A big thank you to all my subscribers so far. I hope you find my content worth your while, even if it is a bit long by today’s standards. If you think I produce high-quality content, the best thing you can do is still to share this publication with others who you think might be interested. You can also offer feedback and constructive criticism. After this article series is finished, there are plenty of other things I want to do: EA chart analyses and methodology, interviews with other astrologers, and more. Stay tuned!
By the way, for those of you who weren’t convinced by my assertion that Pluto in Capricorn corresponded to a time of social justice, responsibility, judgment, blame, angry social media and demands for conformity, the New York Times has a piece out now that seems to agree with me, titled: We’re Watching the End of a Digital Media Age. It All Started With Jezebel. The Jezebel magazine was founded in 2007, shortly before Pluto entered Capricorn.
This was meant to be the final post of the series. As I started elaborating on the Aquarius archetype, I realized there were a lot of things I wanted to cover, though, and it wouldn’t make for a good reading experience if I tried to squeeze it all into one post. Consequently, this post will focus on the Aquarius archetype as such and start looking at how the current Pluto in Aquarius archetype could manifest this time by comparing with the last Pluto in Aquarius transit. In the next and final post, I will cover some more miscellaneous aspects of Pluto in Aquarius as well as saying something about Neptune in Aries, Uranus in Gemini, and Saturn in Pisces.
I will not discuss the Age of Aquarius - when it started or will start, or what it is going to mean. Plenty has been said about that already. But if you still wonder what the Age of Aquarius is going to bring, I suppose that studying the Aquarius archetype as such could give you a partial answer.
In this case, I will not say that Aquarius, Uranus and the 11th house are all the same. I do treat Uranus as the ruler of Aquarius when I do readings, but there is also Saturn to consider here. Uranus on its own is akin to an unruly, mental energy - the higher octave of Mercury, as it is often called. But the Aquarius archetype as a whole is also associated with discipline, seriousness, and a decidedly societal focus - Saturn. Somehow, the Aquarius archetype comes into being through the encounter of Uranus with Saturn.
Aquarius keywords
Let’s start out with some keywords for Aquarius.
Individuation - being different - seeking out like-minded people - networking - collaboration - creative group processes - striving for a common goal - loyalty - egalitarianism - friends and allies - progress and reform - revolution - rebellion - breaking away from the status quo - detachment - distance - objectivity - thinking outside the box - breakthrough - innovation - artificiality - non-linear thinking - genius - flashes of insight - sudden and unexpected events - shocks - trauma - deconditioning - self-creation
I am trying to arrange these keywords so that you can get a sense of how they are all related, e.g. trauma sitting next to the need for deconditioning. The first and last keywords, individuation and self-creation, are also related to each other, thus closing the circle.
From Capricorn to Aquarius
Just as I looked at Sagittarius and Capricorn by trying to understand what preceded it, I also want to show you a few examples of how the Capricorn archetype can transition into Aquarius. Embedded in the descriptions are also a few example charts of real people with Uranus or Aquarius placements who capture some of what I am trying to convey (all the people in the examples are entirely fictional, though).
A young woman takes farewell of her parents, preparing for a radical departure to live in a different city with a new job, perhaps a new spouse as well. The farewell is a happy one and she looks back with fondness and gratitude to all her parents taught her about the importance of hard work and conscientiousness, about morality and fairness, about responsibility and maturity. There is nevertheless a thrill of the new, a sense of breaking free from old structures as she pursues her new life being built on top of the lessons from her parents.
A group of montaineers finally reach the top of the mountain. Their hard work has finally paid off, and they are struck with awe at the enormous vista that is now laid open to them. Everything looks so small down there; the sense of distance and detachment allows them to see things objectively in a way they hadn’t done before. For the first time, they can see the city below entirely from the outside. It is just one big structure among others in this vast landscape. Suddenly, the achievement of having climbed the mountain doesn’t seem so big anymore and they start discussing new plans for climbing even taller mountains in the future.
A group of students graduate from college. They now have an official diploma and a title that they can use when applying for jobs in the future. They are leaving the public institution that has served as their home for several years; the time has come for each and every one of them to go their own, separate paths, while maintaining a network of friends and classmates from their college years. Ultimately, most of them will get jobs at various companies and organizations that will, in various ways, contribute to society.
