*AI Generated Image of Pluto in Aquarius*

The rumors are true. Pluto, the planet of death-and-birth is moving into the tech-savvy sign Aquarius on March 23rd, 2023 and will continue its travels through the fixed air sign for the next 21 years. Indeed, Pluto’s distance from the Sun means that it tends to spend a longer time in each sign of the zodiac. Anyone who has survived a Pluto transit knows that distance is no curb for this mighty catastrophe of a planet. So, what can we expect from Pluto in Aquarius? The technologically unfathomable, is my best guess. I suspect we will see movements exploring the shadow side of Big Tech and the unchecked power of surveillance and data mining. AI will continue to both terrify and amaze, while we attempt to preserve our power as a biological humanity.

Many times, we will see a sort of “teeing-up” of events before a major planetary ingress. I write this article only a month after the tumultuous Twitter take-over by out-of-touch billionaire Elon Musk. Between the eclipses and a Mars retrograde in Gemini, the infamous Blue Check fiasco did not disappoint. Nonetheless, many feared that Twitter would collapse under pressure, potentially decimating a leading social media platform. Within the same period, it’s revealed that Meta has lost $7.3 billion on the Metaverse since September 2021. With both of these major tech companies initiating mass layoffs, it became clear to me that the Instagram impersonator issue was not going to improve, and I reluctantly decided to shift my business account to private to protect my own sense of peace, as well as my followers’. I realized that the platforms we have depended upon could be on their way to collapse. The unraveling mutation of these social standby’s crystalized Pluto’s gaze upon socially-conscious Aquarius this March. Pluto permanently changes everything it touches, after all. While I have my own hang-ups with IG, I know countless others who are rattled that everything has become a TikTok video or an ad. Pluto in Aquarius invites us to contemplate what social media represent for us as a tool. This is an opportunity to question and align.

Pluto’s sign change represents a paradigm shift. As I began formally studying astrology shortly after Pluto’s Capricorn ingress, I have yet to report on a fresh Pluto ingress. Pluto has an elliptical orbit (one reason it was officially demoted by the IAU in 2006) and it stays in each sign for a varying amount of time. Its shortest stay is in Scorpio (11 years) and its longest is in Taurus (~31 years). Pluto will spend the next 21 years traveling through the innovative tech sign of Aquarius. That’s a long transit.

What happens when Pluto rolls through any given zodiac sign?

On the collective terrain, Pluto tends to confront topics associated with each zodiac sign by a catalytically uprooting cultural toxicity fermenting beneath a cracking veneer. Pluto doesn’t do façades. It takes pleasure in exposing the shadow realm, but mostly because it feels so fucking good to purge toxins. And also, because Pluto, the scapegoated Olympian, thrives on pointing out what’s really going on behind the scenes in the happier above-ground dimension. Congruently, Pluto induces a reflexive panic: collective attempts to control the very thing being exposed. The fight to control rallies against the natural order of metamorphosis. It is an epic battle indeed. Pluto permanently altars whatever it touches, but on the collective tier, unfortunately, so much is out of our control, and it doesn’t always turn out for the better. Not at first anyway. Sometimes it takes time to process what just happened before things can level out.

When Pluto entered Scorpio (Nov 1983), it terminated the sexual revolution enjoyed by two previous decades. The AIDS endemic made folks more fearful of sex and bodily fluids than ever. In attempts to control the narrative, the LGBTQ community were stigmatized. Pluto’s journey through Scorpio, a sign associated with intimacy, led to more awareness around sex, sex education, but also left its mark in a way where free love was not as viable. Meanwhile, music censorship moved to curb the perverse from pop culture.

Pluto’s journey through philosophical Sagittarius (Jan. 1995) corresponded with a mass Exodus from the church. Specifically, the Catholic ones – mostly due to the eruption of child molestation scandals at the hands of Catholic priests. Yup, that’s when a lot of parents stopped forcing my peers to go to church every Sunday. This caused many people to question their faith and what religion would mean for them moving forward. Simultaneously, the “fear of the foreigner” arose in a post 9/11 world. Chalk it up to ignorance, but many Americans began to fear foreign languages and turbans. The “Land of the Free,” tightened up its borders, opened Guantanamo Bay and passed the Patriot Act – a surveillance bill dressed in americana. As Sagittarius is associated with freedom, boundlessness, and the wild unknown, we witnessed extreme attempts to prohibit globetrotting and free speech.

