Pluto in Aquarius: The Cry of Freedom
This Saturday, January 20, the Sun moves into Aquarius to be followed less than eleven hours later by Pluto. Pluto transits transform. Transformation is deeper than mere change, it is metamorphosis. When we experience a Pluto transit life profoundly alters. On a global level the last time Pluto was in Aquarius, we had the American and French Revolutions, and the beginning of the Industrial Age. We are already experiencing the harbingers of this through AI and the various rebellions we see globally both current and potential.
When Pluto personally visits something within our chart everything irrevocably changes. Which is why its transits are often feared. They are uncomfortable and that's their purpose: in the comfort zone the familiar place we have been dwelling, our lives remain the same. And we work to maintain that soothing place that familiarity that even though it doesn’t satisfy (you know the place inside that is urging you there has to be something more) seems is good enough. And at one point in our lives, it was but now it has become a prison of our own making. A place where we reenact in some form over and over again a pattern within our lives, where we find ourselves in a familiar dance. This might be experienced through our relationships, addictions or perhaps you always seem to have either the boss or the client from hell. These are all examples of power struggles, one of the things that fall within Pluto’s domain. We, our lives, are in essence a bird (a canary) singing in a cage.
During Pluto transits we are called upon, by our soul, to look our darkness in the eye, delve beneath the surface to the shadowy world of our subconscious, and deal with our complexes, the unconscious stories about ourselves that we carry and keep trying to resolve.
Like the Hindu Goddess Kali, Pluto is an archetype of death and rebirth. She is the dark mother. Kali symbolizes the death of the ego in the ultimate goal of human life in Hindu dharma — moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirth). She teaches us that out of darkness new life arises, whether it is the darkness of the womb, the Phoenix rising from the dark of the ashes, or a lotus blooming in the mud, the soul path we took steps upon when we drew our first breath will not be restrained.
Even though they come from different pantheons these two share many aspects. Pluto also asks us to release an aspect our our identity, often hidden from us, that we in our illusion hold dear. He rocks the boat. Our life is completely disrupted. As the planet of wealth and power as well as death and rebirth, Pluto teaches us that the evolution our soul intended when we were born is an unstoppable force.
It is an alchemical process, and along the way, the dross that covers some part of us is burned away to gold.
A Pluto transit is a long process, his orbit is 248 years after all. In my experience, a Pluto transit, this long process of unfolding, takes around five years in total. When we emerge we are dramatically altered and thus our lives are as well.
All of us will be affected over the next 20 years in some manner. But those of us with planets and points in the fixed signs (whether natally or in the progressed chart) are on a fast train to the underworld that is unstoppable. The trick to a Pluto transit is to lean in, to work with it. To recognize that your soul chose this time for this part of your story to take a dramatic turn. We have records of the planets being measured going back 5000 years, which to me means your soul had to know the timing of all of it, all of the crossroads you have stood upon when you chose to be born. Yes, like the actual birth process, the uncontrollable contractions, Pluto transits are primal. And just like birth itself, they are unstoppable. A woman in labor cannot control any of it, she can only choose how she is going to partner with the process, to recognize there is purpose in the pain, there is new life on the other side.
In the next few years if you have anything between 0° and 5° Aquarius, Taurus, Leo, or Scorpio in either your natal or progressed chart will feel this the most. if your point is more toward 5° the experience will be building in intensity like an approaching wave. Slow down. Breathe. Remember the middle of the is often experienced as the ‘goo point,’ the part of the process that a caterpillar goes through in the cocoon where it completely breaks down before reemerging completely transformed as a butterfly.
There are great riches and beauty that have the potential to be uncovered. It is always darkest before the dawn, and freedom awaits.