Jonathan has had enough of his authoritarian parents and the conservative social norms they expect him to live by. He starts dressing differently, wearing makeup, and listening to music that he knows his parents disapprove of. At school, he seeks out likeminded people who dress similarly and listen to the same music. The more his parents start judging him and pressuring him to conform, the more he feels the need to break away. It all comes to a head in a heated argument with his parents when he ends up spitting his father in the face. His father, shocked and outraged, gives him a hard slap across the cheek. Jonathan leaves the house in fury, screaming at the top of his lungs that he hates his dad and never wants to see him again.
A radical socialist guerrilla stages a coup in a country that has previously been ruled by a corrupt king and his cronies. The guerilla leaders proclaim a new, socialist people’s republic that will be governed by the people for the people. Property and land is confiscated from the wealthy and distributed among landless peasants. The monarchy is abolished and the revolutionaries mark the beginning of the new regime as year 0, cutting of all connections to the traditions of the past. Strong demands of loyalty are placed on ordinary people “in the struggle against worldwide capitalism”, and anyone suspected of being an enemy of the people is either sent to a re-education camp or swiftly executed.
Claire leaves her abusive husband after years of beatings and mental abuse. Trying to understand herself and her own trauma, she joins a feminist book circle where she finds other women carrying similar traumas as her own. Together, they discuss childhood norms and try to understand how they were made to conform to patriarchal values, inhibiting their own individuation processes. They want to throw off the shackles of oppression and become who they truly know themselves to be, beyond all social conditioning. After a while, though, Claire begins to feel that she is not allowed to question certain dogmas within the group. Her desire to find another man to live with is ridiculed and she is taught that she is suffering from false consciousness. She should be loyal to the feminist cause instead of “sleeping with the enemy”. Claire finally leaves the group, feeling that the alternative social structure of the book circle was at least as conformist and oppressive as the social structure in society at large.
A brilliant, young scientist is trying to solve a difficult scientific problem. For everything he has been taught about the laws governing the material world, there is something that just isn’t working out. There is no authority in the world that could help him in this pursuit of new knowledge; he knows that he is moving into unchartered territory. Suddenly, he is struck by a radical new idea that goes beyond anything anyone has ever thought before. He can now envision a solution to the problem, only a solution so paradoxical that it appears counterintuitive, artificial, impossible to fathom with the ordinary intellect, defying all common sense. He has now started thinking completely outside the box. He has entered the domain of Uranus.
Aquarius and Individuation
Embedded in these stories, we see examples of radically breaking away from the status quo (primarily points 4 and 5) as well as smoother transitions from Capricorn to Aquarius (primarily 1, 2, and 3).
Much has been made of Aquarius the rebel, the revolutionary and its need to break away, both in EA and in astrology in general. A real revolution is rarely a cause for celebration though; it is simply a final response to a society that has become so unbearably oppressive that people just can’t stand it any longer. If Aquarius needs to turn to revolution, something must already have gone terribly wrong in Capricorn. And the result is usually not great either, as the old order gives way to violence, factionalism, and a radical uprooting of age-old traditions and norms in the blink of an eye. As pointed out by Michael De Baker:
The point of Aquarius is individuation - becoming that which you already know yourself to be - but the individuation process is not successful if you merely break away from the status quo and define yourself in opposition to it. True individuation takes place in a fair and just society where the individual is allowed to go its own path whilst contributing to the greater whole.
Michael De Baker, The EA School Online, Module 1, Chapter 1, Lesson 13 (paraphrase mine)
We can see that examples 1, 2, 3 and 7 all capture something of this sort, whereas number 4 and 5 are more connected to a dysfunctional, radical uprooting. Example 6 is a bit more complex: Claire is trying to reach out to ideological allies in an attempt to decondition herself from oppressive values and norms, thereby furthering her individuation process. Paradoxically, the feminist book circle has its own demands for conformity, a normative structure that ultimately works against her individuation rather than for it. Claire has no choice but to leave this environment and continue her search elsewhere. In EA, this paradox is explained through Saturn’s co-rulership of Aquarius: groups of like-minded people seeking to liberate themselves from the status quo tend to create their own alternative structures that are characterized by reverse demands for conformity and loyalty. It is a constant struggle of such groups to further liberation and individuation without becoming oppressive in their own right, silencing people and expecting them to conform in the service of the greater good. The problem has been seen most extremely in certain socialist movements that gained power, but also in youth counter-culture groups, activist organizations, and certain corporations.1
The solution to this conundrum might be found when Aquarius learns to integrate its Leo polarity, thus allowing the light of each individual to shine regardless of whether it is perceived to serve Aquarius’ vision of the greater good or not. There are at least a couple of examples I can think of from the recent Saturn in Aquarius era where this Leo polarity was lacking: The first one is the demand for social distancing during the Covid pandemic which made many people feel isolated, lonely, deprived of human warmth (Leo). Entertainment, sports events, and celebrations of all kinds (Leo) were suddenly made impossible because of how we were all required to line up, show solidarity, practice social distance, and eventually get our vaccination shots. The second one regards a wave of edits and reinterpretation of literary works to become more inclusive and less “problematic” - all in the service of the greater good (Aquarius) - ranging from Amazon’s Rings of Power series featuring mostly female rulers to the book publisher Penguin Random House releasing an edited version of Roald Dahl’s children’s books where words such as “fat”, “ugly”, and “crazy” have been replaced with others deemed less inflammatory.