Immediately, Pluto’s Capricorn ingress (Feb. 2008) paralleled a devastating economic crash. On the world stage, we see Capricorn represent big business, ruling class, government, and systemic order. While Wall Street enjoyed billions in bailouts, the middle class perished. Homes were repossessed amidst interest hikes, further cushioning the wealthy banks who benefited. The Arab Spring erupted as New Yorkers Occupied Wall Street. People angered in masses to the wealth inequalities perpetuated by late-stage-capitalism (a signature Pluto in Cap hashtag). I thought for sure Pluto was going to deliver the cookbook “death and rebirth,” to level the playing field. Wrong. Billionaires became trillionaires, Bezos ate Whole Foods and Tesla ate Twitter while the far-right desecrated the democratic process even more shamelessly and openly than ever before. Pluto in Capricorn made corruption worse and increased the chasm of wealth. Sometimes, we need to wait for the individuals born within each Pluto generation to come of age and embody the energy into a force for greater good.

So when Pluto moves into Aquarius, what themes will be italicized?

Most obviously, we will be focused on the realm of Big Tech – a sector which has mysteriously infiltrated every aspect of our lives. My phone reports that I average 3-4 hours per day of phone use (not sure how accurate that truly is between idle recipe pages and podcasts). In less than 20 years, human life has completely transformed, defaulting many tasks to the device in hand. Equipped with microphones and cameras, these devices are also tracking an unfathomable amount of data from our personal lives. We just don’t know how much. And many of us don’t care (yet). From microwaves and ovens with wifi to Alexa and home security systems, it’s all around us. Our ears perk up suspiciously to the commercials advertising the very thing we were just discussing at dinner – and even more creepy are the ads pinpointing the very items we haven’t vocalized but have been thinking about. Rumor has it, that AI can predict us. Now the data mining makes sense. Rumor has it that these tech giants have curated AI profiles for each user and sells this info to various companies. That’s why its free to use these social media platforms – we are paying for it with our personal information.

Upon the mass exodus from Twitter, an engineer revealed that he was asked to build invasive software to track every detail of Twitter users movements – times, locations and the distance of their work commute. Why does Big Tech need this information? What exactly are they using it for? How far does the rabbit hole really go? Pluto in Aquarius promises to divulge this nefarious information and more.

Speaking of AI, this is a quickly developing new frontier will continue to terrify and amaze. Indeed, self-driving cars would be really fucking awesome. Meanwhile, AI generated artwork is presently emerging on the scene, and is already proving to become both problematic for artists, but also for those who appreciate historical accuracy. I’ve seen AI generated images of Akbar the Great enjoying pizza (the 14 fingers on one hand was a dead giveaway), and what Princess Diana and Jimi Hendrix would look like today had they not perished so young. I read about a scientist who programmed a robot with journals from their youth so that they could converse with – and heal – their inner child. It’s possible that AI could open the door to new modalities of healing, but what about those robots who quickly became racist, sexist and wished death upon humanity? Maybe its not too soon to fear the robot wars.

Pluto in Aquarius will exponentially increase the abilities of technology to mind-blowing proportions, but we will also discover its adverse effects on our biology and culture. We could predict movements to reclaim our right to privacy in online spaces, or at least share the profits. After all, Zuk didn’t’ make his $billions from advertisers alone. Facebook has already come under fire for its ability to influence elections, shape ideology and play on our individual psychology. Documentaries such as The Social Dilemma, will likely become increasingly influential during the next two decades of Pluto in Aquarius.

European laws promise greater protections for online users and their data – and specifically those of children. Perhaps sharing images of your children on Facebook for the past 15 years has done wonders for AI aging technology, but ever wonder what Big Tech is capable of in possession of a person’s entire life story recorded on social media? Many parents are cautious about this and limit how much they share about their children online simply because Big Tech is largely an ungoverned frontier where the scale of morality has yet to receive a townhall. One issue here is that technology evolves faster than litigation can keep up.

So what does this mean for the Aquarius house in your chart?

