Slow moving, heavyweight Pluto is now firmly on track to make its influence felt until 2043. Nothing happens instantly with Pluto so the Fixed signs most affected – Taurus (career/life’s direction), Leo (relationships), Scorpio (home/family), Aquarius (personal identity) – are still coming to terms with the changes imposed on their lives since 2024. Other signs pick up milder hints.
Transformation is a word lightly tossed around but in reality is a challenging, on occasion painful process, as old structures are demolished and reduced to ashes before the rebuilding of the new can begin. Pluto demands depth, discarding a superficial approach as trivial and frivolous. He was Lord of the Underworld, ruler of a realm of riches and intense emotional experiences. You have to dig deep to reap his bounty. Those who exist in a half-life of outer appearances find the Plutonic experience the most troubling. Relevant is the myth of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess, who went underground to reconnect with her sister. Her process involved losing all of her finery before she was rescued, not by a knight in shining armour, but by small earth-like creatures. There is nothing glamorous about the Pluto phase.
All signs feel the effect when there is a celestial Pluto aspect as there is this weekend with the pressured Taurus Sun square Pluto and towards the end of May with a risky, frustrated Mars in Taurus square Pluto. Life in general feels stuck, powerless and progress requires perseverance or an acceptance of what cannot be changed immediately. These come around about six times a year in hard aspect to the Sun or Mars so are part and parcel of the weft and warp (fabric) of life.
Pluto through the signs every twenty plus years does have a significant effect on the culture. See list below.
What sparked off this post is that the present Pluto in Aquarius is squaring its 1980s phase in Scorpio in the Thatcher/Reagan era when deregulation of the financial markets took place.
A new book The Asset Class by Hettie O’Brien describes in detail what happens when the state withdraws from key public services and allows private equity to take control. “You don’t know their names, but they own the house you rent. They own your hospitals, nurseries and care homes, the media you consume and the companies you work for”. “They are deeply entangled in our everyday life: in water, energy, housing, care homes, health, trains – services we all depend on.”
She shows how some care homes treat elderly people as “the human equivalent of ATM machines” as fees are siphoned from their housing equity to fund the poor conditions and low wages of exhausted care workers.
In the UK, privatisation was accompanied by regulation but it is often underfunded and ineffective. Nothing changes, because poor services maximise profit and shareholder returns are a higher priority than clean water. O’Brien rightly concludes that this has “rewire[d] the state in service of a wealthy elite”.
It took almost to the end of the last Pluto in Aquarius for the citizens of Paris to revolt against the entitled wealthy and bring them down; and then only because there was a revolutionary Uranus opposition Pluto to spur on the upheaval. There is none such across the next twenty years but it may be (hope!) that the egalitarian drive of Pluto in Aquarius will start to push back against the Gordon Gekkos – fittingly launched into movie stardom a year after the Big Bang.
Pluto in Gemini 1882 – 1912.
Cities, skyscrapers Telecommunications. Electrical age starts. Yellow Journalism
Pluto in Cancer 1912 – 1937.
World War 1. Emancipation of women.
Old family values destroyed. Wall Street Crash
The Great Depression
Pluto in Leo 1937 – 1956
Fascism. World War 11
Nuclear bombs. Baby Boomers
Pluto in Virgo 1956 -1971
Medical advances: Polio & measles vaccines. Heart pacemaker
USA Medicare Act.
European Economic Community. Asian flu pandemic
Suez Crisis. Russia invades Hungary
Pluto in Libra 1971 – 1983
Divorce rate jumps. Changing expectations of marriage. Independence women.
USA Equal Rights Legislation. First domestic violence shelters.
Bloody Sunday, Northern Ireland. Watergate.
Munich Olympics massacre.
Pluto in Scorpio 1983 – 1995
Money and sex. Economic shift. Brinks-Mat Gold Robbery.
AIDs and Child Sexual Abuse surfaces. Crack Cocaine.
Indira Gandhi assassinated
Pluto in Sagittarius 1995 – 2008
Globalization, multiculturalism Schengen EU – cross border travel. New media.
Sebrenica Massacre. Oklahoma bombing. Al Quaeda/terrorism. Rabin assassinated
Pluto in Capricorn 2008 – 2023
Economics and Government. Financial crash. Migrant crisis.
Populism & neo-nationalism. Global warming.
Barack Obama elected
Pluto in Aquarius 1532 – 1552
Henry V111 splits with Rome. Roman Catholic versus Protestant schism.
Pluto in Aquarius 2024 – 2043
The post Pluto – personal and political first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.