I am not suggesting that social distancing was not required during the pandemic or that literary works never need to be reinterpreted due to outmoded cultural values or inflammatory language. But it is a difficult balancing act, is it not? The dangers of overreach are real and serious. The purpose of characters such as the ugly and disgusting Mr. and Mrs. Twit was never to serve some greater cause, but to provide amusement for children. Sometimes, fun is just fun. For Aquarius to become truly inclusive, it needs to allow such absurd Leo pranks to exist even if they are a tad bit anti-social. Ultimately, such inclusion might also serve individuation because of how it respects the unicity of each and every one, allowing people to go their own, distinct paths instead of trying to force them into a mold.
Aquarius and Humanism
As we begin to wonder what the Pluto in Aquarius era will bring, it might be helpful to look at what happened during past Pluto in Aquarius transits. I find this summary by the writer and astrologer Jessica Davidson very helpful in this regard. Themes of political reform, humanism, and innovative thinking seem to have been dominant during these time periods, though we should of course be careful to draw any definite conclusions from such a broad, historical overview. We cannot know with great confidence what will transpire during the upcoming Pluto in Aquarius transit, partly because the other planets will not always be in particular signs when Pluto is in Aquarius - though as Davidson points out, some past Pluto in Aquarius transits also lined up with Neptune in Aries or Uranus in Gemini, as will soon be the case again.
Why, though, is Aquarius connected with humanism? Having pondered this question myself, I have come up with a couple of answers, both (again) influenced by the teachings of Michael De Baker.
The first, simple answer is that Aquarius teaches us indviduation, meaning becoming that which we already know ourselves to be. In some sense, Aquarius teaches us to become fully human. All human beings are humans of course, but there is a second sense of humanness - of humaneness - that can only flower when we reach our full potential in the human form (Capricorn) and go on to give that potential its full, individual expression (Uranus, Aquarius). Aquarius is like a diamond: hard, sharp, brilliant, uniquely precious and valuable. Hopefully it will have integrated its Leonian Solar essence to prevent it from becoming all too cold and artificial. Like a diamond, like a star, Aquarius glimmers in the distance, attaining objectivity and detachment, realizing not just its own unicity but that of everybody else as well. From its new-found meta-perspective, it sees and it senses the fundamental interconnectedness of all beings - a precursor to Pisces.2 The social structure that is was fundamentally part of is now seen from the outside, making possible a reformation that will serve all beings - all the unique little stars, diamonds, or snowflakes - in the process of individuation. From Aquarius' perspective, this individuation process was the purpose of Capricorn's social structure all along.
The other, complementary explanation is based on my own understanding of the grand Air trine. It was at the EA School Online - sometime during class, I believe - that Michael shared with me the idea that Gemini, the first Air sign, is also the first human sign of the zodiac. It is as if animals, with a few exceptions, only have access to the first two archetypes, Aries and Taurus, never fully entering the mental world of Gemini, not really engaging with the air element except through the physical air they breathe. Eventually, from language, words and thought (Gemini) comes self-consciousness (Cancer), which in turn leads to the expression of that self-consciousness (Leo), and so on.
Now, if we treat Gemini as the first human sign and draw a trine to Libra, what do we get? Man as a social creature. If language and thought is fundamental to being human, socializing with others is equally much so. Many species are happy to spend most of their time alone, but not us. Without the interpersonal relationships of the Libra archetype, we could never fully function as humans.
Finally, draw another trine from Libra to Aquarius and we get the individuated human that we have already touched upon. Such a person will have gone through and mastered both the mentalizing process of Gemini and the socializing process of Libra. He or she remains in every sense a social creature, knowing full well that we only become humans together with others. The connecting that defines Gemini3 together with the socializing that defines Libra coalesce into an Aquarian fixed air archetype of networking, social genius, pursuing improvements and reform, socializing with other mature and distinct individuals as an equal among equals.
