Pluto in Aquarius and a Post-Governance Social Order

Last week, Pluto transited into Aquarius after spending 15 years in Capricorn. It will retrograde back into Capricorn in June and then transit back into Aquarius next year where it will remain for the next 20 years. Of the ten planetary bodies, Pluto has the longest transits, spending anywhere from 12 to 24 years in a sign. Pluto marks generations of human history and major shifts in human consciousness. Pluto in a sign seeks to purify by challenging and undermining the deeply held assumptions that undergird the institutions represented by whatever sign it is in. In 2008 when Pluto transited into Capricorn, the entire global financial system collapsed, unmasking the collective fiction that is the global system of capitalism.

Last week during Pluto’s first week in Aquarius, at least here in the US where I’m based, we’ve already seen Pluto hard at work unmasking our government institutions. Trump made history as the first president to be indicted after his presidential term. We’ve witnessed state legislatures openly and explicitly reaffirm their dogged commitment to white supremacy and push forward their anti-democratic and authoritarian agendas. We’ve seen townhall meetings over critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ legislation that look as if they came right out of the 1960s, the height of resistance against the U.S. system of apartheid.

Globally, there has been pointed escalations in high-powered warfare by the world’s existing and emerging superpowers and imperialist powers (the United States, NATO, Russia, China, Israel), an unmasking of warfare as statecraft without even the cover of “self-defense” or legitimate declarations of war. These are blatant campaigns to destabilize and colonize abroad while building up the war machine propaganda domestically.

When Pluto went into Capricorn, many thought the global recession would mark the end of capitalism, but what we learned is the resiliency of power (resilience is another Plutonian theme and so is power) to continue to operate even without the cover of legitimacy — establishing a new normal on the backs of our resiliency, our ability to creatively survive in conditions of afterlife, post capitalism, post colonialism, post climate collapse, post the end of history.[1]

Aquarius is showing the full unmasking and de-legitimization of our political systems and global order of governance. Similarly, I fear, however, that these systems are quite resilient and can reconfigure themselves to uphold the underlying power dynamic on the backs of our dogged will to nonetheless survive annihilation.[2]

However, what social movements have taught me is that Plutonian crisis is the opportunity for radicals (another Pluto word — “radical” meaning from the root) to push history forward by advancing our vision in times when the masses are looking for an alternative to fill the power vacuum that crisis of legitimacy creates.

Jupiter will square Pluto May 17–18 of this year. Jupiter-Pluto has correlated with global leftist movements in the last few years. While these moments of groundswell have been spontaneous and hard to predict, they have also been moments of activation for movements and social ideologies that are already pretty established in leftist, progressive movements. Now is the time to gather your people, your resources, your mutual aid networks, whatever we need when folks take to the streets.

To hear more about major transits this year, you can watch the full “Intro to Mundane Astrology” here.

[1] To read more about surviving after the end of the world, read Bayo Akomolafe’s “What climate collapse asks of us”: http://www.emergencenetwork.org/whatclimatecollapseasksofus/

[2] Another Plutonian word. When humans discovered Pluto, the world was in between two world wars, the Great Depression, and the creation of atomic warfare with the power to destroy the world.