Rethinking Pluto in Aquarius: Musings on a Paradigm Shift*

I’m not sure what I expected when Pluto crossed the imaginary demarcation line between the constellations of Capricorn and Aquarius back in March 2023. Astrologically, we’re taught that planets enter new signs with a splash, announcing their ingresses through some observable event that makes those of us attuned to the heavens nod knowingly and say, “That’s definitely Pluto in Aquarius.”

Instead of a single defining event on March 23 that stood out as quintessentially Plutonic, the headlines reflected a world unlike the one we knew pre-pandemic and certainly long before 2008, when Pluto first entered the sea goat’s domicile. Interest rates were rising amid a U.S. banking crisis, the UN was holding its first water conference raising alarm bells around the issues of availability and sustainability, and NATO was warning the West to brace itself for a long war in Ukraine, the last of which, just last week, saw the destruction of a dam in Kakhovka leading to concerns over the cataclysmic man-made destruction and its impacts on global food supply.

The trouble back in March and the trouble now is that all these stories represent Pluto’s larger planetary agenda on the global stage and on the world as we know it: profound, irreversible transformation.