The Clues of History
We now have a fairly clear picture of the Aquarius archetype. What I would like to do next is to look at a few key patterns and events of the last Pluto in Aquarius transit (from 1777/1778 until 1797/1798) which expressed something of the Aquarius archetype. Davidson’s overview is extremely broad, after all, and the farther back in time we find ourselves, the harder it gets to interpret the events of that time. Better then to focus on the last Pluto in Aquarius transit and look at it in more detail. This could provide us with a few clues as to how the upcoming (and partly begun) Pluto in Aquarius transit will manifest. And as Pluto has already dipped its toe into Aquarius, I believe we are already beginning to see some recurring patterns here.
Revolutionary Coalitions
The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, with Pluto in late Capricorn. The main issue was with new, colonial taxes (Pluto in Capricorn) that had been raised by the British Parliament. Going back to the Capricorn archetype, we can see that anger over perceived injustice and oppression was boiling over.
Pluto entered Aquarius on three occassions.4 On February 6, 1778, less than two weeks after the second entry, the Treaty of Alliance was signed between the United States and France, publicly ensuring French support for United States independence. Later in the spring, Britain declared war on France while Spain entered the war on the French side. Despite British attempts to get France and Spain to exit the war prematurely, the three allies stuck together until the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris which recognized United States independence.
After the French Revolution in 1789, a new kind of coalition-building occurred as the European monarchies bandied together against the expansionist French Republic. With Pluto now deep into Aquarius, questions of loyalty to the ideological cause became paramount both for France and her enemies. Fanaticism reached peak level during the Reign of Terror in 1793-1794. Here it must be noted, though, that this period was marked by Pluto in Aquarius being directly opposed by Uranus in Leo. Pluto alone cannot be blamed for the massacres.
Alliances and coalition-building alone are hardly unique phenomena for a Pluto in Aquarius transit, but it may well be that this Aquarius trait becomes amplified and intensified during the next 20 years. In today’s world, we see Russia, China, and a few other countries speaking out strongly against the US-led world order in favor of what they call a multipolar world (Aquarius - multiplicity; being an equal among equals). Such rhetoric is not new, but may turn out to be more than mere words if important key players (China) feel that they have to choose between the West and Russia. It’s not just a couple of lone despots either; the French president recently visited China with the stated purpose of solidifying ties between the two nations, weakening European dependency on the US.
Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions
The starting point of both the American and the French Revolution (in 1775 and 1789 respectively) were marked by Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions. In part 3, I mentioned the Arab Spring as another example of a sudden revolution that occurred during the same kind of conjunction. Interestingly enough, it seems that the position of Pluto in all three cases can tell us something about how successful these respective revolutions were:
The Arab Spring: Pluto in early Capricorn. The revolutions were generally unsuccessful. In most cases, the protesters were put down or, as in the case of Egypt, one oppressive government was simply replaced with another. Some concessions were made but the establishment generally won out.
The American Revolution: Pluto in late Capricorn. The revolution was not immediately succesful, but triumphed eventually with the help of France and other allies who only joined the fight after Pluto had entered Aquarius.
The French Revolution: Pluto in the middle of Aquarius. The revolution was instantly successful, in a way that shocked the world. The old order was swept away quickly and decisively and France as a country would never be the same again.
During this Pluto in Aquarius transit, there will be two Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions, the first of which will occur in Spring 2024, with Pluto in early Aquarius. An educated guess is that this will also trigger one or more revolutions, and that the impact of such revolutions will be greater than those of the Arab Spring but less than that of the French Revolution.
Humanism and Egalitarianism
It was Richard Tarnas who first made me realize the extent to which Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions are frequently connected to political revolutions as well as scientific breakthroughs.5 As for American and French revolutions, they were both also connected to significant documents such as The United States Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Both of these lofty, philosophical documents6 seem to express an encounter between Uranus the revolutionary and Jupiter the philosopher, ruler of Sagittarius, connected with the question of liberty and Natural Law. And while the US declaration was made with Pluto in late Capricorn, its eventual success probably reflects the movement of Pluto through Aquarius as well.
During the French Revolution, not everyone was happy that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen only considered men as citizens that could have political and civil rights. Thus, Olympe de Gouges published her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791 and Mary Wollstonecraft published her Vindication of the Rights of Woman the year after. Haiti, a French colony at the time, revolted successfully against French rule, abolished slavery and applied the Rights of Man to black men as well as white. And already in 1780, the strongly Aquarian English philosopher Jeremy Bentham had argued that animals, as well as humans, should have certain basic rights because of how they are, in important respects, similar to us, most notably in their ability to suffer.