Not to worry! I am pleased to report that I have survived 15-years of consecutive Pluto transits through my Cardinal-dominated chart. You will survive too. While we all may feel an immediate vibe shift in the collective, or perhaps a “knock at the door” in your Aquarius house (as my teacher John Marchesella called it), you won’t feel the ultimate potency of Pluto in Aquarius until it aspects an important planet or point in your chart. Typical of the lord of the underworld, Pluto prefers to lurk in the shadows and pop out when the moment is right – and by that, we mean transits. And even when you’re in the thick of a Pluto transit, it can take a while for the Pluto message to reveal itself. Like I said, Pluto is mysterious and cryptic like that (see what I did there?). If you’re already feeling a little nervous for your planets at the early degrees of the fixed signs, feel free to book a reading with me or another of your fav astrologers and we can have a chat about it. Pluto is complicated, but I promise that Pluto is your friend.

What else does Aquarius highlight besides tech?

Saturn leaves the door open for Pluto as it exits Aquarius in March 2023. Fortunately, we’ve built a relationship with Saturn in Aquarius for the past 3 years, setting some of the stage for Pluto’s demolition project. Saturn made us more cautious of the air we breathe in enclosed spaces (fixed air is right) – might Pluto in Aquarius introduce new forms of control or revelatory research?

As I emphasized on the Libra episode of The Astrology Podcast, the air signs have to do with technology and invention: Gemini is the pen, the printing press and language both written and spoken – a distinguishing feature of culture and civilization is dialect and language. Libra, the scale, represents commerce and social mores of civilization. Aquarius, the water-bearer, transports water from the river to the remote village using the technology of the urn. Inherent in the symbolism of Aquarius is a forward-thinking outsider. Adam Elenbaas recently explained the archetype of Saturn so superbly in his Pluto in Aquarius video, Previewing Pluto into Aquarius - Part II: Who is the Water Bearer? Aquarius, while associated with groups, always has one foot in the social circle and one foot on the outside, never fully immersing themselves anywhere. The wallflower holds a key vantage point, objectively analyzing the group dynamics and infrastructural flow. Revolutionary ideas which influence social organization will be on the rise.

This is why Aquarius is so sure of themselves. They see the reality of the matter, and they don’t care how convenient it is for anyone (or even for themselves). The fixed air sign is discerning, melancholic and contemplative yet decisive. We may see a resurgence of stoicism, skepticism and more of a return to scientific thinking.

Due to Aquarius’ views on humanity as a whole, Aquarius has the reputation for being “humanitarian.” While Aquarius is concerned with social structure and possesses an idea of how society should be collectively organized for the “better,” the moral compass of each Aquarian varies. Remember that Aquarius is a detached sign; Pluto in Aquarius doesn’t care about your feelings. We may see the world become more robotic. Literally tho. Tech will only continue to infiltrate our lives. While appearing to make us more connected, however, it dismantles our ability to be present and hold space for the things that make us inherently human.

Pluto in Aquarius will challenge our ideas of what is even possible, technologically speaking. I often think of Prometheus, the giver of fire (technology) to human beings. Prometheus paid the price. With the conveniences of technology, it’s as if there are always side-effects to consider. Also resonant of Frankenstein, Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a chip which implants within the human brain as a “neural interface computer,” is set to begin its first set of clinical trials by June 2023. This sounds dangerous on multiple levels. Regardless, Pluto in Aquarius is knocking.

As Aquarius is the sign opposite of Leo, where the archetypal Sun king reigns, we may see some interesting themes crop up around leadership. Aquarius is the anti-hero or the anti-king. Aquarius is the shadow-advisor quietly pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Aquarius does not desire the spotlight, but they don’t mind being in control.

Recall that we are in an age of Air – an element corresponding with an emphasis on technology, education, social connection, the movement of people and yes, plagues and pandemics. Jupiter and Saturn will now conjoin in Air signs for the next 200 years and following Pluto’s Aquarius ingress will be Uranus’ Gemini ingress. Uranus spends 7 years in Gemini, and shortly after it leaves, Saturn enters Gemini.

Indeed, there is a TON of air on the menu. What does this mean for us technologically, socially, and even biologically? Pluto in Aquarius will take its time stealthily revealing these answers to us over the next 21 years.

Read Part II: A historical Evalutation of Prior Pluto in Aquarius Eras

REad Part III: NOteable Pluto in Aquarius CHARTS