Britain in July 1776, 9 months before Pluto last entered Aquarius. It was ahead of the game. And it was making a transition from monarchy (Capricorn) to democracy based on equality (Aquarius). America’s best kept secret, however, is that it has never put the longing for monarchy to bed: this can be seen in the way that her Presidents and their families are treated as royalty; and the high degree of celebrity status given to members of the British royal family. So in this sense, America made the shift from Capricorn to Aquarius in maybe the only way a collective can: by swinging from one extreme to the other. 250 years later, she is still living with those poles within herself. Maybe this issue will be addressed again in some form or other as Pluto enters Aquarius? Maybe super-celebrity Prince Harry living within her shores gives the US that chance? It is a tension that Harry also carries within himself. Through Megan, his African-American wife, raised through her marriage to the peak of the social hierarchy, Harry also carries America’s uneasy relationship with part of its own shadow. This is as the US completes her first Pluto Return. Pluto is the shadow.
Pluto's Ingress into Aquarius 23rd March 2023 |
The chart for Pluto’s Ingress into Aquarius in March, set for New York and hence for the world economy, does not have planets on Angles, and therefore we probably won’t see immediate dramatic events, as we did when Pluto entered Capricorn.
The North
Node, however, is on the Ascendant and conjunct Venus in Taurus, a Venus-ruled
sign that is related to the economy. And square to a prominent 10th
House Pluto. An obvious interpretation of Pluto in Aquarius is the tech
(Aquarius) economy (Pluto.) The tech economy does seem to be the future, particularly
as, through Artificial Intelligence, it will come to swallow up many of the
traditional industries and professions. The retreat we have seen in tech stocks
in recent months may begin to reverse as the end of the current post-covid
recession comes into sight, and we again allow ourselves to get optimistic
about the future of tech. There may be significant events (North Node) emerging
out of the tech world (Pluto in Aquarius) that are of importance for the economy
(Venus rising in Taurus). Perhaps ChatGPT has given us advance notice? Pluto is square to Venus, which suggests economic challenge: but it is wide and separating, so it may not be too big a deal.
What is perhaps most noticeable about this chart is the 12th House emphasis containing a New Moon in Aries. This speaks strongly of a new (Aries) collective dream (12th House). This is resonant of the 2025 Ingress of Neptune into Aries, which also speaks of a new collective dream. Neptune last entered Aries in 1861, the day after the American Civil War began: a military (Aries) dream to re-unite the country.
So the New Moon in Aries could also have a military or combative element, trade war with China being the most obvious candidate. As I write, the US has just shot down a Chinese balloon, which flew over its territory.
Pluto itself is the planet we need to look at most in this chart, for obvious reasons. In the 10th House in Aquarius, it speaks strongly of the advancement of AI and big tech. That sets the context, and so the new dream of the chart will be, to a large extent, about that. But it is more like a current that will gradually rise to the surface, than it is about immediate dramatic events. If there is an immediate effect of Pluto’s Ingress, however, it is likely to be the recovery of tech stocks. But that is not financial advice!