The Aquarian humanism simply does not have to make halt at the boundary of a different type of creature. Petty distinctions such as sex, race or even species cease to matter to the extent that we are all alike in our fundamental natures. Or as the Swedish artist Thomas Di Leva puts it: “The animals are humans (too) [...] and humans ought to be friends [...] I don't eat my friends.”7
Such attitudes - attempting to broaden the scope of egalitarianism across barriers of sex, race, or even species - suggest a fundamental, underlying question about what a human is and what it essentially means to be human, to have a sense of human-ness. And this question is now exploding onto the public stage like never before, albeit in a very different form.
On March 22, with Pluto on the very cusp of Aquarius, an open letter signed by a variety of scientists, engineers, and entrepeneurs was published, demanding a pause in the development of AI, due to the release of ChatGPT and other chatbots that are now able to produce written or visual content that rivals output by humans in quality and certainly overtakes us all in quantity and speed. Then, only a few days ago, with Pluto having stationed retrograde in Aquarius, Geoffrey Hinton, sometimes called the godfather of AI, announced that he is quitting Google over fears that the AI developed at Google and other companies is becoming dangerous. From his interview with the New York Times:
As companies improve their A.I. systems, he believes, they become increasingly dangerous. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said of A.I. technology. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”
Until last year, he said, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is racing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Dr. Hinton said.
His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”
He is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots like ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators and others who handle rote tasks. “It takes away the drudge work,” he said. “It might take away more than that.”
Down the road, he is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he said, as individuals and companies allow A.I. systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons — those killer robots — become reality.
And as I wrote in part 1 of this article series:
As Pluto moves through the zodiac, this deep status quo of transformation, death and rebirth is colored by the current sign. The terrors of that sign are brought to the fore, and the deep existential questions of power, powerlessness, and collective survival are channeled through that archetype. Ordinary people, organizations, political parties, governments, and financial elites - all will deal with issues of power, powerlessness, and collective survival in relation to themes at the core of the archetype in question.
The fears of AI competing with or even replacing humanity itself are becoming very real - and I wouldn’t be honest if I said I didn’t share them, at least in part. One of the first AI-related strikes took place only two days ago. Yesterday (May 4), I read that the White House is now looking to address “the risks of an unchecked race to develop ever more powerful artificial intelligence”.
As I have written elsewhere, stationary planets sometimes seem to act like they are holding their breath, waiting to reverse course on something, whereas retrogradation seems connected to the need to rethink, reevaluate, and reconsider. Sometimes also to roll back: the Ukrainian spring offensive is just now getting under way.8
Perhaps a new kind of humanism is needed: one that emphasizes and safeguards the uniquely human abilities and traits that AI cannot replace. The question of what it means to be human - an intelligent (Gemini), social (Libra) creature that has an intrinsic value as an individual (Aquarius), expressing the grand Air trine - will soon need to be dealt with anew.
As an example of such a corporation, I have previously written about Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos: a corporation that promised a revolution in blood-testing technology but failed to deliver. Employees at Theranos feared asking questions and speaking out about the failures of the technology. Holmes has her South Node closely conjunct Uranus in Sagittarius: a radical innovator (Uranus) glossing over the facts (Sagittarius) because of deep-seated issues with truth and truthfulness (Sagittarius, house placements unknown).
Michael De Baker, The EA School Online, Module 1, Chapter 1, Lesson 13.
Gemini as the archetype that makes connections, connecting the dots, is covered by Michael De Baker at The EA School Online, Module 1, Chapter 1, Lesson 5. See also Michael De Baker, Intercepted Signs (2019), p. 194-195.
The dates of the three entries are April 4, 1777; January 27, 1778; and finally December 1, 1778.
See Tarnas’ magnum opus Cosmos and Psyche as well as his earlier essay Prometheus the Awakener where he covers Uranus as an expression of the Prometheus archetype.
As in the US Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Not the best musical hit ever in my opinion, but the lyrics feel right at home with Di Leva’s North Node in 11H Cancer. Lyrics with English translation can be found here.
Update: As of July 6, 2023, the Ukrainian counter-offensive still hasn’t seen much progress and it did not begin in earnest before the middle of June. At the time of writing, there was a lot of buzz in the media about the upcoming spring offensive which I believe still captured that stationary Pluto quality of a “moment of truth” for the Ukrainians. This article is a case in point.